Reviews for I believe, I doubt

The average rating for I believe, I doubt based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-09 00:00:00 Rocco Dolciato Do not read this book. This book contains opinions, presented as facts, by the authors that can easily mislead well-meaning Catholics who may not be versed enough in their faith and apologetics to overcome. Ironically, one of the basic arguments the authors make in this book is that the way to "save" the Catholic Church is to just let American Catholics live their lives in blissful ignorance of morality and ethics. Repeatedly the authors talk about religion and morality as two separate things, and try to say that they are only talking about ethics and not religion (impossible). I got this book at my Parish's book sale, ironically donated by our retiring Priest. That should have been my first red flag. The second red flag should have been that this book is authored by an ordained Priest who chose not the have his name preceded by Father or proceeded by initials signifying belonging to any order. The final red flag, which did make me put my guard up, was that this book has no nihil obstat or even an imprimatur. But I figured this was a relaxed sort of book that wouldn't deal with morals or facts of the faith. I mean, the book is called How To Save The Catholic Church. The Church will never need saving, being the one true church founded by Jesus Christ and protected from error and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it and all that. Anyway, I got off topic. So I started this with my guard up. At first it seemed innocent enough, and the authors went out of the way to say that they don't agree with much of the reasoning against certain Catholic teachings by laity, but were only presenting the arguments. But it went downhill fast. Just a few samples in case this review gets some people accidentally interested in reading this book to see if everything I'm saying is true: Refers to God as His/Her, S/he, etc. Need I say more? Authors constantly referring back to things they learned in grade school and why it was wrong, or using what they were taught in grade school (sex is bad mmkay) and applying that to meaning that it is what every child was taught in grade school but notorious bad lady Sister whateva. Worst offense in this book is the complete lack of charity (and outright cruelty) to fellow Priests and his superiors. Author was clearly a man who somehow hated being a Priest but pretended to be more knowledgeable than every other priest. Biggest insult I found is mades against a Cardinal Casoria, who peeved the authors off for being against "liturgical dancing" (lol). Author refers to him as "the biggest damn fool to sit in a key position in the Roman Curia in the twentieth century" (page 41). Makes the following blow out of a claim "We must remind ourselves that the Gospels are no longer considered accurate eyewitness accounts of the life and words of Christ... Though not meant to be historically accurate, the accounts nonetheless give us information about how the teachings of Jesus took root." (page 139). Going back to the sex is bad mmkay lie, chapter 7 has a story near the beginning (page 106), which goes on for basically the whole chapter about a married man and a married woman giving into their adulterous passions and kissing each other on election night. The authors repeatedly say 'why is this story relevant you ask?' and 'What about avoiding near occasion of sin and adultery is bad?', and yet...They never answer the questions... They bring the story up and give no reasoning besides saying it shows how sexual passion can be so sudden and powerful...Okey Dokey. Author says "...women must be allowed to be ordained if the Church is the bear witness to the full implications of the sacramentality of women and her analogical power..." (page 151). Backs this up by referring the the Deaconesses in the New Testament, with no attempt to actually know or understand the Church's teaching on this. This man SLEPT through the seminary, I am telling you. At one point he complains about how he was not allowed to go the the ballet in the Seminary because of the risque costumes. One last massive complaint from me, and this one is kind of funny. Quite far in, it actually becomes clear that the male author of this book is really just mad as heck about the fact that he has written some apparently bad fiction books during his spare time that were quite poorly reviewed and were dismissed by fellow clergymen. He uses this book to get back at them it seems... page 203, it says "One of us began writing explicitly theological novels a couple of years ago...The stories were explicitly, formally, deliberately, blatantly theological... a priest wrote the following indictment... [Here is a numbered list of 5 complaints about the book from a priest, unnamed, about the book, mainly about the content containing corruption in Church leadership, immoral young people, all women being portrayed as loose, priests with secret sex lives, and more on corruption]...". The author goes on to called the priest making the complaints "uneducated". Besides all that, there was plenty that I couldn't be bothered to write down. Almost every page honestly. Repeatedly, the authors claim that Church leaders have a "hatred" for women (they base this solely on their personal experience of being taught sex is bad mmkay (somehow that only suppresses women), and the restricted roles women can have in the Liturgy. The authors also say that marriage was made a Sacrament at the Council of Trent. That is a boldface lie, a historical inaccuracy, and represents the terrible understanding of the Church and how it is run that the authors express over and over again in this book. To sum it up. This is a book parading as a Catholic book, apparently geared towards those Big Bad Bishops of the hierarchy (it lists numbered suggestions for change for the Church at the end of chapters), but really only put of to lead innocent Catholics astray. Only good thing I can think of this book is that it sure gives a wild contemporary view of the craziness going on about twenty years after Vatican II. I'm way too young to remember that and things have gone quite back to normal by now if this book is any account.

Review # 2 was written on 2015-01-31 00:00:00 Albert Arauz This was my annual lenten "spiritual reading" book. Father Greely's writing style really irritates me -- it's incredibly dense and awkward in places -- but I love his ideas and the fact that he has a forum to get them out into the public. The authors argue that to "save" the Catholic Church, we must revive the Catholic imagination and reinstate the importance of storytelling, art, and analogy into the Church. This comes in response to criticism from Protestants that the Catholic Church is too "pagan." But the Greelys attest that what makes the Catholic Church unique is its Sacramentality, its ability to find the sacred in everyday objects, events, and people. With this in mind, they also push for the Church to get over its hatred of women and its squeamishness regarding sex -- both women and sex need to be re-instated to their "proper" place of sacramentality. It's been a long time since I've read so much theory, argument, and abstraction, so I felt like I was in college again reading this book. But it did help me to fall back in love with my Church under the reassurance that there are Catholics out there who "get it." Unfortunately, this book was written back in 1984 and not much has changed in 20 years. And not enough people are talking about change, either. But that's not the book's fault.