Books: The Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson -

The Lord of the World

by Rev. James V. Schall, S.J.

In 2001, St. Augustine’s Press published a new edition of Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel, The Lord of the World. A friend of mine in Vermont recently urged me to read it, and I did.

Ralph McInerny, in a brief introduction, writes: “The novel wonderfully conveys the flatness and boredom of a world without God. Boredom becomes a condition for recognizing our need for something more than this — a few more decades of life and then a total void.”

.............

This novel is remarkably similar in theme to Pope Benedict XVI’s encyclical Spe Salvi, one of the very great encyclicals. That is, the novel is about the futility of a this-worldly utopia with the instruments of death (abortion, euthanasia) and endless life (prolongation of life, cloning) that are designed to make it come about. Indeed, in a lecture he gave at the Catholic University in Milan on February 6, 1992, Josef Ratzinger cited The Lord of the World and the deadly Universalist, inner-world atmosphere it depicted.

Read more: www.crisismagazine.com