Catherine of Siena : The Dialogue
(Classics of Western Spirituality) by
Guiliana Cavallini
Most Inspirational Book Aside From The Bible
This is the crowning spiritual work of the only woman other than Teresa of
Avila to be granted the title of Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church. This
volume was simply called my book by the fourteenth-century Italian saint.
The aim of her book (one of the first books to see print in Spain, Germany,
Italy, and England), says Dr. Noffke in her Foreword, was the instruction
and encouragement of all those whose spiritual welfare was her concern.
Catherine was a mystic whose plunge into God plunged her deep into the
affairs of society, Church and the souls who came under her influence.
Professor Noffke goes on to call The Dialogue a great tapestry to which
Catherine adds stitch upon stitch until she is satisfied that she has
communicated all she can of what she has learned of the way of God. In
this, the sixth centenary of the great Dominicans death, we live in a time so
badly in need of her sense of institutional reform as flowing from Divine
truth, love and charity. Dr. Noffke says: In the opening pages of The

Dialogue Catherine presents a series of questions or petitions to God the
Father each of which receives a response and amplification. There is the
magnificent symbolic portrayal of Christ as the bridge. There are specific
discussions of discernment, tears (true and false spiritual emotion), truth,
the sacramental heart (mystic body) of the Church, divine providence,
obedience…. It is not so much a treatise to be read as it is a conversation
to be entered into with earnest leisure and leisurely earnest.
Personal Review: Catherine of Siena : The Dialogue (Classics of
Western Spirituality) by Guiliana Cavallini
This is one of the most important volumes in the Classics of Western
Spirituality series. More is commonly known of the life of this young saint
than her writings; she is the patron of many American parishes. Her
example and directions to high churchmen were an important corrective in
a pivotal moment of Church history. But one feels that the importance of
her writings is only now becoming clear. Few are familiar enough with
them.
Be warned: this twenty-something seer was austere. The transcriptions of
her locutions, done by her confreres, are not prettied up, as they should
not be. They convey a plain authenticity. Sentences and paragraphs run
on and are often difficult to untangle. It can be very slow going; any of
these dialogues can make for a wearying sitting. And the claim is
absolute: God talking directly to Catherine in her ecstatic state, she as the
mere transmitter, the confreres getting it down as best they can.
Of all the mysteries explicated here, however, the pinnacle and the unique
aspect is the discussion of the mechanism of the Mystical Body of Christ.
While a key and unique aspect of Catholicism that was there from the
beginning, only in century 20 was it beginning to be more fully explicated
by the likes of Bishop Sheen and Pius 12. The closest thing in
Protestantism to it is the concept of Christian fellowship, but the Mystical
Body is both more active and more exact than that. Many, including
surprisingly Catholics, will reject this teaching in the radical and awesome
form stated here. Of course, the writings and visions of saints are not
matters of faith, except to the extent they track definitive dogmatic
statements. But one would be challenged to explain how an untutored
youth outside any formal religious house could have uttered a theology of
this loftiness, depth, and sophistication. One thing is guaranteed: the
Mystical Body theology set out in Catherine's locutions will never leave you
-- the Divine Plan working itself out through the multiplicity of human gifts,
randomly distributed, by a God who is most pleased when individual
faithful share and exchange them toward Divine ends.
Many persons in and out of the Church are seeking spiritual experience of
one sort or another, as if pinching themselves to know that they are real.
They would be better off reading Dialogues nos. 6, 7, and 8, and
meditating on them for a year to the exclusion of anything else.

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