An imperfect but certainly fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis.
A balanced look at the struggle for the future of Catholicism.
New York Times op-ed columnist Douthat (Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, 2012) delves into the decadeslong struggle between liberal and conservative forces within Catholicism. Starting with the Second Vatican Council, the author then covers the turbulent 1970s, during which the church struggled to find its way in the post-conciliar world. With the election of Pope John Paul II, a conservative interpretation of the Council took precedence and found its fullest interpretation in John Paul’s successor, Benedict XVI. With Benedict’s surprising retirement in 2013, however, the church had a rare opportunity to change direction, and it did so with the choice of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francis. Despite the many issues facing Catholicism, Douthat chooses to focus mostly on the question of how the church views divorce and remarriage. Some of this work centers on remarriage and the pope’s sometimes-ambiguous teachings and statements on the matter. While Francis is the central figure in such debates, most of the author’s commentary has to do with the many cardinals, and other clergy, whose activism on one side or another fuels the fires of division within Catholicism. Perhaps the book’s greatest attribute is the level to which it introduces average readers to the infighting among the Roman Curia and the larger family of bishops and cardinals who steer the church. Though largely sympathetic to Francis and Catholic liberalism, Douthat does play devil’s advocate on many occasions and, in his conclusion, provides some criticisms of the pope. However, the author is prone to an overabundance of speculation, often bogging down his otherwise solid analysis with a series of what-ifs. His attempt to see the current church through historical lenses—e.g., comparisons with controversies over Arians, Jansenists, and other heresies and schisms—is laudable but overdone.
An imperfect but certainly fascinating look at the church under Pope Francis.Pub Date: April 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4692-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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