Hi, my name is Chase Lovelace and I'm so excited to be able to contribute to the website Catholicism for the Modern World. My corner of the website will consist mostly in cross-posting my current project, Rebuilding Christendom. I am definitely more of a blogger than a journalist or whatever, and so I hope that I can add some unique perspective to the site!
My story
I have enjoyed writing for a long time, but am pretty new to this format. I grew up learning how to song-write, then in college (I obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Performance) had to do my fair share of papers, and off and on in the last couple of years I've done the blog thing. It was a while before I really found my footing. I didn't know what to talk about, and so experimented with different formats for the blog. From discussing manhood to personal goals, and even political activism (a misstep for sure) I've floundered a bit, but didn't give up.
Even though I wasn't sure what to talk about, eventually I knew it had to be about my faith journey.
Turns out, I didn't really have anything super impressive to say about that, either. And I didn't feel equipped to write on Catholicism, since I've only converted this year, at Easter Vigil 2023. Additionally, I'm somewhat under-formed in my education and can't necessarily present a well educated perspective on things. Why even try, when such amazing platforms as Catholic.com and Pints with Aquinas exist?
But slowly, over the course of months, I came into the knowledge of, and fell in love with, the Western Classical Tradition. For three-thousand years (well, more) our culture has built upon itself and has been guided by Holy Mother Church to bring about Christendom. The society, even the secular part of it, only existed in the context of the Catholic church. That she overtook the Roman empire is a testament to Christ's power to convert even the strongest pagan societies.
The height of this culture manifested in societies that were beautiful, literature that taught and
formed us, philosophy that enlightened us to how God works in this world and more. The more I've learned about the Church, the more I understand that I know nothing, and that the world has been remade and attempted to 'revolt' against the church, starting in the 16th century and heating up significantly throughout the 20th century.
Project 'Rebuilding Christendom'
This kinda stuff led me to start the Rebuilding Christendom project. This book club will be my own education, and unlike grade school and even college, this time I intend to pay attention. The Catholic Church is the One True Church, but the evidence is shrouded in so much misinformation and spin brought about by the Protestant Revolution and today's internet that it's nearly impossible to recognize for some. Only by starting at the beginning can we start understand how Classical Tradition matters, and how it demonstrates the Church's guidance through history.
So, will you join me in taking this journey? If so, keep an eye out for subsequent articles. The book club started a month ago on Substack, and this week we are reading Homer's Iliad, Book V, but it isn't too late to join! If you'd like to read with us, here's what I suggest:
Pick up the book here (I am reading the Lattimore translation, because that's the one I found at the thrift store lol, but any translation will do).
Search up some summaries of Homer's Iliad, Books I-IV
Start Ch. 5 and finish before Wednesday, the 13th of September.
If you're really serious and a quick reader, you could totally just start the book from the beginning and try to catch up that way, but it isn't necessary, tbh. This book club is meant to be chill. We all have regular lives, and so the readings will be assigned by the week, rather than how most book clubs do it: a book a month (the result will be making our way through the books more slowly).
Finally, below, you'll find the entire reading list for our book club. This list isn't exhaustive, and it also isn't a commitment. It's simply a suggested list that I used multiple sources to put together, and have found myself editing weekly. Actually, it'd be nice to shorten it a little, but idk what to give up; there's so much I want to read! Even the nasty stuff like Freud, Marx or Lenin is playing itself out in our culture in important ways today, and so I feel his work necessary to understand this cultural moment.
Anyway, thank you to Michael Snellen for allowing me to join this site. I look forward to making new friends and learning new things!
God bless,
Chase
Reading List
The Founding of Christendom, By Warren Carroll (This has not yet been started, as I haven't picked it up yet).
Homer (c. 9th century BC)
Iliad (We are here)
Odyssey
Aeschylus (c. 525-456 BC)
Tragedies
Sophocles (c. 495-406 BC)
Tragedies
Herodotus (c. 484-425 BC)
Histories
Euripides (c. 485-406 BC)
Tragedies
Thucydides (c. 460-400 BC)
History of the Peloponnesian War
Aristophanes (c. 448-380 BC)
Comedies (The Clouds, The Birds, The Frogs suggested)
Plato (c. 427-347)
Dialoges (The Republic, Symposium, Sophist, Phaedo suggested)
Aristotle (384-322)
Works (Politics, Rhetoric, Poetics, The Nichomachean Ethics, Organon suggested
Epicurus (c. 341-270)
Letter to Herodotus
Letter to Menoeceus
Cicero (106-43 BC)
Works (Orations, On Friendship, On Old Age suggested)
Lucretius (c. 95-55 BC)
On The Nature Of Things
Virgil (70-19 BC)
Aeneid
Vitruvius (c. 80-70 — c. after 15 B.C.)
Ten Books on Architecture
Horace (65-8 BC)
Odes and Epods
The Art of Poetry; (Or Epistles)
Livy (59 BC-AD 17)
History of Rome
Plutarch (c. 45-120)
Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Moralia
Tacitus (c. 55-117)
Annals
Epictetus (c. 60-120)
Discourses
Justin Martyr (100-165)
Works (Likely to use “Writings of Justin Martyr” from Veritatis Splendor Publications)
Lucian (c.120-c.190)
The True History
Marcus Aurelius (121-180)
Meditations
Mike Aquilina (Born 1952)
The Fathers of the Church, 3rd Edition: An Introduction to the First Christian Teachers
Plotinus (205-270)
The Enneads
St. Ambrose (c. 339-397)
The Complete Works of St. Ambrose
St. Augustine (354-430)
Confessions
City of God
St. Benedict (c. 480–547)
The Rule of St. Benedict
Beowulf
St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109)
Works
The Song of Roland (c. 12th Century)
The Nibelungenlied (13th Century)
Steve Weidenkopf (born 19974)
The Glory of the Crusades
St. Thomas Aquinas (and Peter Kreeft) (c. 1225-1274)
A Summa of The Summa
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
The Divine Comedy
Francis Petrarch (1304-1374)
Sonnets
Boccaccio (1313-1375)
The Decameron
Chaucer (1340-1400)
Canterbury Tales
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
Notebooks
Machiavelli (1469-1527)
The Prince
Erasmus (c. 1469-1536)
Christian Humanism
Henry VIII and the Reformation
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543)
On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Sir Thomas More (c. 1478-1535)
Utopia
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Three Treatises
St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556)
The Spiritual Exercises (Exercitia spiritualia)
François Rabelais (c. 1495-1546)
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola (1507-1573)
Canon of the Five Orders Of Architecture
Andrea Palladio (1508-1580)
The Four Books On Architecture
John Calvin (1509-1564)
Institutes of the Christian Religion
St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582)
The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
Essays
St. John of the Cross (1542-1591)
Dark Night of the Soul
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
Don Quixote
Vincenzo Scamozzi
The Mirror of Architecture
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-1599)
The Faerie Queene
Francis Bacon (1561-1626)
Essays
Advancement of learning
Novum Organum
New Atlantis
William Shakespeare (1564-1626)
Works (esp Midsummer night’s dream & Hamlet)
St. Francis De Sales (1567-1622)
An Introduction to the Devout Life
The Catholic Controversy: A Defense of the Faith by St. Francis De Sales
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences
Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)
The Leviathan
Rene Descartes (1596-1650)
Meditations on First Philosophy
Discourse on Method
John Milton (1608-1674)
Works (Esp. Paradise Lost)
Moliere (1622-1673)
Comedies (The Miser, The School for Wives, The Misanthrope, The Doctor in Spite of Himself, Tartuffe suggested)
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662)
The Provincial Letters
Pensees
Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677)
Ethics
John Locke (1632-1704)
Letter Concerning Toleration
Two Treatises of Government
Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Jean Baptiste Racine (1639-1699)
Andromache
Phaedra
Antoine Desgodetz (1653-1728)
The Ancient Buildings of Rome
Daniel Defoe (1660-1731)
Robinson Crusoe
Johnathan Swift (1667-1745)
Gulliver’s Travels
St. Louis de Montfort (1673-1716)
True Devotion to Mary
George Berkeley (1685-1753)
Principles of Human Knowledge
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755)
Spirit of laws
Voltaire (1694-1778)
Candide
Philosophical Dictionary
Henry Fielding (1707-1784)
Tom Jones
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
The Vanity of Human Wishes
David Hume (1711-1776)
An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
On the Origin of Inequality
The Social Contract
Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Tristram Shandy
James Stuart (1713-1788), Nicholas Revett (1720-1804)
The Antiquities of Athens
Adam Smith (1723-1790)
Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Critique of Pure Reason
Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals
Critique of Practical Reason
Science of Right
Critique of Judgement
Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Reflections on the revolution in france
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
John Jay (1745-1829), James Madison (1751-1836), and Alexander Hamilton (1757-1804)
Federalist Papers
Articles of Confederation
The Constitution of the United States
The Declaration of Independence
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1850)
Lectures on the philosophy of History
Philosophy of Right
Asher Benjamin (1773-1845)
The Architect, or Practical House Carpenter
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
Pride and Prejudice
Emma
Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
On War
George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1831)
Don Juan
St. John Vianney (1786–1859)
Sermons of the Curé of Ars
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Studies in Pessimism
Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Pere Goriot
John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
Apologia
Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)
Three Musketeers
Count of Monte Cristo
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
Representative Men
Esssays
Journal
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlett Letter
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Democracy in America
John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
On Liberty
Representative Government
Utilitarianism
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
The Origin of the Species
The Descent of Man
Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
Works
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Fear and Trembling
Either/Or
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
Civil Disobedience
Walden
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
Capital
Communist Manifesto
Herman Melville (1819-1891)
Moby Dick
Billy Budd
Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Crime and Punishment
The Brother’s Karamazov
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Three Stories
Lew Wallace (1827-1905)
Ben Hur
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906)
A Doll’s House
The Wild Duck
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
War and Peace
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Tom Sawyer
The Mysterious Stranger
William James (1842-1910)
The Principles of Psychology
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Beyond Good and Evil
The Genealogy of Morals
The Will to Power
Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916)
Quo Vadis
Brian Stoker (1847-1912)
Dracula
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Plays (Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Caesar and Cleopatra, Pygmalion, Saint Joan)
Loius Sullivan (1856-1924)
Louis Sullivan’s Idea
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939)
The Ego and the Id (The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud)
Pope Pius XI (1857-1939)
Mit brennender Sorge
Henri Bergson (1859-1941)
Time and Free Will
Matter and Memory
Creative Evolution
The Two Sources of Morality and Religion
John Dewey (1859-1952)
How We Think
Democracy and Education
Experience and Nature
Logic, The Theory of Inquiry
George Santayana (1863-1952)
The Life of Reason
Skepticism and Animal Faith
Nikolai Lenin (1870-1970)
The State and Revolution
Bertrand Russel (1872-1970)
The Problems of Philosophy
The Analysis of Mind
An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth
St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897)
The Story of a Soul (Tan Classics edition)
Thomas Mann (1875-1955)
The Magic Mountain
Joseph and His Brothers
James Joyce (1882-1941)
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Ulysses
Jacques Maritain (1882-1973)
Art and Scholasticism
True Humanism
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
The Trial
The Castle
Arnold Toynbee (1889-1975)
A Study of History
Civilization on Trial
Edward Bernays (1891-1995)
Propaganda
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Mere Christianity
Miracles
A Grief Observed
The Screwtape Letters
The Great Divorce
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
A Tale of Two Cities
George Orwell (1903-1950)
Animal Farm
1984
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
Nausea
No Exit
Being and Nothingness
St. Faustina (1905-1938)
Diary
William Golding (1911-1993)
Lord of the Flies
Albert Camus (1913-1960)
The Stranger
The Myth of Sisyphus
St. Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)
Works
Harper Lee (1926-2016)
To Kill A Mockingbird
(I am a Rococo enjoyer)
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