Rating: 
Summary: Exposes patterns of dissent and deception within the church
Review: The Catholic Church is in a state of crisis - how can it turn this crisis into new opportunities? In Courage To Be Catholic, Theologian Weigel argues the path to Catholic reforms lie in a renewed commitment to living the Catholic faith. From the current crisis of sexual abuses by leaders to the promise of Vatican II, Courage To Be Catholic exposes patterns of dissent and deception within the church - and offers some solutions.
Rating: 
Summary: My Wake Up Call
Review: This book manages to take a critical look at the modern Catholic Church and be pro Catholic at the same time. This book will benefit any catholic that wants to know why we are in the mess we are in and how to get out of it. Although not a member of the clergy he offers a few suggestions to the catholic in the pew, as well as quite a few to the US Bishops. I found myself not wanting to read the last few pages as he tries to tell the Vatican/Curia what they need to change to accomodate the Catholic Church in the US. other than that it is a fine book.My hat is off to George Weigel!
Rating: 
Summary: Closing your eyes while robbing the cookie jar!
Review: This is one piece of work. Weigel puts the blame for the current problem of pediophilia in the Catholic Church on everyone, from Playboy Magazine, to lower moral standards in society, to Fozzie Bear of "Muppet Show" fame. He blames everyone except the actual monsters themselves like the infamous Father Geoghan, who gives Charlie Manson a serious run for his money as far as being purely, and deeply evil. Every trick in the book is tried by Weigel, from passing the buck, to hiding from the problem like an ostrich sticking his head in the sand. Much ado about nothing when he claims that the "chaste priests" dont have the problem, only the few being prosecuted do. "Chastity is not to blame" even though the Boston Archdiocese shelled out 65 million in hush money to the hundreds of victims. Catholic propaganda at it's very finest, this guy would make a wonderful attorney, he could make OJ Simpson look like the Dalai Lama. The problems themselves, of pediophilia, and the power of raw lust, and the fact that the Church clergy is aging and dying out are avoided altogether, and the author makes everything look like the media blew it out of proportion. John Paul II's outdated, outmoded, moralistic but unrealistic principles are told to be taken as the Gospel, and it is very interesting how the Bible is misinterpeted through the book. Amazing reading, I chuckled, laughed out loud, and cussed loudly throughout. It didnt make me go back to Church, but reaffirmed my position, that the only form of "chastity" that would work nowadays is castration. Lets see just how devout those clergymen are then!
Rating: 
Summary: Good Balance to Mainline Media Coverage
Review: To be honest, there is nothing here that has not already been written many times. Since the latest scandal broke there have been many observers who have written precisely what Weigel presents. However, this is a fine gathering together in book form of the various positions of non-'progressive' Catholic writers. In direct contrast to the New York Times and the National Catholic Reporter, Weigel points out that the sex scandal was not the result of 'oppressive' traditional Catholic morality, but rather their rejection. Had the priests in question embraced the morality that the Church's critics reject and so badly wish to usurp, this all would have been averted. The rediculous notions that clerical celibacy, or other progressivist agenda items, were the cause of this crisis is looked upon by Weigel as utter nonesense, and rightfully so. Weigel traces the origin of the crisis to the 'culture of dissent' that emereged in the '60s, most notably revolving around the rejection of Humane Vitae in 1968. This book is easily accessible to general readers. There is certainly no extensive argument to be found in the book, and there is much left unsaid. It seems hastily written at times, as it almost certainly was in order to get the book published in time to maximize relevancy. But it is well worth reading, particularly for those whose information about the crisis in the U.S. Church comes exclusively from the mainline media.
Rating:
Summary: Keeping the Faith
Review: Weigel addresses some hard-hitting concerns of the day, and while I applaud his effort to pinpoint the issues and offer rectifications, many of his assertions produce a vast vacancy in reasoning. This book is unworthy of Weigel, his arguments are rushed and unsupported...alot of conjecture. If I weren't a Catholic, this book would definately put me "off" of the faith, as it colors a picture fraught with more problems than solutions, more struggles than benefits. I'm embarrassed to have this edition on my shelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Integrist and out-of-date
Review: Weigel's new book has been pretty much shown up for the nonsense it is by Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books.
Weigel calls for "fidelity." He is right. But fidelity to what? To every irrational, reactionary, unbelievable thing which comes out of the mouth of men locked away in the Vatican bureaucracy, without any sense of the real world? To believe that contraception is inherently wrong, that natural birth control is legitimate because it does not mechanically interfere with conception, that celibacy is positive when it obviously encourages the wrong men to enter the priesthood is crazy! To make an idol of the pope is idolatry and contrary to 1900 years of Catholic Church history. Not to recognize that the Church has died in Europe and is in its death throes in the United States and Canada is to be blind to facts. To attack historians and scholars like Daniel Jonah Goldhagen for his justified revulsion at the delinquencies of Pius XII and the Church during WWII, while refusing to open Vatican archives fully, reminds one of the Soviet Encyclopedia whose subscribers periodically got pages in the mail to replace old one when the official line had changed.
The Gospels proclaim that "the truth shall make you free." Weigel supports the Church in asking with Pilate: "What is truth?"
Rating:
Summary: Credible, Edifying and Disheartening
Review: What a disappointing Book! With "reform" in the title, the author writes in defense of "business as usual" and recommends more of the same. If you're looking for hope in the future, stay away from this one; seems commissioned by those who wish to protect an institution as it was rather than help it become all it can be.
Rating:
Summary: Business as Usual
Review: What a disappointing Book! With "reform" in the title, the author writes in defense of "business as usual" and recommends more of the same. If you're looking for hope in the future, stay away from this one; seems commissioned by those who wish to protect an institution as it was rather than help it become all it can be.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant analysis
Review: What is so impresive is the theological depth of the analysis of the causes of the palpable decadence of American Catholicism. We are far beyond the emotivism of the right and the left in this study of the resilience of the Catholic creed and the sober need to become who we are as Roman Catholics.
Rating:
Summary: Turn on the Light; the party's over
Review: While John Paul II was giving hope to victims of communism, helping to win the Cold War, his American flock was way off message. In public the American bishops flogged their assumed moral acuity: intoning sonorous condemnations of Ronald Reagan's policies, loudly wondering if the pontiff knew what century it was, while in private they inducted and sheltered priests who preyed upon unsuspecting parishioners' teenaged boys. This book is an account of how it happened, and how the stinking mess was exposed. George Weigel must certainly have written this book with a very personal anger at the malfeasant clerics who allowed all this to happen. He had written a well-received biography of the current pontiff, who is one of the 20th century's indisputable heroes. Now, the post-Cold War victory glow of the Catholic church has been dispelled by the reek of the American church's sexual scandals. Weigel manfully refrains from calling the crisis a media creation, though he does score the press on a few inaccuracies here and there. He sticks to just the facts: the opinions of even the most influential commentators like Andrew Sullivan and Richard John Neuhaus are excluded. He also does not waste a lot of space replying to charges that the church's rule of celibacy caused these predators to seduce their young male victims. Nor does he dwell on the capture of the American Catholic seminaries by the gay subculture-Michael Rose's Goodbye, Good Men is the place to get an full, infuriating examination of that sad state of affairs. Weigel provides a chronological narrative of the crisis, and by the way an explanation of the functions of various papal officers and departments. He traces the origins of the crisis to what he calls the "Truce of 1968", in which American liberals in the church flouted elements of Vatican II, and were allowed to get away with it. These people then established a "culture of dissent" in the seminaries, turning away orthodox applicants, and spreading laxness and relativism and corruption throughout the American church. The Vatican also bungled its end of responsibility. It did not keep the Pope and his aides adequately informed, nor did it conduct crucial press conferences very competently. Weigel insists against some American reformers that this is a crisis of fidelity, not of management or oversight. He reiterates the theological inspiration for the offices of priests, bishops and cardinals, and proposes many sharp, specific reforms. He calls for nothing less than the spiritual cauterization of the American Church. The Americans were not completely corrupt. The U. S. church had in fact discreetly resolved many of the abuses, under prompting by Rome, by the time the story broke. But what goes on in the dark comes out in the light. The crisis continued to rage after this book's publication. Cardinal Bernard Law was forced to resign some months later, and reformers threatened the outright ban on homosexuals in the priesthood. One gets the sense that things will get uglier before they get prettier. But no one can doubt that thoroughgoing penance and reform must come before any renewal in the American Catholic church. Let the cleaning of the whited sepulchers begin.
| 
