How Well Do You Know Your Bible? My Trivia Quiz Christmas Gift.

The Bible has fascinated authors throughout history and many have adopted its themes pretty explicitly in their fiction. Rosemary's Baby has an inverted birth of Christ episode near the end when the devil's baby is born and three men come to visit. The inversion is pretty obvious in the film as well as the book.  

A number of authors have used bible phrases as their book titles. It's interesting to me that every now and then when I'm reading the Bible I come across a phrase and think, "That would make a great title for a novel." The one I saw yesterday was in the book of Isaiah which I'm reading for Advent. The phrase was "abode of jackals." Now wouldn't that make a great title for a story about a dysfunctional family that are consuming one another through greed, jealousy, and hate. What a challenge to figure out how to redeem one or all of the characters. Sigrid Undset could have done it. She was a master of the human dilemma and the impact of sin and grace. Or how about a spy novel with a hero trying to prevent a terrorist attack by a cell of foreign agents working for an enemy country. And then again couldn't Agatha Christie turn that title into a fascinating murder mystery!

Don't You Love a Lazy Sunday with Friends?

Young Chesterton 1898

What a delightful day. I've been browsing the internet looking for information on G.K. Chesterton and Myles Connolly for a little presentation I'm doing next month at the get-together of the Northern Virginia Chesterton Society. We're looking at Chesterton's Manalive and Connolly's Mr. Blue, two absolutely delightful, light-hearted books with bigger-than-life protagonists filled with the joy of life and living it to the full.

We've discussed both books individually, although, sad to say, I missed the meeting on Mr. Blue which occupies a prominent place on my "best of all times" books. Now we'll see them side by side. That statement, "side by side," makes me laugh. Chesterton and Connolly were both physically large men, about 6'3". Chesterton weighed about 300 pounds and Connolly wasn't far behind at 270. What fun it would have been to see them together in a discussion -- a meeting of the Titans. Connolly was twenty years younger than Chesterton, but, even in those early days when he was fresh out of college, I suspect he was well aware of the bigger-than-life journalist across the pond.

Listening to Mark Twain travelogues while travelling

When my husband and I travel we enjoy listening to books on tape. Two of my favorites have been travelogues by an author I love, Mark Twain. Two years ago on a trip to Texas we listened to Life on the Mississippi. Passing through Memphis, we decided to stop at Mud Island which has a model of the mighty Mississip. Only one problem. It was January and the park didn't open until Spring. We passed through Memphis again today on our way home from Texas and tried again -- two weeks too early. The island doesn't open until April 12. A big sigh of disappointment again. But perhaps we'll plan a visit sometime when it's sure to be open and refresh our memories by listening again to Twain's adventure as a riverboat pilot with all the colorful descriptions of the river and the many interesting characters who populated his river world.

We are coming to the final leg of another Texas trip (we make them once or twice a year because we have two children in Texas, in Houston and Austin). On this visit we've been listening to Roughing It, Twain's description of his seven years in the wild west. He started out as an unpaid secretary to his brother who was secretary to the Governor of the Nevada territory, but his further adventures took him to the silver mines and a series of disappointing excavations along with some near-death adventures. Then he was offered a job as a reporter which probably began his literary career. The book begins with the journey form St. Louis, MO up river to St. Joseph and from their by stagecoach on the nearly three-week trip to Nevada. The stage changed teams every ten miles at stations along the way and took 19 days to make the trip. We cover in a few hours what took those travellers days. But, oh how much we miss as we hurry through the world.

To hear Twain describe the jackass rabbit, the coyote, the sage grass, the coach driver and his assistant (called the conductor), Lake Tahoe, Virginia City, etc. is entertaining and fascinating. I think Mark Twain could make ai riveting story out of buttoning up his coat. He did at one point describe a desperado who had it in for a man and bragged that he could take out the third button on his jacket from a distance. He did and dispatched his victim at the same time. Twain shares many stories of the rough life of the 19th century west. And the only boring part of the tale is his several chapters reading excerpts from the Book of Mormon which he debunks as a shameless theft from the Bible with many repetitions of "It came to pass" and other phrases added to make it sound archaic. His imaginative conversation with Brigham Young complaining about his large family with wives (identified by number) who all want a stick pin because he gave one to number six, is hilarious.

So if you are off on a trip and looking for an enjoyable companion take along Mark Twain. I guarantee the miles go faster with such a passenger.

Oscar Wilde had a Catholic Mind - Saying it is no scandal!

The English press is reporting on an article in L'Osservatore Romano praising Oscar Wilde, the flamboyantly homosexual playwright and author who converted to Catholicism on his deathbed. The Telegraph called the move "a surprise act of reconciliation" in which "the Holy See's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, praised the poet as a 'lucid analyst of the modern world'." The implication is that approving of the playwright's accurate views about the world means the Church approves of his homosexual behavior.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Catholic Church is filled with sinners, hopefully repentant sinners who over and over confess their sins and make a firm purpose of amendment and, in the process, move away from sin and closer to God. Oscar Wilde is an example of the 11th hour penitent; he became a Catholic two days before he died in 1900.

I think Wilde was an honest sinner who recognized his own weakness. Like St. Augustine who prayed, "Give me chastity, but not yet," he clung to his ambition and his lust. He once said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" and his life clearly illustrated that. His novel, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, depicted the destructive nature of sin (the "gutter" so to speak), and, according to Wilde, its characters represented himself. He obviously knew firsthand the ugliness of sin even when it hides behind a beautiful facade.

Last year I wrote about Oscar Wilde in the Les Femmes newsletter in an article about good books. Here's what I said then:

Another “Catholic” writer is Oscar Wilde who converted on his deathbed. He once quipped that Catholicism was the only religion worth dying in and he managed to do it.

His life illustrates the parable of the vineyard with Wilde squeaking in at the eleventh hour. Despite his sinful life (he served two years at hard labor for sodomy) he had a Catholic mind. You don’t see it much in his farcical plays, but it’s obvious in his one novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, whose characters, Wilde said, reflected himself. It gets to the heart of what sin does to the soul even if the body retains its beauty. His children’s stories, The Selfish Giant and The Happy Prince among others, are charming tales of love, sacrifice, and conversion. Wilde’s jail time was probably a blessing. He read Augustine, Dante, and Newman which, perhaps, germinated as the seed of his later conversion. Interestingly, many of his other sinful associates converted to the Catholic faith as well. Wilde’s life illustrates the capacity of grace to overcome sin. A fascinating essay, The Long Conversion of Oscar Wilde, is definitely worth reading.

The secular press has a hard time understanding how the Catholic Church can see the bad and good in a person at the same time. But the fact is that we are all like that, trapped in the human condition by original sin, constantly called to conversion, constantly striving for a return to original integrity. That explains why Catholics like C.K. Chesterton could remain friends with people like the notorious secularist George Bernard Shaw. Mature Catholics know that we are all in need of conversion and who needs conversion the most, saints or sinners? If we refuse to witness to and befriend those most in need, our charity is cold indeed. How we do that in prudence is the subject of another day.

For more interesting articles on this go here and here.