A Quote for Monday: The Last Catholic in America

I recently discovered Loyola Press Catholic Classics series.  These were reprints started in 2005 of several dozen classic novels from the 20th century, from great authors like Rumer Godden (In This House of Brede), Edwin O'Connor (The Edge of Sadness) and A.J. Cronin (The Keys of the Kingdom).  There are also books I don't like as much, such as Mr. Blue by Myles Connolly, but lots of people I love and respect like that one, so there is something for everyone in the series.  A new discovery for me was John R. Powers' The Last Catholic in America.  This is a very bittersweet novel, a young man, a "fallen-away Catholic," as the novel reveals slowly, travels back to the south side of Chicago to revisit his parish neighborhood, and reminisces about growing up in pre-Vatican II Catholic America.  At one point, the narrator recounts his first confession and one soon after as a 2nd grader when he thinks he has committed a mortal sin, and a later confession:

What a fantastic feeling!  To come back from the spiritually dead.  To be free from sin! free from sin! free from sin!  As I walked through the neighborhood, brown igloos of raked leaves smoldered lazily, scening the air with their familiar fall fragrance.  The world fit so comfortably around me that everything I saw and heard seemed as if it had just been given, as I had, a brand-new shot at life.....

And I remember the last one.  Kneeling in a confessional in some city's cathedral.  When the priest asked me if I was sorry for my sins, in a moment of indifference, I gave him an honest answer.  He shouted.  I left.  By then, there was more than a darkened window separating us.

Down the steps of the cathedral knowing, no, hoping in my mind that I was right, yet realizing I was never again to feel that resurgence of faith in my own and the world's immortality.  Never again to experience the exhilaration of rising from the spiritually dead.  Never again to be free from sin, free from sin, free from sin.

A Quote for Monday: Lucy Maud Montgomery

"There's plenty of time for you to be grown up, Rilla. Don't wish your youth away. It goes too quickly. You'll begin to taste life soon enough."


"Taste life! I want to eat it," cried Rilla, laughing. "I want everything­, everything a girl can have. I'll be fifteen in another month, and then nobody can say I'm a child any longer. I heard someone say once that the years from fifteen to nineteen are the best years in a girl's life. I'm going to make them perfectly splendid--­just fill them with fun."


This is the high-spirited title heroine of Lucy Maud Montgomery's wonderful Rilla of Ingleside.  I dearly love Rilla, even more than her mother, Ann of Green Gables.  The book is not just a great story, but great historical fiction, written soon after the events, of World War I's devastating impact on North American families who sent young men to the war.


Of course, she's wrong that 15-19 is the best time in a girl's life.  It just keeps getting better!  I just can't help but share another quote from Rilla of Ingleside:


"Everything, it seems to me, has to be purchased by self-sacrifice. Our race has marked every step of its painful ascent with blood. And now torrents of it must flow again. No, Mrs. Crawford, I don't think the war has been sent as a punishment for sin. I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing - some advance great enough to be worth the price - which we may not live to see but which our children's children will inherit." 

A Quote for Monday: The Children's Homer by Padraic Colum

"Straightaway the mariners took to the oars, then hoisted their sails, and the ship sped on like a strong sea bird. Odysseus slept. And lightly the ship sped on, bearing the man who had suffered so much sorrow of heart in passing through wars of men and through troublous seas--the ship sped on, and he slept, and he was forgetful of all he had passed through."


--Padraic Colum, The Children's Homer.


My 8-year-old son and I have been reading aloud from this book recently.   I think I got the version of the book we are reading when our family was in England last year, but I see it is available on Kindle inexpensively. 


Wow, what an amazing version of the story of Odysseus!  We have read lots of Greek and Roman myths through Usborne books and various picture books, and I had downloaded an App with the text of the Odyssey, but couldn't really get myself into the rhythm of reading the poetry.  This is an excellent introduction of these fantastic classic stories that everyone should know.  Colum's skill with the English language (in I'm sure echoing & translating the original poetry) is just beautiful, as the above quote shows.


After we finish this, we will move on to more Padraic Colum:  The Golden Fleece: Heroes Before Achilles and The Children of Odin.