Appointment in Rome: The Church in America Awakening

Rating:
Summary: More cafeteria Catholicism
Review: Fr. Neuhaus has written a book that is scandalously at odds with the teaching of Pope John Paul II, as most recently given in his apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia in America, presented at the close of the Synod for the Americas that Fr. Neuhaus is writing about here. If you are looking for an orthodox, faithful to the magisterium, review of the Synod, this ain't it. Instead, what you will find is warmed over Protestant Calvinism and political partisanship, where the poor are poor because they are bad people.

Rating:
Summary: A Wise and Affectionate Look at the Church in America
Review: It is little wonder that orthodox Catholic thinkers everywhere, including the Holy Father, hold Fr. Neuhaus in such high esteem. Appointment in Rome is must reading for anyone interested in getting a clear-eyed but affectionate look at the key figures in the American Catholic Church hierarchy. A true joy after the stale rehash of 60's liberalism that taints so much of U.S. Catholic journalism. Neuhaus' snapshot of Fr. Thomas Reese S. J. is worth the price of the book!

Rating:
Summary: A Wise and Affectionate Look at the Church in America
Review: It is little wonder that orthodox Catholic thinkers everywhere, including the Holy Father, hold Fr. Neuhaus in such high esteem. Appointment in Rome is must reading for anyone interested in getting a clear-eyed but affectionate look at the key figures in the American Catholic Church hierarchy. A true joy after the stale rehash of 60's liberalism that taints so much of U.S. Catholic journalism. Neuhaus' snapshot of Fr. Thomas Reese S. J. is worth the price of the book!

Rating:
Summary: A marvellous book which I'm sure the Pope himself enjoyed!
Review: The Pope named Fr. Neuhaus as his personal designee to the Synod, and a splendid choice it was. Neuhaus is one of the best chroniclers of events in the whole field of religion--and some other fields, too. Full of engaging detail and profound reflections, this memoir conveys the day-to-day argument but also the background to make it intelligible, and is infused with a love for the Gospels and Catholic social thought. Its realistic and probing questions give evidence of a powerful desire actually to help the poor to move out of poverty. Neuhaus punctures the simplicities of those who have failed to follow the successive cutting edges of this particular great Pope's thought. For some reason, I note in two or three reviews, it has infuriated the more doctrinaire leftists--probably because it reports their opinions as reflected at the Synod, and dares to question what facts they are based on, and then lets out their hot air slowly and wittily. Richly entertaining as a memoir, and good to read in a prayerful, reflective frame of mind as one tries to think with the Church--this lumbering, concrete, often crashingly human Church at the Synod. Neuhaus describes the daily boredom of listening to speech after speech (as happened many days at Vatican II, too, I remember) but also those moments in which every so often the event was lit up by great flashes of illumination. The deft pen portraits of famous personalities are sometimes wickedly funny, and always candid. The book glows with affection for the Church in all its messy, angular variety. If you love reading about great events and vast panoramas of people--and about Rome--you will delight in this book. It took me some months to get to it, but the great pleasure it gave will stay with me.

Rating:
Summary: A marvellous book which I'm sure the Pope himself enjoyed!
Review: The Pope named Fr. Neuhaus as his personal designee to the Synod, and a splendid choice it was. Neuhaus is one of the best chroniclers of events in the whole field of religion--and some other fields, too. Full of engaging detail and profound reflections, this memoir conveys the day-to-day argument but also the background to make it intelligible, and is infused with a love for the Gospels and Catholic social thought. Its realistic and probing questions give evidence of a powerful desire actually to help the poor to move out of poverty. Neuhaus punctures the simplicities of those who have failed to follow the successive cutting edges of this particular great Pope's thought. For some reason, I note in two or three reviews, it has infuriated the more doctrinaire leftists--probably because it reports their opinions as reflected at the Synod, and dares to question what facts they are based on, and then lets out their hot air slowly and wittily. Richly entertaining as a memoir, and good to read in a prayerful, reflective frame of mind as one tries to think with the Church--this lumbering, concrete, often crashingly human Church at the Synod. Neuhaus describes the daily boredom of listening to speech after speech (as happened many days at Vatican II, too, I remember) but also those moments in which every so often the event was lit up by great flashes of illumination. The deft pen portraits of famous personalities are sometimes wickedly funny, and always candid. The book glows with affection for the Church in all its messy, angular variety. If you love reading about great events and vast panoramas of people--and about Rome--you will delight in this book. It took me some months to get to it, but the great pleasure it gave will stay with me.