There is great joy in the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ. There is very little joy in the writings of His Holiness Pope Francis, marred as they are by his mushy reasoning & fondness for arguing against straw men. In fairness, getting through any papal encyclical might be a slog, as the only examples I've read are his (though Lumen Fidei is described as being largely the work of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI). Francis is the pope, & he may even be a great pope—I pray for his spiritual & physical health, his pontificate, & his prayer intentions every day—but a great communicator I fear he is not.
Before deciding to read Rediscover Jesus I polled those who had read it, asking them this question: Is it by the good Matthew Kelly of The Four Signs of the Dynamic Catholic or the unreadable Matthew Kelly of Rediscover Catholicism? I was assured 'tis by the former; time shall tell.
Recently
Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium (The Joy of the Gospel)
Sam Posey, Where the Writer Meets the Road: A Collection of Articles, Broadcast Intros, and Profiles
Pope Francis, Laudato Si' (On Care for Our Common Home)
Currently
Matthew Kelly, Rediscover Jesus: An Invitation
Daily
Pope Francis & Henri J. H. Nouwen, Welcoming Jesus: Advent Reflections
Madeline Pecora Nugent, The Divine Office for Dodos: A Step-by-Step Guide to Praying the Liturgy of the Hours
Presently
Dr. John Bergsma, Bible Basics for Catholics: A New Picture of Salvation History
Pope Francis, The Church of Mercy: A Vision for the Church
Rice Broocks, God's Not Dead: Evidence for God in an Age of Uncertainty
Richard Price, Clockers
Sir Richard Francis Burton, translator, "Sinbad the Sailor" from The Arabian Nights
Sir Ernest Shackleton, South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage
Norman Davies, Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations
2 comments:
All encyclicals are a slog, the shorter, the better to read. At least Pope Francis's are a LOT shorter then some I've read. One spend pages (or at least it felt like pages) defining the words that they were using, before then going on about them, and some how half way in totally changed what it was talking about. (Not in a veered off topic way but in, part one was on relationships, and part two was on taking care of the poor.) Like they were given a topic (charity) and wanted to cover all definitions of it. i.e love and compassion.
Also the Vatican's web site search engine is horrible. You can type in the title of an encyclical and it will find every other place that uses one of the words, but not it unless you also type in the pope that wrote it. Even if you then look only under that pope.
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