moustakas_0f84

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.

2022-12-10 20:12