A refreshingly balanced perspective often missing from both conservative (Michael Rose’s Goodbye, Good Men) and liberal...
Taking the pulse of American Catholicism after its annus horribilis, the New York Times’ veteran religion correspondent offers a diagnosis of how the Church wound up in intensive care.
Though sex-abuse scandals have dominated the headlines, problems in the Church run deeper, as indicated by falling “Catholic indicators” such as church attendance rates, knowledge of faith, and ratio of priests to parishioners. “If the sex abuse scandal had never occurred, the Catholic Church in the United States would still face a crisis,” comments Steinfels (Neoconservatism, 1979, etc.), former editor of the liberal Catholic journal Commonweal. Many of the Church’s difficulties, he observes, stem from two transitions occurring simultaneously: the passage from a pre– to a post–Vatican Council generation and from clerical to lay leadership. With great subtlety, the author traces how these transitions will affect worship, spiritual life, religious education and formation, leadership, and the Church’s vast network of hospitals and social services. Men ordained during John Paul II’s papacy, he suggests, might be more involved with priestly roles than with organizational and administrative tasks that would require lay participation. Moreover, the declining number of parochial schools requires greater stress on “catechetical programs” (the new phrase for religious instruction) that often add little to children’s understanding of their faith. The author’s mastery of material enables him to provide unexpected insights. For instance, he warns like many others that without large-scale changes in vowed or religious life, the Church will never have enough priests or nuns to keep up with population growth. But he offers a different reason than most: Vatican II’s recent recognition that the call to holiness in marriage and the family is as rewarding as the life of the celibate—a change that not even John Paul II is prepared to reverse.
A refreshingly balanced perspective often missing from both conservative (Michael Rose’s Goodbye, Good Men) and liberal (Garry Wills’s Papal Sin) jeremiads about the troubles in this venerable institution.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-684-83663-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2003
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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