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Title: The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church by George Weigel ISBN: 0-465-09260-8 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.06 (35 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: You don't have to agree to find this book worthwhile...
Comment: George Weigel is a noted author and commentator on the Catholic Church, firmly in the traditionalist camp. This book is a scathing critique of the Church during the recent sexual abuse scandal that few would quarrel with. Although Weigel ascribes no responsibility whatsoever to the Pope, he spreads the blame among the Vatican, the bishops, lawyers, the Papal Nuncio and assorted others. He rightfully debunks the notion that the scandal was a media creation, and rightfully identifies it as a failure of leadership.
Many of Weigel's suggested reforms are similarly well-balanced. He suggests that the criteria for selecting bishops are flawed, and makes important suggestions for change. He also shines a spotlight on seminaries and novitiates. If the incidents he cites are true, there are serious problems to be addressed. Is it true that cruising gay bars was an issue in one seminary? Is it true that no inquiry is made into a priest's personal religious beliefs during training? Surely these problems should be corrected.
But other of his prescriptions for reform are very troubling. Weigel maintains that the "crisis of fidelity" began in the 60's--he says that just as Vatican II opened the windows of the Church to change, ill-winds were blowing. Among these were "irrationality, self-indulgence, fashionable despair, contempt for authority," and above all the sexual revolution, according to Weigel. But what a bleak view of the second half of the 20th century! Weigel pays no attention to the changed status of women as one of the great achievements of our age. Similarly, I failed to find a reference to the civil rights movement anywhere in the book. And what about the dismemberment of the remains of the European colonial empires and the spread of democracy? Surely he would agree that these were positives in the history of mankind.
But these positive factors are the very things the Church is struggling with, and Weigel's call to return to "faith" fails to take them into account. Take the changing role of women--not only are women not priests, but the positions of power in the Church are almost exclusively male, even in positions where being a priest wouldn't seem to be a mandatory qualification. What is the theological basis for this, other than guys like to work with other guys? Weigel fails to address this issue.
Or take the spread of democracy and the modern values of free speech and expression. Weigel attempts to show that the Church is not authoritarian, and he defines an authoritarian as "a person who makes someone do something purely as a matter of willfulness...there are no subjects of an authoritarian regime, only objects to be manipulated by the ruler."
I'd argue Weigel has described a dictatorship, not an authoritarian institution. The American Heritage Dictionary describes authoritarian as "characterized by or favoring absolute obedience...as against individual freedom." Isn't this what Weigel says should be the case in his reformed Church? Weigel says that if the Pope says 2+2 equals 5, the correct public response is "Perhaps I have misunderstood His Holiness' meaning," even though privately you may think the Pope is no longer sane. Surely this is a notion many good Catholics would find hard to swallow. And how does Weigel suggest we live in a world where the highest authority maintains that 2+2 equals 5?
Weigel also seems uncomfortable with the increasing role of the laity in Church institutions. He fails to take into account that the great success story of the Church in the US in the last 50 years is in health care and education, and that these are institutions largely run and supported by lay persons. Will the laity continue to devote time, energy and above all money without control and accountability, without being equal partners in the Church?
Weigel is correct that dumbing down the priesthood and Catholicism is not the way to go. But he fails to consider that the Church changes over time--surely any student of Church history knows this. The Church could certainly go back to the past and reaffirm traditional ways, as many fundamentalist religions have done. But such a Church would be much smaller, as the vast majority of catholics would, I believe, search for a solution that would allow them to live as free and equal beings in the modern world.
You don't have to agree with Weigel to find this book an articulate expression of the traditionalist/conservative point of view. Despite the occasional cheap shots and failure to attribute sources, the book is well-written and worthwhile to anyone interested in the future of the Church.
Rating: 5
Summary: Turn on the Light; the party's over
Comment: While John Paul II was giving hope to victims of communism, helping to win the Cold War, his American flock was way off message. In public the American bishops flogged their assumed moral acuity: intoning sonorous condemnations of Ronald Reagan's policies, loudly wondering if the pontiff knew what century it was, while in private they inducted and sheltered priests who preyed upon unsuspecting parishioners' teenaged boys. This book is an account of how it happened, and how the stinking mess was exposed.
George Weigel must certainly have written this book with a very personal anger at the malfeasant clerics who allowed all this to happen. He had written a well-received biography of the current pontiff, who is one of the 20th century's indisputable heroes. Now, the post-Cold War victory glow of the Catholic church has been dispelled by the reek of the American church's sexual scandals. Weigel manfully refrains from calling the crisis a media creation, though he does score the press on a few inaccuracies here and there. He sticks to just the facts: the opinions of even the most influential commentators like Andrew Sullivan and Richard John Neuhaus are excluded. He also does not waste a lot of space replying to charges that the church's rule of celibacy caused these predators to seduce their young male victims. Nor does he dwell on the capture of the American Catholic seminaries by the gay subculture-Michael Rose's Goodbye, Good Men is the place to get an full, infuriating examination of that sad state of affairs.
Weigel provides a chronological narrative of the crisis, and by the way an explanation of the functions of various papal officers and departments. He traces the origins of the crisis to what he calls the "Truce of 1968", in which American liberals in the church flouted elements of Vatican II, and were allowed to get away with it. These people then established a "culture of dissent" in the seminaries, turning away orthodox applicants, and spreading laxness and relativism and corruption throughout the American church.
The Vatican also bungled its end of responsibility. It did not keep the Pope and his aides adequately informed, nor did it conduct crucial press conferences very competently.
Weigel insists against some American reformers that this is a crisis of fidelity, not of management or oversight. He reiterates the theological inspiration for the offices of priests, bishops and cardinals, and proposes many sharp, specific reforms. He calls for nothing less than the spiritual cauterization of the American Church.
The Americans were not completely corrupt. The U. S. church had in fact discreetly resolved many of the abuses, under prompting by Rome, by the time the story broke. But what goes on in the dark comes out in the light.
The crisis continued to rage after this book's publication. Cardinal Bernard Law was forced to resign some months later, and reformers threatened the outright ban on homosexuals in the priesthood. One gets the sense that things will get uglier before they get prettier. But no one can doubt that thoroughgoing penance and reform must come before any renewal in the American Catholic church. Let the cleaning of the whited sepulchers begin.
Rating: 4
Summary: A Courageous Critique of Contemporary Catholicism in America
Comment: George Wiegel acclaimed author of the international bestseller "Witness to Hope, the Biography of Pope John Paul II" attempts here an overview of the contemporary Catholic Church in America, torn by the sex abuse scandal among the clergy. Analyzing the crisis and the circumstances that led to it, Wiegel exposes the culture of dissent and self-deception among the seminarians, priests and ultimately among bishops who failed in their ministry of shepherding the flocks. Greater fidelity is the proper response to this crisis and just like any other crisis, this too must be turned into an opportunity. Therefore he lays out a blueprint for a genuine reform of the Catholic Church in America.
One may or may not agree with all the opinions, arguments and conclusions of Wiegel; but the book surely provides a mine of information and a wealth of wonderful insights.
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Title: The Truth of Catholicism: Ten Controversies Explored by George Weigel ISBN: 0066213304 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 23 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Letters to a Young Catholic (Art of Mentoring) by George Weigel ISBN: 0465092624 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 02 March, 2004 List Price(USD): $22.50 |
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Title: Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel ISBN: 0060932864 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 10 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice by Philip Jenkins ISBN: 0195154800 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
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Title: The Truth of Catholicism : Inside the Essential Teachings and Controversies of the Church Today by George Weigel ISBN: 0060937580 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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