The charity dinner will be a lavish affair, with an evening of inspirational talks from esteemed international and national speakers, entertainment, as well as a three course meal. OSV News is a national and international wire service reporting on Catholic issues and issues that affect Catholics. Well ,this book is a remarkably good read. It engages from the beginning and difficult to put down. It is very well written and leaves you still thinking well after you've finished it.' Thanks, Anna W, for your five-star review of The Beast of Bethulia Park ( https://amzn.eu/d/5rZGsKc). Her deeply traumatic past and thirst for vigilante justice aside, Emerald is the closest thing the novel has to a stand-in character for a general audience. Like many Brits, she pokes fun at faith – especially Christianity – but is not openly hostile to it. Entering Father Baines’ parish church, she undergoes a sublime-like experience that she does not quite have the vocabulary to fringe. “She was not touched by a sense of history like she had been at the well in North Wales. There was something more than that. There was something alive within that church, something present but unseen, something too beautiful to put into words, something ineffable, something holy – something like a burning bush.”

The Beast of Bethulia Park by Simon Paul Caldwell | Goodreads

Set in present-day England, the novel is both a wild romp that includes fistfights, love interests, and the pursuit of a pair of murderous doctors, and a careful study of human agents navigating the present-day moral landscape. Journalist Simon Caldwell’s debut novel The Beast of Bethulia Park might just be the most believable thriller on our shelves this year.This was an excellent read that was challenging subject matter but educational too, within the structure of a thriller that keeps you hooked from start to finish. For most of my adult life, I’ve been happy to accept the musing of Oscar Wilde, in defending The Picture of Dorian Gray,that ‘there is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.’

The Beast of Bethulia Park Lurking in the shadows: The Beast of Bethulia Park

At the center of the novel are two men and two women. Fr. Calvin Baines is a young, earnest, and naïve priest who becomes embroiled in a quest, together with nurse, Emerald Essien, and journalist, Jenny Bradshaigh, to unmask a prominent and powerful doctor, Dr. Reinhard Klein. Klein, who is at one with the spirit of the Nazi doctors, is both talented and intelligent, but believes he is working for the common good when he kills the old people in his care at Bethulia Park Hospital. In a post-coital conversation with Dr. Octavia Tarleton, his partner in both adultery and murder, Klein says that what he is doing is merciful. Mercy, Klein says, “needs, like so much else, to be redefined into something you can actually believe in. It needs to be purified for our century.”

Enthusiastic and creative English teacher with a passion for literature, communication and writing. For more than 125 years, The Registerhas been a trusted source of faith-based journalism. By making even a small donation you help ensure our future as an important voice in the Catholic Church. If you support the mission of Catholic journalism, please donate today. Thank you. Do you remember, Tafida Raqeeb who in 2019 suffered from a sudden brain injury which left her fighting for her life. She was taken to Italy for further treatments. Further information can be found in www.tr-foundation.org. The archdiocese is, without any doubt, behaving responsibly in protecting the children in its schools from explicit descriptions of sexual, predominantly homosexual, activity. It has a legal obligation to do so. It must uphold the moral and theological precepts of the Catholic Church, which has always taught that sexual intercourse outside marriage between a man and a woman is sinful. It is what it exists to do under its status as a charity. It has behaved entirely as any independent observer would have expected. St. John Paul II wrote that in modern life, “the conscience itself, darkened as it were by such widespread conditioning, is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between good and evil in what concerns the basic value of life.”

The Beast of Bethulia Park - S.P.Caldwell - Piety Stall The Beast of Bethulia Park - S.P.Caldwell - Piety Stall

The characters of the novel fumble their way in the dark, trying to discern the way forward, questioning themselves. Things are off-kilter, but they aren’t quite sure why. This novel aptly summarises the grisly reality of euthanasia beyond public debates about “compassion” and “dignity”. On this earth and Caldwell’s fictional one, the beasts are roaming far beyond Bethulia Park.To that end Catholic journalist Simon P. Caldwell’s debut novel “The Beast of Bethulia Park” more than fits the bill for a holiday or beachtime read, featuring a young protagonist priest, a mysterious string of hospital deaths, a journalist juggling a very modern sort of relationship, and a couple of nefarious characters who may or may not be connected with a historical bit of 17th-century anti-papist terrorism.