2022 was an insane year.

We had a baby. Our sixth. And while the baby himself is deeply beloved, I could have done without the pregnancy and postpartum challenges. I’m in my forties. My pelvis torques with every pregnancy. The usual postpartum hormones are complicated by preexisting conditions. Et cetera, et cetera. Plus, one of our autistic children had several rough months in a row. Also, I wrote/revised all 138,000 words of Adrift in the span of six weeks, not long before Christmas.

Insane. Like I said.

I’m still dealing with hip pain, but otherwise things have calmed down. Our happy baby is now a happy toddler, my mental health is stable, the special needs situation has been addressed, I finished edits on Adrift, and I’ve begun writing the next Molly Chase installment. I also stepped back from some commitments. The storm has abated; the ship has righted.

And with that, I’ve discovered reading again. Yes, books. I had no idea how little I was reading until I turned in Adrift and all of a sudden had time and attention for other people’s writing. “I’m free to read…whatever I want!” And I am. And it is glorious.

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Post Captain (Aubrey/Maturin, Book Two)
Patrick O’Brian

I began my first “circumnavigation” of the Aubrey/Maturin series last fall with Master and Commander. (Read my cheeky reflections here.) I started Post Captain not long after, but owing to doing my developmental edits on Adrift, I wasn’t able to pick it back up again until March. So glad I persevered. While Master and Commander is an enjoyable romp, and not a middling or unthinking story by any stretch, Post Captain is a literary achievement. Adding the women to the mix does so much to develop Jack and Stephen as characters—I understand both men better, and I’m far more invested in the story now than I was after Master and Commander.

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Code Name Edelweiss
Stephanie Landsem

I’m a huge fan of Stephanie Landsem’s work (and of Stephanie herself). Code Name Edelweiss is based on the fascinating real life story of the Nazis’ attempt to infiltrate Hollywood and the amateur spies who stopped them. The novel’s central characters are fictional, but several historical persons make their way into the novel, including Leon Lewis, the Jewish lawyer and former Army intelligence officer who formed the spy ring. Plus, Code Name Edelweiss has a love story subplot. History + spies + romance = right up Rhonda’s alley.

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Works of Mercy
Sally Thomas

Works of Mercy is my favorite type of literary fiction: philosophic and beautifully written, yet also unpretentious, with recognizable characters and a recognizable world.

(Especially for us American Catholics. I know Janet Malkin. I may be Janet Malkin.)

No mid-century grotesques here: this is Jane Austen’s “bits of ivory,” the drama of ordinary life. Even the church cleaning lady has a story, and Sally Thomas tells it straight.

While I was immediately invested in Kirsty Sain, not much seemed to be happening, story wise…until something was happening. My husband likened the novel’s arc to the slow cracking of an egg. Crack… Crack… Crack, crack… Crack-crack-crack… Crack. BREAK.

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The Ghost Keeper
Natalie Morrill

Not entirely sure how to describe The Ghost Keeper except to say that it’s exceptional. One reviewer described it as “one long lyric poem, but never self-indulgent.” Like any story about WWII, it delves into darkness, but it also dares to hope. I loved the nuance, the love and care with which Natalie Morrill treats each character, including the antagonist. So well done.

The changes in narratorial point of view (first person, close third person, omniscient) interested me from a craft angle. Jozef questions his own reliability as a narrator several times over the course of the novel, and he also questions Friedrick’s, when we finally have Friedrick’s story. The war skews their vision of the whole, and the narratorial instability underscores this important theme.

Content warning for sensitive readers: In addition what’s obvious from the back cover copy, the book includes a few open door bedroom scenes.

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Next up in fiction:

• H.M.S. Surprise (Aubrey/Maturin Book 3), Patrick O’Brian

• The Metropolitan Affair, Jocelyn Green

• The Songs That Could Have Been, Amanda Wen

• Counterfeit Hope and Counterfeit Faith, Crystal Caudill (enjoyed Counterfeit Love, the first in the series; looking forward to numbers two and three)

• Dear Henry, Love Edith, Becca Kinzer

• And a ton of other titles from Catholic Writers Guild and Christian Mommy Writers authors. Now that 2022 is behind me, the world is my oyster!

Next up in nonfiction and professional development:

• Reach, Becky Robinson (almost finished!)

• The Genesis of Gender, Abigail Favale

• The Four Cardinal Virtues, Josef Pieper

• The City-State of Boston, Mark Peterson

How about you? What are you reading? Contact me here.

With a membership of a billion people, the Catholic Church cannot help but be a “big tent” church—not that the Church wavers with regards dogma, but that her children adhere to a wide range of opinions, some true, some less so. Catholics argue with each other about all manner of things—a fact the media, left and right, has learned to exploit for their own purposes, for a journalist can always find an interviewee who will say, “Well, I am a Catholic, and I believe XYZ.” And if the interviewee can (mis)quote a theologian, a papal encyclical, or the Catechism, so much the better.

Few topics rouse ire faster than women’s issues. We have Boomer-esque second-wave feminists at one end of the spectrum and pro-patriarchy pundits at the other end. We also have a “third way” camp, mainly comprised of John Paul II devotees, which thinks the first two groups are missing the point. Lastly, we have the large swath of faithful people who are too busy with the actual work of marriage and family (or religious life or apostolate or anything and everything else that constitutes Christian living) to follow the debates closely; though, if asked, they might have practical wisdom to offer.

The range of opinions inside of the Church looks similar to those outside. The difference is that Catholics think these things as Catholics. Sometimes we believe what we do because the Church teaches it; sometimes we apply or twist or make up Church teaching to justify what we believe. Either way, we crave justification from the Church herself.

We also look to the saints. Which brings me to St. Catherine of Siena.

Andrea Vanni, “St. Catherine of Siena” (detail), Basilica of San Domenico, Siena. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), mystic and Doctor of Church, was a consecrated woman and lay Dominican who is best known for having convinced Pope Gregory XI to leave Avignon, France and move the papacy back to Rome, where it belonged. Many people, including myself, have held her up as a positive example of what a woman’s vocation could be and a counterexample to the various flatfooted, hamfisted philosophies that plague us. Catherine proves that God is far more creative in His thinking in this matter than some make Him out to be. She, a nobody from fourteenth-century Tuscany, was given the extraordinarily difficult task of admonishing a pope, the Vicar of Christ and her spiritual father. In doing so, she toppled a political regime and changed the course of history. No small feat for a mostly illiterate single woman and cloth dyer’s daughter.

So she’s a hero, a strong and faithful woman who broke the mold in every way. You go, girl. Smash that patriarchy…

…except that she didn’t.

In holding her up as a model of feminine genius, we can easily miss the point—and until now I had missed the point. Yes, Catherine was quite the woman, but we ought not interpret her life and especially her dealings with Gregory XI through a Girl Power paradigm. Why? Because admonishing the sinner is a spiritual work of mercy. And works of mercy demand self-abnegation.

Sacrifice, not power.

Spouses, children, employees, our rightful authorities—having that conversation with them is painful. Think of Queen Esther praying and fasting three days before approaching Xerxes without permission. He could have executed her. Think of Mr. Knightley calling out Emma for her treatment of Miss Bates. He said what justice demanded, assuming she would be lost to him for having done so. In admonishing sinners, we risk their misunderstanding, anger, counter-accusations, and rejection. But we have the conversation anyway because we love them, and because watching them hurt themselves and others is even more painful.

So admonishing the sinner is an act of kenosis—a self-emptying death, picking up the cross and following Christ. Anyone who derives power or pleasure from admonishing the sinner is doing it wrong. Such a person is likely addicted to righteous indignation. Or he is a tyrant. Or both.

Catherine loved Pope Gregory XI and respected the papacy so much that she wanted to see its integrity restored. She certainly would not have thought it her “right” to reprimand any churchman, much less him. Going against societal expectations was one matter; understanding this calling in light of her own humility was another entirely. And Gregory could have easily dismissed her as a cray-cray homegrown mystic and/or excommunicated her. These are high stakes, especially for a faithful daughter of the Church who subsisted on the Eucharist alone. For her to offer him correction would have come at the cost of great interior mortification.

Admonishing the sinner isn’t a power trip, and it isn’t fun. Let’s admire Catherine’s atypical boldness, by all means, and embrace God’s infinitely creative and unique vision for womankind. But let’s also avoid the power pitfall. You go, girl is grossly inadequate to describe Catherine’s saintly heroism.