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Reviews of Biographies/Autobiographies|
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Francis Phillips reviews Frank Duff: a Life Story
"Finola Kennedy, a lecturer at University College, Dublin, has made excellent use of a mass of archive material in this new biography of the founder of the Legion of Mary. Most founders of lay movements in the Church, let alone one as well-known as the Legion, with its 4 million members worldwide, and 10 million auxiliaries, are described as “charismatic.” Frank Duff would have heartily disliked such a description of himself. A civil servant for over 20 years before he resigned his job in order to devote himself full time to the Legion, he deliberately kept a low profile; this was partly temperamental, partly supernatural humility and partly because he believed that Our Lady was the real founder of this dynamic lay apostolate which began humbly enough in Dublin in 1921."
Francis Phillips reviews Blessed John Henry Newman
"Cardinal Newman, like Saints John Bosco, Therese of Lisieux and Bernadette of Lourdes, whose features are also familiar to us, was born in the age of photography. Having lived so long, much of it in the public eye, he was the subject of several portraits and sketches as well as many photographs; these deepen our unconscious perception of him, already known through his writings. This book, subtitled “A richly illustrated portrait”, brings together many well-known studies of him as well as some of his contemporaries and the buildings, places and memorabilia associated with him, to provide the common reader with a deeper acquaintanceship in this year of his beatification."
Francis Phillips reviews English Catholic Heroines
"This book is the companion volume to English Catholic Heroes, edited by John Jolliffe and published last year. It is particularly welcome in the present climate when women in general seem to have forgotten the “feminine genius” so beautifully articulated by John Paul II, and when some women are in confusion and anger over the Catholic Church’s response to the question of women’s ordination. Only recently I listened to a radio programme on my car radio that talked yet again about how tolerant the Church of England is towards the many strange bedfellows that slumber under its benign coverlet – including those women now wanting to be bishops."
Francis Phillips reviews Joan of Arc, by Mark Twain
'If you ask after Mark Twain at a public library, they will mention many editions of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn but have no knowledge of this work. Yet Twain himself believed that Joan of Arc was his best book; it took him twelve years to research and two to write, while his other writings “needed no research and got none.” In his self-taught, roving youth he had stumbled across some random pages of Joan’s trial and had been struck by the power of the personality that thus revealed itself: the only story of a human life “that has come to us under oath.”'
Francis Phillips reviews A Life with Karol: My Forty-Year friendship with the Man who became Pope, by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Doubleday, Distributed by Family Publications. £11.95
"In a recent Telegraph newspaper poll Margaret Thatcher was named the greatest post-war prime minister of Great Britain. Despite the contempt with which she was (and is) held by Left-wingers, the poll pays tribute to her many achievements; she would undoubtedly join a roll-call of the significant world leaders of the twentieth century. Yet if one is looking at such a roll-call to select one single person who did most to uphold the dignity of man during the latter part of the last century (though he was to die in 2005), the answer of many people from around the world, Christian or not, would be the name of John Paul II."
Note: Teresa Higginson's Cause was closed by the Holy See in 1938, and the imprimatur allowing devotion to the Sacred Head of Christ, as promoted by her, was revoked by Archbishop Downey of Liverpool in the same year, with this being confirmed by his successor, Cardinal Godfrey, in 1949. Thus this is a subject that should be treated with extreme caution, and inclusion of this review on the Theotokos site is in no way an endorsement of the claims about Higginson.
Francis Phillips reviews Teresa Helena Higginson
"This biography by Lady Cecil Kerr was first published in 1926. It tells the extraordinary story of an unknown village schoolteacher from the Wirral who achieved the heights of sanctity. Teresa Higginson, 1844-1905, was privileged to receive many visions, favours and private revelations from Our Lord, culminating in his request that his Sacred Head be universally worshipped as the seat of Divine Wisdom."
Francis Phillips reviews English Catholic Heroes, edited by John Jolliffe, £9.99, Gracewing
"The purpose of this book is laudable: to introduce a new generation to the great men (a further volume is planned for women) from their Catholic heritage and to demonstrate the lack of balance in the Whig interpretation of history. Beginning with Cuthbert, Aidan and Bede it spans well over 1000 years and joins other recent scholars – notably historians – in a vigorous re-examination of our shared past. Iraqi civilization, it is said, goes back to the Garden of Eden; ours, though not of such antiquity, produced formidable individuals who shaped our country for good ever since Christianity came to these islands."
Francis Phillips reviews “James, by the Grace of God…” By Hugh Ross Williamson. Fisher Press. £11.99
"Generations of schoolchildren have been taught to believe that the coming of William of Orange to England in 1688, and the ousting of the legitimate king, James II, from the throne of England, was a “Glorious Revolution”. In reality it was a shabby usurpation brought about by a fickle mob, unscrupulous propaganda and a posse of Protestant grandees. This book, first published by the popular historian and man of letters, Hugh Ross Williamson, in 1955, and now elegantly reprinted, tells the true story. Concentrating on the last 6 months of James’s reign, it is a fascinating, albeit melancholy, chronicle."
Francis Phillips reviews The English Cardinals. By Frs Nicholas Schofield & Gerard Skinner. Family Publications. £19. 50
The word “cardinal” and the phrase “prince of the Church”, with all their pomp and circumstance suggestiveness, raise the hackles of my Evangelical brother. Yet the men in this book, some saintly, some scholarly, others shrewd and sensible administrators, have all played their part in the Christian heritage of this country. The authors, priests in the Westminster archdiocese, relate a fascinating story in these brief essays which are lavishly illustrated, full of historical detail and brought alive by many anecdotes.
Francis Phillips reviews John Henry Newman in His Time. Ed. Philippe Lefebvre & Colin Mason. Publications. £11. 95
"All those who are impatient to see John Henry Newman assume his rightful place as a Doctor of the Church will welcome this book. It is the first of a two-volume project and presents Newman in relation to his age; the second will explore aspects of his writings in greater detail. As such, it is aimed at a general readership rather than a scholarly one. Newman would have rejoiced at this, not because he cared for fame for its own sake, but because he loved the Church and, unusually for his times, when lay people were perceived as subordinate within a dominant clerical culture, recognised the pressing need for an educated, informed, confident and articulate Catholic laity."
Francis Philips reviews John Gerard:The Autobiography of an Elizabethan
"I first heard of John Gerard years ago when I was day-dreaming during a history class; I have never forgotten the teacher’s electrifying description of his escape from the Tower of London; it was meant to be impregnable, yet here was a man whose daring and effrontery had been an overmatch for it. Reading this new edition of the autobiography, first written in Latin in 1609 and translated by Philip Caraman, has been a second, more detailed and more enduring history lesson."
Review of Blessed Alexandrina da Costa, by Francis Phillips
"The subject of this short biography is one of those exemplary people whose true influence will only be fully known in heaven. Alexandrina Da Costa was born in Balasar, Portugal, in 1904; in 1918, eluding a drunken suitor she jumped from a window which gradually brought about a complete paralysis."
Francis Phillips reviews The Confessions of St Augustine
"On holiday in Tunisia recently, I took St Augustine’s Confessions as my spiritual companion. After all, Tunisia is the site of ancient Carthage and it was at the renowned university of Carthage that Augustine studied and practised the art of rhetoric before his ambitions took him north to Rome. The Confessions is well worth re-reading; recounted in dramatic and mesmerising prose, it is a classic story of sin, grace and conversion that manages to be both timeless and contemporary at the same time."
Francis Phillips reviews Saints of the English Calendar
"This book gives us for the first time all the saints in the new Calendar, approved in 2000. It is not intended as an antiquarian exercise. The splendid men and women in its pages are an intrinsic part of our national heritage; they helped form the Christian civilisation of our country over the centuries."
Francis Phillips reviews Alfred Delp: Prison Writings
"Alfred Delp SJ, 1907-45, was a German Jesuit hanged by the Nazis on 2 February 1945 at Berlin-Plotzensee prison. He had been arrested the previous August, charged with being involved in the July Plot against Hitler. Although Delp was friends with members of the Kreisau Circle, which included some of the plotters, the charges against him were flimsy and he had hopes of being exonerated. However his judge, Roland Freisler, was notorious for his hatred of priests, especially Jesuits, so the outcome of his trial became a foregone conclusion. His execution, ironically, took place shortly before the collapse of the Third Reich itself."
Francis Phillips reviews Edith Stein: Woman of Prayer, by Joanne Mosley
"The lives of saints are always a challenge. Edith, in particular, with her insight that women have to express their maternal and wifely gifts in some form, has much to say to modern western woman, who has lost sight of her destiny, her ‘feminine genius’ as the Holy Father calls it."
Francis Phillips reviews John Paul the Great:Maker of the Post-Conciliar Church
"It is a sign of the Holy Father’s enormous spiritual prestige that the title ‘the Great’ is readily conferred on him by his contemporaries, long before the verdict of history. Reading the eight essays in this collection, it is clear he was and is a providential choice as pontiff."
Francis Phillips reviews Married Saints and Blesseds through the Centuries, by Ferdinand Holbock
"In the Preface to this book the question is raised: ‘The majority of the faithful are married. How is it, though, that there are so few married people who have been raised to the honours of the altar?’ The answer, as we know, is that the process of canonisation is long and costly; religious orders are much more likely to have the resources needed for this process. To correct this inequity our present Pope, John Paul II, has always been a champion of the holiness of married love and it is he who has provided the spur to several recent beatifications of married people."
Martin Blake reviews BENEDICT AND THERESE, By Dwight Longenecker
These saints could hardly be more different, on the surface. Benedict the 6th Century patriarch who founded the most prolific religious order destined to last for more than fifteen centuries; Therese the hidden Carmelite nun who died nine years after entering the convent at the age of fifteen in 1888. Benedict of whom we know practically nothing; Therese of whom we know almost everything, and the most photographed saint of modern times.
This is a study of two young Catholic Children of the twentieth century. Blessed Jacinta of Fatima is now well known. Nellie - who lived most of her life in County Cork, Ireland - deserves to be better known. Jacinta died at the age of nine in 1920. Nellie was less than five when she died in 1908.
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Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk