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TALKING TREASON IN CHURCH

THE LAY PERSON'S GUIDE TO RENEWING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

Impassioned argument by one dissatisfied Catholic on taking back the church from its leadership.

Guide to lay Catholic renewal.

Don’t bother looking for the Vatican’s imprimatur in this book–Marren takes on every sacred cow in his salvo against the hierarchical structure of the Roman Catholic Church. Beginning with the simple assertion that Jesus himself was a layman, the author comes to the rather startling point that, "Neither Jesus Christ nor any of his disciples would qualify for leadership in the Catholic church as it is currently constituted." Moving onward, Marren calls for what he terms "lay Catholic renewal," a movement he likens to Jesus’ attempt to set the structure of Judaism on its head. In structuring his vision for renewal, the author looks toward the ancient church and its original structures and practices, based upon scripture and early surviving texts from the pre-Constantine era. Marren points out that women had important leadership roles, bishops were voted into office by the people and that Mass was performed in private homes by laity. The author delves into the history of the Mass to show how it has been changed over time, as well as to discover what a basic Mass would be for a renewed Catholicism. Perhaps Marren’s most damning critique is saved for the church’s teachings about Peter, traditionally seen as the first pope. He calls this view a "myth" and chastises the church hierarchy for interpreting "Jesus’ words to Peter in a crassly political sense, instead of a human and spiritual sense." Calling upon laity to address crises of leadership as well as of freedom of believers, the author advocates a church governed through consensus rather than by hierarchical rule. Though Marren’s work is clunky in places–such as his Declaration of Independence for the World’s Catholics–it is accessible and well-researched and will certainly add to the heated conversation over the future of the Catholic Church.

Impassioned argument by one dissatisfied Catholic on taking back the church from its leadership.

Pub Date: Dec. 28, 2009

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9517-4

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

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

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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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