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Being Catholic Now: Prominent Americans Talk About Change in the Church and the Quest for Meaning

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Author: Kerry Kennedy
Publisher: Crown
Category: Book

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Avg. Customer Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

27 reviews
Sales Rank: 6909

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.1

ISBN: 0307346846
Dewey Decimal Number: 282.092273
EAN: 9780307346841
ASIN: 0307346846

Publication Date: September 9, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 27

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Why bother? November 13, 2008
26 out of 38 found this review helpful

This is a book which is not only intellectually dishonest, it is the trite, boring recitations of shallow people who can't see beyond their own celebrity status. If it were a little bit better written (OK, a WHOLE LOT better written) it could have been a hilarious take-off on self-importance. Really, Susan SARANDON and Cokie ROBERTS as THEOLOGIANS??? But, unfortunately, it wasn't able to pull itself up to the level of spoof and instead drowns in its own banality.

Why do FORMER Catholics who just can't BE Catholic and want to justify their own personal agendas at the expense of everyone else who DOES want to be Catholic? If they don't want to follow the Church - fine! No one is forcing them, but for heaven's sake, have the intellectual and intestinal honesty to admit that they are NO LONGER CATHOLIC. People like Kennedy, Pelosi and company are selling themselves as a something they simply are not and haven't been for some time. If they were honest, they'd admit that what they want is to destroy the Church and rebuild it in their own images.

It sort of reminds me of Kerry's Uncle Ted who wants the rest of us to pay for and endure the blight of "alternative energy" sources. But when a wind-farm was proposed for the Cape where it would have ruined his view, he immediately stepped in to prevent it from being built. These are the elites, remember. Rules are for other people.

One reviewer, possibly trying to justify his own desire to create his "own" church, says "once a Catholic, always a Catholic". Sorry, no. That's like saying I can go another country and take up citizenship and still expect to be able to vote in US elections. Unfortunately, while they no longer are Catholic, we can't stop them from "trade-mark infringement" by continuing to call themselves Catholic.

I have to admit that I couldn't finish the book, although I did skim the remainder to see if by some chance it would improve. It didn't.

If you'd like to spend hours reading about self-absorbed people minutely explaining and attempting to justify their own immaturity, have at it! This is the book for you!

BORING and shallow.

4 out of 5 stars

Insight for American Catholics November 2, 2008
2 out of 7 found this review helpful

Kerry Kennedy provides the opportunity to bring together contemporary Roman Catholicism from an American perspective at a time when the Church in Rome seems to be heading in a different direction. Refreshing ...

4 out of 5 stars

Good Snapshot of American Catholics October 28, 2008
12 out of 19 found this review helpful

"Being Catholic Now" is a collection of interviews of prominent Americans who were raised Catholic. Interviewees include Donna Brazille (liberal) and Bill O'Reilly (conservative), Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Sister Betsy Pawlicki, and even people who are not practicing Catholics anymore such as Bill Maher (anti-Church) and Dan Aykroyd (pro-Church), and many more.

They all express their understanding of "being Catholic now" with candor.

On the one hand, they express their disappointments. Many of them have doubts or disagreements with official Catholic teachings. Some were sexually abused by pedophile priests. Others left or lost their Catholic faith. All have struggled with their faith.

On the other hand, most of the people interviewed are still practicing Catholics. Hence, and without meaning to, many of their interviews are also *testimonials* about God and how they found Him --and continue to find Him-- in the Catholic Church. Martin Sheen's interview is especially moving. His prayer to Jesus Christ before Communion -- "You are welcome here"-- is a summary of the Catholic faith.

I recommend this book if you want a snapshot of American Catholicism. True, the book is mostly interviews with Baby-Boomers; there aren't many young or old present. True, it's short on conservatives. But, most American Catholics are not in 100% agreement with everything that their Church officially says, thinks or does. Nevertheless, most American Catholics believe in God, Christ, and their Church; most get to Mass on Sunday, and most try to keep their faith in how they live. And this book reflects those facts.

4 out of 5 stars

Not always pious, but always honest and often moving October 22, 2008
8 out of 15 found this review helpful

As many reviewers have pointed out, this is not a devotional book. But it's still a great book with a lot to say about what can happen to faith as we become adults. And the answer is: many different things.

Many of the prominent people interviewed in it have left the Church, or have a complicated relationship to the teaching of the Church on any number of social issues.

Consequently, some people will be put off -- or feel put-down -- by the title, "Being Catholic Now." How can you be Catholic if you've left the Church, or don't accept its moral teaching? Who are these people to speak for the faithful? One could argue that they have the least sense of all of what it means to be Catholic now.

I won't attempt to answer that question, but I thought the book was deep, and that the people interviewed spoke honestly and thoughtfully.

For many, it was the social teaching of the Church and the moral education of their Catholic schooling that started them on a path of activism, but also of questioning that, ironically, led them away from their faith, or led them to have a complicated relationship with it.

Others, such as Cardinal McCarrick, followed the same path but found it led them into the Church rather than out of it.

Maybe some people don't want to hear anything about that, and fair enough: they should skip the book.

But I think it tells a story many others will recognize. And it gives voice to something many Catholics know well: how so many people still see the Church's imprint on their lives even though their faith has taken a radically different (and according to some people, wrong) turn.

It shows how, in some sense, they are still Catholic and probably always will be.

I found it always thoughtful and often very moving.

1 out of 5 stars

A Catholic Church Leaders Review October 20, 2008
21 out of 36 found this review helpful

I am a Director of Religious Education and am an adult convert to the Catholic faith (yes, we do exist, more than 20,000 a year in the US). I admit I wasn't angry when I saw the title and authors in this book when I picked it up at Barnes and Noble. I was more curious why many of these authors (90% who are not by any measure Catholic by belief) would be included in such a book.

What I found was the popular perception of Catholicism that has nothing to do with what Catholicism is. At most the people in this book only share Catholicism in common in that they all have, at one point, attended a Catholic Church. That does not make them anymore Catholic than it makes me Muslim because I have been in a Mosque.

The book is an exercise in the ignorance of the Catholic faith. From Pelosi who believes that being a priest or pope has something to do with power (it does not) or those that believe it is possible for the Church to someday ordain women or marry homosexuals (it cannot, priests and bishops actually do not make those decisions).

Catholic theology and the Catholic life is much more complex and more beautiful than those in this book or anyone in our society can understand based on popular media (which refuses to look at anything but the negative) or perception. The problem is, no one is willing to engage in authentic study or real debate. This text shows what happens when you mix liberalism with Catholicism. You have people who call themselves Catholics but who's personal beliefs do not reflect that of a Catholic. "Being Catholic now" means that you believe ALL that Jesus and his apostles, and their successors believed and taught. Anything less, and you are not a Catholic - that is simply fact and is not a condemnation of those who are not Catholic.

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