Category: Culture

You may have heard the speculation that William Shakespeare was a Catholic. Author Clare Asquith, in her new book Shadowplay: The Hidden Beliefs and Coded Politics of William Shakespeare, claims that the Bard of Stratford seeded his plays with subversive Catholic references that was a code for the Elizabethan and Jacobean Catholic resistance movement:

"Far from being an ambitious entertainer who played down his Catholic roots under a repressive Elizabethan regime, Shakespeare took deliberate risks each time he took up his quill, according to Clare Asquith’s new book Shadowplay. She argues that the plays and poems are a network of crossword puzzle-like clues to his strong Catholic beliefs and his fears for England’s future. Aside from being the first to spot this daring Shakespearean code, Asquith also claims to be the first to have cracked it.

"’It has not been picked up on before because people have not had the complete context,’ she explained this weekend. ‘I am braced for flak, but we now know we have had the history from that period wrong for a long time because we have seen it through the eyes of the Protestant, Whig ascendancy who, after all, have written the history.’

"It is now widely accepted that the era was not a period of political consensus, says Asquith. Instead, it was a time in which opposition voices were banished and censorship meant the burning of illegal pamphlets and printed works.

"As a result the Catholic resistance, which had been going for 70 years by the time Shakespeare was writing, had already developed its own secret code words; a subversive communication system which the playwright developed further in his work."

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This story caught my eye since I am currently reading through The Winter’s Tale with a reading group, in preparation for seeing the play performed. I’ve always been fascinated by Shakespeare, but found him difficult to penetrate and so have neglected actually studying him. Whether or not Asquith’s claim has merit, it certainly does pique my desire to better understand Shakespeare.

A reader writes:

I’ve been studying Catholic teaching and am considering becoming a Roman Catholic.  My question is: what resources ought one actually read the early fathers in?  The snippets on Catholic.com  are helpful but I am seeking a broad base understanding.

There are several different resources that I could recommend. It depends on what you are looking for.

The main problem is that the writings of the Chruch Fathers are so voluminous that one person could spend years reading them. If you’re actually up for that, the most easily available set is a 38-volume set produced in the 19th century that, since it is public domain, is now online at a number of locations, such as www.newadvent.org.

Even this set, though, is not complete. There are other works of the Fathers not found in it. (And, as one Baptist pastor who later became Catholic noted to me, it sometimes excludes some of the more Catholic-leaning works since the editors were Protestant.)

If you’re looking for a broad summary but not the texts themselves then there is a 4-volume set called Patrology by Johannes Quaesten.

What I’d really recommend if you’re looking for a summary, though, is the 1-volume setbook Ealy Christian Doctrines by J.N.D. Kelly. Kelly is a Protestant, but he’s very good about admitting how Catholic the early Fathers were.

If you’re looking for texts (shorter than the 38-volume set) rather than summaries then I’d have to main recommendations.

The first is a 3-volume set called Faith of the Early Fathers by William Jurgens. It is like the excerpts on Catholic.Com except that it isn’t organized by topic. Instead, it proceeds in historical order from Father to Father, giving passages that the different Fathers said on particular subjects. The passages also (often) are longer than the ones on Catholic.Com and will give you a broader selection of what the Fathers were saying on different topics, as well as more of the context.

If you want whole documents but aren’t up for a long set, I’d recommend Early Christian Writings, edited by Maxwell Staniforth. This is a 1-volume edition of writings from the first and second centuries. It was very helpful to me when I was becoming Catholic, though it suffers from two problems: (1) It only covers a very small handful of documents compared to those that are out there (which is why it can offer whole documents while remaining 1 volume long) and (2) the period it covers is so early that the Church hadn’t yet had a chance to thoroughly reflect on what had been given to it by Christ and the apostles and so there are a lot of imprecise and, at times, even bizzare things. You won’t get as many of the crisply formulated expressions of theology that you will from later ages. Still, it’s quite valuable and contains things like Clement’s and Ignatius’s letters, as well as the Didache.

Following up with any of these recommendations will give you clues about what you may want to investigate next. For example, if you do some reading in Quaesten or Jurgens or Kelly then you’ll learn about documents that you may want to look up and read in more detail in the 38-volume set.

Hope this helps, and God bless!

Have you ever been through reading cycles? Bibliophile though I am, it seems my reading life is one cycle after another. Right now I’m on my non-fiction cycle and reading fiction can be a chore.

I grew up in a Reader’s Haven, although some might have called it a Reader’s Hovel out of exasperation at trying to climb over the stacks of books. My father introduced all of his children to reading and liked to brag of when he was a child and was the only kid in the neighborhood allowed to borrow double the allotment of books allowed by his local library because the librarians knew he’d have them all finished within the two-week loan period.

Similarly, I was also a voracious reader as a kid. When I was in sixth grade I broke the five thousand page record for pages read in a grading period simply because the teacher said it had never been done. (In retrospect, I think he simply said that to encourage kids like me to try to break that limit.) Give me a four-hundred-page book and I could have it finished in two days.

I can still wolf down books, but only if the ones I’m reading fit the cycle through which I’m currently passing. For example, for years I was a romance novel fan. Still love romance novels — they’re a sentimental favorite — but it is now a chore rather than a pleasure to plow through them. When I read fiction these days, I usually do best with the cozy mysteries — especially the foodie mysteries that have recipes printed in the book. I may never try out those recipes, but I love reading through them and imagining how the food would turn out. (Likely better for my waistline anyway!)

But give me a non-fiction book on a subject that interests me — currently, Pope Benedict XVI, marriage, and parenting issues, and please don’t analyze that too deeply! — and once again I have to carefully pace my reading so I’ll have enough book left to read to get me to the next payday. Does anyone else have experience with reading cycles? If so, through what cycles of the Reader’s Haven have you passed?

My wife has always been drawn to a particular genre of non-fiction in which people struggle against great difficulties, especially physical or mental disabilities. She has read dozens of books in which the main character wrestles with something like autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, blindness or some other malady (though disasters, abuse and hard pioneer life count also).

I have read a number of the books she has around the house and have learned to really appreciate several, not just as interesting stories, but as good, well-written books.

One such book that I can recommend is called "Karen". It is the story of Karen Killilea, who was born with cerebral palsy. It was written by her mother, Marie Killlilea, in 1952. In the book we see how Karen fights both her physical disability and the sometimes callous response of the society around her. There is a bonus, in that the Killileas are a warmly devout Catholic family and the book touches on very relevent themes, such as the intrinsic value of all human life. The book is available at Amazon.com, and you can find more information about the Killileas HERE.

Lately I have wondered what it is about such stories that is so compelling. Everyone has enough trouble of their own, why read about people who have it so much worse than we do?

One good reason to is that these stories throw into sharp relief the virtues that we need to overcome the hard things in our own life. Our admiration for Anne Sullivan’s tenacity in teaching Helen Keller helps us to be a little more tenacious in pursuit of some worthy goal, etc…

Another reason is that we are often tempted to view our own lives as dull and prosaic. Our own struggles don’t seem quite as dramatic as those of people whom we perceive to be "in the trenches", and who struggle under great burdens. It is part of what G.K. Chesterton called the desire for "an active and imaginative life, picturesque and full of a poetical curiosity". In a sense, we envy these people, we covet their stark, tremendous struggles because we are tired of our own small and tepid ones. We don’t often see ourselves as heroes.

But not everyone might agree. It occurred to me that, in our daily battle against the World, the Flesh and the Devil, the angels may view us in a way that is similar to the way we see the heroes in these books; these people who contend with crushing misfortune, or constant deprivation. The fallen world we live in puts us "in the trenches" in a way that makes even our mundane troubles more vital and heroic.

The idea that our lives are dull and meaningless is a lie from the pits of hell. The truth is, every decision we make is of eternal importance.

Not that the angels would envy our place in the battle. If I understand my Bible, they are certainly in the thick of it themselves, and have no lack of excitement. But, if there could be such a thing as holy envy, the angels might envy our role as overcomers. Even in heaven, a scar may be a badge of honor.

An angel might say to me one day, "Tell us again how the grace of God helped you to overcome your sloth, thoughtlessness and all-around deficient faith!".

And I’ll tell them.

A reader asks:

"Have you read the book Catholicism for Dummies? Would you recommend it for learning about the Church? Thanks!"

Catholicism For Dummies by Frs. John Trigilio and Kenneth Brighenti, two priests associated with EWTN, is, in fact, the only secular "For Numskulls"-type book on Catholicism that I can recommend. I have read others on the market, published under other "For Numskulls"-type imprints, and the ones that I have read are all deficient, ranging from somewhat to seriously so. I was so impressed with Catholicism For Dummies, however, that I recommended it to Catholic Answers to carry.

YOU CAN BUY IT HERE.