/lit/ - Literature

This doesn't sound like reality.

>>5380505
I'd read that book.

>>5380514

When you're rich enough, you choose your reality. Trust me, these Russian businessmen know how far they can go with reality.

>>5380516

I've read it already.

>>5380524
No, I mean a book where the plot starts according to your op

>>5380539

There's Herman Melville's Conman. Some dude who's either Socrates or Satan comes aboard a boat and talks everybody to death.

>>5380558
I'll keep it in mind if I ever come across it, although the old student challenge angle adds some noir potential that I like.

most of russians are orthodox, not catholic
i.e. most of them are in fact atheists but think of the russian orthodox church as of their church
so read something about how those churches differ, i suppose

>>5380601

I'm aware of thatm but Ivanovitch converted to Catholicism and specifically wants me to try and convert his guests to the Catholic faith. I'll welcome any good book on the eastern faith, though, as that'd be a good reference point.

My employer holds atheists in cold contempt and wants me to be his fiery weapon of religion. He wants a majority of converts by the end of the 6-month cruise. If I fail that, I won't get my bonus and I won't get to cruise again.

There will be a priest onboard. He'll keep count of how many I get to convert.

This is the craziest job I've ever had.

Here's the most worthwhile thinker Catholicism ever produced, OP.

>>5380638

I have a book by Eckhart, a collection of his sermons and other writings; should I go with yours as well?

honestly i hardly imagine multiple russian businessmen who agreed to travel for 6 months with a catholic preacher and a priest instead of, you know, doing their business and going to sauna with girls... hm, do you have whores aboard btw

>>5380644

They're working all the time, but for their type of work, they don't have to be physically anywhere. Most are CEO's or bosses of some sort. They have entire armies doing their work.

They'll conduct business from the ship. They'll work amongst themselves. We're talking about a thousand people and their assistants.

Yes, there will be whores. The best of the best, and they all came with a health check.

>>5380618
Maybe you should learn more about Orthodoxy and how Ivanovitch's guests might respond.

On a different note, I think the whole idea of convincing someone to believe what you believe is dumb. The religion you join should reflect the beliefs you personally came to about God.

>>5380638
Eckhart is not really Catholic. He was more like a pantheist. Ignore him.

>>5380657
>On a different note, I think the whole idea of convincing someone to believe what you believe is dumb.

I could be an atheist for all you know. Convincing someone of what you don't believe yourself is even dumber, is it not?

>The religion you join should reflect the beliefs you personally came to about God.

Well then, that's convincing them to believe what I personally believe, is it not?

Give me a bit OP I will try type something up. I don't have sources, I'm mostly thinking of method. You've probably already thought of method but maybe we can talk to one and other and arrive at the best way.

>>5380505
Well here is my recommendation.
Lewis and Chesterton are best as an introduction, so Mere Christianity, Orthodoxy and Heretics.
2nd level would probabbly be Dostoyevsky. If there was someone who could convert me it'd be him.
3rd level would be Aquinas since he brings everything to a high, logical level.

Grey Eminence - Huxley

>>5380698

Lewis brought me to faith. I'm reading Chesterton right now, The Everlasting Man, and I dig that stuff. Professors and Prehistoric Men is a badass chapter if I've ever read any. The bitchest slap in scientism's face.

Aquinas is on the list. Thanks!

Actually:

OP, this isn't going to work for the following reason: in order to preach effectively you have to obtain their respect, specifically respect for your way of life. You would have to be a devout religious man and show them by your virtues how your way of life is better than theirs. If you get up there like a garrulous academic and go on and on about theology, metaphysics, history, sociology, natural science, and so on, you will just baffle them and they will see through it and eventually dismiss you. The difference between the discussion you had with your friend and this presentation of yours is that your friend was obviously already looking for God, but it sounds like many of these men are going to be indifferent. So you would have to impress upon them the power and majesty of God, and the only way to do that is if you were endowed with grace and humility with God so that your character made an impression upon them. They ought to see the Holy Spirit inside you. You should come across as Ecclesiastes or St. Dominic, not a professor. If you had lived as a monk for 30 years and just stood up and read a few psalms and talked with the spirit of humility and wisdom on eternity, death, hope of salvation, and hell, etc., you'd make a real impression.

If I were you I would go in seclusion right up until the time that you were invited on the ship. I wouldn't read any apologetics. I'd read Aquinas' Summa, Augustine's Confessions and City of God, Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises, the Bible (esp. psalms and gospels), and St. John of the Cross. I would spend the entire time praying to God for help and fasting and doing penance. I would refuse to take money for the trip except basic living costs and maybe just a bit of compensation to make up for your time away from work (because God probably isn't going to help you if you are doing this for money and not to win souls for him).

>[16] Behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and simple as doves. [17] But beware of men. For they will deliver you up in councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues. [18] And you shall be brought before governors, and before kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the Gentiles: [19] But when they shall deliver you up, take no thought how or what to speak: for it shall be given you in that hour what to speak. [20] For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.

Will you be speaking to atheists, to Jews, to Christians, to a mix? They will come up with various objections, and in order to satisfy them all you would have to have broad learning, would you not? But if you have broad learning, on not the Spirit, then you won't be able penetrate past their intellects; but if you have only the Spirit and no learning, they won't understand you. If you try and depend solely on your own learning, then perhaps God will mock you by making your work fruitless.

I'm not wise OP. I don't have much learning either; but I know that there is a difference between academic learning and wisdom. Academic learning makes your proud and to an extent blind, vain. Wisdom is humbling. A learned man and a wise man make different impressions. A learned man can be interesting, but a wise man is graceful and gets respect.

Any time I've experienced wisdom I've felt as though it came directly from God.

> [3] For perverse thoughts separate from God: and his power, when it is tried, reproveth the unwise: [4] For wisdom will not enter into a malicious soul, nor dwell in a body subject to sins. [5] For the Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from the deceitful, and will withdraw himself from thoughts that are without understanding, and he shall not abide when iniquity cometh in.

"thoughts that are without understanding": a lot of professors are learned but they are without understanding, they are vain, their thoughts are vain.
In order to be wise you have to cease from evil and obey God, that's the only way. It does more than reading does. Another quote goes something like, "he that does justice shall get the understanding thereof." You can get an understanding of justice from a purely academic and mental standpoint, but it does not compare to the understanding of justice that comes from experiencing it, doing it. Similarly, the understanding of God that comes from theology isn't much compared to the direct experience.

>>5380760
>Similarly, the understanding of God that comes from theology isn't much compared to the direct experience.

Aquinas said that all of his works (including the Summa) were straw compared to the secret things that God had revealed to him. He said it in a way that wasn't boastful; he was more or less expressing the vanity of his own works and the supremacy of God's.

>>5380774
How many summae did Aquinas write and are you telling him the thousand page cycle?

>>5380779
I mean this
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/

>>5380782
I'm guessing Loyola's principles didn't stick with you then. Please try some of the more painful ones if you get around to reading them.

>>5380787
I'm not sure what you are saying mate.

>>5380738

Nice post.

>>5380662
>I could be an atheist for all you know. Convincing someone of what you don't believe yourself is even dumber, is it not?

I was talking about Ivanovitch wanting to convert people. You're just doing your job.

>Well then, that's convincing them to believe what I personally believe, is it not?

What?

>>5380790
I'm saying the instant the phrase "perinde ac cadaver" gets adopted by wealthy Russians you're stuck on a boat with, you're going to need to find more than a broken leg's worth of comfort in the tortures of early martyrs. Saying it to the boss might be okay but not the masses as a disposable servant to the boss.

St Thomas Aquinas,
Cathechism: read the Cathechism of St Pius X as it is the traditional one. The new Cathechism has for example removed the Guardian Angels from the cath faith.

I would advise to stay away from the media promoted books that try to present Catholics as Inquisitors only and Talmud as a book for children.

OP, how do you intend on opening? What are they? Are they secular atheists, Jews, Christians of various sorts, a mix of all?

Are you going to start by rigorously proving the existence of God and then proving that the monotheistic religions are the only viable ones, and that of these Christianity is the true one if any of them are true, and that of the Christian churches the Catholic Church is the true Church?
Or do you appeal to a modern ethos? Talk about the danger of modern secularism and doubt, about nihilism/unbelief, about how human's need some kind of spiritual consolation, and that if we don't have a church like the Catholic Church people in greater and greater numbers will succumb to pernicious New Age "spirituality"?
Or do you expect them to be Russian Orthodox and so you can talk about the great schism and the history of the early Church?
Do you appeal to their emotions, talking about death and eternity and about how we ought to live as though we are going to be judged for our actions just in case we are, and how of all the religions the Catholic Church provides the most consolation for souls and preparation for the Final Judgement?
Do you just get up there and say, "I'm a Catholic. Catholicism is the true religion. If you are outside of the Church you will not be saved. Ask me questions."

How do you intend on starting OP?

>>5380816
I'm still not following. Please be more direct.

>>5380505
>I'm a literary scholar and one of my students ended up being a millionnaire.
tell me what you told him please

>>5380838
Read things before you recommend them and you'll be able to discuss their most famous passages and themes with ease.

>>5380838
>Are they secular atheists, Jews, Christians of various sorts, a mix of all?

Bit of everything. They're a thousand, I expect atheists mostly, or lax Christians. Probably some Jews as well.

>Are you going to start by rigorously proving the existence of God and then proving that the monotheistic religions are the only viable ones, and that of these Christianity is the true one if any of them are true, and that of the Christian churches the Catholic Church is the true Church?

That'd be the plan, but God help me.

>>5380842

He was studying business and had to take something on the side, out of his faculty. He took my literary class.

>>5380505
Black people

>>5380850
But maybe you taught him something that ended up being key to his success.

What did you teach him? Give a summary.

OP, I can't really help you much because I figure Catholicism is really just another set of blinders on a perspective of a greater, wider reality.

But, as a former Muslim I will say --

If your job is to convert, argue from emotion. Find their common weaknesses, and find where God or Catholic thinking has alleviated these weaknesses, by any means. For example, guilt. Everyone has guilt. The Abrahamic God is the master of separating you from your guilt. So find apologetics who speak about things like our innate proneness to doing stupid shit and how much proof this is that we need God. Then change the weakness, change the apologetic, and repeat.

>>5380846
That's what I expected. That's a tough audience. That's why I was suggesting you'd have to come across more as a prophet than as a professor to get through to them, because appealing solely to their reason will be difficult as their objections would be so numerous. There are just so many things you would have to address if you appealed to their reason to effect a conversion, but perhaps your friend isn't expecting conversions (it would be silly of him to expect that) but rather for you to convince them that there is a rational case to be made for Catholicism.
There are just so many deceptions in the air today it is difficult to know where to begin. Seeing as you expect most of them to be atheists I think your strategies ought to mostly consist of addressing their objections not just to Catholicism but to religion and belief and the existence of the soul generally. You'd have to talk to them about how metaphysical materialism is just one arbitrary position among many, and that it's ascendancy in the modern world is not because it is true but because of political reasons. But you'd have to dip into why Christianity and not Judaism or Islam, and why the Catholic Church and not any other, at some point regardless.
Maybe read Aristotle's On Rhetoric and other works of that kind.

>>5380843
I didn't recommend them as having read them. I'm saying that's what I'd read if I was in your situation for preparation. I haven't read them.

>>5380660
>Misunderstanding/opposing Eckhart

Please read more, you disgusting pleb.

>>5380890
>I'm saying that's what I'd read if I was in your situation for preparation. I haven't read them.
This gives me hope you will one day get yourself killed, but OP seems like an alright dude, so maybe recommend whatever the opposite of what you would do in his place.

>>5380872
Also to come back to reasons --

Nobody really gives a fuck about philosophy, or metaphysics, or why this and not that -- they are just looking to appease themselves, become satisfied. Some kind of higher power exists and innately we know it so there is a dissatisfaction if we can't believe it. Just bring up all their other dissatisfactions that exist as a human and again, point to where god can save you from your weakness.

Playing to an audience that understands and seeks to listen to philosophy won't get you anywhere, because most of them are smart enough not to be catholics.

>>5380558
I've searched for this story and can't find it. You sure that's the right title?

>>5380618

OP, assuming this is real, how much of your time will be arguing against the Russian Orthodox Church?

Russians have been fighting (rather successfully) against Catholicism for centuries.

If you're looking to battle anti-Catholic sentiment among Russians, you should probably read Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor, then attempt to form a rational and compelling argument against it.

>>5380934

He probably meant The Confidence-Man.

>>5380952
Oh, wow. I should have known that. Thanks.

http://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Sententiae_%28Isidorus_Hispalensis%29
http://la.wikisource.org/wiki/De_locis_sanctis

Have fun.

>>5380505
Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, by Vladimir Lossky
The Sickness Unto Death, by Kierkegaard
Silence, by Shusaku Endo
A Theology of Liberation, by Gustavo Gutiérrez
Alone with the Alone, by Henry Corbin
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, by Spinoza
The Communist Manifesto
Capital

>>5380939
yeah i'd attempt to convert an atheist to catholicism over attempting to convert a russian orthodox to catholicism 100x over.

it's tricky because the two faiths are so close in some ways - but so far in others. maybe op can read up on the catholic church's ongoing dialogue with the orthodoxy.

http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/2842/the_russian_orthodox_church_and_the_papacy.aspx

a lot it might just come down to reassurances that orthodox liturgy and cultural practices will be maintained if there's a union, like the catholics have done in anglican churches that moved into communion with rome

>>5380843
You're doing exactly that, mate. As a general reader in the thread I'd like to know what and/or why (whichever comes easier) the matter of pain comes into play.