• The Price of Truth: Titus Brandsma, Carmelite by Miguel Maria Arribas O.Carm.

I knew very little about Blessed Titus Brandsma, other than that he died in a concentration camp in Dachau. Recently I watched an online seminar about him and was intrigued to find out more.

His whole backstory is so interesting. He was born in the Netherlands in a strong Catholic family with five children. His brother would also become a priest and two of his sisters entered religious life. He always suffered ill health and was not destined to help out his father on the farm. Even with his intellectual gifts, because of his health, it was a trial to be ordained. His first name was Anno, but when he entered religious life he took on the name of Titus (his father’s name).

His years working to be ordained an O. Carm priest and his subsequent years are themselves interesting. This was a man who poured himself out for others. He was always working on something and teaching and helping others. His career was also quite varied as a teacher, University President, and journalist. One of his goals was to translate all of St. Teresa of Avila’s writing into the Dutch language. Truly loved by those around him including non-Catholics in this primarily Protestant country. He was so well known and loved that you could simply write his name on an envelope, and it would be delivered to him. There are a lot of great stories detailing these years including a rather humorous encounter with Pope Pius XII.

His work as a journalist and the ties he made with Catholic journalists made him a good point man to talk with the heads of Catholic newspapers. Especially when the Nazis were demanding that they directly print their propaganda. He had an official role in this from the country’s bishops, and his commitment can be seen in two quotes of his.

“We Catholic journalists must keep in mind that our contributions must be positive, constructive. This is what God requires of those who work for the Catholic cause. Secondly, we must unfailingly practice charity, which is the Lord’s desire. Love must shine through the peaceful tone of the Catholic press.”

“Should the Catholic press abandon this ideal of being a weapon of truth, its very existence would make no sense either for us journalists, or for the Church. It would become worthless. Its steadfast witness to the truth alone constitutes its power and its glory.”

It was in sounding out the publishers of Catholic newspapers that he was arrested and jailed. He would truly show his sanctity in how lived his life moving from one place of confinement, to another, and ultimately Dachau. Despite the severe beatings he received, and even medical experimentation on him, his love of Christ never left him and he imaged it for others. He made friends and helped all those around him. I am only giving a small sample of highlights of his story, there is just so much more to him. I love that he was continuing to write in prison and was writing in between the lines of a book in small lettering since this was all he had available to him.

When he was arrested he was unable to bring his rosary with him. A Protestant he met in prison made one for him. This or another makeshift rosary was given to him, he, in turn, gave to the women that administered the lethal injection that killed him. She would go on to give witness to him during the process of beautification. “I Killed a Saint”.

He was the first of the WWII martyrs that were beautified. Recently the Vatican approved a miracle that will probably lead to his canonization. Michael Driscoll, an O. Carm priest was cured of stage 4 cancer from his intercession after someone gave him a small piece of Brandsma’s black suit.

Blessed Titus Brandsma’s story should be more well known and this book is an excellent introduction to his life.

I recently finished Peter Kreeft’s “Jesus-Shock.”

When I read Wisdom and Wonder꞉ How Peter Kreeft Shaped the Next Generation of Catholics this was one of the books frequently mentioned by others.

Peter Kreeft’s diagnosis is spot on in that one of our sins is that we have made Christianity boring. We are complicit in our complacency. Our lack of wonder and joy shows that we don’t know Jesus. We are fighting about the little things instead of proclaiming the great things.

Kreeft writes that Jesus was never boring and his wonderful chapter detailing so many instances of Jesus-Shock in the Gospel points this out. There was constant astonishment regarding him wherever he went. There were no neutral reactions regarding those who met him.

Kreeft has such a great ability when it comes to a turn of phrase and his eloquence helps you stop and think. For me to stop and pray and wonder and rejoice.

A small sample of what I highlighted:

God appeared to Job, but not to the three friends (42:5). And He said that the three had not “spoken rightly” of Him, but Job had (42:7). Why? Because Job had practiced God’s presence: he prayed. He alone talked to God as present even though he did not feel that presence. The three “friends” were deists. Most theists are deists most of the time, in practice if not in theory. They practice the absence of God instead of the presence of God.

I just finished “The Catholic Controversy” by St. Francis de Sales. This is a collection of the tracts he wrote in a time period not long after he was ordained.

He takes some interesting approaches in addressing the fact that the “reformers” were not sent and had no authority. The lack of miracles regarding their authority and disagreed substantially among each other. At one point he compares this to the Tower of Babel.

“On the contrary, gentlemen, your first ministers had no sooner got on their feet, they had no sooner begun to build a tower of doctrine and science which was visibly to reach the heavens, and to acquire them the great and magnificent reputation of reformers, than God, wishing to traverse this ambitious design, permitted among them such a diversity of language and belief, that they began to contradict one another so violently that all their undertaking became a miserable Babel and confusion.”

He goes to the root of the various problems, the concept of the invisible church, and where they outright denied doctrine. He uses scripture masterly and has such a command of the faith.

Frankly, if I did not know the author ahead of time I would have been surprised to find the answer. You can really tell this is the writings of a young man as he is so much more adversarial than in later years. For the time, in comparison, rather tame compared to Luther or St. Thomas More.

“But I detain you too long on a subject which does not require great examination. You read the writings of Calvin, of Zwingle, of Luther. Take out of these, I beg you, the railings, calumnies, insults, detraction, ridicule and buffoonery which they contain against the Pope and the Holy See of Rome, and you will find that nothing will remain.”

Russell Shaw says of this book in the introduction.

“He can, and does, write with strenuous indignation about those he blames for fracturing Christendom and leading souls away from the true Church. But by the standards of the time, even his polemics are gentle—an exercise in wit and the rhetoric of argumentation rather than a violent verbal assault on his adversaries.”

His tracts though were extremely effective in bringing people back to the faith.

Reading this I was thinking about what Trent Horn recently said when talking about different styles of apologists. He referred to himself as Miyagi-Do style. Which got me thinking about 4th season Cobra Kai and the blending of styles. It seems St. Francis also developed his style over time considering the phrase he coined.

“You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.”

Recently I read Wisdom and Wonder: How Peter Kreeft Shaped the Next Generation of Catholics.

Few figures have impacted the rising generation of Catholics more than Peter Kreeft, the widely respected philosophy professor and prolific bestselling author of more than eighty books. Through his writings and lectures, Kreeft has shaped the minds and hearts of thousands of young apologists, evangelists, teachers, parents, and scholars.

This collection of eighteen essays, mainly by millennial Catholic leaders and converts to the Catholic faith, celebrates Kreeft’s significant legacy and impact, his most important books, and the many ways he has imparted to others those two seminal gifts: wisdom and wonder.

Among the eighteen contributors to this book are the editor Brandon Vogt, Trent Horn, Tyler Blanski, Douglas Beaumont, JonMarc Grodi, Jackie Angel, Matthew Warner, Rachel Bulman, Fr. Blake Britton, and others.

As I was reading these stories, I often found myself nodding my head in agreement and delighting in these individuals’ stories of how Peter Kreeft affected their lives.

In my searching days before entering the Church, I came across his book “Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions” that he wrote with Fr. Ronald K. Tacelli. This book hit me at about the perfect time. As I was investigating Christianity, I was also concerned that I was fooling myself into thinking any of this could be true. My awareness of my sinfulness, that I was not going to cure myself in some Pelagianism hope. If there was a God, I wanted to know if this was true and not because I wanted it to be true.

Reading this book put away those doubts. That the faith was intellectually rigorous and much more so than the atheism I had accepted most of my life. While the arguments and format were helpful for me, Kreeft’s wit also shows through at times. We are often convinced more through evident joy than through well-crafted arguments.

Over the years, I would explore more of his books and his unique voice. I would later come to see some influences such as Chesterton and Archbishop Sheen in him—which I see as natural integrations. A lightheartedness because he could take himself lightly to turn a Chesteron phrase.

Mostly what I came to understand reading these essays is that I need to re-read many of his books I have and get those I haven’t read (which is a lifetime reading project in itself, considering his prodigious output.) One of the downsides of the enthusiasm of a convert is just how much you don’t yet know and passes you by on a first reading. It is worthwhile to dive in over your head at times since you get that sense that there is so much more there you can return to.

Recently Word on Fire put out Food for the Soul: Reflections on the Mass
Readings (Cycle C) by Peter Kreeft. His reflections are everything you might hope they would be. This was not some project where he resorted to dashing out some reflections for every Sunday and Solemnity of the year. An obvious labor of love. I look forward to reading them each week, and this is also true of other members of a bible study I am in.