In "Books That Did It," (National Review, Aug. 14, 2023), Jay Nordinger asked readers what books influenced the way they think. Were there books that changed their lives?
I thought you would never ask! Here's my top-ten list:
Top Ten List:
1. The huge volume of literature that exploded with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in the 1970s and 80s. I devoured: everything in New Covenant magazine, Ralph Martin, Steve Clark, outstanding academic theologians like Killian McDonald, Ed O'Connor, Francis Martin, Cardinal Suenens, McNutt and Scanlon (on healing), Lozano (on deliverance). Very influential as well: non-Catholic Pentecostal authors including Malcolm Smith (Turn Your Back on the Problem), Merlin Carothers (Power in Praise), David Wilkerson (Cross and the Switchblade), Ruth Carter Stapleton (Healing of Memories.)
2. The entire corpus and pontificate of St. John Paul II but first and foremost his catechesis on the human body, gender, sexuality and marriage. This guided and strengthened me to engage my own fiercest struggles. Secondly, his encyclical on Divine Mercy, which drew from the revelations to Saint Faustina, revealed to me the face of God the Father.
3. Around this same time I started reading Communio, voraciously, and the work of Balthasar, Ratzinger, DeLubac, and the American branch led by David L. Schindler. Particularly influential was the essay Sanctity and Theology by Balthasar which firmly located theology within the context of prayer.
4. My junior year of college as a philosophy major I learned about the great 13th synthesis of St. Thomas and read contemporaries Maritain and Gilson. At the same time I was reading about the 19th century masters of suspicion (Marx, Nietzche, Darwin, etc.). I was mesmerized by the clarity, depth, inspiration and insight of the Neo-Thomists that contrasted with the despair of atheism.
5. Finishing college, tumultuous 1968-9, I fell under the spell of Ivan Illich, brilliant, iconoclastic, Catholic mystic. In Tools for Conviviality, De-Schooling Society, and other works he provided a profound diagnosis of the pathology of a modernity sick with bureaucracy and technology. Similar thinkers strengthened this critique: Ellul, Freire, Schumacher, and later Communio. The thinking here was idealistic and utopian but it prepared me to navigate with some sobriety, clarity and serenity a world that had become insane. For example, this prepared me for my 25-year career in UPS, the epitome of techno-efficiency, where I was a loyal employee but maintained some interior distance from the impersonality of the system.
6. Again, around this same time I was reading the locutions of Mary at Medjugorge as well as related Marian literature of Guadalupe, Fatima, Lourdes, and DeMontford. This strengthened my Catholic devotion to Mary.
7. In high school I found in Mr. Blue, by Myles Connolly, a fictional, eccentric, mystic in the modern world: utterly free, ablaze with love of Christ in the Eucharist and of creation in its entirety. It is the most underrated piece of fiction ever! Other works of fiction that strongly touched me: Power and the Glory, Monsignor Quixote, The Edge of Sadness, Keys of the Kingdom,(All four about priests!), The Cypresses Believe in God, and the stories of Flannery O'Connor.
8. Through my adulthood I was inspired by the writings and lives of Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and Catherine Doherty in their love for the poor. They are my role models.
9. In midlife, I discovered The Big Book (of AA) and the 12-steps as antidote to my personal areas of powerlessness in its reckless honesty, accountability, invitation to surrender and amends, and solidarity. Happily, at the same time I participated for time in a Neo-catechumenal community which offered a comparable realism and a striking articulation of the Gospel.
10. Flight from Woman, by Karl Stern, unveiled modernity as repudiation of the feminine into a sterile, faux masculinity. It encouraged me in my awe of the feminine.
Honorable Mention
Oscar Lewis, in his anthropological study of Mexican families (Five Families) unveiled the structural, class, systemic nature of the Culture of Poverty as a dense network of institutions, pathologies, habits, and practices that keep families trapped in poverty.
Paul Vitz, in Psychology and Religion, The Christian Unconscious of Sigmund Freud, The Psychology of Atheism, and other works encouraged me in the study of psychology in a Catholic mode. Other authors in this line include Groeschel, Von Kaam, Baars, Nicolosi, and Charles Curran.
In Violence Unveiled, God's Gamble, and The Apocalypse of the Sovereign Self, Gil Baile brilliantly integrates the mimetic anthropology of Rene Girard with the theology of Balthasar, Ratzinger and DeLubac in a mesmerizing Catholic synthesis.
My spiritual life has always been enriched by classics such as: Brother Lawrence, The Way of the Pilgrim, Abandonment to Divine Providence, the Spiritual Exercises (of St. Ignatius of Loyola) and the guidance of St. Francis de Sales.
A course in Organizational Behavior at Rutgers MBA program taught me to objectively study social systems, including politics, in their complexity of consequences and all the tradeoffs between alternative systems. This freed me from the shrill, moralistic "social justice model" which rushes to absolute judgement and demonization of political opponents. So refreshing!
Finally, magazines, newspapers and journals are important reading. I grew up with Maryknoll, America and the NY Times. They still in a degree frame my thinking. I continue to read the Times daily as a source of information and analysis even as it is my opponent in The Culture War. About 30 years ago I separated from America when I went countercultural and they accommodated sexual liberalism. As noted above, New Covenant and Communio have accompanied me in my adult life. Other influences: First Things, Crisis, and The Catholic Thing.
Final Reflections
First, notice the Bible is not mentioned. I am a Catholic; I do not read the Bible as if it were a book or even a collection of books. Scripture, in its entirety and in every piece, is a verbal expression of the Word of God, of the divine/human person of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, our Lord and Savior. It is the ground on which we walk, the air we breathe, the sun that warms and illuminates, the sky around us, and the horizon that opens to infinity. We breathe it in, consume in, breath it out, rest in it, move in its energy...in the Eucharist, the Prayer of the Church, in song, in conversations and reflections of all sorts.
Second, I see that it was not so much specific books or even authors that have influenced me as much as schools of thought: charismatic, Communio, 12-steps, Marian devotion, Catholic critique of modernity, Girardian mimetics, radical identification with the poor and the dialogue with psychology and sociology.
Thirdly, mine is not a highbrow list: no classics from literature or philosophy. The primary focus is integration of our Catholic life of prayer with real life, including culture, family, and politics.
Intelligent friends who know me well have told me that no one thinks like me. This is largely due to the variety of sources than influence my thought.
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