Beyond the Bookshelf

So you want to craft a brilliant apologetic essay? Strengthen your own understanding of Faith? Shape your children’s character? Books are great, but there’s much more available out there: You need “Power Tools”! Every issue we’ll review helpful non-print media sources such as videos, audiotapes, CDs, CD-ROMs — and plenty more besides: toys, games, even jewelry with a spiritual purpose. Take a look at these.

Welcome to the Catholic Church on CD-ROM 2.0
The entire New American Bible and the entire Revised Standard Version, Catholic edition. An encyclopedic dictionary of biblical terms. All the Vatican II documents. Texts from the early Church fathers, papal encyclicals, hundreds of modern Church documents. Entire scholarly volumes on liturgy, moral theology, Church history, the Sacraments, prayer, Catholic family life, personal devotion, the saints. All on a single disk with search capabilities and 120,000 hyperlinks. Are you salivating yet?

Welcome to the Catholic Church on CD-ROM 2.0. It has something for everybody — apologists, scholars, teachers, priests, students, parents, children. Hundreds of paintings, photographs and maps provide fine illustrations, while short clips of Gregorian chant enrich the work. Bonus for the munchkins: The Lives of the Saints for Every Day of the Year includes with each saint’s biography a printout picture to be colored.

CD-ROM $79.95 from Harmony Media, Inc.; call 503/982-7675; website: www.harmonymediainc.com. 

The Biblical Action Figures Collection
If you’re weary (or leery) of those ubiquitous little Japanese pocket monsters, here’s an array of 6-inch poseable biblical characters to offer kids instead: Adam, Eve, David, Goliath, Moses, Solomon, Job, Mary, Jesus, and an angel. Each one comes with a stand and background play scenery.

The first time your child plays with each one, you can read together a Scripture passage about the character so the child can act it out. But don’t be surprised if later play leads to creative embellishments: Years ago my then-three-year-old, playing with nativity scene figures, was heard to have Mary exclaim: “Baby Jesus, you wet all over my robe again!”

The sores on Job’s limbs seem less like “boils” (Job 2:7) than wounds from a wild dog attack. The feminine angel, contrary to all biblical indications, looks like a sweet Victorian Christmas ornament, decked out with flowers in her hair. Jesus has a goatee and Adam has a belly button. Otherwise, the figures are reasonably realistic. (Eve’s fig leaves are sufficiently modest.)

The next collection should include more women (Esther, Mary Magdalene), more New Testament figures (St. Peter, St. Paul) and especially more villains (King Herod and a Pharisee). After all, in child’s play as on Broadway, the villains keep things interesting … 

Set of ten figures $59.90 from Train Up A Child, Inc.; call 877-463-7543; website: www.trainupachild.com. 

Damien
“The saddest spot on earth,” they called it: Molokai, the enclave of those suffering from Hansen’s Disease (a.k.a. Leprosy), in 19th-century Hawaii. Forcibly separated from their loved ones, the diseased were cast onto a barren island to survive on their own with no doctors, no priests and no hope — until Fr. Damien (Bl. Joseph de Veuster) came to them.

A Belgian missionary of the Fathers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, Fr. Damien was sent at his own request to the colony of people suffering with Hansen’s disease. After sixteen years serving tirelessly there, he himself finally died of the dreaded disease. By then he had overcome nightmarish conditions to transform Molokai into a more sane, humane community and to bring the cause of all ill-treated sufferers of Hansen’s disease to worldwide attention. Pope John Paul II beatified him in 1995.

Aldyth Morris’s riveting one-man play about this remarkable apostle comes alive in a gripping performance by Terence Knapp, produced and directed by Nino J. Martin. The powerful monologue thunders with the universal themes of justice, mercy, and courage as Fr. Damien is dashed about by more interior storms of doubt, temptation, and rage over his parishioners’ plight. Viewers will be profoundly challenged by what his bishop called the "unbalanced generosity" of this tempestuous martyr who labored to cleanse the wounds of Christ in these least of His brothers. 

90-minute video, $24.95 from Ignatius Press; call 800/651-1531; website: www.ignatius.com. 

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