If any one bothers to come and look at this, welcome back and humble apologies. Now I shall make my excuses (although I didn't realise it was SO long since I last wrote a message)....
My computer was out of order for some time and I was thankful to have it fixed - seems to be something to do with a surfiet of internet security measures - resulting in my having to turn off Zone Alarm sometimes if I am desperate to get online and the computer is desperate to prevent me.
Then there is the fact that the main topics of concern change so rapidly. I had meant to write about 'Till we have faces' but I quickly started on another book and couldnt' do it any more.... What I will say about that book is that this is the first book I can remember which I have consiciously decided to read a second time. It impressed me greatly on first reading (must be 8 years ago now) and a more recently encountered comment by C.S. Lewis about how a person can't say that a book is good unless they have read it two or three times (alright for him, sitting around with little else to do BUT read -and likely being a faster reader than I am...). So, I thought I ought to read it again. It was a disappointment - I wouldn't recommend it as heartily now as I did 8 years ago. Interestingly although I had forgotten the detail of the plot the really meaningful, life-changing bits, were remembered very clearly and for those few bits I remain thankful.
After that book there was Hillaire Belloc - it was either that or GK chesterton. I was appalled at what I read in there. Of course Belloc had a big influence on Chesterton (who had grown up, like myself, in a nominally anglican church, and threw in his lot with the Roman church after falling under the spell of Belloc). The reason I was interested to find out more about Belloc (and Chesterton) was because of GK's subsequent influence on C.S. Lewis. In conversation with a R.C . friend of mine on Wednesday I mentioned this link and she said 'yes, Lewis was a catholic too wasn't he?'. I remained very calm and responded along the lines that I believed he was an Anglican.... Anyway some of the themes which came out strongly in the AN Wilson book on Belloc were :
1: He was an objectionable and spoiled little boy without proper manly influence in his developing years (his sickly father died when HB was very young). An obstinate and belligerent character was encouraged in him by those around who thought, in his precociousness, he was quite amusing. He inflicted people with these same kind of demonstrations of selfishness for many years.
2: He failed to be accepted as Don at Oxford and as a consequence he went about with a 'chip on his shoulder' because he thought he was better than them.
3. Although what most people remember Belloc for is is 'Cautionary Tales' he wrote about 150 books. Most of these books he dictated, rather than setting pen to paper, and he was far from a perfectionist. The content of many of his books is merely a repetion of his opinions expressed in other books. He didn't do 'research' for books he wrote - I guess he felt he knew enough already...
4. He was an 'apologist' for the R.C. church and yet when asked how he could believe that the bread and wine were transformed into the body and blood of Christ he responded ' if the church told me they became elephant, I would believe it'. Later in his life when the topic of Christ came up on conversation he stated that he found Christ repellent!!
5. He was not known for his personal Godliness and despised the concept - I suppose he believed that if he kept on DOING the 'right thing' then he would be OK in the end. When on a tour of France he was attending a Mass (as was his daily custom) and standing at a certain point, the sacristan approached him and quietly pointed out that 'here, we kneel at this point' - to which Belloc snarled 'go to hell' (the sacristan is said to have responded 'I see you are a Catholic'!!!)
I have comforted myself throughout this informative and thought-provoking volume by reading my Bible (a think I didn't ever read of Belloc doing) and am comforted to find those plain straightforward truths that withouth FAITH it is impossible to please the Lord and that righteous living is the fruit of a person who is accepted in Christ.
So what did I go on to next?
Auschwitz. This is a book I bought recently at Costco. The anti-semitic sentiments of Belloc (in pre-holocaust days of course) must be quite shocking to anyone living this side of 1945, however Belloc, at home as much in France as here (he spent a year in the French military) was part of a large number of people who believed there was a 'Jewish problem' in Europe. In my most recent book I read that the Vichy government, in unoccupied territory, volunteered to sniff out jews (not the french ones but the 'foreign' ones - if that makes it any better) to be sent East where, it was known, they would be exterminated. There was a widespread belief that the Jews (who in many cases had not been allowed to own land and therefore had only the option of being 'businessmen') were extorting money out of 'hard-working' people by various methods (either buying goods too cheaply or selling them too dearly) and therefore the complaint against them was , on the face of it, economic. However, the fact that France, and Poland were largely Catholic (what excuse does 'Lutheran' Germany have?) may have given fuel to these people's hatred. Back in the 15 Century a pope declared that R.C's must have nothingn to do with jews. Way before that, in the days of King John, Jews were expelled from Britain. We know from stories such as that of Anne Frank that children in those times often despised jewish schoolmates as 'Christ killers'. It seems to escape the attention of such people that Christ was a Jew.....
So, can you believe that there are people, who, many years after perpetrating dreadful acts against jewish men, women and children, STILL believe they did the right thing?
I'm not 'enjoying' this book - might well read a PG Wodehouse next - and therefore it is my intention to read it as quickly as I possibly can do so that I minimise the effect it has on me. I shall then pass it on to the Salvation Army shop in the hope that someone else might seek to understand how, one small step leading to another, factories for killing human beings can be set up and people destroyed for no other reason than their faith being unacceptable to the majority. To be forwarned is to be forearmed, so my father always used to tell me.