Book (Etc.) Recommends

A piece back a reader wrote to suggest that I do a permapost on book recommendations drawing together the various recommends I’ve made from time to time (a la what I do with Lent questions in Annual Lent Fight). I’ve decided to do so, so here goes.

(I’m not sure if I’ve got all the recommends, so if anybody finds ones that I’ve missed in the archives, e-mail me. Thanks!)

This list will become more organized over time.

Fatima Books Recommendations

A reader writes:

Can you recommend a good book on Fatima? I am looking for something with a little meat on it, less inclusive than a 10,000-page multi-volume set (if such a thing exists), but not too short or simplistic.

There are three works that I’d recommend:

  1. Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words
  2. Fatima in Lucia’s Own Words, vol. 2
  3. Calls from the Message of Fatima
  4. Encountering Mary by Sandra Zimdars-Swartz

The first three are all written by Sr. Lucia herself. The first two consist of her memoirs of the incident (there are several different memoirs, which overlap to a considerable degree). The third is the volume she wrote and released after the publication of the Third Secret.

The fourth book is a critical but balanced look at recent apparitions, including Fatima. It is a semi-scholarly work that tries to take an objective look at them, presenting both the evidence for and against them without drawing definite conclusions one way or the other.

For the Vatican’s take on Fatima (including basic information on what happened), read

THE MESSAGE OF FATIMA.

Due to the poor quality of many books on Fatima (many of which contain copious amounts of material now known to be false) and other apparitions, I ask commenters to refrain from recommending additional works in the comments box.

PRIEST: Contraception Can Be OK

A reader writes:

A while ago, my wife stopped taking the pill. I am ashamed to admit this, but we did not realize that the Church taught that contraception was intrinsically evil. We knew they did not "approve" of it, but we did not think it was a grave sin. We also did not know that the pill could sometimes function as an abortafacient. Anyway, when we found out, we immediately got off the pill.

Even though we had made the decision to get off the pill and to stop contracepting, I still wanted to meet with my pastor to discuss the issue of contraception in general, since I really did not understand what was "intrinsically evil" about it.

Anyway, my pastor had some interesting things to say. He pulled out a piece of paper with a [PHONY-SOUNDING TOOL FOR EVALUATING YOUR CONSCIENCE] on it. He told me that my wife and I should use this [TOOL] to make a "mature decision" whether contraception was right for us.

He stated that the most important axiom governing [THE TOOL] was this: Morality is based on reality. He said that the Church’s moral teachings were a "best case scenario" or simply IDEALS to be reached for, and that pastoral practice may not measure up to the optimum.

He basically told me that we needed to do what was right for us, in our situation.

Needless to say, I was very shocked at what the priest said. So I just came right out and asked him: "Father, are you saying that if my wife and I, after reflection, make a mature decision to continue to contracept, that it would be an acceptable decision"? He replied, "Yes."

So, can a decision by a husband and wife to contracept ever be licit?

Here is the teaching of the Church:

Every action which, whether in anticipation of the conjugal act, or in its accomplishment, or in the development of its natural consequences, proposes, whether as an end or as a means, to render procreation impossible [Humanae Vitae 14].

Thus it is never licit to use the Pill or anything else in order to achieve a contraceptive effect.

It is extremely tempting to simply state that your priest lied to you, but I have to hold open the possibility that he is just grossly misinformed about the nature of the Church’s teachings. In any event, he grossly misrepresented them to you.

It is also difficult to resist the conclusion that he is likely to be morally culpable for this gross misrepresentation as well, since a few years ago the Pope issued an encyclical (Veritatis Splendor), one of whose key and widely-reported points was the repudiation of exactly the kind of moral theology your priest pushed on you (i.e., that the Church proposes only goals to strive and that nothing is intrinsically evil so that particular circumstances can allow one to morally do things that the Church proposes as intrinsically evil).

Whether he is culpable for his action or not, I could not recommend that you seek this man’s counsel on any matter of Catholic moral theology. He is at a minimum grossly ignorant of its basic principles and (with a significant degree of probability) knowingly subversive of it.

Christian Convert Killed In Iraq

Zakho (AsiaNews/MEC) – A Christian convert from Islam was killed for his faith. Ziwar Muhammad Isma’il, who worked as a taxi driver in Zakho in the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, was shot dead by Abd al-Karim Abd al-Salam at a taxi station early on the morning of February 17.

Abd al-Salam approached Ziwar and told him to return to Islam. When Ziwar refused he opened fire with an automatic rifle.

Abd al-Salam fled but was chased by other taxi drivers who, after apprehending him, turned him over to the police.

Abd al-Salam claims that the prophet Muhammad appeared to him in a dream and told him to kill the Christian.

Ziwar, who converted to Christianity seven years ago, leaves a widow and five children. He had been quite open about his faith even though he had been threatened by his relatives and other Muslims. He had been arrested twice but never charged.

In countries like Iran, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, where the Shariah (Islamic law) is the state law, Muslim men who convert from Islam can be put to death, their marriages annulled, and their property taken away.

Even under more moderate Muslim authorities, such as those in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq, converts may still face widespread hostility and aggression from their own families and communities.

Funeral Masses In Cases Of Suicide

A reader writes:

Is a funeral mass permitted for a person who committed suicide?

The rule on who can receive a funderal Mass is Canon 1185:

Any funeral Mass must also be denied a person who is excluded from ecclesiastical funerals.

This means you have to look at the previous Canon (1184) to find out who can be granted ecclesastical funerals:

§1. Unless they gave some signs of repentance before death, the following must be deprived of ecclesiastical funerals:

1/ notorious apostates, heretics, and schismatics;

2/ those who chose the cremation of their bodies for reasons contrary to Christian faith;

3/ other manifest sinners who cannot be granted ecclesiastical funerals without public scandal of the faithful.

§2. If any doubt occurs, the local ordinary is to be consulted, and his judgment must be followed.

No mention is made in this canon of suicide cases. The closest it comes is §1 no. 3, which refers to manifest sinners, but it qualifies this, restricting it to the individuals who cannot be granted funerals without scandal being given to the faithful. Scandal does not mean offending the sensibilities of the faithful. It means leading the faithful into sin. But allowing a funeral for an ordinary person who has committed suicide will be construed as an act of mercy on a person who did something wrong–not an endorsement of suicide–and thus will not result in scandal to the faithful. Thus an ordinary suicide victim would not be prohibited from having an ecclesiastical funeral or a funeral Mass.

This is not to say that all suicide victims can be given funeral Masses. Some may not be able to because doing so would cause scandal to the faithful, but this is not the case with an ordinary suicide.

Happy Fixed Blogiversary!

Today is my fixed blogiversary (Feb. 25). My movable blogiversary is Ash Wednesday.

The reason I have two blogiversaries is that I wrote my first post (a review of The Passion of the Christ, which I had just come from seeing) on Ash Wednesday last year, which was Feb. 25th.

It was the day the movie opened, and it seemed like a good day to open the blog I had been thinking about, too.

So here we are, one year out.

In that year I switched from doing a home-designed blog in FrontPage to a professional level blog using Moveable Type. It acquired its own domain name. It migrated from cox.net to TypePad (about 10 months ago). And since that time it’s racked up almost a third of a million hits (will probably hit that mark in about a week), had 1171 posts, 5767 comments, won the best apologetics blog award from CyberCatholics, and evolved from being an insignificant microbe to a marauding marsupial in the TTLB ecosystem (large mammal or bust!).

INSTANT UPDATE: While getting the link for my page in the TTLB ecosystem, I just discovered that we not only have evolved into a large mammal (at least for the moment), we have also cracked the top 1000 blogs in the ecosystem (at this moment we’re #995).

YEEEEEEE-HAW!!!

Thanks, y’all, for making this an extra-special first fixed blogiversary!!!

Biggest Stellar Blast (Short Of The Big Bang) Detected

The biggest stellar blast ever detected (other than the Big Bang) has been detected.

50,000 years ago, a magnetar 50,000 light years away blew its top in the gamma-ray (not visible light) spectrum and outshone the rest of the galaxy. The flash reached earth December 27 and briefly altered Earth’s atmosphere.

The commotion was caused by a special variety of neutron star known as a magnetar. These fast-spinning, compact stellar corpses — no larger than a big city — create intense magnetic fields that trigger explosions. The blast was 100 times more powerful than any other similar eruption witnessed, said David Palmer of Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of several researchers around the world who monitored the event with various telescopes.

"Had this happened within 10 light-years of us, it would have severely damaged our atmosphere and possibly have triggered a mass extinction," said Bryan Gaensler of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA).

There are no magnetars close enough to worry about, however, Gaensler and two other astronomers told SPACE.com. But the strength of the tempest has them marveling over the dying star’s capabilities while also wondering if major species die-offs in the past might have been triggered by stellar explosions.

GET THE STORY.