by Heinz-Jurgen Vogels ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 11, 2011
An unusual, compelling read.
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Vogels gives an account of his crusade for married priests.
Growing up in 1940s Germany, Vogels felt called to the Catholic priesthood. Soon after entering, however, he chafed under the realities of the celibate life. Rather than accept the Church’s mandate for clergy, Vogels took the lead from Eastern churches, local practices and the Bible itself to advocate for priests’ right to marry. Citing 1 Corinthians 9:5, he wrote and spoke extensively against mandatory celibacy, and he went so far as to marry a woman to force the Church to, in his words, “restor[e] the truly ‘Catholic,’ i.e., the all-encompassing fullness in the real sense of the word.” In his view, the right for priests to marry goes beyond marriage alone, all the way up to the Church’s relationship with God. Translated from the German, the prose is a little stilted and disjointed at times, and the course of events can sometimes be hard to follow. Despite this, Vogels’ intense study of and passion for his faith shines through, and the reader can keenly feel his torment as he is compelled to alternately give up his calling or give up romantic human connections. Rather than falling in love and then deciding to marry, Vogels' feelings for his partner and eventual marriage flow naturally from his political and religious commitment, contrary to the more relatable but suspect motivations of Catholic writers such as Thomas Merton. Though this can seem somewhat cold, the reader can see that Vogels is motivated not out of simple self-interest but from a place of faith and exegetical rigor. Of particular interest are the conspicuously slow, equivocal machinations of the Vatican that have reached strategic heights in relation to the sex abuse scandals going on today. The slowly growing movement of married priests is virtually unheard of, and Vogels’ book gives the reader an inside look at the struggles of this little-known population.
An unusual, compelling read.Pub Date: March 11, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456774714
Page Count: 172
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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