The Anchoress

The Catholic Passion is an unusual book – so unusual, in fact that it might be easier to list all the things the book is not, as a means of zeroing in on what it, precisely, is.

The Catholic Passion is not the musings of a man on a personal journey. It is not an apologetics manual. It is not a slap-happy “welcome to the church, it’s awful” volume goading us into loving the church in all its warts. It is not an introduction to Catholicsm, or some trendy dumbed-down “Catholicsm for the not-smart” sort of book.

In some ways The Catholic Passion reminds me of St. Bernadette Soubirous of Lourdes who, when challenged about her visions of the Virgin Mary responded, “it is not my job to convince, only to inform.” The Catholic Passion is not about persuading or proselytizing. It is simply, as its title suggests, a passionate love-song to the Church, composed by one man, using variations on the themes of many.

The love song of David Scott is well-assisted by those variations. By quoting Catholic Christians through the ages, Scott has found a way to talk about the Catholic Church, and what it means to ordinary, practicing church members that is utterly free of complaint or condescension, and full of charity. In his book, which is almost conversational in tone, he finds ways to talk about the Holy Trinity, Mary, the Sacraments and the apostolic nature of the Church with freshness and vitality. Often he brings that freshness about by reaching back through the centuries to pluck a rich pebble of wisdom, and tossing it into our noisy and overwrought new century where it – plonk! – sounds ever ancient, ever new. The voices Scott draws from our history talk the Love of God in language that is sometimes elevated, sometimes plain, and they wash over us like a cleansing rain.

Here is Scott, writing of 19th century poet and playwrite Paul Claudel,

Early in his life, Claudel fell away from the church, convinced that God was a figment of the imagination of a prescientific world. Nonetheless, out of nostalgia of habit, he went to Mass on Christmas Eve at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 1886. During the service he hears a voice from on high say, “There is a God.” It changed his life.

In describing his experience of God’s love for him, Claudel once wrote: “Overcome with wonder, I can only say it is madness, it is too much…Look, see God striding across the earth like a sower; he takes his heart in both hands and scatters it over the face of the earth!”

Scott points out that Claudel says nothing that the Baltimore Catechism does not, but one feels the passion of that statement and understands that the human experience of faith goes where mere instruction cannot take us. And it is in reading this passage that we come to understand what The Catholic Passion is, but Scott helpfully spells it out, further:

“…the faith was never meant to be something we “graduate” from as we do high school. Our knowledge and understanding of what we believe is meant to deepen as our relationship with Jesus deepens. The early Christians spoke of mystagogy, a life of life-long immersion in the mysteries of the faith. This book is a small exercise in 21st century mystagogy.

It may be small, but it packs a wallop. For those of us who simply do not have the time or opportunity to explore ancient volumes, Scott has found a way to bring us some exquisite thinking.

On Mary’s importance to God’s plan of salvation: Mary’s son was the “last Adam,” the firstborn of a born-again humanity, the apostle Paul said. As Mary reversed Eve’s sin, Jesus reversed Adam’s failure to believe and to love. Jesus would be tempted by the devil, as Adam was – first in the wilderness and later in the Garden of Gethsemane. But he would not fall, as Adam did, and by his love and obedience to God’s will, Jesus would reverse the death sentence humanity had lived under since Eden.

The angel waits for an answer…We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion. The sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us. The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent…This is what the whole earth waits for…For on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned – salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race. Answer quickly, O Virgin…speak your own word, conceive the divine Word.

Scott does not look only to the earliest Catholics, those whose writings existed from the first days of the church, and he does not confine his sources to vowed religious and priests. He brings us Dorothy Day, recalling the birth of her daughter and the need that birth brought, within her, to find “Someone to thank, to love, even to worship, for so great a good that had been bestowed upon me.” He brings us Andre Dubus finding sacramental love in the act of making sandwiches for his children’s lunch. Be brings us G.K. Chesterton with a pithy, quintessentially Catholic observation:

But sin is never just a private affair. Our sins – what we do but should not, what we do not do but should – beget countless offenses and violences against loved ones and neighbors, even against people we will never see. That is why in the 1930’s, when the Times (London) asked the Catholic essayist G. K. Chesterton and others to write on the topic of “What’s Wrong with the World Today,” Chesterton sent back a two-word response:

Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely, G. K. Chesterton

Dante is here, so is John Paul II, so is Maximus the Confessor and St. Edith Stein, so are Peter, Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, so are, in a very real sense, you and I.

While I have the minor complaint that the book could have used an index to help a smitten reader re-find a particularly striking quote, all in all, this has been my favorite book of 2005.

For Catholics who love being Catholic, reading The Catholic Passion is akin to the caricature of a capitalist giddily frolicking in freshly-minted hundred-dollar bills. For Catholics who are in the church but having a difficult time remembering why they remain, The Catholic Passion is a spiritual aphrodisiac. And for the curious non-Catholic who wonders why, sometimes, Catholics can seem so giddy about their humanly flawed and faulty church, The Catholic Passion is a perky smudge-faced housekeeper showing off the mansion’s treasures, collected from “day one” until today. For any reader with a curious mind, an appreciation for fine writing and a willingness to expose himself to real fixations of Divine Love, The Catholic Passion is the book to read.

And lucky you, you can order this book through The Anchoress Bookshelf (scroll down to the “reviewed” book section) and your Amazon purchase will create revenue which will be happily and 100% donated to the hospice which saw my brother through his final days. It’s a twofer!

UPDATE: Godspy provides a long and excellent excerpt. Also, an interview with David Scott, here.