Catholic readers will find Francis’ words to be of great interest—and, for the pre–Vatican II crowd, perhaps controversial.
In dialogue with a French sociologist and writer, Pope Francis (Happiness in This Life, 2017, etc.) reveals some of his recent episcopal and ecumenical concerns.
Four and a half years into his seat at the Holy See, Francis has revealed a number of concerns that have caused some division among the ranks of the Catholic faithful. He is a critic of rampant capitalism, for example; as he tells interlocutor Wolton, “the liberal market economy is madness.” Francis is strongly critical of inequality on the one hand and the soul-wearying quest for money on the other. Though he is far from writing off the West, too, Francis sees the future of the church in developing countries and particularly in Africa, from which he has been filling the higher ranks of the organization in Rome. Still, as these conversations reveal, Francis is essentially conservative within the larger confines of doctrine. He finds roles for women in the church but isn’t quite ready for the idea of women in the priesthood, and though he believes that a good-hearted atheist is better than a bad-hearted Christian, he draws plenty of lines (“tolerance is an outmoded word”). Wolton’s questions are usually very much longer than Francis’ replies (Q: “The Catholic Church has a considerable historical and philosophical legacy on the question of relations with the other, with coexistence, with dialogue….You should open up more. Without necessarily engaging in evangelization!” A: “Yes, we can do that”), and the pontiff is frequently gnomic (“tradition, when it becomes an ideology, is no longer tradition”). The mixed-in homilies and addresses to churchly audiences do not always seem to fit in, logically speaking, with the surrounding proceedings. However, the book is a good state-of-the-moment snapshot of some of the things occupying Francis’ mind, many of which are likely to play out in various ways in the larger Catholic community.
Catholic readers will find Francis’ words to be of great interest—and, for the pre–Vatican II crowd, perhaps controversial.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-20056-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 23, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
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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