Century Club Newsletter: April 2009
Dear Century Club Member:
For this issue, we turn the Century Club Newsletter over to Professor Emeritus of Physics Chet Raymo, who profiles ten books that students at any Catholic college should read.
Ten of the Best Books for Students at Catholic Colleges
The college years are a wonderful time to explore in a deeper intellectual way what it means to be Catholic. Here is a list of ten books that any student could read with profit:
Augustine of Hippo
The Confessions
The Confessions recount Augustine's conversion to Christianity, but the book is deeply shaded by his earlier attraction to Manachaean philosophy -- steeped in guilt and longing.
St. John of the Cross
The Dark Night of the Soul
Every journey into faith begins in darkness. John's poetic account of the soul's progress from sense to spirit is gorgeously erotic, evoking the frank sensuality of the Song of Songs.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Poems
What college student could not identify with Hopkins' earnest search for God -- and the exuberance of his language? The Poems should be read in conjunction with Robert Bernard Martin's superb biography of Hopkins.
Sigrid Undset
Kristin Lavransdatter
This sprawling Nobel-prizewinning novel set in 14th-century Norway should be read three times: once in college, once during the travails of family life in middle age, and again in the repose of maturity. But only in Tina Nunnally's new translation.
Georges Bernanos
Under Satan's Sun
The Diary of a Country Priest is generally considered Bernanos' masterpiece, but I prefer this darker account of a priest's struggle with evil. No young Catholic should dismiss Satan without first diving deep into the darkest recesses of his or her own psyche.