A Father Who Keeps His Promises: God's Covenant Love in Scripture (1998) and The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth (1999)

By Scott Hahn

With a great deal of presumption, I have taken to calling Scott Hahn my spiritual brother, since a couple of years ago I discovered that we, both raised Protestant, were received into the Holy Roman Catholic Church on the same evening, during the Easter Vigil of 1986 – half a continent apart, of course. I’ve been aware of him as Catholic scholar and apologist supreme for a great deal of the intervening time, at least since the mid 1990s. I hadn’t actually read any of his books until the last couple of years, however. But then our parish distributed free copies of his and his wife, Kimberly’s conversion story, Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism (1993), which I read and blogged about as part of my Lenten reading for 2014 [LINK]. At some point subsequent to that, I acquired and listened to an audio talk based upon The Lamb’s Supper, giving more detail to the story of his conversion and how it came through intense study of the Book of Revelation, interpreting it through the lens of the Mass; the book fleshes that interpretive scheme out even further. Then, for my Lenten reading 2015 I undertook A Father Who Keeps His Promises.

The CTS New Catholic Bible (2013)

Catholic Truth Society UK

I’ve been meaning to post this for quite a while but am just getting around to it, finally spurred to do so when checking to see if it were available on Amazon.com found that while it has a page [LINK], it shows as currently unavailable and there is virtually no information on it, not even a customer review. I remedied that immediately and decided to also post my thoughts here….

This is my daily reading Bible. A bit of background: I am a convert to Catholicism, back in the 1980s, and my first Catholic Bible was the Jerusalem Bible. Since then I have always loved the high literary quality of the translation (the fact that J. R. R. Tolkien was part of the team producing it back in the 1960s helped in that respect!), except for one thing that I found increasingly irksome – its use of the Divine Name Yahweh against thousands of years of tradition, both Jewish and Christian, rendering it as "The Lord." The Jerusalem Bible may not be the most slavishly literal translation (for that, go to the Douay-Rheims), but I do find it the most readable. Nevertheless, the "Yahweh issue" eventually drove me to other translations, most commonly the Revised Standard Version-Catholic Edition, as a good balance of readability and literal accuracy. Anyway, last year while on the Pilgrimage to Italy [LINK], I went into a little bookstore in St. Peter's Square where I found a red Compact Edition of this Bible (not this edition) as one of the few English editions available. Seeing that it was from the Catholic Truth Society, “Publishers to the Holy See,” I picked it up, and a quick perusal of the introduction revealed that I had finally found my dream reading Bible – a Jerusalem Bible with the Divine Name rendered as "Lord," with an extra attraction as well: The Psalms are printed in the Grail translation, which has become intimately familiar to me from years of reciting the Breviary. The only reason I did not immediately purchase that Bible on the spot was its compact size and tiny print, which I knew was too small for daily reading with my middle-aged eyes. But immediately upon arriving back in the States I was on the Internet seeking out a larger copy, settling on this one, the Standard Edition, basically the next size up, which I purchased directly from the CTS in the UK (The Internet is a Wonderful Thing!). And I have used it daily ever since, because it came with other features I didn't even know about at the time, but which further enhance its utility as a daily reading Bible.

Some Comparative Comments on the First Look at the Didache Bible

I’ve always lamented that there does not seem to exist a good one-volume study edition of my favorite (because I think it’s the most accurate) translation of the Bible, the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSV-CE).  There are, of course, the multivolume series of the Navarre Bible (with their inclusion of the Vulgate Latin and annotations based on the Fathers, Doctors, and Magisterium of the Church) as well as the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible (similar to the Navarre Bible, but no Vulgate and annotations based more on modern scholarship).  Compilation volumes comprising various individual volumes of both Navarre and ICSB have appeared (in the latter case, mainly a one-volume New Testament which I have in the Kindle ebook edition), but neither is published in a one-volume full Old and New Testament edition.  All existing one-volume RSV-CEs have hitherto kept annotations to a bare minimum, mainly an occasional translation note and cross-references on the same page with some not very extensive “Explanatory Notes” relegated to a few pages at the end of the Old and New Testaments respectively.  That’s the case with both of the RSV-CEs that I own:

Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism (1993)

By Scott and Kimberly Hahn

I actually read this book back during Lent, so a couple of months ago at this point. I had been saying I would read it for several months before that, ever since my wife read it late last year. Not only did things she said about it intrigue me, but I've been familiar with Dr. Scott Hahn for many years as a great Catholic convert, theologian, and apologist. I'd only read a couple of books by him, however. Then, a couple of months ago, a friend approached me for help in dealing with a barrage of half-baked attacks from her sister, a convert from Catholicism to Baptist fundamentalism. Not really having delved into apologetics that much in recent years, her questions inspired me to deeper reading on a number of matters I'd gotten a bit rusty on – and I took up this book as well.

Here we have a deeply personal story, written in alternating chapters from the perspective of Scott Hahn and his wife, Kimberly, of what began as his but ultimately became their conversion from Presbyterianism to Catholicism. Making the journey much more rocky for them was the fact that they had met and married while in Presbyterian seminary – Scott was training to become a minister, Kimberly was herself the daughter of a minister and envisioned herself as the spouse, partner, and helpmate of an ordained Presbyterian minister. Which worked out well … for a short time. Scott was ordained and they began their career and a family. But then Scott's theological and Biblical studies increasingly convinced him that just about everything he had ever known about the Catholic Church and its teachings were not true, but rather that it is the most Biblical of all churches. Objection after objection fell before his willingness to put aside his preconceived notions and to follow the Biblical evidence where it leads, especially with regard to his own specialty of study, Covenant Theology. He was at last convicted of the Truth and must become Catholic. Which he did … on Holy Saturday, 29 March 1986. My jaw dropped at that point in my reading and I exclaimed, “Wow!” – because that was the very same evening, a thousand miles away, that I was accepted into the Catholic Church!

Son of God (2014)

Directed by Christopher Spencer

Anne and I went to the 16:00 showing of Son of God, this year's recut theatrical release of just the Christ story from last year's television miniseries The Bible, overseen by Roma Downey and her husband. A year on down the road from that, I didn't perceive most of the extra footage that was added, although there was quite a bit (and some noticeable excisions). It had the same strengths (a very charismatic Christ and high production values, especially for a "mere" $30 million, although I do have to wonder exactly how that figure was accounted given the considerable production overlap with The Bible) and weaknesses (a superficial script that seemed to miss the point of a lot of the scenes, and mangle many more, as well as the basic chronology) that the miniseries did.  Among the weaknesses I would put the artificial and intrusive multiculturalism that plagued the miniseries (“Black Samson” – sounds like a great super-hero name! – and yes he was shown in one of the cursory scenes at the beginning illustrating a monologue telling how the Word was active throughout history; in the Christ story proper, I'm pretty sure one of the apostles was black, and certainly Simon of Cyrene). There also seemed to be too much effort to paint the Romans, especially Pilate, as inhuman monsters, and virtually absolve the Jewish leadership from their role in the events, which I figure was probably a reaction against the criticism that The Passion of the Christ was subjected to a decade ago. I almost feel a need to reread Paul Maier's Pontius Pilate again as an antidote! [link] Of course, the media firestorm that The Bible itself elicited last year, when its Satan was a close lookalike for Barack Obama, resulted in all those scenes being cut. One thing I hadn't been aware of until the closing credits here was that the excellent musical score was by Hans Zimmer, whom I mainly know from the Dark Knight trilogy as well as Man of Steel. (Mysteriously, although I saw it on-screen, IMDB does not reflect his contribution, listing instead one Lorne Balfe; the IMDB credits for "The Passion" segment of The Bible, however, do list Zimmer along with Balfe).  Overall, I enjoyed the whole experience again despite my criticisms, but this film comes nowhere near displacing my gold standard depiction of the Christ story, which continues to be the brilliant 1970s TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, by Franco Zeffirelli.  My mental image of much of the Christ story continues to be informed by that – besides Robert Powell's awesome portrayal of Jesus Himself, Nicodemus will for me always and forever look like Laurence Olivier!

Cheers, and Thanks for reading!

Quick Hits!

Sometimes I read or watch things quicker than I have time – or motivation, or perhaps even focus – to set down in a full blog post. Nothing against whatever those items are. I feel a compulsion to gratuitously share my thoughts on virtually everything, but sometimes get backed up, and I don't want this to turn into a barrage of short posts. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Anyway, hence the periodic “Quick Hits.”

Screen Shot
from iPhone Kindle app

A State of Disobedience (2003) by Tom Kratman

I've been meaning to blog this novel ever since I proceeded to it directly out of his Caliphate last month, but never got around to it. I reserve the right to come back to it with a more thorough review some time in the future, because I'm thinking I'll eventually read it again. Get past the somewhat contrived opening setting up the Texas Rebellion of ca. 2010 (as best I can figure it), as well as the very transparent identity of the utterly wacko and caricaturishly evil US President “Willie Rottemayer,” and it settles into what I think is a fair depiction of how such a valiant but ultimately outnumbered and outgunned attempt at secession from the rapidly socializing, increasingly morally repugnant and anti-Christian United States would likely proceed. Although it was written a decade ago, and in no way foresaw the explosion onto the political landscape of Barack Obama, just how much cultural, political, and social developments in the succeeding decade (really, mostly in the past five years) do seem to be have been foretold sent chills down my spine as I read. As much as Caliphate did [link], this book struck me as a prophetic wake-up call in the guise of a very compelling and exciting story.  As I titled my Amazon.com review, it seems "Frighteningly Plausible."