Long awaited...

This announcement from Christendom College is truly long-awaited, at least by me. While I have always been a lover of history, Warren Carroll's books are more than just a historical adventure to me; the way he conveys to the reader events, personalities, heroism, injustice, tragedy, victory, etc. is also a spiritual adventure.

Our culture has a fascination with singular events in history when they are spectacular, mysterious, or grotesque. Yet our overall interest, sense and understanding of history is severely deficient. This is a problem, not just because we recommit the mistakes of the past, but also a problem in obtaining our salvation....Here is an excerpt from John Meehan's "Two Towers-the de-Chrisitianization of America and a Plan for Renewal":

...some knowledge of history is necessary for grasping how certain events occurred and why people acted in the way that they did. Furthermore, without knowledge of the past, a person will have little understanding of the present and no real expectation or reasonable hope for what lies ahead. Without an historical perspective, he or she will merely live in the here and now, ignorant of what was and indifferent to what may come.

Americans seem to have neither a sense of history nor a taste for it. The well-known entrepreneur, Henry Ford, summed up this deplorable state when he proclaimed, "History is bunk." Thus, many lay people in this country have little or no knowledge of either salvation history or of secular history, or, more importantly, of the Catholic view that all history converges in the Person of Jesus Christ. This disturbing condition requires a look back at the arrival of religious practices in America by way of European immigrants...."

Back to Warren Carroll-history is not boring or stagnant between his covers. If the large History of Christendom volumes are intimidating, try one of his shorter titles (available here), they are even more engaging.

(Of course if you are in the market for books...don't forget RequiemPress)

Feast of the Immaculate Conception

Don't forget the plenary indulgence available today(from www.zenit.org):

VATICAN CITY, NOV. 30, 2005- Benedict XVI is offering the faithful a plenary indulgence on the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Dec. 8, the 40th anniversary of the close of the Second Vatican Council.

The indulgence was announced in a decree published in Latin on Tuesday, signed by Cardinal James Stafford and Conventual Franciscan Father John Girotti, penitentiary major and regent, respectively, of the Apostolic Penitentiary.

The document establishes that when the Pope renders public homage to Mary Immaculate in Rome's Piazza di Spagna, he "has the heartfelt desire that the entire Church should join him, so that all the faithful, united in the name of the common Mother, become ever stronger in the faith, adhere with greater devotion to Christ, and love their brothers with more fervent charity."

... the Holy Father "has kindly granted the gift of plenary indulgence which may be obtained under the usual conditions (sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion and prayer in keeping with the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff), with the soul completely removed from attachment to any form of sin, on the forthcoming solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, by the faithful if they participate in a sacred function in honor of the Virgin, or at least offer open testimony of Marian devotion before an image of Mary Immaculate exposed for public veneration, adding the recitation of the Our Father and of the Creed, and some invocation to the Virgin."

From Bethany, the small holding in Bethune...Happy Feast Day and Oremus pro invicem!