|
R e v i e w s
|
This Rock
Volume 14, Number 7
 September 2003 
|
|
|
Hard Going
Some books are difficult to put down. Others are slow going, dense, and difficult to absorb. The Ordinary Path to Holiness by R. Thomas Richard may be such a book, but don’t let that stop you from going out and getting a copy.
The title might be misleading. The reader will not find a recipe or a step-by-step guide on how to approach holiness. Instead, one will find a study. A chef does not go to a culinary academy in order to memorize recipes, but he should come away with an understanding of how different ingredients and techniques combine to make good food. In the same way, Howard provides the diligent reader with enough knowledge, insight, and inspiration to tackle his own spiritual development with newfound energy.
The first fifty pages are painstaking as Howard outlines the three stages of the development of the human soul. This foundation becomes the thread winding its way through the rest of the work. The author borrows from the works of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, among others, to describe the purgative, illuminative, and unitive stages of development of the soul—"the ordinary path to holiness."
After I read those first fifty pages, I set the book down and walked away from it for a time. It is heavy reading. With extensive footnotes and meticulous documentation, it is not something to be taken to the beach or left on a nightstand for casual reading. I have found over the years that, many times when I go back to a book after excusing myself from its company for a time, the decision to go back is inspired. That was the case with this book.
After the author lays out his paradigm of the three stages of development, he offers an in-depth analysis of some of the major aspects of Catholic spirituality. According to Richard, through the study of Scripture, prayer, participation in the sacraments, and finally suffering and dying, we are given opportunities for holiness. The book gives these subjects enough attention to flesh out the ideas and provide a guideline to the reader for how to approach these activities. The author talks about persevering in the prayerful study of Scripture in yearning to get close to God. Similarly, I found that I had to persevere in this book to appreciate the three-step model.
This book is written for the Catholic layman. It is not an outline of monastic spirituality or personal mortification that is not practical or even possible for those of us with spouses, children, jobs, and other responsibilities making demands upon us. Richard explores the sacramentality of marriage and the possibilities for holiness to be found therein. He does not insist, for instance, that regular and prolonged retreats are an essential step in reaching the illuminative or unitive stage. He makes it clear that, through effort in communal liturgical worship, the careful study of Holy Scripture, and effort in regular prayer, we are able to achieve the holiness to which we are called.
The careful reader will recognize patterns of thought, prayer, and behavior in himself that point to one or more of the stages of development that the author lays out. After reading this book, one may be more confused about where he is spiritually than he was when he started! This is not a criticism but an indication of the profundity of the study. It is a book that one might set down upon completion and then find a whole new way in which to examine his conscience.
The Ordinary Path to Holiness is an extraordinary work. Whether you are married, single, or ordained, there will be some (and possibly great) benefit in tackling this book. The spiritual journeyman will recognize the qualities of the novice in his own past and will hopefully be inspired to achieve the level of the master, where, as St. Bernard says, God is all, and all are loved only in God.
-- Michael Barnett
The Ordinary Path to Holiness
By R. Thomas Richard
Alba House
252 pages
$14.95
ISBN: 0-818-909-137
Harry Potter, Christian Evangelist?
"You’re going to read that?" my brother asked as I tossed a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone atop the last-minute foodstuffs we’d rushed out to buy for our family’s Thanksgiving feast last year. Although my nominally Christian brother had no problem with the Harry Potter novels, he was surprised that a practicing Catholic would read them.
"Pottermania" had re-ignited over the release of the first movie. Both Catholics and Protestants were in a lather over the alleged occult elements in the series, and I wanted to know what all the fuss was about. Before I finished The Sorcerer’s Stone I raced out and bought the rest of the books.
With the Christian controversy in mind, I read The Hidden Key to Harry Potter: Understanding the Meaning, Genius, and Popularity of Joanne Rowling’s Harry Potter Novels by John Granger. His thesis is that J. K. Rowling is a Christian writer who has created a fantasy fiction in the tradition of C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. The novels are a Christian Everyman’s journey from death to life, a "pilgrim’s progress" of sorts to spiritual perfection. Granger claims that Rowling is, in the words of Lewis, "baptizing the imagination" with Christian symbols and forming her readers in a sacramental worldview.
If Rowling’s novels are traditional Christian fantasy, then why the brouhaha? Granger opens his book with a letter that Lewis wrote in response to criticism of Out of the Silent Planet:
"You will be both grieved and amused to hear that out of about sixty reviews only two showed any knowledge that my idea of the fall of the Bent One was anything but a private invention of my own. But if there only was someone with a richer talent and more leisure I think that this great ignorance might be a help to the evangelization of England; any amount of theology can now be smuggled into people’s minds under cover of romance without their knowing it."
Still skeptical? Note one of Rowling’s most surprising Christian referents: alchemy. Popularly believed to be a form of medieval "voodoo" that attempted to achieve riches and immortality through the transformation of base metals into gold, alchemy is a symbol, Granger argues, of "the way to spiritual perfection or theosis (divinization), and the Philosopher’s Stone [called in the American version the Sorcerer’s Stone], as the end result of this process, was a symbol for Christ" (p. 174).
Granger’s work invites the reader to go back to Rowling’s novels and see Christian symbols previously missed. For example, in rereading The Sorcerer’s Stone in preparation for this review, I noticed the School of Hogwarts’s tradition of having first-year students arrive at the school by sailing over a nearby lake, while older students arrive separately. Could this be a symbol for baptism, the Christian initiation into the "pilgrim’s progress"?
Granger’s book could use a thorough editorial overhaul. It’s annoying to stumble over unorthodox word spelling (e.g., "teevee" for "TV"). And the book lacks proper definition of terms: For example, Rowling is acclaimed as an Inkling-inspired writer long before formal discussion of the Inklings on page 145. (I had to go online to discover that the Inklings were a group of twentieth-century British Christian authors—Lewis and Tolkien among them—who met regularly to discuss literary matters.)
A Christian who is reading this book to determine if it is acceptable to read Rowling’s books will find significant "spoilers" in Granger’s text. This may be unavoidable for evaluation purposes, but it should be noted as a possible danger to later enjoyment of the Harry Potter novels.
Surprisingly, there is no mention of Granger’s credentials as a literary critic. There are anecdotal references to his Orthodox Christian faith and his status as a concerned parent who first read the Potter novels to explain to his children why they would be forbidden to read them. But the "author blurb" is limited to stating that Granger is "a lover and teacher of the Great Books" who has "knowledge of classical philosophy and Christian traditions." While a sympathetic reader can benefit from a writer’s private meditations, a skeptical reader would demand information about Granger’s educational background that supports his scholarly conclusions.
Given the controversy surrounding J. K. Rowling’s novels, the book would have benefited from a discussion about the objective differences between traditional Christian fantasy and the occult fantasy that Christian skeptics rightly fear. Without such a discussion, Christians are likely to remain confused over what distinguishes Christian literature from occult writing.
Aside from such problems, the thoughtful reader will find that the real reason J. K. Rowling’s novels are universally popular is because her books are fulfilling a true need: "The great mass of people, despite materialist immunizations and naturalist booster shots, still long for explicitly Christian spiritual experiences; and . . . the prevalent culture is so bereft of what is good, true, and beautiful, that the unsated desire for these things is overwhelming when presented with what it craves. Hence, Pottermania" (p. 154).
-- Michelle Arnold
The Hidden Key to Harry Potter
By John Granger
Zossima Press
364 pages
$18.95
ISBN: 0-972-322-108
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
of
