Picks from April 2007
Sinners Welcome by Mary Karr
About the author:Mary Karr’s poetry appears frequently in the New Yorker. She has also published two bestselling memoirs: The Liars’ Club, which won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and Cherry. She is the Peck Professor of English Literature at Syracuse University. In 1996, Mary Karr converted to Catholicism, a fact likely to intrigue or puzzle readers familiar with her first two books. She describes herself as a “black belt sinner.”
Notes on the book:
Sinners Welcome is a book of poems about the experience of faith from someone who didn’t expect to find it.
Though a yearning for the transcendent suffuses Sinners Welcome, only about a quarter of the poems deal directly with Karr's Catholicism. Among these is a five-poem sequence, Descending Theology, on the stages of Christ's life, from nativity to crucifixion and resurrection. Descending Theology was inspired by Karr’s eight-month study of Ignation forms of prayer.
In the afterward to Sinners Welcome, Mary Karr offers an explanation for what draws her to poetry and prayer: “I’ve written elsewhere of its Eucharistic qualities. In memorizing the poems I loved, I “ate” them in a way. I breathed as the poet breathed to recite the words: someone else’s suffering and passion enters your body to transform you, partly by joining you to others in a saving circle.” “Maybe saints turn to God to exalt him. The rest of us tend to show up holding out a tin cup. Put the penny of your prayer in this slot and pull the handle—that’s how I thought of it at first, and I think that’s typical. The Catholic church I attended in Syracuse, New York (St. Lucy’s) said it best on the banner stretched across its front: SINNERS WELCOME.”
The Mass in Slow Motion by Msgr. Ronald Knox
About the author:1888–1957, English theologian and author. He attended Eton and then Balliol College, Oxford, and in 1910 was ordained as an Anglican minister. Doctrinal preferences, however, led to his Roman Catholic ordination (1919) and appointment as Catholic chaplain at Oxford (1926). While chaplain, Knox wrote several detective novels until appointed to produce a new English Bible (complete ed. 1955). Other works include Spiritual Aeneid (1918), a defense of his adoption of Catholicism, and Enthusiasm (1950), a history of Christian sectarianism.
Notes on the book:
With the outbreak of WWII, Knox unexpectedly became the chaplain at a Catholic girls’ school. In a series of sermons to the students he broke down the Mass and explained it bit by bit. He shared his insights on how to celebrate Mass with one’s whole heart. The lectures to the students resulted in one of his most popular books.
Sex and the Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth by Daniel A. Helminiak
About the author:Daniel Helminiak is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of West Georgia where he teaches Psychology of Spirituality on the graduate level and Human Sexuality, Statistics for the Social Sciences, and Foundations of Neuroscience on the undergraduate level. He is also a psychotherapist, theologian, and author. He holds a Ph.D. in psychology from The University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in systematic theology from Andover Newton Theological School and Boston College.
As a psychotherapist, social scientist, and theologian, he is concerned to integrate religion and psychology and thus to suggest what wholesome human living means in a pluralistic and secularized world. Said otherwise, his specialization is spirituality. His areas of special interest are post-childhood development and human sexuality. http://visionsofdaniel.net
Notes on the book:
Sex and the Sacred examines the spiritual dimension of human sexuality in a way that is free of religious affiliation but still open to traditional religion and belief in God. Dr. Daniel Helminiak, author of the best-selling What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality, looks at the relationship between sexuality and spirituality, first, from a humanistic perspective and, then, a more familiar Christian point of view. In particular, he encourages LGBTI people to reclaim their spiritual heritage without apology. This unique book emphasizes spiritual commitment as an essential facet of LGBTI/queer consciousness and addresses such burning themes as coming out, the importance of self-acceptance, gay marriage, gay bashing, and the ethics of gay sex.
