Reclaiming Spirituality: A New Spiritual Framework for Today's World

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Summary: Where is the "framework" for reclaiming spirituality?
Review: I expected this book to present a path to reclaim spirituality and present "new" possibilities for a more integrated worldview of spirituality. Instead it is a book on what seems to be exploration and more condemnation of patriarchal based religious views. I'm disappointed in that there is no real fundamental presentation of the advantages of reclaiming spirituality. It seemed that he has reiterrated views that have already been expressed by numerous other authors.

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Summary: No advance in the dialogue. . .
Review: I was looking forward to reading this book because of its topic and the various aspects covered - as well as the author's reputation. However, I was disappointed. First of all, the tone struck me as hostile. It's almost as if O'Murchu were baiting the Vatican to censure him. If that's too harsh, maybe he is simply engaging in catharsis because of the admittedly difficult positions espoused by the Church throughout the centuries. Anyway, the other thing is that he didn't seem to break any new ground. The book was mostly analysis, with little (as far as I could see) recommendation for positive action. Also, it had been done before. Patriarchy has been appropriately bashed already. I had hoped for something that could be seen as the next step. But that seems impossible, since all the institutions we know are bankrupt and half the human race (the male half) along with it.

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Summary: toward an Wholistic Ecumenicism
Review: O'Murchu applauds the growth of spirituality and the waning of formalized religious practice. We must think in evolutionary time spans and reject the self-denying dualisms of the Church in its 2000 year history.By embracing a feminist consciousness we become life affirming and escape the control of the white male church.

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Summary: A Case-In-Point Of DeMan's 'Blindness And Insight'
Review: O'Murchu has managed to succeed in the highly non-trivial task of writing a book that is both trivial and profound. _Reclaiming Spirituality_ is trivial in the sense that it is one more in a dreary series of books berating 'patriarchy' with an almost-fundamentalistic fervor, and espousing a no-less-fundamentalistic vision of 'The Imminent End Of Western Civilization As We Know It.' But the book is also profound in that O'Murchu's blindness to his own discursive irony gives us a glimpse of why, in a kind of convolutedly self-referential way, his thesis about dualism leading to a blind alley is correct - a blind alley his very advocacy of this thesis inscribes in his book. Despite his repeated, and eventually, boringly repetitive, perorations against either/or 'duality,' O'Murchu's own text is founded upon an enormous either/or duality: formal institutional religion vs. spirituality. In fact, so central is this duality to the book that the book, which would collapse if this duality were ever resolved, is actually at base (neo-)Gnostic. Other either/or dualities abound, despite O'Murchu's ostensible disavowal of them: patriarchy vs. egalitarianism, linear/logical thinking vs. intuitive. What O'Murchu doesn't seem to realize is that, in empirical fact, where you find one half of each dichotomy you inevitably find the other, and that an attempt to subvert either/or dualities that is itself predicated on an either/or duality necessarily subverts only itself.