Long on evangelism, short on reform.
A call for pride, sincerity and depth in Catholic life and community.
Weigel (Faith, Reason and the War Against Jihadism, 2007, etc.) falls short in this sweeping, yet shallow call for “deep reform” in the Catholic church. The author argues that Counter-Reformation Catholicism, after a three-century reign, has been slowly dying in the face of modernism. The church of today had its genesis with the election of Pope Leo XIII in 1878, who began reforms that led to the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. As the Catholic church grapples with a rapidly changing world, Weigel writes, it must finally shed the remnants of Counter-Reformation Catholicism and fully embrace Evangelical Catholicism, “a counterculture that seeks to convert the ambient public culture by proclaiming certain truths, by worshipping in Spirit and in truth, and by modeling a more humane way of life.” The bulk of Weigel’s book examines how this new Catholicism can be applied to the episcopate, priesthood, liturgy, laity, etc. The author makes many important points, and his call toward a deeper spirituality and sense of mission in Catholic life is laudable, but he is stunningly silent on many important issues. Although he does not ignore the clergy sex scandals of recent decades, he glosses over them. “Fidelity and deeper conversion to Christ…not ‘reforms’ ” are called for to solve such problems, an answer few would accept as practical or comprehensive. Likewise, he does not address the drastic shortage of clergy and gives little thought to the emerging role of the third-world church and their particular needs and points of view. Weigel’s call for reform is based in attitude more than in structure, which may fall flat with many readers interested in “deep Catholic reform.”
Long on evangelism, short on reform.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-465-02768-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
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