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Reviews of Cultural Books|
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Francis Phillips reviews Faith, Reason, and The War against Jihadism, by George Weigel
"George Weigel is Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Centre in Washington DC and the author of many books exploring the relationship between faith and culture. Here he brings his voice to the urgent debate that has arisen since 9/11 2001 and the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York, asking: what are the right tools for winning the war against terror? In this thought-provoking brief survey he examines the history of jihadism and the weaknesses and strengths of the West in facing it. In this he leans heavily on the work of two scholars of modern Islam, Lawrence Wright and Bernard Lewis. His book is divided into three parts: understanding the enemy, rethinking realism and deserving victory. It should be read by, among others, all thoughtful atheists (not an oxymoron)."
Francis Phillips reviews The Realm, by Aidan Nichols O.P. Family Publications
"The title of this work might sound a little antiquated – a word such as one might find in Shakespeare – but there is nothing antiquated about Father Aidan Nichols’ new book. At only 160 pages, it fizzes with stimulating thoughts and ideas. This should not surprise; Nichols is a Dominican friar from Cambridge, now John Paul II Memorial Visiting Lecturer at Oxford, and the Dominicans were founded to preach the word of God against heretics."
Francis Phillips reviews No Place For God: The Denial of the Transcendent in Modern Church Architecture. By Moyra Doorly. Ignatius.
"On being taken to Mass in the underground basilica at Lourdes, the late Monsignor Alfred Gilbey, that most courteous of men, was moved to comment, “It reminds me of nothing so much as a Nazi rally.” He was referring to the vast crowds, the raised central stage and the spot-lit altar of this concrete bunker. Moyra Doorly, an architect and convert, does not use so extreme an image in her analysis of modern church architecture but she makes her views very plain. Modern churches, she believes, are geared “to the celebration of… the worshipping community”, not to a transcendent God; they are temples to the “spirit of the age” and just like earlier styles such as Gothic and Baroque, they reflect the theology of their times."
Francis Phillips reviews The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister. By John O’Sullivan. Regnery Publishing. $27.95
"John O’Sullivan has chosen to write about a decade of great events, brought about by three people of great stature. It could be called “Ten Years that Shook the World”. The author is very well placed to write it, having covered the Reagan presidency as a Washington columnist, having been a special adviser to Margaret Thatcher and having written extensively on John Paul II. To this dramatic story he brings his own shrewd, informed political judgments. In contrast to the depressing accounts of wars and rumours of wars that we read daily in our newspapers, we are treated here to an alternative perspective."
Francis Phillips reviews In the Light of Christ: Writings in the Western Tradition
"Oscar Wilde once described a cynic as “knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing”. This careless witticism suggests more than its author could have realised; indeed, it is a neat description of the post-modern, post-Christian culture in which we live. Lucy Beckett’s book is a magnificent demonstration of the poverty of the rational, scientific outlook when divorced from “value”, the value of certain classic texts in the light of truth, goodness and beauty – the light of Christ."
Francis Phillips reviews two books on Shakespeare:
"A former archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, once remarked of Mother Teresa of Calcutta: “She belongs to us all.” He was paying tribute to the universal appeal of a holiness that transcended religious divisions. Genius, like holiness, has a universal quality; when it is expressed in poetic drama to the very highest degree, it will affect all who encounter it and cross all barriers of time, race and culture. That is why Shakespeare matters; being the greatest poet of all time he is the touchstone, as the Yale professor Harold Bloom has pointed out, for what it means to be human. And so he, too, belongs to us all."
Francis Phillips reviews The Cube and the Cathedral, by George Weigel
"This book was written before the French and the Dutch voted decisively against the proposed new European Union constitution. However, these plebiscites are, in their own way, a significant coda to it. Ordinary people – as opposed to the remote and arrogant mandarin elite in Brussels – feel a profound unease at the way Europe is changing. What began as a small, economic fraternity, the Common Market, designed to end old enmities in a new spirit of cooperation, has, over the decades, turned into a projected ‘super-state’ where the ancient certainties of national life and identity will have altered irrevocably and in which the vox populi is neither heard nor consulted. No wonder that in these two recent referendums the proposed constitution has been rejected."
"In their introduction to this volume the authors, the former a philosophy professor and the latter a science and theology lecturer, quote from the Didache, a first century manual for those considering becoming Christians: “You shall not commit adultery. You shall not corrupt boys. You shall not commit fornication…You shall not use magic. You shall not administer drugs [magic potions, contraceptives and abortifacients]. You shall not slaughter a child in abortion, nor slay a begotten one…”It is a chastening list for, after 2,000 years of Christianity, which has given us sublime teaching and great saints to exemplify it, the Western world in our times has slipped back into the spiritual darkness and immorality of the pagan world. How could this have happened? This book singles out the men and women of the last 200 years whose theories and ideas have been so potent and so poisonous in subverting our formerly Christian culture."
Dr Pravin Thevathasan reviews Civilizing Sex, by Patrick Riley
"Civilizing Sex is a profound examination of the impact on civic life of sexual behaviour. It argues that the virtue of chastity is essential to the common good and to the very survival of society: Sex is not merely a private matter."
T & T Clark - ISBN 0 567 08766 2 - £16.99
(Encounter Books, San Francisco), ISBN 1-893554-08-2
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Theotokos Catholic Books - Book Reviews Section - www.theotokos.org.uk