I’m going to steal an idea, so here ya go.

Some of you might know that Human Events issued a list of 10 Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Century, much discussed around various blogs. Jimmy Akin was one of the Catholic bloggers who ran a thread on it.

What I’m stealing is this blogger’s idea of a "bottom ten list" for the Church. He’s (as far as I can tell) a convert from the Episcopal Church to Eastern Orthodoxy, and his list is rather Protestant-skewed. I don’t know if I can come up with 10, and I doubt I have enough energy to justify them at this time of night, but here goes. Oh, and mine’s going to be popular and pastorally-oriented, and not particularly scholarly. And in no particular order, either.

1. Catholicism by Richard McBrien. Good historical material, and useful for that, but definitely harmful in the way McBrien evaluates the material and the context in which he places it all – a big grab bag of Catholic Stuff, in which nothing is really more true than anything else. A great irony of Catholic Life in the 90’s was that the same people who hated, hated, hated and decried The Catechism of the Catholic Church pushed Catholicism on every would-be catechist and heck, Catholic, who came down the road. It wasn’t a catechetical compendium that was the issue – it was whose.

2. Christ Among Us by Anthony Wilhelm. My primary, foundational text for all four years of Catholic high school, as it was for many of you, I imagine. Very much in the "Many Catholics believe" genre of catechetical writing.

3. Environment and Art in Catholic Worship   ‘Nuf said about that around here.

4. Human Sexuality by the CTSA, edited by Anthony Kosnik

5. The Sexual Celibate by Daniel Goergen and The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen. I have much admiration for Nouwen, but I am sorry to say that I think this book had seriously negative, completely unintended consequences for those engaged in ministry in this country, and combined with the impact of the first title….disaster.

6. Sexism and God-Talk by Rosemary Radford Reuther. I’m not ashamed to call myself a feminist (on my own terms), and I’m quite interested in issues related to women and religion (the subject of my MA thesis), and while interest in women’s issues and perpsectives have revealed much of importance, the whole direction taken by the early thinkers like Reuther ended up throwing things off track and wasted a whole lot of time and energy. IMHO.

7. The Joshua books by Joseph Girzone. In this review , I relate asking Michael why he thought they were so popular. He said, "Because people don’t read the Gospels, that’s why." Why are they damaging? Because, in essence, they concretize the supposed opposition between spirituality and organized religion, in which the latter always comes out as the bad guy, made it immensely popular and beloved among ill-educated catechists of all ages.

8. The Da Vinci Code. Okay, I had to throw that in there. Even though I really don’t know if I’d put it on the list. Yeah, maybe I would.

9. The works of Malachi Martin (Thanks to Tom for the suggestion)

10…..You fill in the blank. And argue intensely about it.