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THE HIDDEN ENCYCLICAL OF PIUS XI

Certain to reopen the debate on the political, diplomatic, and, most importantly, moral failure of the Catholic Church in the face of fascism and the Holocaust. Historians have long known that Pius XI—who had sought accommodation with Mussolini's regime in 1929 but later became convinced that diplomatic methods were futile with both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy—commissioned an encyclical in June 1938 that was to have been a detailed condemnation of fascism, racism, and anti-Semitism. But Pius XI died in early 1939. His successor was Eugenio Pacelli, the late pope's secretary of state and former papal nuncio in Nazi Germany, who took the name Pius XII. Pacelli was a fanatical anti-communist, convinced that Europe would fare better under Nazi domination than Soviet hegemony. Pius XII never spoke out publicly against Nazi atrocities, not even when the Jews of Rome were rounded up by the SS. The encyclical (titled ``The Unity of the Human Race'') disappeared into the Vatican archives, never to be published. For decades, the Vatican even denied its existence, until it was discovered by a Jesuit seminarian in the late 1960s. Passelecq (a Belgian monk and former member of the anti-fascist Resistance) and historian Suchecky accurately re- create the historical context of the document and trace its fate. Of immense value to historians is the text (over 100 pages) of the encyclical, published in its entirety for the first time in English. It is an extraordinary work, combining a traditional and conservative defense of the family and the faith, along with a detailed critique of modernism and the atomization of contemporary civilization. It insists that the plurality of human ideas and beliefs does not deny an unassailable truth—the unity of the human race. Garry Wills contributes a foreword to this work, which, at a time when the Catholic Church is considering the canonization of Pius XII, may force Catholics and others to reassess his moral failure in a time of crisis.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-15-100244-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997

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THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS

AND OTHER ESSAYS

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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THE ART OF SOLITUDE

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.

“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.

A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020

ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0

Page Count: 200

Publisher: Yale Univ.

Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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