Does anyone know of any reviews of The
Purpose Driven Life from a Catholic perspective? I haven’t read it,
but I know millions of people have. I tend to be skeptical of anything
that popular. That’s not to say I never jump on any bandwagons, but I
like to check things out first. Also, I’ve heard some folks dismuss it
as “fluff” and others denounce it as heterodox.
I anxiously await your responses. 🙂
This National Catholic Reporter opinion piece really got me hot under the collar. Here’s how CathNews sums it up:
The recent Vatican censure of US Jesuit theologian Roger Haight for his attempt to reformulate doctrines about Christ for a postmodern world highlights a disturbing theme of John Paul II’s pontificate. Instead of the ban on teaching, however, a more imaginative response might have been to convene a summit on Christology. A lively debate over Haight’s work already existed, and many of the reactions in serious theological journals were negative.
What possible purpose would a summit on Christology serve? Newsflash, NCR, we’ve already had all the summits we need; they’re called ecumenical councils!!!
The time for polite discussion is over. If a patient comes into an ER with a gunshot wound, the doctors don’t sit around contemplating their navels as they discuss the moral and ethical implications of the Second Amendment. They remove the bullet, stop the bleeding, and dress the wound. Likewise, rather than allow Haight to continue teaching rubbish and risk a gangrenous infection developing at his university, Church officials have removed him for the good of the Body of Christ.
"Convene a summit" indeed. I’m reminded of a scene from The Life of Brian, in which People’s Front of Judea resolve to discuss rescuing Brian from crucifixion, thus wasting precious time that could be spent actually rescuing him.
JUDITH: They’ve arrested Brian!
REG: What?
COMMANDOS: What?
JUDITH: They’ve dragged him off! They’re going to crucify him!
REG: Right! This calls for immediate discussion!
As many are already aware, in December Rev. Roger Haight, S.J. was notified by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that his book Jesus: Symbol of God contained errors contrary to the faith. The notification contained seven propositions concerning which Fr. Haight’s book was judged to be in error. These errors, however, were not original with Haight, nor should the Vatican’s reaction be surprising. All are in contradiction with Ecumenical Councils and other infallible teachings of the Church. Below are found the systems to which these propositions belong, and the infallible teaching which refutes them. Citations are given by the Denzinger Enchiridion Symbolorum as edited by Rev. Karl Rahner, S.J. Full discussion of these matters, and quotes with complete citations to the individual documents can be found here.
…all the live-long day 🙂
Remember
my WikiIndex idea? Well, somebody saw it and asked me to participate in a private
beta for a wiki site he’s developing. I accepted and have begun work on a wiki for
Catholic books. There’s much work left to do, but if
you take a look, you’ll get the basic idea of what it’s about.
Update:
The index no longer exists because nobody had time or energy enough to maintain it. Here’s what it looked like.
Recently I was discussing and lamenting with friends the proliferation of heretical books written by individuals calling themselves Catholic or at least purporting to have expert knowledge of the Church or Christianity in general. I read a lot and my friends read a lot. We’re inquisitive people and have at least a little ability to discern works that are in accordance with orthodox teachings and those that are not. The vast majority of people in the Church lack such a foundation and are easily lead astray by dreck by the likes of Dan Brown, Gary Wills, and John Shelby Spong.
Once upon a time, the Church maintained a list of books that Catholics ought not read, called the Index. It’s impractical in this age of mass communication for the Church to maintain such a list. However, a queriable database of books that have been given an imprimatur and/or nihil obstat would be nice. Speaking of this useful service with my friends, an idea occurred to me.
What if we created a wiki with information about popular theological books? I lack the time to set something like that up, but I’m sure someone else could do it. Somewhere in this vast blogosphere is an individual or group with the time and know-how to set up a WikiIndex. Please spread this meme if you’d like to see this idea come to fruition.
Update: I’ve discovered that the software used to create Wikipedia is open source. Woohoo!
