A one-sided defense of the most controversial organization in the Catholic Church by Italian journalist Messori, whose interviews with John Paul II form the text of the pope's bestselling Crossing the Threshold of Hope. Opus Dei, founded in Spain in 1928 by a young priest, Jose Maria Escriva de Balaguer, now boasts over 80,000 members worldwide and the special favor of the pope. The organization provides a system of spiritual guidance to help members, mainly married laypeople known as supernumeraries, practice an unobtrusive Christian idealism in everyday secular, including professional, settings. Opus Dei priests are drawn only from the male numeraries, the group's inner circle whose members take a vow of celibacy. Messori describes the outstanding University of Navarre and the various student hostels and colleges that are open to people of all religions or none at all. Despite his claim to objectivity, Messori unabashedly idealizes the organization and its founder. Rather than following up in true journalistic fashion on the firsthand accounts of people who claim to have been harmed by Opus Dei, Messori is content to rebut criticisms merely by quoting statements of official policy and Opus Dei spokesmen, one of whom has written the introduction to this book. Messori writes off any criticism of Opus Dei as coming from malcontents and unorthodox Catholics, ignoring the fact that many devout believers, including bishops, have voiced concern about the organization's recruiting methods, its treatment of women, and the use of spiritual direction as a means of mind control (see Maria del Carmen Tapia, Beyond the Threshold, p. 788). Messori's text is poorly translated into cumbersome and at times incoherent English (e.g., ``Many have not forgiven Opus Dei for its opposition, or fealty to the Church.'') Messori's uncritical approach serves only to reinforce the authoritarian image of Opus Dei and raises more questions than it answers.
Pub Date: Oct. 2, 1997
ISBN: 0-89526-450-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1997
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
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.
bookshelf
