A lucid account of Ratzinger’s long theological career and likely manner of leadership in the future; of particular interest...
Vatican watcher Weigel (The Truth of Catholicism, 2001, etc.) considers the course of the church under the previous pope and the possible changes that the new one will bring.
Joseph Ratzinger, elected pope by the College of Cardinals on April 19, 2005, is said to have been a less-than-willing candidate, feeling himself unfit “by reason of age and temperament.” Certainly many cardinals shared his reservations, though for complex reasons: Writes Weigel, there were those who wished to see greater engagement with globalization and human-rights issues, extending the concerns of John Paul II through the appointment of a Latin American pope; those who opposed Ratzinger because of his conservatism (and who promoted an apparently unfair Ratzinger-as-Nazi trope); and those who, as true hardcore clerical conservatives, wished to see the papacy restored to an Italian pope after a long turn in the hands of Karol Wojtyla of Poland. Weigel is at his best when documenting, in diary-like form, the ins and outs of Vatican politics and the inside deals that are struck in order to produce a puff of white smoke; his account here joins very nicely with recent intramural books, such as John L. Allen’s Conclave (2002) and John-Peter Pham’s Heirs of the Fisherman (2005). Less effective is his exposition of the problems now facing the church, some of which, as one of the faithful, he is presumably reticent to discuss at much length; one thinks of priestly marriage, women in the priesthood, the rooting out of sexually abusive clerics and the church’s stance on contraception. Nonetheless, Weigel looks squarely at plenty of difficult issues and offers a few prescriptions, including one by which the ecumenical Catholic Church would more actively help “those courageous Islamic scholars and religious leaders who want to challenge Islamist radicals and extremists.”
A lucid account of Ratzinger’s long theological career and likely manner of leadership in the future; of particular interest to reform-minded Catholics.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-621331-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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