Catholic Spain has a new herald:
Juan Manuel de Prada
From acclaimed author to staunch apologist for the Church and the pope, including in L'Osservatore Romano.
His is one of the many stories of conversion from unbelief to the Christian faith, in Europe, speaking out
against the tyranny of the 'progressives'
ROME, October 12, 2009 – A new book out in Italy is a collection of interviews with converts to the Catholic faith, some of whom are prominent: from Jean-Claude Guillebaud of France to Janne Haaland Matlary of Norway, former deputy foreign minister of her country and an author of books that have been translated into various languages, one of which has a preface written by then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
The collection of interviews, published by Lindau, was written by Lorenzo Fazzini and is entitled:
Nuovi cristiani d'Europa. Dieci storie di conversione tra fede e ragione [New Christians of Europe. Ten stories of conversion, between faith and reason]".
And one of these converts is a contributor to
L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
He is the Spanish writer Juan Manuel de Prada, photographed here with the promotional cover of the 2003 novel that definitively sealed his success: "La vida invisible."
In his latest book, de Prada, 39, has collected the combative articles that he has written in defense of Catholicism, not only for the Spanish newspapers
ABC and
XL Semanal, but also for
L'Osservatore Romano, where he has been a contributor since 2007.
In just five months, five editions of the book have been issued in Spain. For one month, de Prada has also been one of the main voices of COPE, the most important Spanish Catholic radio broadcaster.
Last October 2,
L'Osservatore Romano translated and reprinted the preface to his book. In it, de Prada recalls how and when his "life changed direction."
It was the spring of 2005, and John Paul II had just died. De Prada found himself in Rome, and he "suddenly" wanted to adhere definitively to that "ancient freedom" which is the religious and cultural treasure of the Catholic Church: a freedom that is "the antidote to all the tyrannies of the world."
The book, in fact, is entitled:
La nueva tiranía. El sentido común frente al Mátrix progre (The new tyranny: Common sense against the 'progressive' Matrix).
The "progressive Matrix" is de Prada's name for the grand deception that he sees at work in the dominant culture in Europe: "The dictatorships of the past stifled personal freedom. The modern ones induce man to worship himself, and thus deny his own nature."
And again, he writes:
"The battle that is joined today tends to restore to men their authentic nature. If it succeeds – if the Matrix is dismantled – men will discover that they do not need to build towers in order to reach heaven, for the simple reason that heaven is already within them, even if the new tyranny seeks to strip it from them."
De Prada dedicated his book to his friend Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of OR.
The following is a translation of de Prada's preface to
La nueva tiranía.
chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1340484?eng=y
The original text is included on the Spanish edition of this page of
www.chiesa.
In fact, I cannot forget the first bylined article by De Prada in OR that I noticed because it was the one in which, for the first time, the Vatican, through the pages of the OR, debunks the widespread media-fed myth that Benedict XVI's red shoes are made by the designer house Prada - and the fact that the man who wrote the article was surnamed De Prada. Here is my translation posted in the PRF of that June 2008 article entitled 'Liturgical vestments according to Ratzinger'.
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