For such an argument, see John van der Zee’s Agony in the Garden (Feb. 2003).
A flabby account of a dispiriting matter—namely, sexual abuse at the hands of priests.
In the 1980s and before, writes journalist France (Bag of Toys: Sex, Scandal, and the Death Mask Murder, 1992), without offering much in the way of evidence, little attention was given to instances of such abuse “thanks to cozy relationships among the Church, courts, and media.” That that priestly crime now commands the front pages of so many newspapers owes much to laypeople who, disgusted at what they perceived to be inaction and even cover-up on the part of the Catholic hierarchy, took matters into their own hands in communities across the country. American Catholics have effected such rebellions in the past, France suggests, offering as a useful example their overwhelming rejection of Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical on birth control, “the most disastrous for the Church in modern times,” which even the national conference of bishops opposed. That encyclical, France argues, was symptomatic of the Church’s unrealistic attitude on matters of sex, particularly in light of the sexual revolution sweeping the outside world at the time. The “generation of clerics who entered seminary in the buttoned-up 1950s and reemerged in the 1960s” behaved badly, so much so that a psychological report to the 1971 synod of bishops estimated that only “10–15 percent of all priests in Western Europe and North America are mature.” The bulk of France’s account is given over to campaigns on the part of the laity to remove “immature” priests from office, very often against the wishes of the Church itself, which has instead sought to protect the good name of bad people. His narrative, however, is excessively anecdotal and too often unfocused; a tighter, more economical argument would have been more useful, especially on so controversial a subject.
For such an argument, see John van der Zee’s Agony in the Garden (Feb. 2003).Pub Date: Jan. 20, 2004
ISBN: 0-7679-1430-9
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Longwinded though affecting tribute to resilience and solidarity.
Even a Category 5 hurricane can’t stop a revered coach and his championship high-school football team.
Popular historian Thompson (Driving with the Devil, 2006, etc.) begins in the locker room of New Orleans’ John Curtis Christian School on August 26, 2005. It was the night of the “jamboree” scrimmage that opened the season, and members of the Patriots were hoping to win another state championship for their school. Nationally recognized coach J.T. Curtis, also the school’s headmaster and son of its founder, knew that his hardworking, enthusiastic squad couldn’t compare to last year’s lineup. Many key players had graduated to college ball, and he needed to mentally and physically condition a young, unproven team with efficient, college-level practices consisting of “equal parts Broadway musical and football drills.” The 2005-6 Patriots included an anxious new starting quarterback, a Harvard hopeful, a spiritual heavyweight and a star linebacker whose religion forbade him to play on Friday nights. John Curtis School favored community building and happiness over flashy exteriors, and Coach Curtis reflected those values in his broadminded teaching style and paternal approach to his players’ personal lives. Hurricane Katrina confronted him and his team with the ultimate challenge. Returning to the drowned city, J.T. found the school in miraculously good shape and set out to reunite his squad and get them on the field again. Some players were tempted to join teams in other school districts, and Hurricane Rita tested them once again, but the devoted coach kept on plugging. Thompson deftly profiles a generous selection of players and families torn apart by the disaster and considers the contagious obsession for football shared by participants and fans alike. In a somewhat meandering fashion, he delivers a fully realized interpretative portrait of a coach and a sports organization willing to sacrifice all in the name of football.
Longwinded though affecting tribute to resilience and solidarity.Pub Date: July 31, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4070-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2007
A meandering, uneven fire-and-brimstone sermon.
America’s post-war cohort should repent its godless ways before it’s too late, according to Winley’s jeremiad.
Writing in the persona of “Baby Boom Prophet” Jonah Ubiquitous, Winley, a minister at Harlem’s Soul Saving Station for Every Nation, subjects those born between 1946 and 1964 to a serious scolding. His demographic rationale is two-fold. First, the boomer generation authored the culture of sexual permissiveness, abortion, homosexuality, drug abuse, violence, welfare dependency, personal irresponsibility and unorthodox spirituality that he blames for America’s moral rot and the travails of the African-American community. Second, a recap of four decades’ worth of boomer-dominated history, from the 1960s assassinations to Monica-gate and the war in Iraq, serves as a framework for viewing modern times as a parade of depravity, war, natural disaster and apostasy, all of it leading inevitably to Armageddon. Winley’s manifesto interweaves disparate themes, stories and registers. There is a murky digression into a failed publishing venture, a confusing discourse on the structure of Heaven (the fourth heaven is the paradise where saved humans go, while hell itself is “a type of heaven”) and a dash of end-times numerology (“June 6, 2006, represents forty years from the symbolic birth of the Anti-Christ world ruler (6-6-66)”). There’s some religious-right politics—Winley denounces materialism and money-grubbing while defending George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and decides that the Christian injunction to turn the other cheek need not apply to Al Qaeda. And there is a persistent voice crying out in the wilderness, warning that “racial hatred, murder of innocents, political corruption, family disintegration, killer children, home-grown terrorism, violence, greed, lust, and every imaginable evil dwell within the borders of the United States.” Winley’s message is standard Christian Fundamentalist doctrine, but in some passages—especially during a long, affecting parable about a black man who, after an abusive upbringing, lands in prison, where Jonah tries to bring him to the Lord—he writes with real pathos about the moral chaos that ravages men’s souls.
A meandering, uneven fire-and-brimstone sermon.Pub Date: April 30, 2007
ISBN: 978-0595417636
Page Count: 175
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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