'Catholic and Bookish': Lumen Fidei, Libraries, and the New Evangelization

I'm still working my way through Pope Francis' new encyclical, Lumen Fidei. It's nice to pause between sections to really drink up the whole thing. I love when new encyclicals are released-nothing like some new fresh breath to revitalize us. And thanks to the wonders of the internet, we all flock to the virtual watering-holes to excitedly share what we're reading. As one friend of mine pointed out, it's like a virtual Harry Potter release party...only with encyclicals. We all wait giddy with anticipation, and then rush to read the whole thing immediately. Technology enables us to share the faith with greater speed and facility than ever before. It's a shame that Brandon Vogt's eagerness to share the new encyclical in e-reader formats was suspended so quickly...but I guess even the Good News is subject to quibbles over distribution rights these days. 

Then, today, I was delighted to see that some friends of mine have banded together to encourage people to request that a print copy of Lumen Fidei  be added to the collection at their local public library. I hope that many more people decide to do the same. I'm especially excited to see this happen because it strikes many chords with things I've previously written about evangelization and libraries. I think we all spend so much time tinkering around on the internet and caught up in discussion of 'the new evangelization' that we forget that books have a tremendously important role to play in spreading the faith-after all, "tolle lege" got St. Augustine's conversion going, and as St. Josemaria once said, "Reading has made many saints."

I think it's relevant here to revisit the words of Mr. Thomas Loome (of Loome Theological Booksellers fame) as he highlighted the great destruction of many Catholic library collections in the wake of Vatican Council II:

"The only other lesson that occurs to me is this: as believing Catholics we have a responsibility to preserve the patrimony of the Church, certainly in so far as it has been entrusted to us as librarians and as professionally interested parties. Much has been destroyed forever. Those who wreak the damage have mostly passed from the scene (although one would like to think that in the end they acknowledged their wrongdoings and perhaps clothed themselves in sackcloth and ashes). And so only we, presiding over the wreckage, are left to tell the tale. 

"What is the lesson for us? To start afresh. Slowly to recreate, in some small measure, what is gone forever. We shall do this, however, only if we are both Catholic and bookish: commmited to the Church, passionately devoted to books, and, as a consequence, deeply rooted in the Church's literary and theological tradition. This is the indispensable condition for an even tolerable future for Catholic libraries. Absent this profound commitment to Catholicism and books, I frankly see virtually no hope at all for Catholic libraries."

Lumen Fidei

"Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfillment, and that a vision of the future opens up before us."

-Lumen Fidei

It's here! Nothing like a new encyclical to get the weekend rolling. Click the image below to read online or download in several formats, including an ebook!

And if that wasn't enough, we're also getting two new papal saints this year!

Our Bookish [Former] Papa

Viva Il Papa

At the Holy Sepulchre

 There are not words sufficient to describe the affection I have for our Holy Father. His writing and intellectual work, as well as his quiet and gentle, yet strongly abiding sense of charity, joy, and above all, humility, have been such a gift and example. He has shown us how to listen, how to serve.

I still remember the day if his election, albeit fleetingly. Everyone was still in the throes of coming to terms with the death of John Paul II. As a high-schooler, I remember feeling in a strange state of limbo. I did not have a special attachment to John Paul other than the general affection one feels for the Holy Father, but being so young, John Paul II was THE POPE. In my experience, the office had never belonged to anyone else, so to see it change hands was strangely surreal. As I sat in Spanish class on a Tuesday afternoon, our lesson was interrupted to watch the news unfold on TV. At first glimpse, teen-aged me wasn't sure what to expect. The new pope was clearly different and hard to read, so unlike the charismatic John Paul to which we were all accustomed. 

But since then, I have come to feel a special closeness with Benedict XVI. Like he has been to so many others, he has been a resolute paternal guide during my spiritual coming of age. Somewhat disillusioned by common casual religious attitudes, I was captivated and refreshed by his personal piety, intellectual seriousness, and attentiveness to tradition. This is a man who deeply understands our need for faith and truth. 

His influence on my professional formation has been no less. In a world where the information professions seem increasingly directed towards indulging individualistic curiosity and faddish research and activism, there is great need to return our focus to humble service of the truth. In Salt of the World, Pope Benedict explains:

"In the course of my intellectual life I experienced very acutely the problem of whether it isn't actually presumptuous to say that we can know the truth-in the face of all our limitations. I also asked myself to what extent it might not be better to suppress this category. In pursuing this question, however, I was able to observe and also to grasp that relinquishing truth doesn't solve anything but, on the contrary, leads to the tyranny of caprice. In that case, the only thing that can remain in really what we decide on and can replace at will. Man is degraded if he can't know truth, if everything, in the final analysis, is just the product of an individual or collective decision. 

In this way it became clear to me now important it is that we don't lose the concept of truth, in spite of the menaces and perils that it doubtless carries with it. It has to remain as a central category. As a demand on us that doesn't give us rights but requires, on the contrary, our humility and our obedience and can lead us to the common path" (66-67).

As such, I have come to see a clear part of my professional vocation as not simply empowering people with knowledge, but helping them on the path to freedom through the pursuit of truth. In hindsight, I am very glad that the Holy Father never achieved his dream of being the Vatican librarian, otherwise we'd likely be at a large loss for his wisdom. Grazie, Il Papa-you have been a true gift to us all.

Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto-Dominus conservet eum et vivificet eum, et beatum faciat eum in terra, et non tradat eum in animam inimicorum eius.

Papa Benedetto...

And in order to read, it helps to know Latin.

Pope Benedict's Dream Job

So late last week we got a taste of what the Holy Father would really prefer to be doing. Forget fostering Christian unity and writing encyclicals. The man just wants to be a librarian.

And Archbishop Jean-Louis Brugues, Librarian of the Apostolic Library and Archivist of the Vatican Secret Archives, had this to say of the role of the library for the Church: "It must be like the keel of the ship, which is not seen. In fact, few people are able to see it. So it is with the library: there are few, apart from specialists...who understand the amount of work that takes place in the Library and Archives.

"It is really theses institutions that allow the barque of the Church to stay afloat and move forward...If it were not for the keel, the ship would be subjected to doctrinal winds of any nature or fashions. It is this keel which gives depth to the catechetical work of the Church and her teaching."

Pope Paul VI on Archives

"Our pieces of paper are echoes and vestiges...of the passage of Our Lord Jesus in the world. And then, by reflection, having the cult of these papers, of the documents, of the archives, means having the cult of Christ, having the sense of the Church, giving to ourselves and to those who will come in the future the history of the transitus Domini in the world."

-Pope Paul VI, 1963