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Summary: The Banality of Evil
Review: Wills warns the church not to be held hostage by its obsessive concern with precedent and magisterial authority. This book should be read in conjunction with "Hitler's Pope" John Cornwell's work on Pius XII and the Holocaust.
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Summary: Garry Wills and the Second Reformation
Review: Wills brings his extraordinary historical sensitivity to bear on what he considers the primary "papal sin" of our time, the Vatican's alleged tendency to advance some of its causes by means of "deceit." Wills' special talent, as seen especially in "Lincoln at Gettysburg," is his ability to expose hidden historical meanings by making historical documents and events interrogate one another. His exposure of the self-serving agenda behind Pope Pius IX's push to be declared infallible is a brilliant and revealing exercise of historical interrogation. It establishes his paradigm of what papal deceit in modern times looks like. The paradigm is then identified in several other modern cases--most effectively, I think, in Wills' examination of four papal initiatives: Pope Pius XII's consignment to oblivion of his predecessor's "hidden encyclical" against anti-Semitism, Pope Paul VI's prohibitions of the discussion of "artificial" birth control and married priesthood at the Second Vatican Council, and Pope John Paul II's on-going prohibition of women's ordination. Less effective, in my opinion, are Wills' discussions of the doctrine of the Eucharist and of the Vatican's attempt to beatify two victims of the Holocaust. Deceit does not seem to be the main problem in these examples. His reservations about the Vatican's anti-gay policy are apt to a point. But they are obscured by his assumption that gay priests are sexually active priests. This assumption is false, since gay priests [such as myself] may be, and often are, celibates. Perhaps it was this assumption that led Wills to make the reckless, unfounded charge that gay priests would be more likely than straight priests to conspire to protect priests guilty of pedophilia. Nevertheless, the book as a whole is a major contribution to the world-wide discussion that is developing into a Second Reformation--a reformation of the Christian Church that will be all the more effective for being non-violent.
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Summary: New Age Religion
Review: A book about the New Age Spirituality and direct from Yale University. These are the same old thoughts half truths emerging from the global village. Do not waste your money!!
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Summary: Well done, Gary Wills!
Review: As a former Catholic seminarian and long-time member of a religious order, I can attest to the accuracy of Wills' book regarding the "structures of deceit" still found and well-defended in the Church today. He truly did his homework and research on this one. I found out many new things in this book that were glossed over or never mentioned in my years in the seminary, such as the incident of the kidnapped Jewish child by Pius IX and the sordid story behind the declaration of infallibility at Vatican I. Truly Catholics have to wake up to what has been hidden from them for centuries and perhaps re-evaluate their Church. I found the last chapters a bit dry for my taste, but overall this is an excellent, well-researched work. Bravo!
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Summary: And the Kitchen Sink
Review: I am an admirer of Mr. Wills' previous books on Lincoln at Gettysberg and his little gem on Augustine. Given my high estimate of some of his previous writings, I expected a book with a tighter, more focused argument. Not that there isn't plenty to chew on! The pleas for a radical dedication to truth,recalling Newman and Augustine, are bracing.The accounts of Pius IX and Vatican I (and the syllabus of errors) are juicy. I thought the connection between authoritarianism and marianism made in regard to Pius IX and the present pope were provocative and on target. But Mr Willis mixes brilliance with sloppiness, and thus gives his critics too much room to dismiss the basic thesis. For example, he is sloppy, inaccurate re limbo. He does not distinguish between what is presented as a doctrine (cannot ordain women) with a discipline of choice (celibate priesthood). The church has never said it could not ordain married men (in fact, does).And when it comes to abortion, he rightly points out the tradition is more complicated than is usually presented, but contents himself with that. Once he gets started, Mr. Wills starts throwing in everything he can get his hands on, including the kitchen sink.He comes across more as a prosecutor than an historian. He weakens his basic argument thereby. I had come to expect a little more. One footnote: It appears the church is proceeding with the canonization of Pius IX! Yipes!
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Summary: Abortion, Birth Control, and Women Priests
Review: This elegantly researched book could almost have been entitled "Let Us Prey." The problem with Catholicism, says author Garry Wills (a Catholic), is not with Scripture, not with its core doctrine of good works, but with a Vatican hierarchy that fears admitting the Church has ever made a mistake. For once a Pope admits that prior Popes or the institutional Church ever got things wrong, then the present aura of infallability will start to crumble. So instead of Popes being true to Scripture or the early history of the Church (which would require them to admit, for example, that there were many apostles, not just 12, and that they included women), Popes are only true to their predecessors. The current Pope, John Paul II, presides over an enormous erosion of priests in the developed world and the virtual elimination of the sisterhood. Why? Professor Wills says that young people who might be attracted to the priesthood or sisterhood are thoroughgoing idealists; they simply cannot accept the dumb, deceitful, anti-humanistic strictures of the Pope against abortion, birth control, or women priests. And to be ordained, they have to vow obedience to the Pope. Naturally, young Catholics are increasingly working outside the Church--doing social work, human rights work, etc. Theirs is a true Catholic mission, in the best spirit of Jesus Christ. Unless the next Pope realizes this and is honest enough to correct the current mis-teachings, there's not much hope for the Catholic Church in our generation. As Professor Wills forthrightly puts it, "To maintain an impression that Popes cannot err, Popes deceive--as if distorting the truth in the present were not a worse thing than mistaking it in the past."
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Summary: Provocative
Review: Despite some previous reviewers' opinions, Garry Wills is a very bright and talented historian. Pulitzer prizes in general are not bestowed on the witless.It's disturbing, but not unexpected, that some Catholic publications choose to attack his book in ad hominen terms. Conservative Catholic readers are precisely the ones that should be reading such books. Such issues as the ordination of women, contraception, and the necessity of celibacy in the clergy are not going to go away. For me, Wills is very effective in arguing that the injunction against women in the priesthood is based on age-old misogyny and fear of women. To be a against contraception at this time in history seems to be a totally ludicrous position. The author also points out that the scriptural evidence supporting celibacy in the priesthood is thin indeed. He covers other well fought issues such as homosexuality and abortion. On both those issues, it appears to me that he takes something of a middle ground. His disdain for the politics of the Vatican is quite apparent throughout the book. However, he also appears to be a very committed Catholic. The analogy to the patriotic American who abhors his government's sometimes heavy fisted ways seems obvious to me. Although, at least we get to elect that leadership. No, I know the Catholic church is not a democracy. However, Wills points out that the church is ultimately about the body of believers in Christ that share those basic beliefs. Now I understand that you cannot have a church without physical structures, priests or deacons, scripture/doctrine, etc. But what if you declare a church and no congregation shows up? You cannot have a civilized institution of any sort without a constant dialog between believers and the hierarchy. The Vatican seems to be one of the last holdouts of monarchical values. I was brought up Episcopalian. My more recent spritual interests have been in Buddhism and Unitarianism. I've had a good number of Catholic friends over the years and one ex-wife who were Catholics--or perhaps lapsed Catholics. I have great respect for many of the people and some of the traditions of that church. I sincerely hope that the Catholic church will open itself to reasonable, constructive change in the coming decades and to improve dialog with its own body of believers, Protestantism, non-Christian religions, and non-believers.
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Summary: Pope John XXIII pray for your Brother Karol--he needs you!
Review: This book, in a sense is for the older generation, who have inbred guilt over even disagreeing with the Vatican or Pope. The younger generation have either become fed up with the ludicrousness of moral pronouncements and since left, or, they worship, pray, love, live ....and then simply ignore what common sense (inspired by the spirit) tells them is hogwash! Thank God Popes are not involved in murder, debauchery, rape any more, in this modern time. But they still deserve outr utmost honesty and critique when they make claims to be infallible..or, uphold the claims of former Popes that now are so very incredulous. How many words have been written by Popes, how much paper and ink exhausted....to pen defenses of past popes. A million words to avoid saying three: WE WERE WRONG or I AM SORRY. The people in the pews took Pope John XXIII serioously and have since matured in faith. The Vatican needs to catch up with them, and take a humility pill. I must say that this book revealed so much more than I ever imagined ..especially about the various Pope Pius's--- in their own words they say such bizarre stuff that one simply cannot fathom them to have been infallible.
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Summary: Another masterpiece by Garry Wills
Review: This book is a well-reasoned and compassionately critical history of the Vatican's methods of intellectual self-deceit. It deftly considers the sources of these 'structures of deceit', and their sequelae for the Church as a WHOLE -- not just the hierarchy. Every Catholic should read this book and seriously consider its points. This book also continues Wills' brilliant ongoing elucidation of St. Augustine's thought (which begins in Wills' "Confessions of a Conservative," and comes to full flower in his recent book, "St. Augustine"). Here's hoping Garry Wills continues to bring Augustine of Hippo to contemporary readers.
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Summary: Never too late for Truth
Review: Garry Wills lets off a great deal of pent-up steam in this book, but there is still room for a great deal more exposition in the area of truth. This book (terrible title....Mr. Publisher) begs for a larger tome which looks at structures of deceipt in religious organizations of various Christian sects. Mr. Wills has sent me back to a study of Augustine, for which I may or may not be grateful.
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