The Catholic Book Club discussion

8. Dante has Virgil, but if you could have any person of literary/historical/religious significance take you on a guided, life-changing journey, who would you choose? (To keep it interesting, you can't say Jesus)

(With thanks to Emmy, who posed this question to Fr. Wetta.)

I think I would want St. Thomas Aquinas. I thought also about Sts. Augustine and Paul, but they each seem to me to have a severity that would make such a journey more arduous. St. Thomas, I think, has a softer appreciation of the failings of his fellow men, and would be an extraordinary intellectual and spiritual guide on such a journey.

It need not be a Catholic. Dante chose Virgil, who wasn't even a Christian. So I think I'd choose C.S. Lewis or G.K. Chesterton, who are two of my favorite authors.

There's always that risk of learning that our heroes are not the people we thought they were. Regardless, I would choose Plato.

I knew this would be a tricky one when I asked if, but I'm excited to see everyone's answers so far! I'm torn between GK Chesterton and Saint Joseph (my all-time favorite saint!)

Emmanuel wrote: "There's always that risk of learning that our heroes are not the people we thought they were. Regardless, I would choose Plato."

Virgil probably wasn't the person Dante thought he was.

I was also thinking about C. S. Lewis or Tolkien as a guide.

As for saints, I would choose St. Anselm of Canterbury. Here are a bunch of posts about him:

https://aclerkofoxford.blogspot.com/s...

C.S. Lewis chose George MacDonald as his guide.

Mother Teresa of Calcutta

Absolutamente truth in the "Great Divorce".

For the hell i would choose Oscar Wilde, to the purgatory G.K. Chesterton i reserve my answer for the heaven. I would not mind chosing to the Professor or Juan Manuel de Prada.

Fonch wrote: "For the hell i would choose Oscar Wilde, to the purgatory G.K. Chesterton i reserve my answer for the heaven. I would not mind chosing to the Professor or Juan Manuel de Prada."

Eh, Fonch, I'm still alive!

From Prada too. You don't have to be dead to guide me through the afterlife. I could have chosen Lewis as my purgatory guide because he always believed he'd end up in purgatory.

It is interesting to compare Beatriz's case with the girl in Pearl's poem.

By the way, since we're talking about purgatory, there's a very interesting novel by Ignatius Press (the same publisher that published Augustine Wetta's The Eighth Arrow) written by Michael Norton about purgatory. I'm sharing the link in case anyone is interested. A Hiker's Guide to Purgatory https://share.google/SzanKiA2tWFrh7rVk

Manuel wrote: "Fonch wrote: "For the hell i would choose Oscar Wilde, to the purgatory G.K. Chesterton i reserve my answer for the heaven. I would not mind chosing to the Professor or Juan Manuel de Prada."

Eh, ..."

LOL