Summer Reading (as the Summer is NOT almost over)

Here are some of my recommendations for books on marriage, sex, and family for those who would spend serious time thinking deeply about what marriage is, how we came to the point of its overthrow, and what the future might hold. Most available in e-editions.

Sherif Girgis, Ryan T. Anderson, and Robert P. George. What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense. Encounter Books, 2012.

Being a human affair, marriage is a natural entity before it’s a religious matter. The authors make a purely rational, non-religious argument for natural marriage grounded in reason and history as a comprehensive union of will and body ordered to procreation and the broad sharing of life, involving permanent and exclusive commitment.

Pope Paul VI, On Human Life: Humanae Vitae. Ignatius Press, 2014

Ignatius Press presents Fr. Marc A. Caligari’s 1998 translation of Paul VI’s controverted encyclical with Mary Eberstadt’s fine essay “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae” serving as a forward. James Hitchcock provides “A Historical Afterword” and former atheist turned Catholic-blogger-speaker-apologist Jennifer Fulwiler provides a postscript entitled “We’re Finally Ready for Humanae Vitae”. The additional material makes the volume most useful for discussion and study.

Mary Eberstadt, Adam and Eve After the Pill: Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution. Ignatius Press, 2013.

Eberstadt, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, provides us with a collection of essays worked into a coherent book dealing with the dynamics of technological and social change on sexuality and their effects on men, women, children, and young adults.

• Anthony Esolen, Defending Marriage: Twelve Arguments for Sanity. Saint Benedict Press, 2014.

Many people assume same-sex marriage affects no one outside of those who choose to enter such legal unions. Esolen, professor of literature and translator of Dante, shows how same-sex marriage will change society and culture on a deep level by its effects on things such as friendship, freedom, the relationship between the sexes, and children.

• Robert R. Reilly, Making Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior is Changing Everything. Ignatius Press, 2014.

Against those who would assert that acceptance of the gay agenda is no big deal, Reilly demonstrates not only that the acceptance of homosexuality is changing human society at a fundamental level but also through copious quotes that radical change to the fabric of human existence has been gay activists’ desired endgame.

Ryan T. Anderson, Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom. Regnery, 2015.

Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has done more to defend natural marriage in the public realm than any other figure. After Obergefell, he provides us with a road map for living with—and resisting—its consequences.

Enjoy!

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A Child's Right

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Novus Motus Liturgicus

From The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God: In 1959, Pope John XXIII saw a true need for liturgical renewal within the Roman Rite in accordance with the metaphorical principle of organic development, the aim of the Liturgical Movement endorsed by Pope St. Pius X. In authentic organic development, the Church listens to what liturgical scholars deem necessary for the gradual improvement of liturgical tradition, and evaluate the need for such development, always with a careful eye on the preservation of the received liturgical tradition handed down from century to century. In this way, continuity of belief and liturgical practice is ensured. As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote at the time, the principle of organic development ensures that in the Mass, “only respect for the Liturgy’s fundamental unspontaneity and pre-existing identity can give us what we hope for: the feast in which the great reality comes to us that we ourselves do not manufacture , but receive as a gift. Organic de...

Libido Redux: Gabriele Kuby

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Ode to Freddi: Be Careful When You Write Papa

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Et Lux in tenebris lucet et tenebrae eam non comprehenderunt

What Is the Source of This Darkness of Our Times? |Blogs | NCRegister.com : What prompted me to write a book about the current spiritual war ongoing in the world in which we live? Stumbling upon this quote by the Pope of the council, Pope Paul VI : We have the impression that through some cracks in the wall the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God: it is doubt, uncertainty, questioning, dissatisfaction, confrontation. And how did this come about? We will confide to you the thought that may be, we ourselves admit in free discussion, that may be unfounded, and that is that there has been a power, an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil. We thought that after the Council a day of sunshine would have dawned for the history of the Church. What dawned instead was a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainties . I am an avid reader of Msgr. Charles Pope, who has written recently on this our adversary in ...

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