My parish owes heartfelt thanks to visiting priests from Africa. Not long ago, my pastor visited two of them in their home diocese in Uganda. While he was there, a controversy flared up. From what I could tell by parsing the news report, a government official there was levying a Church tax on Catholics. Shades of Germany? So I duly quizzed my returning pastor, a keen advocate of tithing. “Have you learned any “enhanced tithing techniques”?  He shot back, “You read too much.”

Well, just maybe. A friend of mine, an algebra teacher, claims that he’d only read a book about X after experiencing X, but that I’d only experience X after reading a book about X. Right. I remind him that “fools rush in where wise men and women…” and so forth.

Still, an examination of my conscience might be in order. Do I read too much? Gentle reader, I hasten to share my scrutiny with you. So keep reading. I do so recalling that some years back the NOR asked its readers how many books they’d read in the past year. The mean answer: 48! Golly, good going!

Hoping to exculpate myself, I strive mightily, and I urge you to do the same, to avoid bad reading. Unless I’ve received a special dispensation, I shun the mainstream print media. Not for me, the L.A. Times. As for the newspaper of record, I commend my brother-in-law’s resolve to read the Sunday N.Y. Times only every other week. Let’s put aside, I say, the unending replay of what’s allegedly trending!

Of course, if we are to avoid bad reading, we must, even more, pursue good reading. Let’s try reading: Aristotle, sometimes in Greek; Cicero, sometimes in Latin; Dante, sometimes in Italian; Cervantes, sometimes in Spanish; Shakespeare, only in English; and Flannery O’Connor, always in American.

Okay, I admit that a high-caliber reading regime takes time away from neighborhood (and internet) chitty chat. But most of the chitty chat brings precious little bang. And in my neighborhood “talk time” is heavy on canine “poop patrol” advice, on who just bought a Tesla, and on digestive biscuits for seniors. It falls to me to lament canine, and especially Chihuahua, overbreeding.

To be sure, at times I need to re-calibrate my reading/life balance. But when last I crunched the numbers, it turned out that if I follow through on doing the dishes, taking out the trash, turning out the lights in empty rooms, flossing, swatting the flies (moscas vagabondas) that have infiltrated the house, and the like — well, blimey — I’m not left with much time for reading Thomas Aquinas and Flannery O’Connor, much less for the rest of the gang.

To make matters worse, I have to split my extra time playing chess. Catching more flak, I remind my pastor, a Cuban-American, of the legacy of the José Raúl Capablanca, the Cuban chess prodigy who became world champion (1921–1927). And I recommend to the serious scholars I know the splendid volume, authored by the bishop Ruy López (c. 1530–c.1580), The Art of the Game of Chess (republished by The Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Read it, I tell them!

Enough of this self-examination. Despite my past rigorist tendencies, I will admit to only peccadillos in the matter of reading. That is, I admit to, on occasion, reading too little. I hope, gentle reader, that should you examine yourself in this regard, you will fare as well.

As for my pastor, I will submit this blog post to him in hopes of advancing our dialogue! As a mark of my confidence in him, I have already encouraged him to consider becoming a chaplain for the local cell of the American Solidarity Party.