Audio only:
Todd Aglialoro, director of publishing here at Catholic Answers, offers ideas for some “delightful” Catholic summer reading. In this first of a two-part reading series, Todd offers non-fiction ideas, with fiction to come later.
Cy Kellett:
Great tips for summer reading. Todd Aglialoro is next.
Hello, and welcome to Focus, The Catholic Answers Podcast for living, understanding, and defending your Catholic faith. Maybe on this episode, we should add enjoying your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host, and part of the enjoyment of being Catholic, all of the beautiful books. I mean, Catholicism is a religion that loves art. We love the visual arts, we love the musical arts, and we love the art of writing, and so Todd Aglialoro, he’s the Director of Publishing here at Catholic Answers. We invited him to come in and suggest some very fine, maybe a little lighter Catholic nonfiction for summer reading. A little lighter because summer is a time to go a little lighter. Here’s what Todd had to say.
Todd Aglialoro, Director of Catholic Answers Publishing. Thanks for being with us.
Todd Aglialoro:
Hey, Cy. Great to be here.
Cy Kellett:
I think it’s kind of a fun idea we have this year. We’re going to do some summer reading shows, and you got the nonfiction and you’re not happy about it.
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I’m just a little envious is all. My old friend Mark Brumley, I guess, is going to be doing the fiction, and when we’re talking about summer reading, what comes to mind? It’s fiction, it’s the beach novel, the paperback while you’re relaxing in the sun and all of that.
Cy Kellett:
Did you… Was this idea of the summer kind of type of reading in your mind when you chose these? You tried to get summer-y type reading?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, we thought about it a little bit, especially when it comes to nonfiction, especially when it comes to Catholic nonfiction.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Todd Aglialoro:
What does it mean to be a summer book? A lot of Catholic books are serious. We publish apologetics books, popular theology, spirituality. Not usually the sort of thing you think about kind of knocking down alongside a margarita under an umbrella-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… but I tried to think about books that would nonetheless be sort of fitting for summertime, when we’re unwinding from school and work, when the air is warm and the bugs are buzzing and you’re relaxed and you’re thinking about wanting to be delighted by what you read, not just at edified-
Cy Kellett:
Aah, very good. Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… not just educated, but to find some delight and joy in the crafting in the words and all of that stuff, so-
Cy Kellett:
That’s what we have here?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes [crosstalk 00:02:35] and of course-
Cy Kellett:
A sampling of-
Todd Aglialoro:
It is a sampling of books that I think fit those parameters-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and that, of course, also necessarily express Todd Aglialoro’s personal taste, so-
Cy Kellett:
Okay, good, good.
Todd Aglialoro:
… this is entirely subjective and there’s probably many books here on this table that our listeners know and love as well, but I hope there’ll be some new ones in there as well.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, good. Well, so I’m looking here and I actually don’t know Susie Lloyd, so I get to pick, right? This is how you’ve set-
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes-
Cy Kellett:
… this up. I [crosstalk 00:03:06]-
Todd Aglialoro:
… those are the rules.
Cy Kellett:
… and then, you will tell me about that book and maybe read a sample of it for our audience and that kind of thing?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
All right, so let’s start our Catholic summer reading nonfiction version with… I see this one and I’m not familiar with it. Bless Me, Father, For I Have Kids by Susie Lloyd.
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes, so Susie has been described as a Catholic Erma Bombeck kind of a commonsensical every-woman humorist and she’s extremely funny and a very good writer.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
Bless Me, Father, For I Have Kids is the second in a series that she wrote kind of detailing her true and somewhat augmented stories of being a Catholic homeschool Mom.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
The first one was called, I believe, Please Don’t Drink the Holy Water. It’s tales of her and her six daughters and one little boy, raising them, trying to homeschool them with all of the travails that go along with it, all of the trials and the tender moments and the humor unlooked for and all of that sort of thing.
Cy Kellett:
She’s funny?
Todd Aglialoro:
I think she’s hilarious.
Cy Kellett:
That’s great [crosstalk 00:04:22] because you just don’t get the funny Catholic book that much. I mean, there’s not that many what you [crosstalk 00:04:28]-
Todd Aglialoro:
No, well [crosstalk 00:04:29] we’re serious folks. We’re about pain and guilt and [crosstalk 00:04:33] the cross and we embrace all of that stuff, but she pulls a lot of humor out of everyday life and-
Cy Kellett:
Good for her.
Todd Aglialoro:
… though I’m not a homeschooler, I didn’t have to be. I didn’t have to be a homeschooler or a mom to enjoy these accounts of being a homeschooling mom.
Cy Kellett:
All right, now, do you want to give us a sample of Susie Lloyd?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah, I-
Cy Kellett:
Let’s hear a little bit about [crosstalk 00:04:55]-
Todd Aglialoro:
… I almost was able to dip my finger in at random because-
Cy Kellett:
They’re that good?
Todd Aglialoro:
I think so, and of course, I’ve set it up now and it’s going to be this point of inflect. This is a section where she’s talking about homeschooling, kind of comparing it to childbirth and then she says, “Take it from one random example, teaching English. Being a writer, I thought that was going to be breeze. In fact, it was the real reason I homeschooled so I could pass on my knowledge to my children. We started with phonics and went through an indefinite period sounding like Fred Flintstone, yabba dabba doo. At first, it was like early labor, not too painful yet, but tiring. No fear. Once you get past that early stage you’re clear to be hooked up to a workbook. That’s like the epidural. Your kids reds the directions, you lie back and relax a bit and let nature take it’s course.
Todd Aglialoro:
I recommend Catholic workbooks. That way, your kid’s English, it gets born and baptized all in one shot. For instance, penmanship grade one, and notice she lists the words, piety, fortitude, martyrdom, modesty, beach, attire, should, never, be, worn, to, church-
Cy Kellett:
Good for her. That’s funny.
Todd Aglialoro:
… hell, damnation. Then, composition hits and it starts to get tough. The transition phase has begun, so-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, that’s great. I’m going to get that for my wife. You know, my wife’s a convert to the Catholic faith, so this is good. This will give her the light side. I love it. Very good, so that’s Bless me, Father, For I Have Kids, Susie Lloyd?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, good. All right, now, I just get to randomly pick from the… I mean, Thomas Aquinas is sticking out in red and yellow here, so I’ll just grab some light Thomas Aquinas reading. Really?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I’ve [crosstalk 00:06:48] got some passages here, too. Want to grab one or two that I don’t? See, I’ve already-
Cy Kellett:
Okay [crosstalk 00:06:51]-
Todd Aglialoro:
… broken the rules.
Cy Kellett:
… oh, okay, so get something, go a different direction?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah?
Todd Aglialoro:
… all right, yes.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I’m scared to pick now. I’ve got to see what it is.
Todd Aglialoro:
I’m sorry Cy.
Cy Kellett:
Exiles: A Novel? Ron-
Todd Aglialoro:
I cheated.
Cy Kellett:
… Hansen.
Todd Aglialoro:
I’ve broken two rules in the first five minutes.
Cy Kellett:
The author of Mariette in Ecstasy. Okay, so [crosstalk 00:07:10]-
Todd Aglialoro:
Ron Hansen is a Catholic novelist and screenwriter of some renown, and I felt justified in choosing this so-called “novel” Exiles because it is kind of a bio novel. It’s-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… grounded in fact-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… so it’s got that biographical fiction tag on it that I felt was close enough and it tells the story set in the late 19th century during Bismarck’s Kulturkampf in Germany, which is an extremely significant period for the modern world and for the Church. It might even be said that what Bismarck did then kind of birthed World Wars I and II.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
We don’t look back upon him and his actions, I think, and invest those with the importance that they deserve. At any rate, as Bismarck was unifying Germany, I don’t know, 1870s, 1880s, and giving it a decidedly Northern German-Prussian-Protestant slant, he instituted various persecutions of the Church-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and persecuted the clergy, shut churches, and this story tells the tale of a boat called The Deutschland on which were five sisters. I forget what order they belonged to. They were German nuns who were essentially being exiled because of the anti-Catholic policies being instituted by Bismarck. The ship met a sad fate. It sunk and the sisters were all killed. He parallels his reimagining of their personal life histories with a poem that Gerard Manley Hopkins would later write about-
Cy Kellett:
About that.
Todd Aglialoro:
… the sinking of The Deutschland-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and weaves in the lives of the great Jesuit poet and these martyrs of a sort into a thematically unified-
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
… story. There’s a lot of pieces there. Maybe it’s sounds more complicated than it is, but it’s got a great unity to it and it’s just mesmerizing to read.
Cy Kellett:
It’s real history-
Todd Aglialoro:
It is.
Cy Kellett:
… imagined as a novel? So-
Todd Aglialoro:
That’s right, so-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… Hansen imagines-
Cy Kellett:
All right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… working off, of course, what he knew of them in real life, but it gives them backstories, gives them motivations, and then-
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
… he works into [crosstalk 00:10:06]-
Cy Kellett:
I got to read this. I didn’t know about this at all, and I have to say with what you say about the Kulturkampf, I realize I don’t know that much about it, so I think that this [crosstalk 00:10:16]-
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah, well, you’re not alone. Certainly, I’m no expert, but I know enough to know that we should know more-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and this-
Cy Kellett:
All right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… will dramatize for… will conquertize for those who read it, especially Catholics, the struggle that the Church faces in almost every era, in almost every place, that we’re strangers in a hostile world. Even in the heart of what was the Old Holy Roman Empire, we’re strangers in a hostile world.
Cy Kellett:
Exiles by Ron Hansen-
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
… okay, good.
Todd Aglialoro:
Okay, I really will let you pick this time, so-
Cy Kellett:
You will?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes, promise.
Cy Kellett:
All right, I’m going with A Severe Mercy.
Todd Aglialoro:
Oh, come on.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, come on. What the heck? All right, what am I supposed to pick? It… Oh-
Todd Aglialoro:
A Severe Mercy is perfect.
Cy Kellett:
A Severe Mercy, okay, by Sheldon Vanauken. Includes 18 previously unpublished letters by C.S. Lewis. I like that C.S. Lewis’ name is way bigger than Sheldon Vanauken. I can see who sells books there.
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, this is an early edition, I think probably before Ignatius Press published it and made it really popular. Yeah, this is a Bantam Books edition when they really had to pump up Lewis’ name to give some cred. I’m probably the 50 millionth person to read and love this book, so it’s-
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Todd Aglialoro:
… this is not some gem that I’ve dug out of the coal-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
… but it tells the story of Sheldon Vanauken, who went on to be a Catholic man of letters, but beginning in his irreligious phase, and his meeting and courtship and marriage to his wife and their mutual conversion through The Church of England and eventually to Catholicism.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
Then, the personal trials and tragedies that followed that. Vanauken is an old… The late Sheldon Vanauken is an old friend and supporter of Catholic Answers. Karl knew him personally and for years, I carried around a little note that I stole from The Catholic Answers Correspondents Pod, back when you corresponded via paper.
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah, so [crosstalk 00:12:34]-
Todd Aglialoro:
As a kind of relic of the fellow, but I wish I knew where it was today, but Vanauken was a close friend of C.S. Lewis’ and Lewis was undoubtedly an instrumental factor in bringing Vanauken to Christ, and then probably in subtle ways leading him toward the Church.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so he made that final step, though, that Lewis himself never made.
Todd Aglialoro:
I know.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. Any thoughts on why Lewis didn’t make that step? Do you have any?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, Lewis scholars could speak to that. I buy the most common explanation that he simply had too many deep-seated kind of Northern Irish biases against Catholicism to finally cross the river, but got as close as he could.
Cy Kellett:
A Severe Mercy is the name of this one by Sheldon Vanauken. You said you can get it from Ignatius Press now?
Todd Aglialoro:
I believe Ignatius publishes its own edition, yeah.
Cy Kellett:
All right, I’m going to see on our next episode when Mark Brumley comes in if he’ll [crosstalk 00:13:32]-
Todd Aglialoro:
Good, tell him [crosstalk 00:13:33] I’ve read one of his books.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right. I want to see if recommends any Catholic Answers books. I’m looking at your face. Can I [crosstalk 00:13:39]
Todd Aglialoro:
Do it.
Cy Kellett:
All right. Okay, I can pick this up now. Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox by a little feller named G.K. Chesterton [crosstalk 00:13:46]-
Todd Aglialoro:
Not so little, but yes-
Cy Kellett:
Okay, tell us about that book.
Todd Aglialoro:
… in every respect. Chesterton, how do you leave him off of any list of delightful Catholic nonfiction? The man was a wordsmith nonpareil, but-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… a lot of his works can be a little effort to read. His-
Cy Kellett:
Yes.
Todd Aglialoro:
… verbal gymnastics, it’s like being on a roller coaster ride of-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… nouns and verbs. Maybe the conventional choice for delightful summer reading from Chesterton would have been Orthodoxy. It’s a little book and it’s perhaps his most accessible, perhaps leaving out his light poetry. I chose Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox because more than anything I’ve ever read, this helped me to understand Saint Thomas-
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Todd Aglialoro:
… and I was, and to no small extent still am, one of the 50 million Catholics who don’t understand The Angelic Doctor as much as I ought to-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… but the-
Cy Kellett:
50 million?
Todd Aglialoro:
More than that.
Cy Kellett:
You’re off by a power of 10 there.
Todd Aglialoro:
We’re doing our best here at Catholic Answers and then others to bring him to the masses, but to me, this combines biographical anecdotes and raconteurship with Chesterton’s inimicable ability to break down complex ideas into common sense.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right.
Todd Aglialoro:
I had two parts I wanted to read if I might.
Cy Kellett:
Oh yeah, please do, please do, yeah.
Todd Aglialoro:
One of each, so the short one is this. I’ll read the anecdote first.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Todd Aglialoro:
There’s this famous story of Saint Thomas when he was in Paris and he had been musing about the latest resurgence of Gnosticism and the Manichean heresy and how to take faith and reason and unite them. How to take what our senses tell us and what our minds cogitate on and connect them. Manichea is like all Gnostics of every stripe sought to separate those things. Chesterton imagines it this way.
Todd Aglialoro:
“Somehow they steered that reluctant bulk of reflection to a seat in the Royal Banquet Hall and all that we know of Thomas tells us that he was perfectly courteous to those who spoke to him, but spoke little and was soon forgotten in a most brilliant and noisy clatter in the world, the noise of French talking. What the Frenchmen were talking about we do not know, but they forgot all about the large, fat Italian in their midst, and it seems only too possible that he had forgotten about them. Sudden silences will occur, even in French conversation, and in one of these, the interruption came.
Todd Aglialoro:
“There had been no word or emotion in that huge heap of black and white weeds like motley in mourning, which marked him as a mendicant friar out of the streets. I contrast it with all of the colors and patterns and quarterings of that first and freshest dawn of chivalry and heraldry. The triangular shields and pennons and pointed spears, the triangular swords of The Crusade, the pointed windows, and the conical hoods repeated everywhere that fresh, French Medieval spirit that did in every sense come to the point, but the colors of the coats were gay and varied with little to rebuke their richness. For Saint Louis, who himself a special quality of coming to the point, had said to his courtiers, ‘Vanity should be avoided, but every man should dress well and in the manner of his rank that his wife may the more easily love him.’
Todd Aglialoro:
“Then, suddenly, the goblets leapt and rattled on the board and the great table shook for the friar had brought down his huge fist like a club of stone with a crash that startled everyone like an explosion and cried out in a strong voice, but like a man in the grip of a dream, ‘And that will settle the Manichees.'”
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
That was the moment were Saint Thomas figured out how to settle the Manichees.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, wow, but also the kind of juxtaposition of vanity and humble wisdom. It’s beautiful.
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes.
Cy Kellett:
It’s beautifully done.
Todd Aglialoro:
Then, the nod to King Saint IX.
Cy Kellett:
Yes, right, right.
Todd Aglialoro:
Then, a much shorter passage-
Cy Kellett:
Oh, I’m sorry. I [crosstalk 00:18:49]-
Todd Aglialoro:
… just a [crosstalk 00:18:49] little byword of mine that I’ve always recalled where he talks about what he calls The Thomistic Common Sense and he says… This is the heuristic that I’ve used to come back to, to try to grasp Saint Thomas’ thought. He says, “The essence of the Thomas Common Sense is that two agencies are at work, reality and the recognition of reality, and their meeting is a sort of marriage. Indeed, it is very truly a marriage because it is fruitful. The only philosophy now in the world that really is fruitful.”
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
There’s reality and there’s the recognition of reality-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and they’re meeting as a sort of marriage, and that [crosstalk 00:19:44] blows away Cartesianism, that blows away nominalism, and every ism that tries to separate our perception from what is really real.
Cy Kellett:
Well, and Chesterton, only a Modern could really write about Thomas that way because the Modern preoccupation is, “How do I know what’s real? How do I ever have access to what’s real?” It has been since Descartes, and there’s Thomas saying, “Well, they knew how to in the Middle Ages.”
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, they knew how to in antipathy, so of course, he’s always said he baptized Aristotle, and then elevated Aristotelian classical realism and made it Christian.
Cy Kellett:
All right, what about some books from Catholic Answers?
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes, what [crosstalk 00:20:28]-
Cy Kellett:
The only books that you picked from Catholic Answers.
Todd Aglialoro:
… well, there’s two on the table, so this is ours, too.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay [crosstalk 00:20:33]-
Todd Aglialoro:
Something for the kids. Well, kids, There Are Dogs. In fact, the author wrote these graphic novels for adults because, I guess, adults read these things. However-
Cy Kellett:
I guess adults read these.
Todd Aglialoro:
I’m sorry. That was a little bit snarky.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, the whole video department is like, “Well, that’s what we do all of the time.”
Todd Aglialoro:
I’m showing my age here.
Cy Kellett:
Sorry, guys.
Todd Aglialoro:
They are the only apologist graphic novels that we know of in existence in history, and they are written by a semi-cloistered abbot who goes by the pen name of Amadeus and whose real name I won’t reveal, but it is probably available for a price if you want to talk to me after the show. He tried to marry his love of science fiction and his quirky sense of humor with Apologetics and popular theology. This is a trilogy and the first one, The Truth is Out There, introduces two intergalactic mailmen named Brendan and Erc, a little fellow and a big fellow. Kind of in that Vladimir and Estragon tradition or Lenny and Carl tradition. Not Lenny and Carl-
Cy Kellett:
I was going to say, Lenny-
Todd Aglialoro:
From Of Mice and Men… What’s his name?
Cy Kellett:
Lenny and Carl are The Simpsons.
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, forgive me.
Cy Kellett:
Go ahead.
Todd Aglialoro:
They have a plot, this kind of outer space plot, but while they’re going through it, they are pursuing truth. This book takes them and the reader through natural religion, natural law, basic philosophy, leading us to the precipice or to the… Not the precipice, but to the foundation of Revelation. Then, it gets into Christian distinctives and then finally Catholic distinctives. It ends with one of the characters being baptized into the Church.
Todd Aglialoro:
The second is the sequel to The Truth is Out There. It’s called The Big Picture, and it backs up and it follows the further development of the faith life of these two characters set against a parallel exposition of salvation history from Eden to Calvary. It’s the most ambitious of the three in that the main plot, which is, again, kind of a sci-fi thriller story, has thematic interweavings with the themes of salvation history.
Todd Aglialoro:
Finally, The Weapons of War, which refers to the sacraments, is probably the darkest and most serious of the three and it takes up or it recalls modern themes of persecution of the Church, religious freedom, and morality and how the sacraments are the weapons that we have, the swords of the spirit, to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Cy Kellett:
I envision maybe a parent with some teenagers or younger this summer just getting these, leaving them out on the coffee table.
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Let the kids discover them themselves.
Todd Aglialoro:
They’re colorful, they’re funny. I wish… Reading from them really wouldn’t do justice because being graphic novels-
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Todd Aglialoro:
… half of the experience is in the visual-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… but Father Amadeus is a really funny guy, and though they were written for adults, my kid started picking them up at 11 or 12. He found that confirmation age, or at least what’s confirmation age in most areas, that 14-15 range seems to be what they really grab on-
Cy Kellett:
Perfect.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and they’re faith-building, too.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, and they will pick them up because they’ve got pictures.
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah [crosstalk 00:24:38]-
Cy Kellett:
At some point, they’re-
Todd Aglialoro:
… picture [crosstalk 00:24:38]-
Cy Kellett:
… going to pick them up. “I’m bored, Mom.” “Well, look on the table.” George, it’s Lenny and George.
Todd Aglialoro:
Lenny and George, thank you.
Cy Kellett:
All right, I’m going to save Mr. Belloc for [crosstalk 00:24:50] the end, so let’s go with Edmund Campion. I assume it’s not by Edmund Campion, it’s-
Todd Aglialoro:
It is not, but very little of what Edmund Campion wrote of it in his so-called “Brag,” but yes, this is by Evelyn Waugh, who was also primarily a writer of fiction. Perhaps best known among Catholics for his masterpiece Brideshead Revisited.
Cy Kellett:
I thought you were going to say Helena, best known for Helena, but maybe not. No [crosstalk 00:25:18] I was just teasing you.
Todd Aglialoro:
As Edmund Campion is kind of an analog to Helena in that it’s a historical imagining in much the same way that Exiles was, although it’s less of an novel in its construction, but it tells the story of Saint Edmund Campion who was an Elizabethan martyr, perhaps the greatest and most talented of them all, though maybe not the most accomplished because of the early end that he met. He was one of the greatest men of his time. In fact, none other than Queen Elizabeth II herself called him The Jewel of England, such was his learning and brilliance, but like many who went on to be martyrs in that era, he did not yield to the new religion-
Cy Kellett:
Right.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and went to the continent, became a Jesuit, and returned and was one of these priests who made the rounds at the old Catholic houses, the old Recusant homes, and hid in the priest holes and said mass in the hidden attic chapels.
Cy Kellett:
Amazing.
Todd Aglialoro:
If you’ve ever gotten to visit those homes, it really is quite extraordinary.
Cy Kellett:
I have not. My [crosstalk 00:26:46]-
Todd Aglialoro:
I was able to once by the good graces of an English priest friend and it’s every bit, indeed, these little tiny cubbies that they would stuff them in where everybody is cramped and dark and scared as you can imagine in the hidden chapels and was caught out. Probably betrayed and went to hang at Tyburn Tree, the immense gallows that was constructed in Northern London. Hanged and drawn and quartered in that way that non-squeamish ages of the past-
Cy Kellett:
I know.
Todd Aglialoro:
… considered to be a fitting punishment for heretics.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Well, the whole world was like a Mel Gibson movie.
Todd Aglialoro:
That’s right. Whether he cried, “Freedom,” as yet I don’t know, but… Waugh is a wordsmith of the first order.
Cy Kellett:
Boy, is he.
Todd Aglialoro:
Yeah, and knew how to wield the pen-
Cy Kellett:
All right, Edmund Campion [crosstalk 00:27:40]-
Todd Aglialoro:
… and his rousing [crosstalk 00:27:41]-
Cy Kellett:
If you went to a Catholic university, there’s an Edmund Campion Hall somewhere on the campus, but you don’t know the man, get the book. Evelyn Waugh, Edmund Campion, but you can also recommend almost anything from Waugh.
Todd Aglialoro:
Yes, indeed.
Cy Kellett:
Here’s another one that you can recommend almost anything from, but you’d spend a lifetime if you wanted to read it all. How many books from-
Todd Aglialoro:
Something like 150 books Hilaire Belloc wrote, yeah.
Cy Kellett:
All right, so you chose The Path to Rome.
Todd Aglialoro:
They used to tease Belloc about how prolific he was and some of his books he didn’t, shall we say, put a lot of care into the research of-
Cy Kellett:
Oh [crosstalk 00:28:21]-
Todd Aglialoro:
… and he used to say, “I have to write so many books because I need the money because my children are howling for pearls and caviar,” he used to say. Say [inaudible 00:28:31] this kid, but really it was just his own lifestyle, I think, but yes, there was no way I was going to leave this out. It’s one of my favorite books and I never fail to recommend it if you give me the time. The Path to Rome, which was also Belloc himself said, the only book he ever wrote for love.
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Todd Aglialoro:
Every other book of the 150-some odd that he every wrote, including ones that his light verse books like The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts or his two other very famous travel books, The Four Men and The Cruise of the Nona, which are beloved, or his historical works, “All of them,” he said, “I wrote for money.”
Cy Kellett:
But not this?
Todd Aglialoro:
Not The Path to Rome, so The Path to Rome was written, I believe, in 1902 when he was still a relatively young and unbroken man. He conceived of the idea of walking from the City of Toul in Central Southern France to Rome. Belloc was renowned for his feats of physical prowess. He was a tramper and he thought nothing of walking 30, 40 miles a day-
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
… around his home of Sussex or around the continent. He conceived this idea of just walking through Catholic Europe and writing down whatever occurred to him along the way and drawing pictures because he was also an accomplished artist, and so that’s what he does. What emerges is a really unique book.
Todd Aglialoro:
Now, there are other travelog-type books, one that our Father Hugh recommended that I have been reading called A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor is another example of this genre that I would recommend. That was a walk from Amsterdam to Constantinople, so an even greater feat than what Belloc did, but it’s more than that. It’s a love song to Catholic Europe before all was shattered by the two World Wars.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, yeah.
Todd Aglialoro:
Then, Belloc would, in fact, write a forward to a later edition after both World Wars, after he lost his wife and two of his sons prematurely, and then he had a stroke and kind of spent his life in diminished capacities and in constant mourning for then. He said, “What I have written about in this book no longer exists,” so it’s kind of a time capsule.
Cy Kellett:
Wow.
Todd Aglialoro:
Now, is it a little bit gauze-y? Is it a little bit idealized for those of us especially New Worlders like we who have this romantic picture of Catholic Europe? Probably, and Belloc was known to be an exaggerator and that sort of thing, but it doesn’t diminish in any way how delightful it is to read.
Cy Kellett:
Makes it a good summer read.
Todd Aglialoro:
It makes [crosstalk 00:31:32] it a good summer read, so if we have the time, I’ll-
Cy Kellett:
Please do.
Todd Aglialoro:
… share [crosstalk 00:31:36] we’re probably nearing the end. This is another book that I could have put a blindfold on and picked a page at random, but this is one of the better-known stories. He made a couple of vows before setting out, one of which is that he would, as he put it, hear mass every day [crosstalk 00:31:57] hear mass every day, and that he would go on foot the entire way. He was suffering from a cramp or something. He was tired. He was about halfway through and he was drawing.
Todd Aglialoro:
He said, “My fatigue was very great and my walking painful to an extreme.” He came up on a gorge and he begins to sketch and he says, “While I was occupied sketching the slabs of limestone, I heard wheels coming up behind me and a boy on a wagon stopped and hailed me. What the boy wanted to know was whether I would like a lift, and this he said in such curious French that I shuddered to think how far I had pierced into the heart of the hills and how soon I might come to quite strange people. I was greatly tempted to get into his cart, but though I had broken so many of my vows, one remained yet whole and sound, which was that I would ride upon no wheeled thing.
Todd Aglialoro:
“Remembering this, therefore, and considering that the faith is rich in interpretation, I clung onto the wagon in such a manner that it did all of my work for me and yet could not be said to be actually carrying me. Distinguo. The essence of a vow is it’s literal meaning. The spirit [crosstalk 00:33:26] and intention are for the major morality and concern natural religion, but when upon a point of ritual or of dedication or special worship, a man talks to you of the spirit and intention and complains of the dryness of the word. Look at him askance. He is not far removed from heresy.”
Cy Kellett:
That’s Belloc. How beautiful. How wonderful. Well, Todd, I’m very, very grateful to you for these, and we’ll put the list up maybe on our… Well, we’ll put it on the Facebook page, the list of the various books.
Todd Aglialoro:
We have our own beautiful edition of The Path to Rome. I think we have some copies left.
Cy Kellett:
You can get that at shop.catholic.com-
Todd Aglialoro:
You can.
Cy Kellett:
… as well. Say a word about why read some books this summer. Why just pick up the printed page and read some?
Todd Aglialoro:
Well, I wish I had something profound for you. Reading keeps the brain working-
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Todd Aglialoro:
… and it renews us, and especially if like a lot of us and probably a lot of your listeners, we’re always reading to be edified, to be bettered. That can be work and sometimes we need to read just to rest in the beauty of expression. Really, that’s a foretaste of Heaven, isn’t it?
Cy Kellett:
It is, indeed. Thanks, Todd. Thank you very, very much.
Todd Aglialoro:
That’s great.
Cy Kellett:
Have a happy summer.
Cy Kellett:
Well, I’ve got my reading cut out for me this summer because I’m realizing now that I’ve spoken to Todd about it, I haven’t read very many of those books that are on his lists, so that’s maybe a bad thing in that I haven’t done it, but a good thing in that I’ve got it all to look forward to. I hope you have it to look forward to as well. Thanks for joining us.
Cy Kellett:
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Cy Kellett:
I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.