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
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
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