Catholic readers should not expect an in-depth reaffirmation of their faith, but they may enjoy dipping into the memories...
Simple and honest essays, recollections, and quotations on contemporary Catholic faith and culture in America today.
As promised, this collection offers dozens of answers to the question “Do you like being Catholic?” and to its natural followup: “Why?” The responses are celebrations of favorite prayers, Christmas Masses, Catholic music and literature, and the lives of heroic and “average” Catholics—told by well-known and unknown Catholics. Editors Leach and Borchard include several of their own pieces in the set, such as Leach’s “Ten Good Reasons to Raise Your Kids Catholic” and Borchard’s “There’s Something About Mary.” While both of these titles suggest a comic slant, however, the essays—and the collection as a whole—fall short on wit and entertainment value. Still, the writing is honest, warm, and uncomplicated, conveying authors' devotion to their faith and to the Catholic community. Highlights include best of Catholic culture picks—amusing yet somewhat predictable top-ten lists of the best Catholic novels and movies (think: Ulysses, A Man for all Seasons, etc.). Also featured throughout are a flurry of quotes by well-known Catholics from Martin Scorsese and Flannery O’Connor to Mario Cuomo and Yogi Berra. But while the editors have collected material from a broad scope of the 63 million American Catholics, the result is a choppy stream of soundbites that never truly gets beneath the surface.
Catholic readers should not expect an in-depth reaffirmation of their faith, but they may enjoy dipping into the memories and sentiments of those who share their religious heritage.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-385-49951-5
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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
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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