 |
|
Title: Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning
ISBN: 0307346846
Author:
Kerry Kennedy
Publicate Date: 2008-09-09
Publish: 2008-09-09
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 2.5
Format: Hardcover
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $14.88
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $13.99
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.47
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: A breath of fresh air.
As a Catholic, I've grown tired of relentless monotone stereotyping of Catholics. Being Catholic Now has been needed for a long time. Kennedy brings a more honest look at the rich spectrum of Catholic experience. The book affirmed that my experience growing up Catholic, thoughtful, curious, open, and responsible (not guilty) was not an anomaly as so many would suggest. In fact, my experience seems normal. What a joy!
|
2: Why bother?
This is a book which is not only intellectually dishonest, it is the trite, boring recitations of shallow people who can't see beyond their own celebrity status. If it were a little bit better written (OK, a WHOLE LOT better written) it could have been a hilarious take-off on self-importance. Really, Susan SARANDON and Cokie ROBERTS as THEOLOGIANS??? But, unfortunately, it wasn't able to pull itself up to the level of spoof and instead drowns in its own banality.
Why do FORMER Catholics who just can't BE Catholic and want to justify their own personal agendas at the expense of everyone else who DOES want to be Catholic? If they don't want to follow the Church - fine! No one is forcing them, but for heaven's sake, have the intellectual and intestinal honesty to admit that they are NO LONGER CATHOLIC. People like Kennedy, Pelosi and company are selling themselves as a something they simply are not and haven't been for some time. If they were honest, they'd admit that what they want is to destroy the Church and rebuild it in their own images.
It sort of reminds me of Kerry's Uncle Ted who wants the rest of us to pay for and endure the blight of "alternative energy" sources. But when a wind-farm was proposed for the Cape where it would have ruined his view, he immediately stepped in to prevent it from being built. These are the elites, remember. Rules are for other people.
One reviewer, possibly trying to justify his own desire to create his "own" church, says "once a Catholic, always a Catholic". Sorry, no. That's like saying I can go another country and take up citizenship and still expect to be able to vote in US elections. Unfortunately, while they no longer are Catholic, we can't stop them from "trade-mark infringement" by continuing to call themselves Catholic.
I have to admit that I couldn't finish the book, although I did skim the remainder to see if by some chance it would improve. It didn't.
If you'd like to spend hours reading about self-absorbed people minutely explaining and attempting to justify their own immaturity, have at it! This is the book for you!
BORING and shallow.
|
3: Insight for American Catholics
Kerry Kennedy provides the opportunity to bring together contemporary Roman Catholicism from an American perspective at a time when the Church in Rome seems to be heading in a different direction. Refreshing ...
|
4: Good Snapshot of American Catholics
"Being Catholic Now" is a collection of interviews of prominent Americans who were raised Catholic. Interviewees include Donna Brazille (liberal) and Bill O'Reilly (conservative), Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Sister Betsy Pawlicki, and even people who are not practicing Catholics anymore such as Bill Maher (anti-Church) and Dan Aykroyd (pro-Church), and many more.
They all express their understanding of "being Catholic now" with candor.
On the one hand, they express their disappointments. Many of them have doubts or disagreements with official Catholic teachings. Some were sexually abused by pedophile priests. Others left or lost their Catholic faith. All have struggled with their faith.
On the other hand, most of the people interviewed are still practicing Catholics. Hence, and without meaning to, many of their interviews are also *testimonials* about God and how they found Him --and continue to find Him-- in the Catholic Church. Martin Sheen's interview is especially moving. His prayer to Jesus Christ before Communion -- "You are welcome here"-- is a summary of the Catholic faith.
I recommend this book if you want a snapshot of American Catholicism. True, the book is mostly interviews with Baby-Boomers; there aren't many young or old present. True, it's short on conservatives. But, most American Catholics are not in 100% agreement with everything that their Church officially says, thinks or does. Nevertheless, most American Catholics believe in God, Christ, and their Church; most get to Mass on Sunday, and most try to keep their faith in how they live. And this book reflects those facts.
|
5: Not always pious, but always honest and often moving
As many reviewers have pointed out, this is not a devotional book. But it's still a great book with a lot to say about what can happen to faith as we become adults. And the answer is: many different things.
Many of the prominent people interviewed in it have left the Church, or have a complicated relationship to the teaching of the Church on any number of social issues.
Consequently, some people will be put off -- or feel put-down -- by the title, "Being Catholic Now." How can you be Catholic if you've left the Church, or don't accept its moral teaching? Who are these people to speak for the faithful? One could argue that they have the least sense of all of what it means to be Catholic now.
I won't attempt to answer that question, but I thought the book was deep, and that the people interviewed spoke honestly and thoughtfully.
For many, it was the social teaching of the Church and the moral education of their Catholic schooling that started them on a path of activism, but also of questioning that, ironically, led them away from their faith, or led them to have a complicated relationship with it.
Others, such as Cardinal McCarrick, followed the same path but found it led them into the Church rather than out of it.
Maybe some people don't want to hear anything about that, and fair enough: they should skip the book.
But I think it tells a story many others will recognize. And it gives voice to something many Catholics know well: how so many people still see the Church's imprint on their lives even though their faith has taken a radically different (and according to some people, wrong) turn.
It shows how, in some sense, they are still Catholic and probably always will be.
I found it always thoughtful and often very moving.
|
|
|
|
|
