La Conversión

He encontrado en mi bandeja de correo uno enviado de parte de una de las personas más pensantes que he conocido: Tom Dunn. El correo se titula Ideas, books, articles and other sources of information on God as either an invention or a revelation... Y en él nos narra una platica que ha dado a un grupo de amigas de una de sus hijas (Camille).

En el correo original tengo los documentos a los que hace referencia Tom, si alguien desea alguno de ellos deje su correo dentro de los comentarios y con gusto le hago llegar los que sean de su interés.

Una lectura densa pero que vale la pena. Difúndelo por cualquier medio que creas conveniente.

Aquí es donde inicia el correo de Tom.

Family-friends...

I was invited to give a talk, about my conversion experience, to Camille's group of high school and college students and young professional women to whom she acts as counselor at Rinconada.   They are all "cradle" Catholics and many have some fundamental of doubts about core beliefs or skepticism about the history and the integrity of the Catholic church.   They had so many questions at the end that they ran way over the usual time for these talks.   Several of them, and two teachers, asked for information on my favorite books and articles - so here it is.   Some of you have seen parts or all of this list before, but it occurred after I sent it out that you might find some of this reading worthwhile.   Given the situation of Mexico and the US today, the last two articles on China might be of special interest.

Tom

Camille,

        

What helped me approach the Catholic faith, trust the church and end up converting --in addition to the prayers, love and the good examples of living their faith in Christ that came from family and friends-- were several books received from some of those same "family and friends" and a number of ideas I discovered from random reading of books, magazines and on web sites.    The results suggest that the invisible hand of the Holy Spirit was guiding my selection of random reading...    The books and materials I read before my conversion include:

• "Truth and Tolerance" by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger  -  this is a serious book of theology, about how to recognize the TRUTH, but is easy for an average reader to grasp as it is not complicated.
• "Crisis of Faith" by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
• "Salt of the Earth" in which Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is interviewed by Peter Seewald
• "God is Love" - the first encyclical by Pope Benedict XVI
• "Orthodoxy" by GK Chesterton
• "The Ball and the Cross" by GK Chesterton
• "The Keys of the Kingdom" by A. J. Cronin
• "The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism" by Michael Novak
• "Will It Liberate?: Questions about Liberation Theology"  by Michael Novak
• "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis
• "The Gifts of the Jews" by Thomas Cahill
• "How the Irish Saved Western Civilization" by Thomas Cahill
• "The Holy Bible", New Jerusalem version of updated translations (approved by the Catholic Church) can be found in Spanish, English, French and other languages (which is based on careful work by the French-based translation and theology community operating in Europe, the Holy Land and in North America)  - I cannot over-emphasize the importance of reading the scriptures, both Old and New Testament, and not having any fear of it being too complicated.   It is not complicated but must be read in big bites to grasp the context and the vocabulary if each book.   The New Jerusalem version has excellent notes on historic order, language and context.   When you hear the daily readings in mass, you will find a much richer experience and message if you go home and read the entire section from which the short reading of the mass is taken.    I love the old classic English language usage of the King James version, which is somewhat like the old versions of the bible printed in Spain, but one cannot appreciate the meaning of each book or chapter clearly without also reading the newer translations that maintain the traditional understanding of the history, culture, gender roles and language, in the case of the New Testament, of 1st century Jews living in the Greek-speaking eastern Byzantine territory of the Roman Empire.    I understand that the Navarra Bible in both Spanish and English is even better in the notes for each chapter and verse.     The whole body of the Bible, as a collection of books on the history of God's self-revelation to the Jewish people, and especially the short books that explain the short life of Christ, is the Word (Logos) of God which has radically transformed how man thinks and has created Western Civilization. 

After my conversion, and my entry into "full communion with the Catholic Church" I started to discover a rich and deep river of books and ideas that, had I discovered them sooner, might have accelerated my slow learning curve.   Or maybe not.   I am always haunted by the image of Christ sending the Holy Spirit to raise the level of the IQ of the Apostles from that of small-town Jewish farmers, fishermen, tradesmen and bureaucrats (most were probably conversant in Aramaic but some apparently were able to speak, and maybe read, Greek) to transform them into Jewish "theologians" able to debate the Hebrew scriptures with the temple officials...     We really should not be too convinced of our change of heart due to some personal skill or merit.

Subjects that need to be addressed for a non-believer, or agnostic, to convert to faith in a personal God and the special gift of life made through God's incarnation through which He become man and lived as the son of a carpenter in a small, and very poor, village in Palestine are, in my mind, the following:

• Faith that God is real, not the product of man's creative imagination, and that this God has revealed himself in a rational way to primitive man as he became progressively less primitive and therefore able to understand and document what God has said.   The understanding of God and His guidelines for living fully and well requires written language, intellectual and mental skills that don't just pop up in every culture or place.   The best books for this are:
• "Discovering God" by Rodney Stark  -  in which a non-Catholic sociologist explores all the major and minor religions of the world and explains how he, as an originally agnostic historian, came to understand the uniqueness and profound differences between the major monotheistic religions.   This will help anyone who thinks Buddhism, or Taoism or Confucianism are all fine alternatives to Christian faith or why people should consider Islam as just another version of the Jewish story.
• "Introduction to Christianity" by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is one of the first books written by this professor of Theology at Regenberg, Germany, for consideration by the general public, over 40 years ago.   It is worth buying even if you only read the introduction.
• "Modern Physics and Ancient Faith" by Stephen M. Barr shows science and math that support the uniqueness and the alien (other-worldly) concept of love of our fellow man, and even of our enemies, at the heart of the Christian faith.   I attach here an article by the same author.
• "The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Evidence That Points Toward God" by Lee Stobel   -  this book is by a protestant author who brings a very fresh collection of information on scientists, astronomers, biologists and mathematicians whose work leads toward faith in God and Christ.
• "The Victory of Reason" by Rodney Stark is one of the strongest presentations I have found to help understand the historic strengths, the intellectual depth and integrity of the Catholic Church and the monastic orders in creating what we now know as Western Civilization.    Too many cradle Catholics believe the unsupported theories of the agressively anti-Catholic historians, and especially the Enlightenment philosphers of England, France, Germany and Spain, who want to blame all the evils and violence of the western world since the fall of the Roman Empìre in the sixth century on the narrow views of the Catholic church.  Stark is not Catholic but he concludes that the Catholic church and the monastic traditions started by St. Benedict of Nurcia salvaged the great math, science, art, music and history from the original Greek, Indian and Chinese sources to build the Western Culture which has dominated the world since the time of St. Thomas Aquinas.   His concluding two chapters help us understand what really happened in Latin America and why China is now following the West by letting the Christian churches, both Catholic and protestant, grow freely although not officially.

I have attached a number of articles from the Internet which I hope will be of interest.   The case of China is especially interesting as the Chinese were the dominant culture in the world prior to the 13th century, then they dropped out.   They did not have the religious view of the world or man to lead them into science, math, art or music.   The Judeo-Christian faith is the main force that leads man into the seeking the orderly structure of God's creation.    The Chinese now find that, in the void created by following Marx ideas regarding religion, man becomes totally corrupt.   Judeo-Christian faith is one of the only religious ideas that tends to make mankind self-governing and able to live imitating the love of God and to interact with love toward the weak, the poor, the defenseless and the sick who all have the same human dignity since they are all God's creatures and all made in His image.   This idea does not exist in any other religious faith.

I am not including any web sites since I think there is more value in reading from paper sources before getting distracted by the computer screen and the tidal flows/distractions and formats of electronic media (plus all the Microsoft, Google and Facebook flashes and ads that invite worrying about why Lady Gaga was banned in Jakarta or why John Travolta fired his driver) which don't encourage reading large enough amounts of ideas in large enough time-frames while thinking and making notes in the margins.