Sunday, 12 March 2023
Friday, 10 March 2023
Hidden Valley (Memoir) by Paul Richardson
Hardback: Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth. - Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Hidden Valley (2023) is the story of the real ‘good life’ of an off-grid existence in rural Spain.
Paul Richardson fled the city to live on the land in a rough-and-tumble village on the edge of Europe.
Immersing himself in the culture of his remote Spanish community, he learned the traditional arts of animal husbandry and vegetable growing, wine-making and home distilling, and made bread from the rye he sowed on the stone-walled terraces of his twelve-acre farm.
In prose that shimmers with wit and sensuality, the author charts his personal route-map along a road less travelled – from urban pressures to rural tranquility, and from insecurity to fulfilment. Along the way he pays tribute to the influences that have shaped his progress – from The Good Life to Henry David Thoreau, from the 1970s pioneers to self-sufficiency to his farming neighbours in the far-flung region of Extremadura.
In Richardson’s hands, off-grid living both becomes an act of rebellion and a heartening proof that a simpler, better life is possible, if only we can remove ourselves from the ethos in which conspicuous consumption is a duty and success/failure the wheel on which society turns.
Hidden Valley is a glorious narrative of one man’s journey towards self-reliance. Original and thought-provoking, it is also hugely entertaining.
About the author: Paul Richardson is a British food and travel writer. He has written for publications including the Evening Standard, Guardian and Taste Magazine, and his books include Our Lady of the Sewers: And Other Adventures in Deep Spain; Cornucopia: A Gastronomic Tour of Britain; A Late Dinner; Discovering the Food of Spain; Rustic Spanish: Hearty, Authentic Recipes for Everyday Eating; and Indulgence: Around the World in Search of Chocolate. Richardson has owned and managed a small farm and vineyard in Spain for over twenty years.
Wednesday, 8 March 2023
The Godmother: Madre Pascalina, A Feminine Tour de Force by Charles Theodore Murr
Paperback: Now for the first time author Charles T Murr (The Society of Judas) vividly recounts his conversations with Josefine Lehnert - the woman known in some circles as La Popessa. Few women in the 20th century wielded more power and influence than did Josefine Lehnert (1894-1983). No woman, in twenty centuries, ever wielded more power and influence in the Vatican.
When Josefine Lehnert entered Holy Cross Convent [Menzinger, Switzerland], she was given the name "Pascalina." In 1917, the beautiful young nun from Bavaria and two other Sisters were sent to Munich to organize and maintain the nunciature. The Holy See's newly appointed Nuncio to Bavaria was 41-year-old Eugenion Pacelli.
For the rest of his diplomatic career, Schwester Pascalina would remain his personal secretary, housekeeper and ne plus ultra confidante. When Pacelli was recalled to Rom e in 1929 and subsequently made a cardinal and appointed Secretary of State, he requested that Sister Pascalina be permitted to continue working with him. She was the first woman ever to reside in the Apostolic Palace.
In 1939, on the first ballot and by a unanimous [minus one] vote, Eugeion Pacelli became the world's 260th Pope; the twelfth to take the name "Pius."
Romanità - an unofficial yet rigorous ecclesiastical/Italianate protocol that permeates diplomacy to this day - saw fit to "promote" the new pontiff's secretary. Henceforth, "Sister" Pascalina was "Mother" Pascalina.
Strong woman that she was, "La Madre" was keenly and constantly aware of the tightrope she was walking - and more so of the snake pit just below it. As the pope's closest confidante, she strove for anonymity; kept any opinion she might have had on any matter, private or public, strictly to herself; avoided photographers and journalists like the plague and - perhaps most challengingly of all - ignored every cruel rumour and innuendo, never dignifying one of them with a response.
Undoubtedly, Pope Pius XII was a giant among men; an outstanding intellectual; a saviour to countless victims of World War II; a courageous advocate for the voiceless; a born leader who understood a complicated world and its leaders, good and evil; a Pope worthy to be called "Great."
It is said that "Behind every great man is a great woman." The history of Pope Pius XII and Mother Pascalina requires one very important word change to that maxim: "Beside every great man stands a great woman."
The Godmother: Madre Pascalina, A Feminine Tour de Force (2017) is essential reading for anyone interested in modern Church history and for those seeking spiritual growth and development.
About the author: Charles Theodore Murr (b 1950) is a Catholic priest, theologian, author, philosopher, linguist, psychologist and founder of an Orphanage in Tepatitlan, Jalisco, Mexico. Murr is notable as a recipient of the "Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World" award and the "Ten Outstanding Young Americans". Both honours were awarded in 1985.
After completing his primary and secondary education, Murr then went on to St Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, obtaining his BA (Magna cum Laude) in Romance Languages in 1971, while also taking graduate courses at the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the summers of 1970 and 1971 in French, Spanish and Latin, and courses in Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.
In the fall of 1971, he enrolled in the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Urbe, Rome, Italy; earning a second Baccalaureate, this time in Philosophy in 1972. He then began theological studies at the same University, earning another Baccalaureate, this time in Thomistic Theology, finishing in 1975. Moving on to Graduate Theology, Murr attended the Pontificia Universita Gregoriana, Rome, Italy, earning a (Doctoral-level) Licentiate in Sacred Theology in 1977, and continuing there, earning a Licentiate in Philosophical Anthropology in 1979.
His continuing education includes: Universität Salzburg; Salzburg, Austria, 1993–1994, Psychology and German; Saint Joseph's Seminary, Dunwoodie, New York, M.Div. 1996, and New York University, New York, New York, M.S. in Psychology, 2001. Father Murr has written five books.
Tuesday, 7 March 2023
Monday, 6 March 2023
The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story Of The Francis Papacy by Marcantonio Colonna
Hardback: The Dictator Pope: The Inside Story Of The Francis Papacy was previously published in e-book in 2017 under the name Marcantonio Colonna. This completely revised and updated version (2018) tells the inside story of the Francis papacy.
Could Pope Francis be the most tyrannical and unprincipled pontiff in modern times? Yes, says Church historian Marcantonio Colonna, in his controversial yet judicious new book, The Dictator Pope.
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope in 2013 as a liberal and a reformer. In fact, he was neither - except by coincidence. Though he was not well-known within the College of Cardinals that elected him, close observers in his native land already recognized him to be a manipulative politician, skilled at self-promotion, and a disciple of the populist dictator Juan Perón.
Behind the mask of a genial man of the people is a pope who cares shockingly little about theology or the liturgy but is obsessed with his own power. Allying himself with the most corrupt elements in the Vatican, Francis rules by fear. He has obstructed or reversed the very reforms that were expected of him and attempted to alter Catholic teaching by subterfuge. In The Dictator Pope, you will learn:
1) Why the head of Francis’s own religious order thought he should not be made a bishop
2) Why Francis may have diverted Church funds to support Hillary Clinton’s failed presidential campaign
3) How true Church reformers have been punished by the Pope and his allies
4) How Francis himself has mused that he might be the cause of a schism in the Church
5) Why clerics in the Vatican have gone from dismissing Francis as a “clown” to fearing him as a dictator
Marcantonio Colonna has exhaustively mined his extensive contacts in the Vatican to produce a provocative and revealing account of Pope Francis’s true motivations. The Dictator Pope is essential reading to understand one of the most enigmatic, and dangerous, figures to occupy the See of St Peter.
About the author: Marcantonio Colonna is the pen name of H J A Sire, an author and historian. Sire was born in 1949 in Barcelona to a family of French ancestry. He was educated in England at the Jesuits' centuries-old Stonyhurst College and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he gained an honours degree in Modern History. He is the author of six books on Catholic history and biography, including one on the famous English Jesuit, writer, and philosopher Father Martin D'Arcy, SJ.
The Dictator Pope is the fruit of Henry Sire's four-year residence in Rome from 2013 to 2017. During that time he became personally acquainted with many figures in the Vatican, including Cardinals and Curial officials, together with journalists specializing in Vatican affairs.
Sunday, 5 March 2023
The Liturgy, The Family, And The Crisis Of Modernity: Essays Of A Traditional Catholic by Joseph Shaw
Hardback/Paperback: The decline of the Catholic Church in the developed world has been accelerated in the last decade by a devastating series of scandals involving sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. But just as clerical abuse fits in to a wider story about the abuse of power in the modern “sexual marketplace,” so the decline of Catholic church-going and religious belief finds its context in a wider collapse of cultural institutions and shared beliefs: the crisis of modernity.
This is no source of comfort for Catholics, since in recent decades the Church has provided neither shelter from secular trends nor a compelling analysis of the crisis. In these essays, Dr Joseph Shaw examines what the Church has in common with the wider world as it passes through this crisis as well as the perennial wisdom of her tradition that shows us how to escape it.
The first part examines the place of the ancient Catholic liturgy in modernity, defending it, against the misunderstandings of modernists, as something supremely suited to engage our deepest instincts towards the worship of God.
The second part turns to the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council and addresses a series of lines of attack on those Catholics attached to the traditional Latin Mass - notably the attempt to link them to the crisis of clerical abuse.
The third part addresses one of the most contested issues of our times, sexuality and gender roles, and asks what, if anything, the Church can still say about them.
Dr Shaw approaches these explosive topics with seriousness and honesty, leaving behind the point-scoring of social media and partisan journalism while not shying away from unpopular teachings and uncomfortable conclusions.
Part I: Liturgy
1. Discovering and Rediscovering the Traditional Mass
2. What Is the Liturgy For?
3. Understanding the History of the Liturgy
4. Understanding Liturgical Participation
5. Traditions and the Narcissism of Consumer Capitalism
6. Tradition, Liberation, and Meaning
Part II: Crisis
7. What Vatican II Did to the Church
8. Liturgy and Orthodoxy
9. The Traditional Latin Mass and Diversity
10. Why Do They Call You “Rigid”?
11. Clericalism and the Culture of Clerical Abuse
12. Sex Education and the Ethics of Consent
Part III: Family
13. Understanding the Feminisation of Christianity
14. The Male Priesthood and Patriarchy
15. Headship and Hierarchy
16. Feminism, Patriarchy, and Regretting the Sexual Revolution
17. The Family and Culture
18. The Family and the Defence of the Faith
About the author: Dr Joseph Shaw has a Doctorate in Philosophy from Oxford University, where he also gained a first degree in Politics and Philosophy and a graduate Diploma in Theology. He has published on Ethics and Philosophy of Religion and has edited The Case for Liturgical Restoration: Una Voce Position Papers on the Extraordinary Form (Angelico Press). He is the Chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales and President of Una Voce International.
Shaw was also an early critic of Pope Francis’s motu proprio Traditionis custodes, which abrogated permissions for celebration of the Tridentine Mass. He teaches Philosophy at Oxford University and lives nearby with his wife and nine children.
Thursday, 2 March 2023
Warnings From The Beyond To the Contemporary Church by Nancy Knowles Smith
A translation from the French - Avertissements de l'Au'delà à l’Église Contemporaine – Aveux de l’Enfer - by Jean Marty was carried out by Nancy Knowles Smith.
The French book is available from 'Les Editions Saint Raphael, 31 Ouest, rue King, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada J IH INS.
The revelations have also been published in German by Bonaventure Meyer in Switzerland.
The English translation can be found here.
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