A winning ethnographic portrait of 28 American Catholic priests. Journalist Kunkel has ventured into biography once before, with Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker (1995). This collection of essays is as engagingly thoughtful, but more personal; Kunkel writes as a Catholic seeking to understand the tumultuous changes of the post—Vatican II Church. To find the answers, he turns to the same source many Catholics do: the priesthood. Kunkel based these short chapters on extensive interviews with dozens of priests, and the diversity represented here offers a valuable window on the changing face of the Catholic Church. The multiracial priests come from inner-city, suburban, and rural churches; some parishes are affluent, while others are struggling to survive. But one strand connects these very different clergymen: They are members of what seems to be a dying breed. The American Catholic priesthood is aging, and with so few young seminarians stepping up to renew it, in ten years there may be only one priest for every 3,000 American Catholics. The priests interviewed here often serve several parishes. They may also be social workers, administrators, school principals, fund-raisers, and authors, in addition to their ecclesiastical duties. One Jesuit father is a medical doctor and an AIDS activist; another priest is executive director of a children’s rescue agency in Chicago. These priests actively embrace a changing clientele of blacks, Filipinos, and Hispanics; they are open to the charismatic renewal movement. But they also manifest a strain of traditionalism, especially (and surprisingly) the few young priests. Their “back to basics” approach seeks to adopt the best legacies of Vatican II but not abandon the core doctrines of the Church (reverence for the host, for example). Kunkel’s priests are energetically combining radical change and conservative standards. With economy and sensitivity, Kunkel brings these priests to life, portraying them as both fully human and a breed apart. Essential for thoughtful Catholics.
Pub Date: May 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-8133-3464-0
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1998
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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