Customer Reviews

The Snakebite Letters: Devilishly Devious Secrets for Subverting Society as Taught in Tempter's Training School

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a followup to C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, and, while not as good as the orginal, it is an excellent way to get a "tour" of the current problems in the church. It has the merit of a humorous approach to problems ranging from priests and professors who discourage faith in Catholic colleges to a short discussion of confusion and its role in teaching people that sophistication is better than truth.

A second set of diabolical dialog between a senior tempter (Snakebite) and his young protege (Braintwister) in the style of the Screwtape Letters of C.S. Lewis. He captures the tone and insight of the original masterpiece, giving short chapters of very funny and often uncomfortable insight into how easily we can find our best intentions twisted to serve evil ends, while still feeling "pious" and "spiritual."

This book more focuses on the institutional strategies - how the church can have its ends twisted, and still profess faithfulness. Such things as bad translations of scripture, bad and vapid worship music, emphasizing half of a truth and missing the whole, and so on. His chapters on the homosexualizing of the Catholic clergy, written 10 years ago, are worth reading in light of today's problems.

Much recommended.

This is a fabulous read. I could not put the book down until I knew just how the advice from one of the devil's hench-men to an underling would turn out. Kreeft is witty, out-right funny and deadly serious all at the same time. I was simultaneously laughing out loud and horrified to recognize my own behavior. How does an author make that possible? How could I not have known about this book earlier? The book is also full of truth and moral lessons, helpful in any age, but particularly difficult to find in the modern world and impossible to find in such an enjoyable manner.

I never thought the day would come when I gave a Peter Kreeft book a poor grade. But the day has come.

This book is written in the style of the classic "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis. I don't fault Kreeft for falling short of the brilliance of Lewis, for almost any author is going to miss so high a mark. But I do fault Kreeft for failing to tell a consistent story over the course of this book. In "The Screwtape Letters" Lewis shows you the life of a young man (from the perspective of his tempters) from the time he becomes a Christian, all the way through to his death. We see him while he is a baby in his faith. We see him fall into sin, and then repent. We see him struggle in World War II and then follow him to his death. Finally we get to see a glimpse of him as he rises into Glory. We can see in this young man our own lives, our own struggles and our own temptations. And we can hope for his reward.

"The Snakebite Letters" fails utterly to imitate this style. The man in this book has just converted to Christianity. Then, out of nowhere, he's sleeping with some girl we never even heard of. Then, just as suddenly, she's having an abortion. Then we never hear about her again! Then there's several chapters about him attending classes at a liberal Catholic university. Then the book just ends. What a disappointment! The chapters don't flow at all. It is as if each chapter was written independently and then hobbled together into a book.

Peter Kreeft is one of my favorite authors. I get the feeling that either he didn't spend much time on this book, or that it was heavily edited by someone else. It's a pity. Kreeft is one of the few authors that could pull off a legitimate update of "The Screwtape Letters." But he missed with this one...

Normally I love Peter Kreeft's works, but this one isn't sitting right with me. I have really thought hard about why it doesn't sit right, why I don't think it warrants five stars, like most of what I read by Dr. Kreeft.

There is of course the obvious: by even writing this book Dr. Kreeft opens himself to attacks and comparisons because he is not C.S. Lewis. Yet, I found this book to be at times clear, concise, incisive, and important. That isn't why it doesn't "sit right."

Perhaps it suffers from weaknesses in content, and form, that will deny it a place like the one reserved for C.S. Lewis' classic original? But that is self-evident. I didn't read this thinking it would outdo what Lewis has already done. This is no classic of English literature, as Screwtape is, but I don't think it pretends to be. It acknowledges the importance of that seminal work by Lewis by paying homage to it through imitation.

So why doesn't this book sit right? It feels even like a terrible book in some respects.

Many valid criticisms of this book have been raised here: there is no continuity of narrative as there was in Lewis' book. Kreeft is too focused on politics and the culture war and the resultant work is perhaps too myopic, polemical, and hard hitting as a result.

Perhaps both criticisms are only somewhat off the mark, even if they point in some way to people's valid discomfort with the text. Kreeft, if anything, arguably had a too ecumenical and "liberal" agenda when writing this book.

I think my biggest problem with the text is that PERSONAL sins, the sort of everyday and real temptations that will lead a soul away from God that Lewis addresses, are almost totally absent from this book. This book is ALL about the "culture war" and "politics." Perhaps Kreeft thought C.S. Lewis had already done that, and his book was designed to be "different," but I think our Church in the US is suffering from a such a myopic focus on these worldly political things, and this book perhaps plays into that. Consider, as many priests and authors like Kreeft are so focused on the culture war, what is being lost? What aren't we hearing?

This review will look at contraception as one example of what I am trying to get at, however we could substitute almost any other personal sin for it and make the same point.

Kreeft portrays contraceptive sex in marriage as basically okay in this book. Its just that unitive and procreative sex is better. In this book, marital sex, even contraceptive sex, is abominable to the demons. The only things that cause the demons pain are homosexual sex, premarital sex, and affairs (the culture war stuff). God's law about marriage and sex seems limited to no sex outside of marriage. That is the only real sin there is. With all due respect to Dr. Kreeft, that is a very protestant and very incoherent point of view.

Consider this passage from "Snakebite" Dr. Kreeft's demon-character who takes the place of C.S. Lewis' :

"Just think, Braintwister, what a horrible time tempters have who are assigned to faithful married people who time after time enact their disgusting little animal ecstasies within the secure framework of the Enemy's law, like a great painting surrounded by a great frame. Those poor devils have none of the ghoulish glee you had at the two little animals running from the Enemy in rebellion before, and in shame after, the deed. Those poor devils feel nothing but pain at the animals' unmitigated love, especially if they hold nothing back and do not even contracept."

This passage is silly, philosophically weak, and not very Catholic. Contraceptive sex in marriage constitutes grave matter, and thus has one of the necessary components of a mortally sinful act. For Dr. Kreeft who has no problem speaking about the evils of gay marriage, to write such a passage as above may even amount to hypocrisy. Those who fight gay marriage, but gleefully accept contraceptive heterosexual marriage (or simply ignore it as a problem), are philosophically incoherent and blatantly hypocritical.

Also, if you ever a hear a lay person (or a protestant) angrily condemning someone who is dealing with same-sex attraction, or someone who has had an abortion, but meantime goes home and is using chemical contraceptives, you are hearing (and seeing) the very definition of the Pharisee. Homosexual sex is wrong because it is sex that is removed from the procreative function. The contracepting couple is guilty of much the same thing. And most chemical contraceptives are abortifacients!

And, unless one has struggled to stay chaste within the context of marriage by living the totality of the Church's teaching on sex and sexuality, how will one have empathy for those who are stuck in sinful states? So many who struggle to live the Church's teaching have failed time and time again in trying to live them out. The most so many of us can claim is that our failures get less frequent, and we are on the road to someday (God willing) being holy.

Here is what bothers me: every time I read a book like this, and increasingly every time I go to Church, I hear a constant message about the evils of our culture. Abortion, gay marriage, etc. etc. etc. These things ARE dangerous and evil and need to be preached on, but we are preaching to the choir. In Church we run the risk of turning the message into something about "those people." The Gospel is here to condemn those "liberals," those who advocate so-called "gay marriage," those who advocate for "abortion rights." Everything is "them them them."

But how many such people are REALLY in the pews? Not many these days. And what do you never seem to hear about?

What about personal sin; the way we ALL offend God by our actions? When was the last time you heard a homily on the evils of contraception for instance? Or avarice? Or dishonesty? The average Church has a VERY long communion line, and no one going to confession, and everyone is contracepting. However, the message from a book like this, and from too many pulpits, is that the problem lies with "those people;" the liberals, the pro-choicers, the homosexuals.

And this is dangerous, because it leads to self-righteousness and a judgmental disposition that can lead one to believe that getting to heaven is just about buying into a certain political (or theological) ideology. And that too is protestant. Getting to heaven is NOT just buying into an ideology. We AREN'T saved by faith alone, which amounts to having solid doctrine alone.

With Kreeft, and with those clerics so focused on a war with "those people," we run the risk of not preaching the truth to the people sitting in our pews. We run the risk of not encouraging repentance on the part of our congregations, but instead encouraging judgement.

I think this is my problem with this book, and about all books that focus purely on the culture war. Is the Devil behind abortion? Yes! I abortion evil? Yes! Should our focus be on reaching out to women in crisis situations, trying to show them the truth with love, and standing with them? YES! Is being pro-life only about voting and buying into a political/ideological construct? NO!!! And no, I am not saying it is okay for a Catholic to vote pro-choice. It isn't!! But no Catholic who really understood the depth of what the Church teaches here WOULD! And that is the problem.

And if we are judging others for taking innocent human life in the womb, but are popping birth-control pills that often do exactly that, what exactly are we doing? We are acting like nothing but pharisees.

Perhaps its because I just left a parish where the only things preached on were political, never personal. It was a sin to vote a certain way, a sin to support a certain candidate, but never a sin to DO anything. Contraception? We'll only mention that at the NFP Mass at 9:00 at night when no one who isn't already in "the know" is around. When we do present it we won't actually talk about sin or anything... its just an alternative to contraception...

But I think its more than that. I think there is a mindset out there that places all the blame on the other, and keeps us from judging ourselves harshly. The Christian however is called to be his OWN WORST critic and to deal with others with charity. C.S. Lewis artfully avoided the trap of making Screwtape polemical in that sense. Kreeft doesn't; and his book just doesn't sit well as a result.

of the general themes Prof. Kreeft covers in his other, more "serious" academic works.

As a former government bureaucrat (recovering nicely, thank you!), I particularly enjoyed the narrative of what happens to various tempters who fail in their missions - they get assigned to Hell's version of "sensitivity training." <Heh.>

I am inclined to recommend the reader to stay with Prof. Kreeft's academic work, and leave the related "stirring fiction" to one of his favorite writers, C.S. Lewis.

If Amazon had a half-star rating, I'd give this 3.5 - a B grade, as a 4 star would be an A-.

My dear Wormwood,

Obviously you are making excellent progress. This volume from the often dangerous Dr. K----- is sure to be harmless in the long run. Whenever he speaks in his capacity as a philosopher, writing in a philosophical way about philosophical things, he is sharper than Michael's sword when it was unsheathed against Our Father. In this book the doctor makes the gleeful mistake of copying the work of a man whose insights into the nuances of human nature were far greater than his own will ever be. If you can keep him on the path of imitating a man he can never imitate well, you will easily blunt him as a tool of the Enemy.

Ah, how much destruction Lewis' book did to our unholy cause! It was frightening how much insight he had into our methods of temptation, however wrong he may have been on a certain facts. How much better is this book by the current doctor, who has such a mind for abstract truths but such a tin ear for the subtler movements of the human soul. And how wonderfully ironic that at one point in the book he writes, "Only scholars can be passionate about abstractions," when he himself spends the entire book writing passionately about abstractions, and devotes almost no pages at all to the methods which our illustrious Spiritual Order utilizes to catch souls in our nets. As if we attack humans primarily in the realm of the mind! Of course nearly everything he says in the book is true, and undoubtedly its light will shine brightly on the few human souls who read past the first chapter, but that light is abstract enough that it will hopefully fade within a short time.

As you know, my dear nephew, for some time it has not been your mission to capture the soul of Dr. K----- for our domain (which by now would be almost impossible) but to render him ineffectual in the realm of Catholic apologetics and evangelism. The two best ways of accomplishing this are: (1) to keep him stuck in the realm of abstractions, never understanding human nature the way Lewis did so that he might actually connect with readers on a basic level, and presenting human behavior in the most cartoonish fashion; and (2) to keep him so much in love with Lewis that he compromises the necessity and uniqueness of the Catholic Church (which we happily kept Lewis from entering to the bitter end) in his apologetical works, out of a misplaced desire to be as famous throughout the various schismatic groups as Lewis was.

I look forward to your next report. Do not let me down.

Your affectionate uncle
SCREWTAPE

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