Robert McClory
Autor(a) de Faithful Dissenters: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church
About the Author
Robert McClory is associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
Obras por Robert McClory
Faithful Dissenters: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church (2000) — Autor — 52 exemplares
Radical Disciple: Father Pfleger, St. Sabina Church, and the Fight for Social Justice (Roman Catholicism Roman Cathol) (2010) 19 exemplares
Turning point : the inside story of the Papal Birth Control Commission, and how Humanae vitae changed the life of Patty… (1995) 15 exemplares
Power and the Papacy: The People and Politics Behind the Doctrine of Infallibility (1997) 10 exemplares
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Sexo
- male
Membros
Críticas
Faithful Dissenters
they loved and changed Church
"In the Beginning" is the most complete account I've read of what ails the Catholic church, where these pathologies come from, and why the solutions to them will likely be incorporated into the structure of the church -- eventually. McClory is able to show these processes because of his unique perspective. He was a priest for many years. His training has given him perspective on what's gone wrong, and why. But the story of his clerical service, dating roughly from the 1940s to the 1970s, is not the strength of the book. The history of the Catholic church, stretching back two thousand years, is the real star of the show.
McClory is expert at providing an overview, then swooping in and highlighting significant trends every few hundred years. His interest is in finding precedents for lay participation in the church. He explains how these came about, and suggests the benefits that could occur if they were revived. He shows clearly that lay participation was common in the early church, a point that even conservatives who uphold the hierarchy at every turn must concede. Indeed, the body of believers during the first center of Christendom, following the advice of none other than Jesus Christ, did without priests, bishops and popes.
Some of the most interesting stretches of the book describe Gregory's reform pontificate (around 700 A.D.) and the theological basis of the conciliar movement (1000 A.D or so). Here McClory shows a deft scholarly hand at compressing and explaining much neglected theology and ecclesiastical development. You will not hear references to these things during a Sunday sermon,nor during a papal encyclical. These explanations disclose that lay participation is not a new nor a radical idea.
He explains how the monarchical trappings of the church, which repel so many, first came to be. He also shows how these habits became fixed and, one is tempted to say, immutable. I say _tempted_ because McClory shows time and again that much of what we take to be immutable, fixed, and infallible in the church is anything but. The strongest lessons in the book show that the hierarchy of the church first resists, then argues with, and (finally) incorporates change. McClory demonstrates that the 'sense of the faithful' (beliefs held by the vast majority of ordinary people) can be as important as papal pronouncements.
The official Catholic church has experienced an unprecedented wave of bad press over the last 12 years or so. These revelations have included horrific allegations, largely substantiated, that thousands of clergy have caused harm to thousands of children of the laity. McClory tells this tale, too. Yet, this is not a negative book. On the contrary, he shows that the real problem in the clerical ranks is not the love of sex, but the love of power. That doesn't excuse the injustices, but it does point to the causes and to some likely solutions, which have to do with decentralization, transparency, and listening to the voices from below.
For committed Catholics who love church teachings but hate the ossified structure which has gained such an apparent stranglehold on the church, this book could be a revelation. It may not prove that the church is worthwhile (that may require more faith than many can muster). However, McClory's book makes a powerful argument that the Catholic church could be worth a lot more than is apparent. His book all but demonstrates that the church, as bad as it may be, is not yet beyond hope. That is a singular achievement.
The book has a few flaws. Tighter editing would have improved readability by removing redundancies and trite phrases. The introduction spends rather too much time on the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov. While the digression is pertinent to the theme of problems in church management, it seemed somewhat at odds with the main topic. The themes of the novel are many, and the inclusion of thought-provoking hypotheses and ethical debates pulled this reader's attention off McClory's main theme. The resultant confusion could not have been what the author intended, particularly in an introduction.
The body of the book is not confused but proceeds in a straight line at a slow pace. It might fairly be called plodding. But, much historical writing is plodding, and building a case as strong as McClory's depends on covering a lot of ground. He has enhanced this dry church history by showing the effects of ideas, opinions and a wide cast of characters on that history. He has also included his own story and, in a quietly effective manner, his enduring faith in the viability of the Catholic religion. This is a view that few are qualified to provide, and fewer still would be capable of integrating into a two-thousand year history.… (mais)
McClory is expert at providing an overview, then swooping in and highlighting significant trends every few hundred years. His interest is in finding precedents for lay participation in the church. He explains how these came about, and suggests the benefits that could occur if they were revived. He shows clearly that lay participation was common in the early church, a point that even conservatives who uphold the hierarchy at every turn must concede. Indeed, the body of believers during the first center of Christendom, following the advice of none other than Jesus Christ, did without priests, bishops and popes.
Some of the most interesting stretches of the book describe Gregory's reform pontificate (around 700 A.D.) and the theological basis of the conciliar movement (1000 A.D or so). Here McClory shows a deft scholarly hand at compressing and explaining much neglected theology and ecclesiastical development. You will not hear references to these things during a Sunday sermon,nor during a papal encyclical. These explanations disclose that lay participation is not a new nor a radical idea.
He explains how the monarchical trappings of the church, which repel so many, first came to be. He also shows how these habits became fixed and, one is tempted to say, immutable. I say _tempted_ because McClory shows time and again that much of what we take to be immutable, fixed, and infallible in the church is anything but. The strongest lessons in the book show that the hierarchy of the church first resists, then argues with, and (finally) incorporates change. McClory demonstrates that the 'sense of the faithful' (beliefs held by the vast majority of ordinary people) can be as important as papal pronouncements.
The official Catholic church has experienced an unprecedented wave of bad press over the last 12 years or so. These revelations have included horrific allegations, largely substantiated, that thousands of clergy have caused harm to thousands of children of the laity. McClory tells this tale, too. Yet, this is not a negative book. On the contrary, he shows that the real problem in the clerical ranks is not the love of sex, but the love of power. That doesn't excuse the injustices, but it does point to the causes and to some likely solutions, which have to do with decentralization, transparency, and listening to the voices from below.
For committed Catholics who love church teachings but hate the ossified structure which has gained such an apparent stranglehold on the church, this book could be a revelation. It may not prove that the church is worthwhile (that may require more faith than many can muster). However, McClory's book makes a powerful argument that the Catholic church could be worth a lot more than is apparent. His book all but demonstrates that the church, as bad as it may be, is not yet beyond hope. That is a singular achievement.
The book has a few flaws. Tighter editing would have improved readability by removing redundancies and trite phrases. The introduction spends rather too much time on the Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov. While the digression is pertinent to the theme of problems in church management, it seemed somewhat at odds with the main topic. The themes of the novel are many, and the inclusion of thought-provoking hypotheses and ethical debates pulled this reader's attention off McClory's main theme. The resultant confusion could not have been what the author intended, particularly in an introduction.
The body of the book is not confused but proceeds in a straight line at a slow pace. It might fairly be called plodding. But, much historical writing is plodding, and building a case as strong as McClory's depends on covering a lot of ground. He has enhanced this dry church history by showing the effects of ideas, opinions and a wide cast of characters on that history. He has also included his own story and, in a quietly effective manner, his enduring faith in the viability of the Catholic religion. This is a view that few are qualified to provide, and fewer still would be capable of integrating into a two-thousand year history.… (mais)
cClory boldly declares that democratization is coming to the Catholic Church, and soon, something not readily evident by the Church hierarchy's growing conservatism in the past 3 to 4 decades. His patient and hopeful thesis is built on a well-researched historical record of changing structures within the Church that have always returned to consensus fidelium. Examples range from the efforts of the people to support the teachings of the Council of Nicea against bishops who campaigned for a contrary teaching to reform of the 20th century evident in the Second Vatican Council. McClory illustrates a possible future in which the laity is included in a way that seems not just hopeful, but even possible.
Favorite Passages:
Favorite Passages:
If modernity stressed reason, the church stressed faith. If modernity stressed human progress, the church stressed original sin. If modernity stressed freedom of thought, the church stressed the binding nature of its dogmas. If modernity stressed democracy, the church stressed authority. This stress-filled stalemate was to perdure for the better part of four hundred years. If there had been even a small opening for discussion and dialogue between these two rivals, I think the church might well have served as a helpful brake on the runaway exuberance of modernity that led to riots, wars, and mass executions, of which the French Revolution is one well-known example. By the same token, some discussion and dialogue between the two sides might have helped the church realize that many Enlightenment insights were not fundamentally different from some of its own foundational values. - p. 118-19… (mais)
Robert McClory puts the Catholic church under the historical lense in Faithful Dissenters: Stories of Men and Women Who Loved and Changed the Church to show instances when individuals have stood up against official Church teachings and hierarchy. These dissenters are sometimes punished in their time, but all have been revealed to be prophetic voices whose ideas are accepted by the Church at large to the Church's benefit.
The Faithful Dissenters include:
In the conclusion, McClory writes:
I thought this was a good book as the historical sketches were well-written and informative. Additionally, it is written very respecfully, resisting the temptation to condemn those who tried to quash dissent as history's losers or turn this into a rallying cry for our times. McClory message is that good people can disagree and some ideas are ahead of their time, but eventually that which is of God will triumph.… (mais)
The Faithful Dissenters include:
- John Courtney Murray, who proposed the very American idea of "freedom of religion"
- Gallileo, who respectively tried to incorporate his observations of the heavens into the Church's longtime understanding of cosmology only to have his studies repressed
- "Still, there are two facts about which no dispute is possible: first, on the scientific issue, Galileo was overwhelmingly correct and the institutional Church was wrong; second, by seeking to quell an idea whose time had come, Church leaders dealt the institutional Church a severe blow from which it is still recovering," - p. 26
- John Henry Newman, who insisted that doctrine actually develops bottom-up from the laity
- Mary Ward, who founded an order of religious sisters active in apostolic works of teaching and charitable work within the world at a time when women religious were expected to be cloistered
- 16th century Jesuits who realized the changing economy of Renaissance Europe meant changes in the understanding of usury as well
- Catherine of Siena, who took it on herself to tell the Avignon papacy to shape up and ship back to Rome
- Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary to China who success converting the Chinese to Christianity by controversially incorporating local Buddhist and Confucian philosophy
- "In a very real sense, his biographers have noted, Ricci tried to do for Confucius what Thomas Aquinas did for Aristotle: provide a complex belief system witha a philosophical and moral undergirdining, thus making the mysteries of the faith more approachable to the people of a specific culture," - p. 97.
- Hildegard of Bingen, a visionary with startingly modern concepts of the feminine divine
- Yves Congar, an ecumenical activist for fellowship, dialogue and respect of other Christian denominations and Judaism
- "Congar wrote of two great tempatios confronting the Church in every age: "Pharisaism," that is, absolutizing religious rules and regulations rather than serving the spirtual and pastoral needs of the people; and "the temptation of the Synagogue," that is, freezing tradition in such a way that cannot develop beyond what was understood in the past. What the Church must do, he insisted, is harmonize itself more generously with the style of a new society -- "a society she [the Church] is called to baptize as she has baptized others in the past,"" - p. 124
- John Purcell and Edward Purcell, who taught that slavery was sinful at a time when it was widely accepted in the Church
In the conclusion, McClory writes:
In two important respects the dissenters described her are unqualifiedly alike. First, they absolutely refused to leave the Churh in the face of all their difficulties. One could argue that this stubborn fidelity, this standing in place while contradicting authority, was the principal factor in their ultimate success and (sometimes posthumous) vindication. Second, they did not see themselves as disobedient persons. They shared a remarkable awareness that submission to God and submission to Church authority are not always the same thing. Some today might call them "cafeteria Catholics." In a sense, they were; they maintained that not everything in the cafeteria was edible. Nevertheless, their acknowledgement of Church authority and their gratitude for what the Church offered them over the long haul never left, " - p. 164
I thought this was a good book as the historical sketches were well-written and informative. Additionally, it is written very respecfully, resisting the temptation to condemn those who tried to quash dissent as history's losers or turn this into a rallying cry for our times. McClory message is that good people can disagree and some ideas are ahead of their time, but eventually that which is of God will triumph.… (mais)
Estatísticas
- Obras
- 9
- Membros
- 116
- Popularidade
- #169,721
- Avaliação
- 3.8
- Críticas
- 5
- ISBN
- 13