1 comments about Road To Joy: The Letters Of Thomas Merton To New And Old Friends.

1. Am inclined to think that this is the only selection of Merton letters that you will ever need. It presents Merton at his warmest, his most enjoyable, his most gregarious, his most humble. Loyal to old friends and a willing correspondent with new friends, the Merton we find in "The Road to Joy" contrasts happily with both the austere champion of contemplative solitude and the dour progressive who often bristled under abbatial authority.

   We have here letters to his Columbia professor/mentor Mark Van Doren, and the ever-whimsical wordplay-concoctions to his chum Robert Lax. We have encouraging letters to a high-schooler in San Francisco, Suzanne Butorovich -- these, quite possibly Merton's most charming examples of epistolary writing. We have letters to his New Zealand "Aunt Kit," and letters to other family members upon learning of her drowning after a ferryboat sinking. We have letters of pastoral counsel, one to an anguished homosexual; and we have letters thanking fans for their kind words, one in which Merton seems pleasantly surprised to be told that C S Lewis liked some of his books! There is a letter to a Massachusetts high-schooler proferring the asked-for help on a term paper. And there are letters about the events of the day, at the monastery and in the world at large. A flavour of some naive sixties hippiedom in a few places, but no matter.

   All manner of thing in this collection; surely, Merton at his gladdest and most endearing. And even if we often tire of Merton after ten or more years of reading him, we can return to these letters and be reminded of what first drew us to this most compelling figure.

1 comments about THE SEARCH For Kum ba ya.

1. Brilliant. Cerebral. Written by a female African American medical doctor. And, yes, that detail is important. For she delves deeply into multiple aspects of slavery, prejudice, hatred and oppression, not just the usual, mundane diatribe of the oppressed against the oppressor. Interestingly, the overall tenor of the book brightens the senses,enlightens the mentality, and brings about a catharsis of sorts without diminishing the significance of those dark topics in history. The best book in a long time to try to span the divide between black and white and between ignorance and enlightenment in this country. Must reading for anyone who is willing to surrender some preconceived ideas or to admit that we still have a ways to go - hence the subtitle. Educators, especially, ought to find the book helpful in providing a fresh perspective on all aspects of racial issues. Well researched and well written. An easy but intellectual read.

No comments about Yves Congar: Theologian of the Church (Louvain Theological & Pastoral Monographs).

3 comments about The Story of a Soul (Saint Benedict Press Classics).

1. In terms of her ability to maneuver words in the written form, Saint Therese of Lisieux was not as established as other writers such as St. Augustine or Thomas Merton. For this trait, she often apologizes in her writing. However, her insight in developing a relationship with Jesus and her devotion to that relationship make a profound statement. Even in the littlest of sacrifices, she shows herself growing closer to Jesus. The message outweighs the writing style in terms of importance.
   
   The product of three separate journals St. Therese kept during her short life, the book can be divided into these sections: The story of her life, the letter written to Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, and the notebook written for Rev. Mother Marie de Gonzague. While each of these writing tasks were given as an assigned task, they had a greater purpose and may have been the most important work of St. Therese's life. Even at a very young age, St. Therese showed strong devotion to the Lord. The story of her life makes up the greatest percentage of the book. Despite the death of her mother at a young age, St. Therese seemed happy and her devotion led her to pursue a devotional life at an unusually young age.
   
   In her short life, St. Therese saw the unbelievable and was touched by the hand of God. She showed her devotion even in the smallest of sacrifices. Still I believe that nothing is more touching than the initial pages of the book. It is perhaps one of the best explanations of God's love.



2. This is a wonderful book! It's St. Theresa's own story of her childhood, written at the request of her sister who was the Mother Superior of her Carmelite Monastery at the time. She tells about her mischievous activities as a charming little girl in the midst of her extraordinarily loving family. A most engaging story.



3. This is a lovely book by 'the greatest saint of modern times.' read any chapter and you will see the heart of Catholicism. You will learn catholic spirituality and the reason why Therese was a saint. Some men have said they are improved every time they read this book. It is true. Besides the Eucharist itself, St. Therese is the saint that drew me into the Church. Her Little Way gives me hope that perhaps we all have a chance of getting to heaven.

5 comments about Forty Acres and a Goat: A Memoir.

1. When he was seven years old Will Campbell (b. 1924) decided that he would be a preacher. Ten years later he was ordained, then took a pastorate at a small church in Louisiana. "It just didn't work out," he writes. Nor did his stint as Director of Religious Life at the University of Mississippi, where his views on civil rights were far too radical, nor after that his assignment with the National Council of Churches. He thus found himself with "a call but no steeple," a sense of failure, doubt about himself (but not about his call), and "a penchant for self-destruction." What to do?
   
   In this memoir Campbell tells how he regrouped on a rundown two-hundred year old farmhouse with forty acres and a goat named Jackson. There in rural Tennessee he has flourished as a Christian anarchist and rabble rouser. He's farmed, wrote nearly twenty books, hosted a steady stream of troubled people both famous and unknown, wrote country music, visited the sick and the imprisoned, and continued his curmudgeonly protest against the principalities and powers. If you were raised in the south as I was, have an interest in the civil rights movement, or want to enjoy one of the most irreverent Christians ever to irritate the church, then read Will Campbell. He was born and raised in the rural and very poor deep south of Amite, Mississippi, "ordained" by family members at a local Baptist church when he was seventeen, and, in a delightfully improbable life, played a central role as an activist and agitator on behalf of African Americans. In 1957, Campbell was one of four people who escorted the nine black students who integrated Little Rock's Central High School; and he was the only white person to attend the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. But he also made nice and sipped whiskey with the KKK Grand Dragon of North Carolina, believing that God's indiscriminate love embraces all of us without exception or conditions.
   
   Will Campbell loves a good chew of tobacco and will strike many as enigmatic. Not everyone will appreciate his rapier wit. But PBS profiled him in their documentary "God's Will," in 2000 President Clinton honored him with a National Endowment for the Humanities medal, and his book Brother to a Dragonfly won numerous literary awards.



2. There are vague memories of Will Campbell, from my childhood days at St. Phillips Episcopal Church. I always knew that he was the Salman Rushdie of the Southern Babtist Convention but I never new why he was associated with the Episcopal Church until reading 40 Acres and a Goat. I recently hooked up with the Phil Rice the son of Father Charles Rice.
   My interest in 40 Acres and a Goat got rekindled during my search for Convention: A Parable, which I still have not found a copy of. Convention: A Parable was referenced in American Theocracy : The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury, and I have been on the search for a copy since.
   Will Campbell is probably the most effective activist I have ever known in my life. 40 Acres and a Goat made me aware just how effective he was.
   I would stack him right up with Micheal Moore.
   I have a twenty year old activist living in my home who I hope reads this book and it would be extraordinary if he could get an opportunity to meet Mr. Campbell to put his radicallism into a much larger perspective.
   There is almost a melancholy conclusion to the memoir with a lack of assurance to the effectiveness of his efforts. But I believe that if you bang the drum your whole life and all you have to show for it is someone to bang the drum for you when you are gone, your life is golden.
   I do not know if I would ever have met Kerry Majors, Donald Cockrill, Bonita Hayes, Sammy and Loretta Tally, Douglas Palmer who were transfered from Hopewell Elementary to Andrew Jackson Elementary as a result of Brown vs. the Board of Education and the efforts of Mr. Campbell so I consider his contribution phenomenal.
   And I think that it is ironic that it took place Andrew Jackson Elementary, whereas Jackson A' Goat was the name of the goat who witnessed all these events.



3. I've owned this book for fourteen years...a real treasure. Have told many friends about it...this was done first by a Southern publisher; then in paperback, I think, by HarperCollins.

   Now, it looks like a new Southern publisher is bringing it back out in paperback. It's funky, Southern, religious, racial...abosolutely Southern and a must read. I recommend it to anyone who asks big questions about themselves and world and people around them.




4. This book is out of print. It is being reissued by Jefferson Press (see above.) It's a great buy.
   DM



5. Will Campbell is one of the South's great writers and this re-issue of Forty Acres and A Goat is perhaps his best. This book, still in high demand, has an exciting new cover and should be read by all who love the South, goats and God.

1 comments about Cries in the Night: Women Who Challenged the Holocaust.

1. The authors wrote of 7 women, out of many they could have chosen. An astonishing chronicle of courage in the face of Nazi terror. While many of the powerful and famous failed to help, these humble women - some vowed religious, some lay - faced death and torture and fearlessly rescued some hundreds of innocent people, including many children. A moving, wonderful book.

No comments about The Unknown Hsuan-Tsang.

5 comments about The Pontiff in Winter: Triumph and Conflict in the Reign of John Paul II (Random House Large Print (Cloth/Paper)).

1. It's one thing to disagree with the Pope it's another to write a mean spirited pack of half truths. I bought this assumeing it was a biography of the Popes final years. WRONG it is an angry polemical agenda driven anti-JPII book. Waste of my $.



2. Cambridge scholar George Holmes analyzes the long reign of Pope John Paul II, the former Karol Wojtyla. He discusses the pope's accomplishmnets and his views on controversial issues including birth control and abuses by the clergy. The author seems to be making his case for critizing the centralization of papal power. Though he does show us both the good and the bad affects the policy of this pope has had on the world. We see him as pope and a person. The book is well-written, but does not answer any questions. I am pleased I read a library copy. But I do suggest you read it and make up your own mind.



3. "The Pontiff in Winter" is eighty percent hagiography. It glosses over Pope John Paul's culpability for 20 million AIDS deaths, citing his opposition to disease-preventing condoms in one place and the statistical consequences of that policy elsewhere, but leaving it to the reader to make the connection. But Cornwall does quote the UN Secretary General's assertion that the current Roman Catholic theology is one that favors death rather than life.
   On the issue of Karol Wojtyla's much-touted ventures into ecumenism, Cornwall leaves no doubt that the only ecumenism the pope was willing to consider was the other side's unconditional surrender. To Wojtyla, all non-Catholics were in a "gravely deficient situation," and Lutherans and other Protestants were "not Churches in the proper sense."
   To the Vatican hierarchs currently dominating (some might say enslaving) the world's half-billion Catholics, right and wrong are whatever the hierarchs say they are. When four bishops denounced the archbishop of Vienna for his child molesting, a bishop from the Wojtyla faction told a TV station that the four would "roast in Hell." When Boston's cardinal Law covered up the crimes of pedophile priests, the pope initially ordered him not to resign, and later appointed him to an influential sinecure in Rome. And Wojtyla personally suppressed reports that priests in 29 African countries were infecting nuns with AIDS, and had impregnated more than thirty of them.
   Previous carefully censored media reports of the "third secret" prophecy by the surviving perpetrator of the Fatima hoax were consistent with the alleged prophecy being newly composed for political purposes. Cornwall's printing of the entire prophecy supports the interpretation that it really was composed in 1944, since it was so far removed from reality that even National Inquirer would have been reluctant to claim so many mistakes by a "psychic" as a hit. As Gary Wills wrote in the New York Review of Books, "Either the Virgin's crystal ball was clouded in 1917, or Lucia's imagination was overstimulated in 1944."
   As a virtual insider, with almost unrestricted access to the Vatican hierarchy, Cornwall was able to see for himself that, for at least the last five years of his papacy, John Paul II was less than compos mentis. After Wojtyla met with the archbishop of Canterbury and other Anglican dignitaries, he asked an aide, "Tell me, who were those people?" Cornwall concludes that, "John Paul was at best only partly in control, either of his own mind or the decisions of his close associates."
   Despite practising-Catholic Cornwall's attempt to write a charitable and balanced account of John Paul's pontificate, it is difficult for anyone to read this book with his brain in gear and fail to conclude that, as long as tyrannical popes are able to appoint the oligarchs who will choose their successors, the Roman Catholic Church is going to remain the most oppressive, totalitarian religious tyranny on earth, with the Scientologists and Moonies not even close contenders.



4. A well-written book, which can be appreciated and understood by
   Catholics and non-Catholics alike. (For those who seem to think
   that the only criticism of the late Pope comes from those who
   don't understand the Catholic Church, let me state here that I
   am a practising, progressive Catholic).
   
   There were no great surprises for me - I've long been concerned
   at the high-handedness of Pope John Paul and the Vatican Curia;
   this book confirmed my opinions while supplying a lot of
   background information explaining, as far as anyone can, how
   and why John Paul acted as he did.
   
   Probably the most appalling aspects of John Paul's pontificate -
   to a liberal thinker - were the hypocrisy of encouraging
   rebellion against left-wing regimes while clamping down on
   any protest against right-wing rulers; and the encouragement
   of tale-telling and denunciation of anyone who might even
   vaguely be suspected of harboring opinions not in full accord
   with the pope's own views - a mindset worthy of both the Nazi
   and Communist regimes under which he himself had suffered.
   Cornwell details many such instances of Vatican repression.
   
   There is another major act of hypocrisy - the branding of
   homosexuality as "intrinsically evil", and the refusal of
   needed pastoral care for religious homosexuals at the same time
   that the Vatican has done its best to put the issue of priestly
   paedophiles to one side, and has to this day failed to issue
   either a free-ranging enquiry or to apologise to the victims.
   Both issues are explored in the book, although it could be
   argued they deserve a book of their own.
   
   I suspect that the full extent of the damage done to the Church
   by John Paul II won't be fully realised until the Pontificate
   after the current one, when the only choices for a new Pontiff
   will have to be made from the ranks of those ultra-conservatives
   appointed as Bishops under the late Pope, and the Church will
   find itself hopelessly outdated and irrelevant. Cornwell sees
   clearly the already huge divide between the Vatican hierarchy
   and the Church on the ground, and it's unlikely that the
   division will be healed by Benedict XVI or his successor. Far
   more likely is the scenario that under a succession of arch-
   conservatives, engineered by John Paul, the imortance of the
   Catholic Church will be increasingly diminished in a world that
   is changing faster than anyone could have envisaged at the
   start of John Paul's reign.
   
   This is a valuable book, honest and forthright - if anything,
   it is kinder than it might have been.



5. Let me preface this review by saying I am not Catholic and though I have Catholic leanings I have resisted converting because of my liberal religious outlook. Seemingly, this is an outlook I share with Mr. Cornwell. I--like him--hold John Paul II in very high regard as a man of peace and one of the most influential agents of positive change in the past fifty years. On this aspect of his papacy, I feel Cornwell provides great examples and writes with appropriate zeal and praise.
   
   However, the areas that are of concern to many non-Catholics, which include ordination of women, contraception, marriage of clergy, and even papal infallibility, are presented in such a negative and sarcastic light that I fear no one will take them seriously. Cornwell claims to be a reform-minded Catholic. Unfortunately, his presentation of real concerns for thousands of Catholics and non-Catholics alike are handled with such vitriol that this book will prove to be more divisive than unifying.
   
   Ultimately, I feel that in spite of differences in belief between the author and the Pope this book could have been infused with a great deal more respect for a man who will be missed by millions. After all, in Cornwell's own admission, John Paul II has done more for peace in the world than anyone. Somehow, it seems that after saying that about someone repeatedly referring to him as "old boy" is entirely inappropriate. I had hoped for an unbiased (although this is seemingly impossible when writing about religion) and thoughtful portrayal of the strengths and weaknesses of John Paul's papacy. Unfortunately, I got a venomous diatribe.

No comments about Treasures in Darkness: A Doctor's Personal Journey Through Breast Cancer.

2 comments about The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales.

1. Saint Francis de Sales is another example of a disciple of Christ who literally lived the Gospel of Christ in his daily life. By the grace and love of God, he was also able to communicate his life in Christ in his own words. This book is a beautiful and deeply spiritual tribute to a life fully lived in and for the love of God. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for ways to live the life of Christ more completely.



2. I have always enjoyed reading Camus's portrayal of Francis de Sales since he knew him personally and spent time with him. When he talks about Francis, we know he likes him and admires him a great deal, and is curious about him as well. We learn something of Francis the person, and in the process learn a good deal about Camus himsewlf and the period. I was delighted when this work was in print again for the first time in quite a while. Enjoy.