A review by wwatts1734
Pierced by a Sword by Bud Macfarlane Jr.
1.0
I have to be frank here. This is a thoroughly awful novel. It is poorly written. The dialogue was completely unbelievable, using 1950s slang in a 1990s context. There is no character development in this novel. The main characters of this novel were drug abusers, materialists and womanizers who miraculously are converted to perfect Christians overnight. One of the great features of religious fiction is the believer's struggle with their own sinfulness as well as society's rejection of Christian values. This novel has none of that. The characters are instant
Saints who never struggle again.
For Catholics who read "Pierced by a Sword" and are confused, let me clarify something. The Catholicism in "Pierced by a Sword" is not the same Catholicism that you probably practice personally. McFarlane was an advocate of the "Marian Movement" in US Catholicism in the 1990s. This school emphasizes the role of Mary almost exclusively, largely ignoring the role of the Saints, the Church or even the Trinity. McFarlane discusses Mary in this novel as though she were a goddess, actually performing miracles and personally answering prayers without God. This is not orthodox Catholic teaching, although it is presented as such in this novel.
The plot of this book is a struggle between the Marian Catholics as represented by McFarlane, against the enemies of religion as personified by Mormons, liberal Catholics and a bizarre cast of Russian Generals typecast from the old 1950s Cold War novels. He has a naive view of the world in which the good guys hang out on the campus of Notre Dame, eat at McFarlane's favorite campus pizza joint, drink his favorite brand of whiskey (Maker's Mark) and smoke his favorite brand of cigarettes (Marlboro). Does anyone else find it bizarre that a work of Catholic religious fiction should advocate the drinking of hard liquor and smoking?
There are much better works of Christian religious fiction out there. Consider a novel in which a director of a large Catholic non-profit organization, a man who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, should violate Church teaching by divorcing his wife and the mother of his four sons for another woman. The man then uses his large salary to hire divorce attorneys who remove her sons from her and force the divorce settlement against his wife who wants to preserve their marriage despite her husband's adultery. This scenario is actually an episode from the life of the author, Bud McFarlane Jr. It is far more compelling than anything you will read in "Pierced by a Sword."
Saints who never struggle again.
For Catholics who read "Pierced by a Sword" and are confused, let me clarify something. The Catholicism in "Pierced by a Sword" is not the same Catholicism that you probably practice personally. McFarlane was an advocate of the "Marian Movement" in US Catholicism in the 1990s. This school emphasizes the role of Mary almost exclusively, largely ignoring the role of the Saints, the Church or even the Trinity. McFarlane discusses Mary in this novel as though she were a goddess, actually performing miracles and personally answering prayers without God. This is not orthodox Catholic teaching, although it is presented as such in this novel.
The plot of this book is a struggle between the Marian Catholics as represented by McFarlane, against the enemies of religion as personified by Mormons, liberal Catholics and a bizarre cast of Russian Generals typecast from the old 1950s Cold War novels. He has a naive view of the world in which the good guys hang out on the campus of Notre Dame, eat at McFarlane's favorite campus pizza joint, drink his favorite brand of whiskey (Maker's Mark) and smoke his favorite brand of cigarettes (Marlboro). Does anyone else find it bizarre that a work of Catholic religious fiction should advocate the drinking of hard liquor and smoking?
There are much better works of Christian religious fiction out there. Consider a novel in which a director of a large Catholic non-profit organization, a man who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, should violate Church teaching by divorcing his wife and the mother of his four sons for another woman. The man then uses his large salary to hire divorce attorneys who remove her sons from her and force the divorce settlement against his wife who wants to preserve their marriage despite her husband's adultery. This scenario is actually an episode from the life of the author, Bud McFarlane Jr. It is far more compelling than anything you will read in "Pierced by a Sword."