Briefly Browsing a Bevy of Books

Catching up on a bunch of mini-reviews

The usual Weekly Roundup is suspended until my return from the pilgrimage I’m helping to lead in Greece & Turkey. Instead, we’ll spend time today with some recent books that have caught my attention and might deserve yours once you hear about them.

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(Un)expected Proliferation of Books on the Devil, Hell, and Evil

No, I’m not posting these because we’re less than a week out from Halloween. It just occurred to me, as I looked at my groaning bookcase of new books sent to me for review (or at least for honorable mention) that an unusual number have to do with dark subjects.

I think we all understand why this should be the case. Our age is particularly saturated with evil, and no, I don’t buy the idea that because “every age thinks it’s own time is the most evil,” therefore we’re wrong to think ours is the worst. Ours is, in fact, the worst age the world has seen since its creation, and that can be said with moral certainty. There are kinds of evils (e.g., abortifacients, IVF, transgender mutilation, digital child porn) and magnitudes of evils (e.g., the sheer amount of contraception and fornication, the sheer number of abortions, the sheer amount of porn produced and viewed) that exceed the evils of all the rest of history combined. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that we are living in the most evil period of all human history.

This means: we are living in an age where the Prince of Darkness, the ruler of this world (as the New Testament calls him), is more at work than ever before, with his vast number of demons (let’s not forget that the number of angels exceeds by a huge margin the number of human souls that will ever exist, and that one-third of these angels fell, according to a common theological opinion). And it also means more souls are lost in hell than ever before.

Thus, sin, death, Satan, and damnation are topics that understandably have risen to the surface in our days. Progressives in the Church want to downplay or redefine sin; our Western society runs away from death, hides from it and politely hides it when it comes, yet inflicts it indiscriminately on anyone unfortunate enough to be in the way; our modernists deny the demonic even when more people are turning to Satanism than ever before; and even many devout Catholics have been seduced into believing the lie that hell is either empty or will someday be emptied of souls.

All these topics need to be addressed, with a calm confidence in divine revelation and in the aid of God’s grace by which we may overcome these evils and live forever with Our Lord, ravished by the beauty of His Face, and rejoicing with the angels and saints. These are not topics we should become bogged down in; the moment our interior peace is stolen, we need to pull back and reorient on the good, the holy, and the beautiful.

With that necessary preface, here are the books, in two groups:

Readers of this Substack will recall that I take exception with some of Archbishop Sheen’s views (such as his praise for Teilhard de Chardin and his seeming lack of sympathy for the laity deprived of the Latin Mass). However, as I also admitted in both places, when he’s on, he’s on. The compilation of his writings On the Demonic, including never-before-published material, is one of those cases where he’s on.

Arouca has done us the favor of bringing back into print a little gem from 1957, in which three eminent writers at the time — Fr. Walter Farrell, OP; Fr. Bernard Leeming, SJ, and Msgr. Catherinet — address the reappearance of the devil in modern life and literature at a moment of maximum skepticism about the spiritual domain.

The next two belong to that new genre created by C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters, namely, books consisting of a fictional exchange of letters between a higher-ranking devil and a lower-ranking devil-in-training (in the original, “Screwtape” and “Wormwood”). The epistolary form proved infectious. Charles Williams wrote a review of the Lewis book in the form of a letter from “Snigsnozzle” to his colleague “Scorpuscle.” Dorothy Sayers sent Lewis a letter signed by “Sluckdrib.”

Long-time readers of Peter Kreeft may remember his 1998 The Snakebite Letters: Devilishly Devious Secrets for Subverting Society As Taught in Tempter’s Training School. In fact, at my alma mater, Thomas Aquinas College, Kreeeft came and gave a lecture about the devil — dressed in a red devil outfit. As he exited the podium, he pulled off his tail and tossed it into the audience. (I have not attempted any such costumes or hijinks in my public lectures, although I have more than a few enemies on the internet who would no doubt consider me to be in the employ of the “Lowerarchy”!)

The other well-known contender in this genre is Richard Platt’s 2012 As One Devil to Another, which Walter Hooper praised in a Foreword as “a stunning achievement, the finest example of the genre of diabolical correspondence to appear since this genre was popularized by C. S. Lewis… It reads as if C.S. Lewis himself had written it.” In Platt’s book, “Slashreap” trains his protégé “Scardagger.”

Now we have two fine Catholic additions to this body of literature: Kennedy Hall’s 2020 Lockdown with the Devil, in which “Quelle” educates “Malthus,” and Fr. Serafino Lanzetta’s 2021 His Infernal Highness Arcibaldo: Letters from an Expert Devil to an Apprentice Tempter (first released in English in 2024), in which “Arcibaldo” instructs “Polliodoro.” These two books are pictured above. They are entertaining and insightful; both connoisseurs and neophytes will enjoy them.

Group #2:

Hell and Its Problems is a classy Sophia Institute Press reprint of a 1917 book, tightly argued and totally orthodox. The author, Fr. John Godfrey Raupert, tells us with refreshing straightforwardness:

Without the conception of a future and permanent state of punishment, consequent upon a life of sin and rebellion against God, the Christian scheme of Redemption has neither consistency nor coherence, and its most central doctrines become unreasonable and incomprehensible.

The publisher summarizes:

In an age of rationalistic thinking, Hell is often reduced to a mere concept or a cleverly devised myth — even by certain members of the Church. Contrary to this notion, the most learned theologians and philosophers throughout the centuries have affirmed the logic behind Hell’s existence. In this prescient and eye-opening classic, Fr. Raupert offers a careful, comprehensive explanation of the Catholic doctrine on Hell…. “Universalism,” or disbelief in Hell, is a slippery slope to a spectrum of other heretical views. In fact, denial of the possibility of Hell engenders a lukewarm Church that gradually comes to disregard her mission to lead all souls to Christ.

Timothy S. Flanders, probably best known as the editor of OnePeterFive, gives us an entirely different and more consoling book from 2023: When the Gates of Hell Prevail: What Catholics Do in Dark Times. Flanders offers sound spiritual advice from Sacred Scripture and the Church Fathers for surviving and even thriving in an age of darkness like ours, with detailed advice on how to overcome vices and stay focused on the love of God and neighbor. He rightly sees every stumbling block outside as an occasion and an impetus for intensifying our life of prayer and virtue, so that suffering with Christ, we may not only share His triumph, but, as co-redeemers, raise up the world and the Church.

A fascinating book by Joshua Charles and Alec Torres did not (it seems to me) attract nearly the attention it should have, given the subject: Persecuted from Within: How the Saints Endured Crises in the Church (Sophia, 2023). What the title and subtitle do not quite convey is that the book tackles saints who suffered at the hands of the Church (or, rather, of churchmen who unworthily represented her). The authors argue that this kind of maltreatment of the good within the Church is predicted by Scripture and the saints, and has been used by the saints for their sanctification. Christ Himself “predicted and prefigured the sufferings of His Church at the hands of wicked prelates.” Twelve figures who “suffered from undeserved persecution by their superiors and even betrayal by clergy” are showcased — St. Paul, St. Athanasius, St. Bruno of Segni, St. Joan of Arc, St. John Fisher, St. Thomas More, St. Teresa of Ávila, St. John of the Cross, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Padre Pio, St. Mary MacKillop (who was unjustly excommunicated, like Athanasius), and Fulton Sheen.

Lastly, and once again from Sophia, eminent church historian Roberto de Mattei’s The Paths of Evil: Conspiracies, Plots, and Secret Societies sets a new standard for serious books on a subject that seems to invite both crackpot literature and reflexive dismissal. Chapter 1, “Political Conspiracies and Crimes,” discusses many well-documented historical examples of such things, to help establish inductively that in fact there are plenty of conspiracies that turn out to have been true and potent. The discussions of poisonings, tyrannicide, the anti-Jesuit conspiracy, and assassination attempts are particularly fascinating. Chapter 2, “Conspiracies and Secret Societies,” calmly explains what we know about many famous instances: Freemasonry, the Illuminati, the Count of Cagliostro, Moses Dobrushka, Doctor Falck, Buonarroti, the Alta Vendita, Mazzini, Synarchism, and Satanism. Chapter 3, “True and False Plots,” debunks a number of false claims such as the Monita Secret, the Popish Plot, the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the “Reptilians,” and QAnon, with interesting forays into antisemitism, Umberto Eco, and the New Age.

After all that, I think we need to consider a very different kind of book!

Light and Prayer

These two hefty tomes are absolute winners that should be in every Catholic’s home.

As attacks against tradition mount, so do defenses. Our defenses consist not in carnal weapons but in adherence to the truth, commitment to the good, and rejoicing in the beautiful. No matter how high-ranking, no one can take knowledge away from us, or break our resolve to restore tradition when these sorry days are over, and these shameful assaults become stories for grandfathers to tell their grandchildren after a Solemn Traditional Mass at the local parish.

A case in point: this newly typeset and lavishly produced (yet still affordable) edition of Dom Benedict Baur’s long out-of-print 1937 classic Light of the World: Daily Meditations on the Traditional Mass (first published in English in 1952). This over-700-page hardcover offers a full year of meditations on the TLM. (Nota bene: The print is very small in this book, so if you have trouble reading “fine print,” I’m afraid this won’t be a book for you. A large-print version would take four volumes at least!)

Baur was rather unique in his time, a true spiritual grandson to Dom Guéranger in maintaining the original spirit of the Liturgical Movement among the Benedictines of the Rhineland. His project: Enter and appreciate the givenness of the Roman Rite, not alter it in the name of relevance to modern man. Comparisons between Baur’s Light of the World and Guéranger’s Liturgical Year are not out of place; though not as compendious, there is enough material in Light of the World for several years’ worth of retreats. The style is not verbose or florid like that of the decidedly French Guéranger (Baur was, after all, a German dogmatic theologian), but Light of the World is every bit as devotionally nourishing — and crippled with none of the historical-critical nonsense that so afflicted his time.

The original printing was a hefty two volumes (see photo below), with a number of citation errors and other insufficiencies. Printed not too long before Vatican II, this set was all but lost in the frenzy of liturgical novelty. Benedictus Books’ new edition is a landmark restoration—and in a single volume. Happily, the work was published in 1952, and therefore reflects the pre-55 (i.e., Tridentine) Holy Week.

The author’s introduction is itself an excellent guide to “praying with the Church,” introducing readers to the transcendent “now” of the liturgical making-present of the mysteries — an aspect that shapes the entire cycle of meditations through the year. Several features of the Roman Rite that fail to receive much focused attention in works of meditation appear here — Septuagesima, Embertide, Rogation days, the O antiphons, even the stational churches! This volume is a superb investment for daily spiritual reading. (If you’d like to look at some sample photos from inside the book, go here.)

The other book pictured above is the compendious Baltimore Book of Prayers from the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore — back when synods knew what they were about. Here, I will shamelessly borrow from Sophia Institute Press’s description:

If the greatest legacy of the Council of Baltimore in 1884 was the Baltimore Catechism, a close second was this definitive book of prayers. Issued in 1889 to fulfill that council’s call for an authoritative and comprehensive compilation of traditional prayers and devotions in English, this magnificent 672-page collection became the constant companion of laity and clergy and a devotional mainstay of Catholic families for generations.

This manual is a window into Catholic piety and worship as practiced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It remains the gold standard for other traditional books of prayer and an invaluable treasure trove of the rich heritage of our Faith. In these timeless pages, you will discover:

• A full liturgical calendar [pre-55 — PAK]

• Tables of feasts and fasts 

• Brief summaries of Christian doctrine and practice 

• A Latin-English Sunday Missal 

• Prayers for the Church, families, and individuals 

• Breviary prayers and chants 

• Prayers for Eucharistic Adoration 

• Devotions to our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints 

• Prayers for the sick, the suffering, the dying, and the deceased

• Sacred hymns and sequences for feasts throughout the year

Moreover, you will find thorough instructions for devoutly hearing Mass; preparing for, receiving, and making a fruitful thanksgiving after Holy Communion; and examining your conscience, making a good Confession, and growing in virtue. General instructions on receiving the sacraments are also included, along with the rites for all of the sacraments (except Holy Orders), as well as general and seasonal blessings.

In addition, many liturgical prayers are featured in Latin as well as in English, along with a detailed index for easy referencing. This rare gem of a book will help you and your loved ones drink deeply of the Faith of our Fathers and cherish it for years to come. 

I agree with all that. This isn’t really a book you can easily haul around (to Mass, to your office); it’s too much of a brick for that. I would describe it as a book that stays at the home altar to be used for family prayers, or perhaps next to your icon corner for personal prayer times.

The little detail that brought a big smile to my face was the Table of Movable Feasts on pp. 16-17. You’ve all seen those in old missals. Well, this one — which of course is keyed to the TLM’s calendar — starts in 2024 and ends in 2074. And I fully believe that it will still be eminently useful in 2074.

A Mighty Commentary on the Mass

Angelico Press has just released the first-ever translation of Fr. Jean-Jacques Olier’s The Mystical Meaning of the Ceremonies of the Mass. This is a major publishing moment and it’s a big surprise the work has never been translated before:

Here was the endorsement I gave to the publisher:

Fr Jean-Jacques Olier writes: “In the Church of God, the smallest details of the ceremonies are figures of hidden mysteries.” In keeping with this principle, inherited from the great medieval commentators on liturgy, Olier unfolds step by step the “mystical meaning” of the words and gestures of the Roman Mass, with an intellectual penetration and spiritual unction that make the work at once eye-opening and heart-inflaming. It is quite astonishing that so masterful a work on the central act of the Christian religion by so towering a figure of the French School—one whose spirituality, moreover, influenced centuries of clergy as the founder of the Sulpicians—should never before have been translated, but such is the case. We owe an immense debt to both Fr Claude Barthe and David Critchley for bringing it to a modern audience at last.

So, as you can see, this is another publication that joins many others in what looks like a veritable renaissance of interest in the once-maligned but now well-appreciated genre of “allegorical interpretations of the Mass.” (I wrote about this at length in an earlier Substack post.)

I might say, apropos this, that in my view the allegorical reading of the traditional Mass can be a very effective basis for defending it. If we respond to those who say “The traditional Mass does nothing for me” by saying “Well, it does speak to me,” then they might reply, “That is because you are psychologically damaged,” and at that point there is no purpose in continuing the discussion because it has descended to ad hominem abuse. We can say in defense of the traditional Mass, “This is what we have always done through the ages and we must continue to reproduce the smallest details” (and for most religions over the centuries that would have been a satisfactory answer), our opponents will deny the normative nature of tradition. We can say that the traditional Mass truly makes present the sacrifice of Christ, but they will reply that provided we preserve the crucial “words of institution,” we can rewrite the rest of the Mass with impunity. If, however, we say that the traditional Mass in its smallest details recreates the whole of salvation history from the Creation to the Ascension, then I think there is no answer to that. Either it does or it doesn’t; and if it does, and if there is any value in this parallelism, then the argument prevails.

Fr. Olier’s work reflects teaching delivered to seminarians. Though I obviously hope for a wide readership for this book, the crucial audience is seminarians. If 200 seminarians absorb the book and take it with them into their sacerdotal lives, it has achieved its purpose. Maybe if even 100 do so… As the number of priests diminishes, so the importance of just one priest increases.

I have thought about the circles of laymen who read books of this sort, books by Martin Mosebach, Uwe Michael Lang, Claude Barthe, myself, and others. Where do seminarians who feel called to celebrate the traditional Mass come from? Certainly many come from families already assisting at the TLM, but surely a decent number must arise from those who pick up books like Olier’s and fall in love with tradition through knowledge and imagination. This pool of “reading laymen” plays a role all out of proportion to its actual numbers. One feels for the “ordinary Christian” stuck at a Novus Ordo Mass, but the best thing that we can do for him is to support the training of a new generation of faithful priests who will in due course move out into the parishes and reinvigorate them with tradition, when the open hunting season on it comes to an end. That, I think, is exactly the situation Olier found himself in at his time. He found the Church in France almost moribund, and resolved to deal with the problem by training up a new generation of faithful priests. And how successful he was!

Ideal Introduction to Aquinas the Exegete

This new pair of books from Word on Fire is very well done. Content, introduction, notes, layout. I’d say this is by far the best introduction to Aquinas on Scripture that has yet been published, for those who are not going to acquire a whole library full of his commentaries.

Obviously I wasn’t the only one who rushed to pick up the set; they are now “sold out” but WOF will notify you of when the next printing comes in.

Right, that’s enough and more than enough books for this week. What a publishing renaissance is occurring in our times, even as institutional walls and pillars fall down. Seeds of renewal are being planted. Let them germinate and grow into tall trees to offer shade and beauty.

Thank you for reading (and thank you for reading books) and may God bless you.