It seems that my recent listing of “The Top Ten Books I Think Catholics Should Read” has sparked a mini-controversy. Dena reprimands me for omitting the Bible and the Catechism, a little unfairly, it seems to me, because I obviously took these books, quite literally, “as read”. When asked what is the greatest book of all time, all honest people, all honest Christians at least, would say the Bible, without hesitation. Similarly, all honest Catholics would say, or should say, that the Catechism is the most important book for Catholics to read, second only to the Bible itself. Since this is so, and obviously so, it becomes a little tedious to prefix any discussion of “great books” by mentioning the Bible and the Catechism. We have to assume that this is already known by our interlocutors. Dena is on more solid ground in her querying of my inclusion of Eliot and Hopkins on the list. “I’ve read some of Hopkins’ poetry to very intelligent, well educated Catholics who are left stone cold by it,” she writes. Agreed. Indeed, I know some very intelligent, well educated Catholic poets who are also “left stone cold by it”. Roy Campbell and Eliot, for instance. For that matter, I know many “very intelligent, well educated Catholics” who are “left stone cold” by Chesterton. Is this a reason to exclude Chesterton or anyone else from the list? I sympathize with Dena’s querying of the absence of “a Church history” from the list. I would only say that the Church histories that I have read do not warrant placement in a “top ten”, all of them being deficient or inadequate in one way or another. Perhaps Dena has read a Church history that is up to the accolade of inclusion but since I have not read it I can obviously not recommend it! I sympathize also with Larry Bethel’s surprise that there is no Belloc on the list. Belloc is a great favourite of mine but the fact is that there is no single work of his that would warrant inclusion in a “top ten”. Perhaps Survivals and New Arrivals is hovering just outside the top ten but it is not, me judice, as important as those that are already included.
As a further defence of my selection, let’s look a little closer at the purpose of the list. It is not “My Top Ten Favourite Books”. If it had been, The Lord of the Rings would have been at the top, or near the top. I think The Lord of the Rings is one of the greatest books ever written. It is also, in the judgment of its author, “a fundamentally religious and Catholic book”. And yet I don’t believe it is a book “all Catholics should read”, or at least that it’s not as important that they read The Lord of the Rings, as Catholics, as it is that they read the books included on the list. Nor is the list a “Top Ten Books that Everyone Should Read”, in which case Homer, Aristotle, Plato and Shakespeare would have figured prominently. It is, to reiterate, “The Top Ten Books I Think Catholics Should Read”. In making the selection I had in mind a list that would be readily accessible and digestible to the average intelligent Catholic. This is the reason that Copleston’s Aquinas is on the list and the Summa Theologica is not. I am not saying, of course, that Copleston’s summary of St. Thomas is better than the magnum opus of the saint himself; I am simply acknowledging that all Catholics should understand the basics of Thomistic philosophy and theology even if they will never have time to read the Summa.
And finally, of course, we should not forget the crucial words “I Think” at the heart of “The Top Ten Books I Think Catholics Should Read”. These are my thoughts, in other words the whole exercise was meant to be subjective. This being so, Dena’s final words are also the final words on the subject: “Of course, there’s no way consensus could ever be reached on such an assignment.”
But isn’t grumbling about top 10/25/100 lists what makes them so much fun? And on that note, where oh where are works from two of my favorite saints, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross? No Interior Castle or Dark Night of the Soul? Or now that i think about it, no Kempis and his Imitation of Christ? All grumbling aside (well perhaps that really wasn’t a grumble, more of a pitch for them and their writings), i am thankful to have stumbled upon your list since i haven’t read most of the books on it and have been wondering what i should read next as i continue to delve more deeply into religion/Catholicism. By the way, was there any rhyme and reason to the ordering of the list? Do you consider Apologetics and Catholic Doctrine as the most important book for Catholics to read (after the Bible and Catechism)? Thank you and God bless.
I think The Lord of the Rings is the best fiction ever written, all things considered. At least, it is the best I know of. (Maybe the very best works tend to be left out of the “canon” and forgotten?) One thing about Tolkien: sin is never ever presented in a neutral or positive light. Also, the work is classical (by which I mean affecting the emotions in keeping with reason). I have read much of Tolkien’s whole body of work, and I do not understand how it came to be.
Perhaps Mr. Pearce has not found a satisfactory Church history because such a history cannot be written. Once we leave biography, basic facts, and Revealed history, things get very complex and increasingly unknowable. The growth of the kingdom is hidden, beneath the headlines. Whenever I hear someone say, “The first mass in this land was celebrated in __,” or “The first missionary reached this land in __,” I find no reason to believe these statements. Thomas was in India, Matthew in Persia, Joseph of Arimathea in Britain, according to traditions. Jesus may have visited the New World as “Quetzalcoatl.” There is evidence of Biblical religion very early in China, I have read. The Jews maybe were in the New World very early. Consider what you know of Rasputin. Now go to alexanderpalace.org and read some contemporary accounts. He may have been a saint, or lots of other things. Let me quote from a mainstream scholarly linguistic history of the world, Empires of the Word, by Ostler (2005): “The arrival of the monk Alopen in the Chinese capital Chang-an (Xian) in 635 is commemorated on a stele set up in 781, bilingual in Syriac and Chinese” (90). The description of the stele, still in existence: “The bulk of the inscription in Chinese summarises the Christian creed (the shining doctrine from Da Qin) and a history of the Church under imperial patronage in China. The Syriac part is in vertical columns, like Chinese. It reads: ‘In the year 1092 of the Greeks, my lord Yazedbouzid, priest and chorepiscopus of Kudan, royal city, son of the late Milis, priest from Balkh, city in Tahouristan, erected this monument, wherein it is written the law of Him, our saviour, the Preaching of our forefathers to the Rulers of the Chinese'” (91). I do not believe any history book, especially because most of them come from the godless universities. It’s like believing a statistic reported on hellevision (or the devil’s tabernacle). A writer named Mark Twain (don’t read him) said, “There are lies, [darn] lies, and statistics.”
Is biography the only real history?
Even if you go up to a group of friends and ask them about what happened only a month ago, they will give different accounts and argue about it. And history is written often by mortal enemies! Let us believe that the real history of the Church (stretching back to Adam and Eve, who were intimate with the One God before the Fall and who were promised the Christ after it) is much better than we are led to believe.