Were the Index of Forbidden Books still in force (it was retired in 1966), this would likely be on it. Useful, if...
Is the pope infallible? Depending on your answer, this is either an instrument of needed clerical reform or an act of heresy.
Non-Catholics will find some of the doctrinal issues raised in Australian ex-priest Collins’s muckraking examination to be mysterious, and even liberal adherents may wonder at some of the viewpoints he and his fellow theologians advance. (For instance, “If you take the logic of the argument that says only a man can represent Jesus in the action of the mass, then you would only be able to have Jewish men ordained as priests, because there is a sort of absolutist, biological determinism embedded in that argument.”) Still, Collins’s chief point is solid enough: despite Vatican II and the supposed ecumenicalism of the modern church, the papacy is committed to a highly conservative platform reinforced by its Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, a “lineal descendant” of the Inquisition that has brought grief upon the heads of such would-be reformers as Ivan Illich and Bernard Häring (who has averred that his treatment at the hands of the CDF was “worse than that he had received from the Nazis”) while battling “the so-called heresy of ‘modernism’.” Collins profiles and interviews seven leading dissidents, among them the well-known German exponent of “Christology” Hans Küng, Sri Lankan liberation theologian Tissa Balasuriya, and Father Robert Nugent and Sister Jeannine Gramick, Americans whose ministry to gay and lesbian Catholics led to official condemnation. Of them, Küng is perhaps best equipped to debate the finer points of doctrine, and he offers a spirited defense of the view that the Catholic church is “indefectible,” meaning that while the church can be in error, “the Holy Spirit would remain with the Christian community.”
Were the Index of Forbidden Books still in force (it was retired in 1966), this would likely be on it. Useful, if unsettling, reading for Catholic reformists.Pub Date: July 16, 2002
ISBN: 1-58567-270-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Overlook
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
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
BOOK REVIEW
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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