What Are You Reading?

Have you ever heard the expression, "You are what you eat?" That may be true physically, but there's a more important reality about man than his physical body -- his soul. And I think a more real expression is, "You are what you read." 

If I were marooned on a desert island and could have only one book, I would choose the Bible. Since I'm not marooned on an island I have millions of book from which to choose. Many are poison to the soul. I want books that echo biblical truth and the teachings of the Catholic Church. Owen Francis Dudley's books fill the bill.

Right now I'm re-reading Dudley's series on happiness. I have the five novels in the series only lacking the first book, a short work of non-fiction, Will Men Be Like Gods, which I just ordered from Barnes and Noble. It was a response to H.G. Wells book, Men Like Gods. The second book, The Shadow on the Earth [first published 1926], is about a young man crippled after a devastating fall in the Alps who is taken to a nearby monastery. He is cared for by a doctor monk, a veteran of what is presumably World War I. Brother Anselm, the "Masterful Monk" of the second novel in the series served as a medical doctor in that war and features prominently in the series.

This morning I read something that is so true and so current it's hard to believe the book was published almost 100 years ago:

The world hates the truth. The masses...are kept in perpetual prejudice and ignorance of the Catholic Faith by the lies and misrepresentations of its enemies...Even the Press to a large extent assists the world. It almost invariably supports Modernism -- that lie of lies, the very antithesis of the Faith of Christ.

Dudley could hardly have realized, during the pontificate of Pope Pius XI, that a day would come when the most virulent enemies of the Catholic Faith would occupy the highest places in the Church. I wonder what he would write if he were alive today. 

I really recommend this series for any Catholic thinker who wants to delve deeper into the mystery of happiness, the value of suffering, the antagonism of false philosophies -- all laid out in a story that challenges the mind and heart. The third book, The Masterful Monk is a beauty and the beast novel, although "the beast" is, like Dorian Gray, handsome and alluring. It would be a good book for teenagers, especially girls. I can just imagine the discussion at a teenage book club discussing the heroine whose called Beauty by all her friends and becomes a target of the beast who lusts after her.

What do you read when you're up in the middle of the night? Dudley's series may not help you get back to sleep, but I guarantee he will make those wakeful hours interesting and thought provoking.

N.B. My apologies to anyone who read my original post. My copy of Shadow on the Earth was published in 1945, but I failed to notice it was the 24th printing of the book. Dudley did publish several of his novels during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII. He died in 1952 during that pope's reign, but The Shadow on the Earth was much earlier.