NCR Book Club Column

Update: Australian bishops find 'difficulties' in retired bishop's book on church reform

NCR Book Club — Wed, 14 May 2008 13:41:37 -0400

NCR Book Club

By Dennis Coday, NCR staff writer

Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus
By Bishop Geoffrey Robinson; Foreword by Donald Cozzens
Liturgical Press, 320 pages, $24.95

Days before Australian Bishop Geoffery Robinson was to begin a U.S. tour promoting his book about church reform, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, the Australian bishops’ conference released a statement saying they had found “doctrinal difficulties” with the book.

Here’s a Catholic News Service story:

* * *

By Dan McAloon, Catholic News Service

SYDNEY, Australia -- The Australian Catholic Bishops' Conference has listed its concerns with a retired bishop's book that critiques sexual and authoritarian abuses in the church.

The 2007 book, Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus, was written by Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, retired auxiliary bishop of Sydney and former head of the church's abuse panel.

The bishops said that "after correspondence and conversation" with Bishop Robinson, "it is clear that doctrinal difficulties remain." Central to these, they said, is Bishop Robinson's "questioning of the authority of the Catholic Church to teach the truth definitively."

Personal stories of World War II Europe make the horrors more real

NCR Book Club — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:06:25 -0400

NCR Book Club

Reviewed by Rachelle Linner, Catholic News Service

DIARY OF A WITNESS, 1940-1943
by Raymond-Raoul Lambert. Translated by Isabel Best.
Ivan R. Dee (2007). 288 pages $27.50

To understand a period as complex as World War II and the Holocaust we need to read both trained historians and ordinary men and women. Historians provide a broad overview and an understanding of context but it is only individuals who can communicate the intimate details of what it is like to endure the suffering of mind, body and soul that is the reality of war.

Personal narratives can elicit the empathy and identification that move the reader to compassion and insight. The two books under consideration, while not among the central Holocaust narratives, are important in fleshing out our knowledge of those terrible years.

The conversion of a president

NCR Book Club — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:03:55 -0400

NCR Book Club

Reviewed by John Dear S.J.

JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters
by James W. Douglass
Orbis Books, 544 pages, $30

This week, Orbis Books publishes one of its most significant books in years, a labor of some 15 years work by Jim Douglass. JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters tells the painful, hopeful story of John F. Kennedy's efforts to save us from nuclear war, his decision to pull out troops from Vietnam, and his call for nuclear disarmament, a vision that animated shadowy forces in the U.S. government to do away with him and his vision.

I consider Jim one of the world's leading theologians of Christian nonviolence. His brilliance is reflected in his powerful books, The Nonviolent Cross, Lightning East to West, Resistance and Contemplation and The Nonviolent Coming of God (all recently republished by Wipf and Stock).

A God worthy of our belief

NCR Book Club — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 17:06:05 -0400

NCR Book Club

Interview by TOM FOX

QUEST FOR THE LIVING GOD: MAPPING THE FRONTIERS IN THE THEOLOGY OF GOD
by Sr. Elizabeth Johnson
Continuum, 256 pages, $24.95

Sr. Elizabeth Johnson, distinguished professor of theology at Fordham University, talks with Tom fox about her new book, Quest for the Living God Mapping the Frontiers in the Theology of God. Of this book, Roberto S. Goizueta, Associate Professor of Theology, Boston College, wrote, "Karl Rahner had an abiding concern that much of Christian theology presented God ‘unworthy of belief.’ Here Johnson has given us a God truly worthy of our belief, fidelity, and love. Every word breathes with the author's own deep love of God, the church, and the world.”

Excerpts from the Fox’s interview with Johnson follow. You can listen to the full interview or read a transcript here: A God worthy of our belief.

Tom Fox: Allow me to start where many people probably start when they talk to you about your book, and that is the bad press that God has been getting recently, and even you allude to it early on in your book. Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion is giving God a bad time. Is this deservedly so, given his arguments?

Elizabeth Johnson: To talk about Dawkins, and also Hitchens, Harris, the others that are writing those kinds of books, simply gets me very frustrated because the God that they are denying existence to is not the God that most Christians even believe in. …

Gems of the Catholic canon

NCR Book Club — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 15:00:01 -0400

NCR Book Club

Reviewed by RACHELLE LINNER

One Hundred Great Catholic Books: From the Early Centuries to the Present
By Donald Brophy
BlueBridge, 222 pages, $16

The German writer Ida Goerres uses the lovely phrase "book providence" to describe the way "certain books come into our lives at certain times for some God-given purpose." Most people can recognize this in their own experience as readers, whether in the chance conversation that leads to a previously unknown author or a serendipitous discovery made while browsing in a bookstore or library. Donald Brophy's One Hundred Great Catholic Books will surely mediate book providence for countless readers. Mr. Brophy, for many years an editor for Paulist Press, reminds us that great Catholic books are "your friends and companions on the journey." He advises, "Treasure them, hold them close."

The criteria for inclusion in the book, Mr. Brophy writes, was a work's "interest to general readers ... books that people today can actually 'read.' There was some effort made to show the wide range of Catholic writing without loading the volume down with moral or systematic theology." A variety of genres are represented, including poetry, fiction, apologetics, biography, memoirs, history, theology and, most prominently, spirituality. All the books on Mr. Brophy's list are currently available in print or online, and he includes an afterward of 50 more books he recommends and a helpful appendix with publication and translation information.

Australia’s reform minded bishop schedules U.S. tour

NCR Book Club — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:25:50 -0400

NCR Book Club

By Dennis Coday, NCR staff writer

Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus
By Bishop Geoffrey Robinson; Foreword by Donald Cozzens
Liturgical Press, 320 pages, $24.95

From the number of e-mail queries I have received since NCR ran the story about the publication of Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church: Reclaiming the Spirit of Jesus by Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson, I know many NCR Book Club readers will welcome this news:

Collegeville, Minn.-based Liturgical Press has obtained the North American rights to Robinson’s book, and it is now available for purchase here. Here’s a link to the book's Web page at Liturgical Press: Confronting Power and Sex in the Catholic Church.

For those eager to read the book, there is more good news. Robinson, the retired bishop of Sydney, Australia, will be on a U.S. book tour in May and June.