Reviews for Philosophy Between Faith And Theology: Addresses To Catholic Intellectuals

The average rating for Philosophy Between Faith And Theology: Addresses To Catholic Intellectuals based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-02-19 00:00:00 Karen Stolfo Sinclair is a passionate and articulate advocate, and I enjoy his rhetoric on behalf of working people and against social inequality. The main thrust of his argument, however, is that religion, as it now exists, (or more accurately as it then existed) is nothing more than a tool used to keep the oppressed from rising up against a wealthy class that the religious leaders represent. It is an argument that I might have found compelling in my youth. In fact, when I was in high school I wrote a cheeky essay on how the church as a big business that was interested in protecting its profits. It was full of quotations and clever arguments, and I got an A on it in my English class. So in arguing against Sinclair, I am also arguing against my junior year self. Sinclair makes the mistake of assuming that there is a single entity in the world called "religion" that can be replaced with a new religion of justice and equality that mirrors his socialist idealism. He imagines that all religion is in the business of making money and consolidating power, while the religion of social equality does not exist now, only in a utopian future. Of course the reality is much more muddy. Churches modeled on the ideal of social justice exist along side churches that encourage support of the status quo.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-08-24 00:00:00 Tom Dale "Let us not fail, young comrades; let us not write on the scroll of history that mankind had to go through yet new generations of wars and tumults and enslavements, because the youth of the international revolution could not lift themselves above those ancient personal vices which wrecked the fair hopes of their fathers'bigotry and intolerance, vindictiveness and vanity, envy, hatred and malice and all uncharitableness!" I swear I didn't start reading this book to perfectly coincide with the latest battle between Church and State i.e. the Kim Davis controversy. It just so happened that it was the final book in my stack of "religion is dumb lol" books I had horded from when I worked at a bookstore. It just so happens that conflicts between religious belief and public policy is as old as... well, history as we know it. Frankly, I was surprised this even existed - the idea of such a harsh indictment of religion, especially Christianity (but specifically Catholicism), being published in 1918 seems unfathomable to me. However, here it stands and it's quite a ballsy critique/expose, which shouldn't be entirely surprising from the man who wrote The Jungle. The book doesn't solely focus on religion, as Sinclair also takes time to make it clear that big business is the main source of corruption in religion. I definitely think there is something to be said for that too, especially when you take stock of the "mega churches" that pockmark the American landscape, which seem more like temples devoted to Capitalist demagoguery than anything Jesus would have considered appropriate to his core teachings. This book is a nice read though, and certainly belongs in the pantheon of must-read religious critiques, along with Bertrand Russell's "Why I am Not a Christian" and Sam Harris's "The End of Faith"