Recent reading. I just finished Simplicity by John Michael Talbot and Dan O'Neill (Troubadour for the Lord, 1989). If you click the picture, you can go to Mr. Talbot's website. He's best known for his music. He started a religious community of both married and single people. The book is sort of, well, not too great as far as books go. The content is sort of all over the place. It begins with Talbot's testimony, which is a most unusual thing for a "Catholic" book. It's NOT Imprimi Potest, Nihil Obstat, or Imprimatur. The book talks about ecology, politics, and how we can help the poor by simplifying our lives. The last part of the book talks about Talbot's community in Arkansas. He talks about how they live the Biblical example of having all things in common and being fashioned after St. Francis while being completely different. I just wasn't very impressed with it. Funny, I couldn't find a single review of the book online. Hmmmm...

A couple weeks ago I finished Liberalism Is a Sin by Fr. Felix Sarda Y Salvany and translated and adapted by Conde B. Pallen, Ph. D., LL.D. (Tan Books and Publishers, Inc., 1899, 1993). This one IS nihil obstat and imprimatur. It's taken me awhile to be able to say anything about it just because I had to kind of get over it, so to speak. Basically "liberalism" in the book = everything not Catholic. Protestants are the root of everything that is evil in the world. But that's only the first chapter, and then it gets completely dropped. The rest tries to define liberalism and how the Catholic can avoid it and fight it. It really shouldn't have taken so many pages to say what he wanted, but maybe in Espania things take more words. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that it was 100 years ago. I really wanted to know more about liberalism, but I think I understand it less now. But El Liberalismo es Pecado. Blah. I don't recommend this one. I would really like to read a decent book for a change. What I consider to be a good book, I'm still not sure.