Author: Mary Lea Hill
Year: 2018
Genre: religion
Publisher: Pauline Books & Media
ISBN 9780819816573
Summary
Purporting to be a “true story of our family of faith”, The Church Rocks! was recommended to me by my beloved wife, a lifelong Catholic who bought this book at a church-sponsored conference for women. (My wife is aware I’m an atheist, but also that I’m interested in history, generally-speaking.)
Written by Sister Mary Lea Hill (also known as “The Crabby Mystic”), who has “happily” lived in a convent since 1964 (source), this book opens with the line “Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after he rose from the dead” and ends with the hope that the 21st Century will be “the best in all of the Church’s history”. Yes, it’s that kind of “history” book. I found much of it informative, not only about actual history, but about the Catholic church’s viewpoint on various events in history. However, I couldn’t help but notice various falsehoods, fictional additions, and glaring omisisons, which I will discuss more below.
What I Liked Most About It
I liked that Hill kept the writing style on the level of her intended audience, which is stated as ages 9-12 or grades 4-6. A few times, I felt the language slip to a slightly younger audience, and a few times I thought a fourth grader might have trouble with it, but the majority felt like a history book for children of those ages.
I also liked the layout and design of the book, and the use of layout/design to designate separate sections or types of content. For example, the primary text is in a serif typeface, while asides, notes, and other text boxes utilize an obviously different, san serif font. Hundreds of relevant illustrations decorate the pages; each chapter has consistent organization and helpful explanations of words/concepts that might be new to young readers, including “excommunication”, “Gothic”, and “canon law”.
Hill also helpfully included non-church-related history as context anchor points for the church’s story. So, in addition to learning the church’s history, a young reader can easily pick up knowledge of wider world history as well.
What I Liked Least About It
By far, the thing I liked least about the book was the use of words like “history” and “true story” to describe events better characterized as myths, legends, or claims. I noticed that when referring to Islam, the author was careful to say Muhammad “believed he had a vision from God”, but when referring to Catholics, she wrote that the visions occurred (not that they were claimed or believed to have happened). For example, in the story of Joan of Arc, Hill writes:
“One day God sent Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint Catherine of Alexandria to giver her [Joan] a special mission.”A good historian or history writer would not state as fact something so unlikely. The fact is, Joan testified in court that she had a vision of one mythical being and two women who had been dead for more than a thousand years. The same pattern is repeated throughout the book: Saint Francis “heard the voice of God”; Attila the Hun “saw a vision of Saints Peter and Paul on either side of the pope”; and Emperor Constantine “saw a vision in the sky”. All of these are unsubstantiated claims and should be designated as such in any non-fiction book, regardless of the author’s personal views.
Additionally, one of the regular asides in the book is called “I witness”, easy to spot because it’s always accompanied by a simple drawing of a smiling child or youth and a drawing of an eye. Each of these contains a paragraph in the first person, apparently written by the child in the drawing. (“My name is Joussef and I’m...”, for example.) As far as I could determine, none of these children are real people from history; they’re entirely made-up by the author. At no point in the book is it made clear that these are imaginary people, meant to serve only as illustrational anecdotes.
Further, there are “Mystery Of History” sections in each chapter, several of which attempt to make things more mysterious than they actually are. Just for an example, the book says no one knows where Saint Patrick came from. Yet, all other sources I can find (including Catholic websites) say Patrick was born in Britain. Another “Mystery Of History” section implies “Brendan the Navigator” might have sailed to North America — but fails to tell the reader that this myth is based on a clearly fictional tale called “Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis” (Voyage of Saint Brendan the Abbot), in which Brendan also passes near a demon-infested volcano, meets Judas Iscariot (and protects him from Hell’s demons for one night), and visit another island where magical ageless monks eat magic bread.
But perhaps the biggest tip-off that this isn’t a book of history but rather of church propoganda is when we get to the “Shroud of Turin” on page 214, where Hill implies that “the glorious light of the Resurrection” created the image on the cloth. She fails to mention that the shroud’s first documented appearance in the West in 1390 CE was accompanied by a local bishop’s statement that it was a forgery, saying the artist had confessed. Though she mentions carbon dating in another part of the book, here she fails to say that carbon-dating has placed the shroud between 1260 and 1390 CE (three independent tests, by the way, which were conducted at three separate locations). Further, she failed to note that actual burial shrouds from the era of Christ were made differently, of a different type of material.
It didn’t help that when the story came to the great schisms in church history, the author referred to some parties as right and others as wrong.
Other Tidbits
When it comes to infamous periods in the church’s history, such as the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc., the author seems to justify these up to a point, but then adds something like “unfortunately, some participants went too far”. It was to me a humorous admission — considering that the foundation of these activities was ridiculous to begin with. No one “went too far” in the Inquisition; they were simply carrying it to its logical conclusion. It should have never begun in the first place. No one “went too far” in the Crusades; the church should have never been raising offensive armies in the first place, or participating in the affairs of state in any way.
The tone is celebratory when the book mentions rulers in early centuries being converted to Christianity, including triumphant mentions of bans on other longheld local religions. But oh, the horror, when the Muslims began to do the same thing or when Protestant rulers in England or elsewhere forbade Catholicism or when atheist rulers in the Soviet Union persecuted all religions. She simply couldn’t see the hypocrisy in this and doesn’t realize how wrong it was for any rulers to use the power of the state to enforce any way of thinking or believing.
Late in the book, when we finally get to the 20th and 21st centuries, there are brief mentions of Nazi Germany, the child abuse scandals within the church, and Roe v. Wade. Expectedly, Hill mentions the Catholic church’s condemnations of the Nazi party, but doesn’t mention that Hitler himself was raised Catholic or that the Catholic church’s 1933 “concordat” with Nazi Germany effectively increased the prestige of Hitler’s regime — something agreed upon by most historians.
Hill mentions abortion, only to say “two billion... children” have been “killed”, and how horrible it is.
On the topic of the child-molestation scandal:
“Unfortunately, serious corruption and scandal also came to light in the first years of this century. It became known that some members of the clergy had secretly abused children in the past.”The way this is written, it’s “unfortunate” that the scandals “came to light” — which is, very possibly, how the Catholic church sees it. But Hill goes on to add that the church “was struck with sorrow over failing to protect children” and “the Church has taken needed steps to prevent these terrible crimes from ever happening again.” Oddly, she doesn’t mention that the church is actively fighting reform: spending more than $2 million lobbying against the Child Victims Act in New York, fiercely fighting changes to the statute of limitations in Pennsylvania, and refusing to report to police internal confessions of child abuse — just to name a few avenues in which the church has not “repented” and is not taking “steps to prevent these terrible crimes”. To date, it’s estimated that these abuse allegations have cost the church more than $3 billion — just for the settlements of lawsuits. Some portion of every dollar donated to this organization (including the purchase price of this book) goes to the defense of clergy members who are accused of committing the aforementioned assaults.
Conclusion
I wouldn’t recommend this book for anyone. The bits of unfamiliar history that were interesting can be learned elsewhere, and most readers — especially those eager to learn — will want to avoid the slew of myths, legends, and astounding claims presented as certainly “true” in this book.
Note: A shorter version of this review is available on Goodreads, here.
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