by Paul L. Williams ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 15, 2017
Unquestionably uneven, but if only 10 percent of the author’s claims are true, his report is still quite damning.
A scathing examination of the Roman Catholic Church.
Journalist Williams (Operation Gladio: The Unholy Alliance between the Vatican, the CIA, and the Mafia, 2015, etc.) is an unabashed Tridentine Catholic: he rejects the authority of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the leadership that has followed it. In his latest exposé, the author explores the “good old days” of the church, the many forces that caused it to change, and what he sees as a downward spiral from the 1960s onward. A bizarre mix of solid analysis and conspiracy theorizing, the book is an evocative page-turner sure to turn heads. Williams begins with an overview of the pre–Vatican II church, an entity certain of its own superiority and intent on generational obedience and participation. A mixture of high finance, Mafia dealings, Freemasonry activity, and simple cultural change led to an attempt to redefine the church in the 1960s, a change Williams views as disastrous and irreversible for the spiritual lives of believers and for the temporal power of the church as an institution. Just when readers begin to see the author as a fundamentalist curmudgeon, however, he steers into on ocean of scandal to prove his point. The breadth of controversy is staggering, as Williams presents the Vatican as the center of a crime syndicate. From secret CIA funding to offshore bank accounts to Mafia family connections to episcopal embezzlement, the list of unholy activities is amazing. The author even supports a theory that John Paul I, who died just over a month after becoming pope in 1978, was murdered because he had decided to investigate the Vatican’s financial dealings. Topping it all off is a chapter on the pedophilia scandal and a final jab at John Paul II as a heretic. Though this is a work that screams out for rebuttal, it also raises innumerable questions about how a religious body can engender such grave controversy.
Unquestionably uneven, but if only 10 percent of the author’s claims are true, his report is still quite damning.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63388-303-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
Share your opinion of this book
by Albert Camus ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 26, 1955
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Albert Camus
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus ; translated by Justin O'Brien & Sandra Smith
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus ; translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy & Justin O'Brien
BOOK REVIEW
by Albert Camus translated by Arthur Goldhammer edited by Alice Kaplan
by Stephen Batchelor ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 18, 2020
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by Stephen Batchelor
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.