Livestream: 4Q Q&A - With the Superior of the Institute

[@prevatican2catholicshow]

53:27 🇸🇬 Singapore loves the RCI and Bp. Sanborn!

[@christopherbates1428]

Could Bishop Sanborn please provide a reading list for Traditional Catholics? Keep up the excellent work!

[@mariekatherine5238]

I second that! I’d particularly like to find Catholic books suitable for children, reading for enjoyment, ages 8-10.

[@crusaderfilmworks]

Thank you for reading off my questions to His Excellency and thank you both for your time.

[@LoveJesus-getlife]

Thank you, Stephen, very dapper 💼

[@JayHochstedt]

Dickens was no socialist. The vice he most deplored was Avarice, and Scrooge is won to the virtue of generosity, liberality. Dickens believe private philanthropy was a good. Chesterton saw in Dickens a writer celebrating joy, merriment, against the dark materialism of the Birmingham capitalism.

[@codinoo]

At my 11-years daughter ‘s “catholic” school in Italy, this year’s Christmas play was… A Christmas Carol…

[@codinoo]

Which ones are good children ‘s book for next Christmas play?

[@leoniea138]

I slept right through this one....very hot in Africa ....the heatwaves are beating us up....

[@NicoleE12388]

Our Catholic household enjoys many of Dickens’ works, most notably among them A Christmas Carol, and disagrees with His Excellency’s and Stephen’s comments. Socialist or not, as is disputed, the same critical illustrations of Victorian capitalism that Dickens presents are likewise addressed by Leo XIII before the end of that same century. We Catholic lay people and families indeed have to strive every single day against the culture of the time, as His Excellency counsels. That is precisely why our children ought to be fed a healthy literary diet of the saints, that their virtues may be championed and imitated, as well as good and decent classics, so that when they meet the Bob Cratchits and the Scrooges, the Amy Dorrits and Uriah Heeps of the world, they may act accordingly. In the recent MHT livestream, His Excellency recommended Chesterton as a good Catholic author. Interesting to note, Dickens was one of Chesterton’s favorite authors, with Chesterton having written a biography and literary analysis of Dickens, as well as prefaces to reprints of Dickens’ works.

[@StephenHeiner]

To be clear when you say His Excellency’s and Stephen’s comments, our comments were not the same. I made the point, which I stand behind, with the context of having read a lot of Dickens (and appreciating those reads as well) that a Christmas Carol is a light, protestantized, “good person” feel-good story. It doesn’t mean it’s not worth reading. It just doesn’t qualify as Catholic literature. Chesterton may have admired Dickens, but he didn’t imitate him; no Chesterton I’ve ever read, fictional or otherwise, ever left me in doubt about the moral or sacramental universe he lived in, which was Catholic. Dickens lives and breathes in a world that is in the ruins of Catholicism and visits to such ruins can be fruitful, and I have made use of those works myself. As to His Excellency’s opinions on Dickens himself I was not aware of them until the stream but as he has said he has a general dislike of novels (that’s a personal preference, not a theological statement) and his points on Dickens are not entirely without merit. Remember how much St Jerome was chastised for being a “Ciceronian” (read his letter 22 if you’re not familiar) which led him to realize it’s more important to admire inferior prose focused on the supernatural than sublime prose that is entirely focused on the natural order. Don’t let your (reasonable)love for Dickens drown out some (reasonable) words of caution (he didn’t say anyone was sinning by reading Dickens) from a cleric who has more experience with Catholic families than you ever will. Signed, a fellow Dickens reader ;)

[@rommelbandeira]

Your Excellency, could the Revolutionary War be seen as a counter-revolutionary event from the perspective of Catholics, given that it dismantled the colonial systems of anti-Catholic discrimination and ultimately allowed for the free practice of the Faith under the protections of the Constitution?

[@diannealice3601]

🙏🙏🙏🌹

[@nondeblah]

Re: Harmony vs melody. Isn't the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament something that appeals to the eye as well as to the intellect? Isn't one of the beauties of Catholicism the elevation of mere matter (and thus the senses that perceive them) to the service of the Divine? Incense? Etc? Or is the issue, "how much of an appeal is enough of an appeal;" and the fact that such a premise could be a slippery slope?

[@leoniea138]

New education system coming