Catholic Spotlight

Transcript of Interview with Conor Gallagher about Catholic Classics Series. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

The Catholic Classics Series is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-catalog/45/Classics/

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Chris Cash: Welcome to the Catholic Spotlight. This is the Catholic Spotlight, the Podcast and we talk about what to do, cool and exciting in the Catholic marketplace. I’m your host Chris Cash, Director of e-Commerce from CatholicCompany.com, your stores for all your Catholic needs.

And today in the Spotlight, we have Conor Gallagher who is – what exactly is your title there, Conor?

Conor Gallagher: Well, it’s Director of Publishing for Saint Benedict Press.

Chris Cash: Excellent, so we’re going to be talking a little bit about Saint Benedict Press, especially the Catholic Classic Series the same the press is now putting out, as well as your plans for some excellent new Bible translation. So, Conor glad to have you on the Spotlight.

Conor Gallagher: Thanks for having me.

Chris Cash: And so, Conor I guess first off we want to talk about why is that Saint Benedict Press is putting together the Catholic Classic Series as well as the new line-up of Bible translations?

Conor Gallagher: Well, first, let’s talk about the Classic’s. You know we call these ever green titles, right? They never go out of style. These are titles that are found throughout the churches tradition, the intellectual tradition, the spiritual tradition of the Catholic church, which is just so rich with countless pieces of literature that have you know not only given students something to study but something for Saint to become Saints with. This is the stuff; this is the how to stuff that things are made of. This is the material that has proven the test of time that has penetrated and lasted through every culture, every time, every fad, everything in culture that is vogue in the 1800’s or in the 1900’s or the 21st century. These are the titles that the church is really founded upon the, the intellectual and spiritual tradition of found upon.

So, for example we’ve all heard of Imitation of Christ, I think in the year 2500, it’s that the Classic of Imitation of Christ or the Classic of Introduction to Devout Life. There is still going to be in style, because they are dependent on any kind of particular culture or time, so what we’ve done with the Classics and we said, what are those tittles, what are the best one’s imitation of Christ? A Story of a Soul which is really in a very short amount of time become a Classic by Saint Therese of Lisieux. Something like Interior Castle, Dialog of Catherine Siena. Introduction to that life which I mentioned. How about – oh not a new title, but one that’s becoming more popular now, Abandonment to Divine Providence, which I heard recently that Benedict Groeschel reads everyday. So, these are the kinds of Classics that we’re publishing and you can see on SaintBenedictPress.com. You know about 27 different titles or so that really do fall into this category of great spiritual classics.

So, those are the classics, you want to hear a little bit about the Bibles now Chris?

Chris Cash: Absolutely.

Conor Gallagher: All right, well the Bibles, of course the Classics are wonderful but the Bible is the word of god. And there is you know even though the Bible is the Bible, it is what it is. There is – its often translated and presented to people in many different ways. We found through our market research and through talking to a lot of people that there is primarily three translations that that today’s Catholic really need. One is the Douay-Rheims, the beautiful old translation. We are in the process of designing, typesetting and then eventually printing the Douay-Rheims translations. So, we are going to have a dynamite version, large print version of Douay-Rheims. Currently, we have multiple editions of NAB and not only NAB we have the Red Letter Edition of the NAB, which is kind of hard to find. So, the words of Christ are in Red, so it’s a  wonderful thing to just be able flip through and go through those thousands of pages and find exactly what our lord talked to the people 2,000 years ago about exactly what he’s saying to us today.

And we just don’t want to present the Bible you know, we want to present a Bible that is helpful to us in today’s life, so we have certain supplemental material in our Saint Benedict Press NAB Bible. So, we have something like the Succession of Popes, we have Dogmatic Constitutional Divine Revelation. So we are Catholics you know the Catholics are the ones Chris they supposedly don’t know their Bible, they don’t use their Bible, but the church has had such a wealth of, of information and scholarship on the Bible, more than any other church or more than any other private church could ever dream to have. And so, there is few documents from the church that we put in our Bible to help explain to Catholics, how the Catholics read the Bible. So, we got an introduction to the New Testament, an introduction to the Old Testament to help us the Catholics see how we should breathe and how we should use the Bible in our daily lives. So, that’s the NAB and we got that, you can find beautiful editions of that on SaintBenedictPress.com.

The third translation, which is very popular is the RSV, and many of us know that the RSV is also a beautiful translation. Its very accurate – oh, let me go just quickly to the NAB. One of the reasons that’s an important translation Chris is because that’s over here at mass. That’s what our kids grow up with, that’s what I grew up with. So, many of us when we go to mass, we like seeing the NAB. And in one of our next editions, we are actually going to have the listing of the daily readings in the NAB, so if you are going to daily mass or whatever, you are going to be able to read word for word what you are hearing from the alter, which will be a great thing. So, back to the RSV now.

The RSV is a popular translation, its beautiful, is accurate. And so, we have great hopes for the RSV. There are a lot of editions out there, so we had at Saint Benedict Press we need to first ask ourselves, why we are going to print an RSV when Ignatius press has it and others have it, why are we going to do it? Well, this is why Chris, what we are going to do is we are going to produce the best, the best Catholic study Bible with the RSV. When you go into any protestant book stores, any protestant book stores and you are going to find gobs and gobs of different study Bibles, study Bibles for mom, for dad, for kids, for soldiers, for anything, they got it all. The Catholic marketplace were messing it, why you know, why do we have it? So, that’s one of the reasons Saint Benedict Press is coming into the marketplace. We are going to produce the best Catholic study Bible with the RSV translation, and we’re in the process of working on that right now. Its going to have faith for explaining the Catholic faith. It’s going to be large print, which is just obviously popular, if you can get large print why do you get you know anything else. I mean so large print we are going to have that, its going to be in a beautiful binding material. We are going to have concordances, study day, Bible timelines, Bible mass; you know questions to the most typical answers for Catholics. Who is Mary, why do we pray to her, who is the Pope, who is this guy that lives in Rome and we listen to? We are going to answer all those questions for you in one study Bible, so a Catholic can use that for any number of things. He can read it for its own spiritual journey. He can use it to answer his, his skeptic friends, he can use it bring a falling Catholic back to the church, he can use it to answer protests and educate the evangelical friends. You know one of the things that has helped my faith the most is I worked for two years intimately with one of the most intelligent guys I have ever known and he was an evangelical. So, the conversations we had over lunch were unbelievable and it forced me to go back to my Bible and study. And I realized I don’t have a study Bible, we don’t have any. We got study programs, you know but we don’t have a study Bible.

And this Christmas is exciting; we have recently come to terms with Gail Buckley at Catholic Scripture Study, which is taken off. It’s so popular all over the country and all over the world have Catholic Scripture Study. And we’ve just reached an agreement with her to provide her with the official Catholic Scripture Study RSV Bible. So, that’s going to be dynamic product, so hopefully everybody that’s participating around the world with Catholic Scripture Study with Gail Buckley and offer wonderful for that to provide the scripture study, hopefully they are going to have our Bible in their hand.

So, that’s it, that’s very exciting. I think that answers the question of why we are doing Classics and why we are doing Bible, because Chris, frankly that’s what our faith is based upon in those two things. The great works of the Saint, the great works of the great scholars and the Church, the churches history and the Holy Scripture of course.

Chris Cash: Now as you said earlier about the Classic Series, these are kind of fundamental books about the faith that are – have been ever green, ever popular. And on that note, there have been many, many translations, many, many publications of these books over the years, what is it that makes the Saint Benedict Press versions of it unique from other translations and publications of these specific titles?

Conor Gallagher: Oh, that’s a great question. You know when you are dealing with an old book, okay you are going to end up with multiple editions to choose from, okay. Lets take for example, I don’t know we could pick any but you know Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross, which we just came out with a brand new edition of the most beautiful – it’s the most beautiful book you are going to find out that you got to go, if you are fan of Dark Night of the Soul or if you are just going through any of kind of what I call a dark moment in your life, you might now be a mystic because guess what? I am a mystic, I am calling through the Dark Night of the Soul by John of the Cross was or Mother Theresa was, but I sure have dark moments. So, if you are going through any dark moments go to SaintBenedictPress.com and check out our new design of Dark Night of the Soul.

So, to get to the translation point, okay there are so many editions because like I said it’s a priceless, timeless piece that multiple people have undertook to translate and to present to whatever their culture is at that time. So, we spent a tremendous amount of time and as director of publishing, I’m also operating as Editor-in-Chief and I spent a tremendous amount of my time looking at translations to use, what are the best translations to use. So, Dark Night of the Soul, the translation that we ended up choosing, I felt was the most accessible translation we could find.

Now, here’s a thing Chris you know sometimes when you use monitoring equation of something, it seems to suck out all the good stuff. You know, its like in order to be a modern of the temporary translation, it has to be almost on a third rate level. They suck out all the elegance of, of the language. You know they suck it all the beautiful politic throws, you know use of words, so I wanted to strike a fine balance. I wanted to say, okay we might have to use a little bit older translations, but its clear, its concise, it’s readable to the modern ear and the modern eye who’s going to understand it. Ah it’s still beautiful. Because you know what Chris, if you have a Classic like Saint John of the Cross, we don’t want to dump it down such an extent that it looses the beauty that John put into it. You know we want to keep John’s language, we want to keep Johns beautiful choice of words, the beautiful prose. So, we choose the best translations we can to fit all those different desires that we have.

But I also comment what distinguishes our Classics our products from other publishers, and the best way to do it is to look at ‘em on SaintBenedictPress.com because we have spent a lot of money, a lot time into choosing and designing the most beautiful books possible. These are quality works and so, Saint of the Cross or Saint Siena, you know that’s quality piece of work therefore, it should have a quality typesetting. It should be beautiful to see on the page, it should have the quality material, bind material. So guess what, if you read it one time it’s not going to fall apart in your hands with chips of glue falling on your lap, which many publishers do it. They just take the shortcuts to you know to get it as cheap as possible. We chose quality and then of course we found a preeminent designers in book publishing to help us design and choose the most beautiful outlook possible to go in the cover of our books, they are gorgeous. I have gone to tradeshows, I have talked to people, I’ve been on other radio shows, everybody that looks at our book says, “This is the most beautiful edition I have seen,” and there is multiple editions you know. We are not publishing something that they are just one off, no, no. There are multiple editions. But if you can take one look at our titles, you see at the most beautiful one out there.

Chris Cash: All right, we are going to take a second to hear from our sponsor and we come, we’ll be speaking more with Conor Gallagher about the Catholic Classic Series and Saint Benedict Press Bibles. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

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Chris Cash: And we are back on the Catholic Spotlight with Conor Gallagher talking about the Saint Benedict Press, Catholic Classic Series as well as the new Bible translations that they have coming out now. Conor, do you have a personal favorite among the Classics that you find is really meaningful to you and your life?

Conor Gallagher: Well, that’s tough, that’s tough.

Chris Cash: Well, you haven’t read all of them?

Conor Gallagher: Well, I have certainly tried that’s for sure. But you know here is something interesting about our line of Classics; we got the really old stuff like an Imitation of Christ, right? But we also got some new stuff, because there are Catholic thinkers out there like G.K. Chesterton, okay that are fairly recent you know. I mean, he didn’t lived too long and his works such as Heretics or his works such as Orthodoxy, I mean they are Classics period you know. They don’t have to be old to be a classic and so, that is in our line of Classics as well. So, if you are a Chesterton fan, go to SaintBenedictPress.com or I should mention CatholicCompany.com who carries our products all of ‘em and you can see our beautiful edition at CatholicCompany.com. But it’s a tough question, what’s my favorite you know because Chesterton’s just fun you know. I mean, you can read any given line in his stuff and you just almost start laughing, but then there’s also other Catholic Classic’s like Robert Hugh Benson’s novels, like Lord of the World. I mean, that is you know I remember a few years back Father came out and that was hugely successful, but the predecessor who Father a books was Robert Hugh Benson’s great classic called Lord of the World, its apocalyptic novel. It’s a wonderful piece of Catholic literature, that’s you know said, so if you are looking for a novel you know something fun to read, that’s not like so heavy like Dark Night of Soul. Pick Robert Hugh Benson stuff, they are from a more an academic setting – standpoint we have Cardinal Newman work of Idea of a University.

Now, I’m Adjunct professor and philosophy and gosh, I wish I could have signed all my students to read that book, they are not going to have ‘em we are too busy doing other. But it’s becoming very popular for Catholic colleges around the country to have their freshman read idea of the university, because that is an amazing work about what as a Catholic what our studies ought to be. And so, that was favorite kind of in an academic studying, so I can’t really answer. But if you pin me down and I was speaking at a ProLife conference recently, a training seminar for ProLife that’s in South Carolina, and I said you know maybe, maybe this is the most important – well, first I said, Chris, I said, “If you were to go to a deserted island which Classic should you take you know and you are going to be stranded there forever? Which classic should you take? And I said, “Any of ‘em you want, specially the spiritual Classics because they are all saying the same thing. Now, I’m not saying don’t just read one you know or just read one, I’m saying you got to read more because they all have different implications into our lives but they are all saying the gospel message. They are all saying how faith, hope and love. They are all saying abandon yourself to Divine Providence, like one our great classics, they are all saying imitate Christ, they are all saying you know develop a Devout life, they are all saying be a little flower for god you know just like the Story of a Soul by Saint Therese of Lisieux…

Chris Cash: But certainly each of them speaks to people on a different way and some of the messages speak louder to certain people that they were to others.

Conor Gallagher: Absolutely. You know and that’s why its kind of a joke as I take any of ‘em because if you are going through a – okay for example as a husband and father I got six kids on the way, and so I – I said a minute ago and I didn’t finish the statement ‘cause I got sidetracked about the funny things you know take any of ‘em.  But if you pin me down to what’s the most important one for you, what’s your favorite, I think I would say Abandonment to Divine Providence by Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade’s, if I can’t say the French Version but its de Caussade’s Abandonment to Divine Providence. This is why, yes I’m a businessman, yes I used to work as a lawyer, yes I teach one philosophy class, the mostly Chris I’m a husband of my lovely wife Ashley who is pregnant with our six kid. I’m a father of all these other children running around my house, that’s where my holiness is found, that’s where my holiness is really going to be tested. And so, abandonment to Divine Providence I think is my favorite Chris because it tells you, it instructs you how to find holiness, sanctity and the daily duties of your life in the needy greedy stuff of lie.

And I explain them my preference for that right to the book about god is not a lofty idea, god is not a theological concept, he is a real being that is found in our hands, in our feet and on our knees, he is found in doing the dishes, he is found in changing diapers, he is found in working hard to pay the bill, to cut the grass, to do the laundry, that’s where he is found. Jesus Christ for us became – he didn’t become a Rabi, he became a carpenter in a poor family to show us holiness is found in the things of life, in the stuff of life. And I think more than any of the other classics, probably Abandonment of Providence addresses that the most and so, I was pinned down I’ll probably say that for those reasons it’s my favorite spiritual one.

Chris Cash: And what seems to be the most popular of the books in the series?

Conor Gallagher: Well, you know its interesting, its – you know its very *** in a certain way, it depends on the season, it depends on what was going on with the revelation of Mother Theresa 49, I think its 49 year long dark night of the Soul and her new book, which we don’t publish but I got to recommend because of the beautiful edition of – I’m sure you can find it on CatholicCompany.com. So, go there and get Mother Theresa’s book on – but Dark Night of the Soul sure picked up and it got really popular, because people were saying what is this dark night you know, if the Christ is fake, is it turning your back on god, is it god turning his back on you and you can – of course you realize that’s not, that not it at all and I won’t go into what it is. But people wanted to return to the source, which is Saint John of the Cross. So, that was definitely for a while our best seller and Abandonment is getting very popular. A while back some of our titles like T Dolorous Passion by Anne Catherine Emmerich and her other stuff like the life of the Virgin Mary, some of her other mystical experiences you know that the Interest in the Passion of Christ by Mel Gibson certainly got away a little bit, but that’s a very popular title as well Dolorous Passion because you know of the movie. And with his movie if you don’t know, The Passion of Christ was based on this particular book called the Dolorous Passion of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

So, you know it really depends on the season, it depends on what is going on in culture, but those – you know they are all pretty popular; it’s hard to say which one is the most. It all depends on the time.

Chris Cash: And luckily for Catholic Company, we are able to due a minor misprinting episode, we were able to get copies of the Dark Night of the Soul out to all of or Catholic Company reviewers a few weeks ago. Thank you very much guys.

Conor Gallagher: Great.

Chris Cash: So, hopefully, we will be seeing some interesting reviews of Dark Night of the Soul coming in over the next few weeks to kind of talk about modern feelings, about that particular book. And that excites me just to, to hear how it’s affecting people in their everyday lives, everyday.

Conor Gallagher: Yes, that’s awesome, Chris. That’s a great thing, I wish there were more opportunities to do with all of our books, because part of our mission statement was Saint Benedict Press, Chris, we are not trying to rehash the same old stuff all the time you know. There is some plenty of other publishers doing that, we are trying to make these classics and I used two key words when I worked in initial stages, attractive and accessible. Those are the two killers if you will, that you know our decision making is based upon. Attractive and accessible, because we want people, especially young people to see these classics are applicable to today in your life today, they are not just something of the past. So, that’s great, you are getting to do that that little survey because I wish we could do that with all of those.

Chris Cash: Well, you know when we started this interview 25 minutes ago, Conor was a little concerned that he wouldn’t be able to talk for more than about 10 or 15 minutes and be interesting, but it seems like you have certainly gone well past your initial list and its there.

Conor Gallagher: Well, it seems to happen if you – you know early in the morning Chris, sometimes it’s hard to get your motor running, but I tell you what, I came into this business for a reason. You started getting me to talk about the Classics and our publishing plan of New Bibles and you know, you get me talking about this stuff and boy, it turns on and I start going, so.

Chris Cash: Well, you know and this is exciting time, at least in Catholic publishing I think, because there are so many new and interesting things coming out and we are re-discovering all the time. The ancient wisdom of those who have come before and so, this is just a greater opportunity to go back and discover some of these great things that we’ve known in our faith for so long, yet we seem to forget about it. And everybody they go out on their modern vision whereas trying to figure out and they find themselves and figure out their faith. And what they believe when in reality there is just this wealth of things, of resources that people can go to where those who have gone before have worked out so much, and have brought so much to the table that we can come to a better understanding of what our faith is and how to apply it in real everyday lives.

Conor Gallagher: Yes, you are exactly right Chris. You know I’ll leave you with this. Every person who is listening to this, every person who is going to listen this for years and years in the future, they are all going to have one thing in common. They are all going to be coming from different countries, different situations, different family lives whatever; they are all going to have one thing in common. They are looking for something, they are looking for something. A lot of them don’t even know what they are looking for. A lot of them aren’t Catholic, a lot of them are fallen away Catholics, a lot of them are Catholics, but they are saying why am I not getting what I feel like I should be getting from my faith, why am I not getting from the Eucharist what I feel like I should be getting?

And here is the interesting thing about the Classics, Chris, the church has the answer. The church has the answer for what you are looking for. Of course it’s Christ and its Christ taking us directly to the father for our eternal salvation, but it’s a little bit more involved than that. I wish it was just simply you know that simple. And so, the great Classics are the churches way of answering the question what am I searching for in this world right now. And so, that’s why people, every person should pick up a Classic because it answers, it answers the question that you as an individual have in your faith journey.

Chris Cash: Well, thank you Conor for coming on and for talking about the Classics. And I very much look forward to seeing more Classics and more bibles and more interesting things coming out of Saint Benedict Press in the future.

Conor Gallagher: Thank you, Chris so much. Keep up the good work you do.

Chris Cash: All right, God bless you.

Speaker: Thank you for listening to Catholic Spotlight introduction of the Catholic Company. Your story for over 10,000 books to gift and make a difference. Find us online at CatholicCompany.com. You can find more podcast in the Catholic Spotlight at CatholicSpotlight.com. And if you have a question, a comment or would like to be featured in our intro, call our voicemail at 206 -312 -0069, we would love to hear from you. You can find more intro on being seated in our intro at CatholicSpotlight.com as well as announcements about future interviews. Have a great day and god bless.

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Transcript of Interview with Conor Gallagher about Catholic Classics Series. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

The Catholic Classics Series is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-catalog/45/Classics/