The Catholic Book Club discussion

6. Ask here any question you want to address the author of the book, that isn't covered by the other topics in this discussion.

I have a question for Mr. D. Greaney i have the big advantage of being your friend in Facebook and i see a lot of his discussions. I would like to ask for his project of publishing a fiction novel. I would like to ask for this project.
I would like greet a common friend Declan Finn. He was introduced by L. Jagi Lamplighter, perhaps the most hilarious friend with the permission of Karina Fabián, and Jane Lebak.
I take the chance to recommend the novels of comoderator Manuel Alfonseca they are really good as me and Steven R. McEvoy and others can assure

Currently I am writing some novels, both as a way of earning some income(!), and to insert some of the ideas underlying Catholic social teaching to get them across to people in as painless a manner as possible. I have three completed. The first is a romantic thriller set in modern day Idaho in which a rancher sort of kidnaps two women and manages to get in over his head by refusing to let them go. The second is a mystery based on an actual incident recorded by Harry Houdini that happened in 1906, but to say more about it would give spoilers. The third is the story of a town buying a flour mill to keep it open and save jobs in the face of an attempt by a New York conglomerate to buy it and shut it down. The one I'm working on right now, and the one Fonch is referring to (I think) is "Chesterton, P.I.", about an alternate world in which G.K. Chesterton is a private investigator and Peter John "Fulton" Sheen is his associate. It's almost half done, and so far my beta readers have said it's good. It's sort of historical, as I set in in 1935-1936, and I'm keeping to major events as they actually happened, even to the possibility that the character based on Fulton Sheen (who is not, of course, the actual Sheen, just modeled on him) rode in a train driven by my grandfather . . . I had to give grandpa a free plug. I'm currently seeking an agent to help me place the novels, and a friend in Europe is using his contacts for me. He used to work at the Vatican and still has a number of good contacts in the media.

Michael wrote: "Currently I am writing some novels, both as a way of earning some income(!), and to insert some of the ideas underlying Catholic social teaching to get them across to people in as painless a manner..."

Oh they are very interesting projects please I tried to finish them, and have them published. Above all, Houdini's. I confess myself to being a great admirer of G.K. Chesterton (The Professor can attest that he is my favorite writer). Oh I meant when we were discussing the different economic alternatives. As the participants in this paper will know, following the theories of G.K. Chesterton, and my admired Juan Manuel de Prada sought a different way of capitalism, and of social democracy-communism what in America I believe, which you usually call liberals in Europe has another meaning. I would have loved it if he could have debated with us, when Hilaire Belloc's "Servile State" was discussed, and I wish to thank him for accepting the invitation to debate with us.

I also love very much his articles about that socialist priest who was critical of the Encyclicals of Leo XIII and who he talks about so much in Catholic World Report.

Yes, Father Edward McGlynn, whom i hope to make the subject of a future book (I have the perfect title; "Loose Canon"), is a martyr glorified by modernist and socialists. he was excommunicated for disobedience, and his reinstatement was taken as a change in the Catholic position on socialism . . . which was not the issue. He was "allowed" to be a socialist and a priest, but not disobey a direct order from the pope to visit Rome and explain his bizarre actions. Socialism is still condemned, capitalism is still criticized, but socialists and capitalists are rarely condemned. It's the "hate the sin, not the sinner" approach.

Michael wrote: "Yes, Father Edward McGlynn, whom i hope to make the subject of a future book (I have the perfect title; "Loose Canon"), is a martyr glorified by modernist and socialists. he was excommunicated for ..."
Yes, well, I was ignorant of the history of socialism in America, or liberalism as you call it, and I didn't know the socialist politician that was being talked about. The only thing he knew is that Orestes Brownson seems to have been among the first to realize the danger posed by Karl Marx, just as Donoso Cortés did in his Essay on Catholicism, Communism, and Liberalism that Karl Marx was not yet around. Yes, the latter is a Catholic characteristic.

Actually, that depends on how you define liberalism; confusion of the term is one of the great triumphs of the rei novae, the "New Things" of which Gregory XVI and Leo XIII spoke.

Collectivist liberalism is based on the assumption that humanity is sovereign. Since "humanity" is an abstraction created by man and not by God (god created man, man created humanity), this puts man above God, and humanity above man, leading to socialism.

Individualist liberalism is based on the assumption that an elite is sovereign. Since this, too, is an abstraction created by man, man is above God, and an elite is above man. This leads to capitalism.

Personalist liberalism, which is the liberalism that the Church accepts, although it hasn't referred to it by that name generally since the collectivist liberals revolted against Pius IX and the individualist liberals and reactionaries restored him (the story is in a book awaiting acceptance and publication) is based on the sovereignty of the human person under God, and leads to Economic Personalism, https://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploa...

So, you can see, a lot of confusion results from the way modernism has confused language and even how people think these days, as is only to be expected from "the synthesis of all heresies."

Michael wrote: "Actually, that depends on how you define liberalism; confusion of the term is one of the great triumphs of the rei novae, the "New Things" of which Gregory XVI and Leo XIII spoke.

Collectivist lib..."
Actually, for us liberalism would have been born when a French gobelin told Colbert that to help them he will leave them Laissez Faire. Liberalism would be the child of the English Enlightenment, and French with Adam Smith, and in France it would have importance with the physiocrats Arnauld, and Quesnay (Adam Smith, and Malthus in Europe are considered liberals. In fact Adam Smith would be the Father of Economic Liberalism, and later his thought would be accepted by the Vienna School with Hayek). But it would have been born in the French Enlightenment, which would be prior to anarchism, and socialism, which would be children of the French Revolution in this case we have François Noel Gracchus Babeuf, and in England Mary Shelley's father. The utopian socialists would have started with Saint Simon, Cabet, Fourier, Barthelmy Enfant, Robert Owen until reaching Karl Marx, who belongs to the Hegelian left, and had a Satanist component. I did not study Proudhon as a Utopian Socialist, but as an anarchist then came Herzen, Bakunin, Kropotkin, and other leaders of the left, or extreme left (although the term left was born from the French Revolution).

It is by these criteria that we judge it in Europe. In Spain liberalism is divided into two families the progressives, and the moderates (these are part of conservatism). Traditionalists, on the other hand, would be hostile to liberalism. There would be a part of the monarchists who would have merged with moderate liberalism. But I think your ranking is good Mr. Greaney. I also agree with religious liberalism, which he describes at the end, and is the germ from which comes the modernism condemned by St. Pius X.

IMO, most people today don't recognize personalist liberalism because they don't recognize anything except socialism (collectivist liberalism) and capitalism (individualist or moderate liberalism). Some, sensing that when the popes spoke in a positive way of liberalism (not very often) they meant something different, assumed they were changing Catholic teaching (which is impossible) or they didn't mean what they said. In consequence these days we have an effort to rehabilitate de Lamennais, the first modernist, because he was allegedly the "good" kind of liberal when he was nothing of the sort. That's one reason I spent so much time on Pius IX, who remained a true personalist liberal all his life, despite the effrts of the raedical liberals to paint him as a reactionary monster.

Michael wrote: "IMO, most people today don't recognize personalist liberalism because they don't recognize anything except socialism (collectivist liberalism) and capitalism (individualist or moderate liberalism)...."

Many times I have spoken with Professor Manuel Alfonseca when we read Dostoyevsky's "The Demons". My admired Don Juan Manuel de Prada often refers to this novel to explain that communism-anarchism because the principles of Svidrigailov, and Verjovenski Jr. could be one of those ideologies. This is seen when confronting Verjovenski Father who defends individualistic liberalism with Verjovenski Jr. who defends collectivist when the father rebukes his son who tells him that he is completing his father's work, and it is true because both doctrines are not antithetical, but one begets the other, and both are daughters of the Enlightenment, and crystallized in the French Revolution. It is true at first Pius IX that today he has remained a reactionary, but he was very progressive even in favor of Italian Unification until he saw that it was what was behind Italian Unification. First he learned when Mazzini establishes the Roman Republic that is dismantled by France, and Spain, and then with the Masonic anti-Christianity of Victor Emanuel II, and Cavour.

Michael you mention a possible second volume on another 10 Battles have you done any work on it? Might it still materialize.

It is a good question. There is more battles for commenting. The Professor said of some of them.

Steven R. wrote: "Michael you mention a possible second volume on another 10 Battles have you done any work on it? Might it still materialize."

Not at this time. "Ten Battles" sold okay, but "The Greater Reset", my other book for TAN, has not sold well, at least yet. Publishers are in business to make money, and they are now cautious about accepting new books from me. I am currently seeking an agent for my "non-Catholic" books, which will give my Catholic books a boost; I have no plans to let anyone other than TAN publish my "Catholic" books, but they have to be able to make a profit on them, or they can't publish them. It's a business, not a charity.

Michael wrote: "Steven R. wrote: "Michael you mention a possible second volume on another 10 Battles have you done any work on it? Might it still materialize."

Not at this time. "Ten Battles" sold okay, but "The ..."

Wishing you would find him, because his literary projects seem enormously interesting.

Fonch wrote: "Michael wrote: "Steven R. wrote: "Michael you mention a possible second volume on another 10 Battles have you done any work on it? Might it still materialize."

Not at this time. "Ten Battles" sold..."

You and me both. I'm sending a follow up email today.

Michael wrote: "Fonch wrote: "Michael wrote: "Steven R. wrote: "Michael you mention a possible second volume on another 10 Battles have you done any work on it? Might it still materialize."

Not at this time. "Ten..."

I would be delighted with that follow-up. First of all forgive me for having delayed me in answering your last post. I was busy reading, and on Youtube the Professor knows that I am subscribed to several channels, and he spent too much time on them, and that is why I have taken so long to answer. Of course I'm delighted with the follow-up, and I enjoy a lot with your friendship, that of Jagi L. Lamplighter, that of Declan Finn, and that of Karina Fabian. If you want my address I give it to Mr. Greaney send me a message, and I give it to you. In August I am going to meet T. Enwright in a hotel in Valladolid, as he is on his way, because he wants to go to Cantabria to witness the places where the events of the Virgin of Garabandal occurred.