The Book Depository The Catholic Gentleman by Samuel Guzman
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Price: £14.75
Brand: The Book Depository
Description: The Catholic Gentleman : Paperback : Ignatius Press : 9781621640684 : 162164068X : 20 Apr 2019 : What does the Catholic Church have to offer to men today about living a life of true manhood and virtue? In short, easy-to-read chapters, this edition is a solid and practical guide to manhood and holiness in the modern world. It offers the timeless wisdom of the Catholic Church to the many questions of men today on this important issue.
Category: Books
Merchant: The Book Depository
Product ID: 9781621640684
MPN: 162164068X
GTIN: 9781621640684
Author: TRACEY ALEXANDER
Rating: 5
Review: I have to congratulate you on your book. I bought it for my husband and I’ve read 80% of it staying up till 4 am reading. It’s an incredible book so valuable to men of all ages and different stages of their personal journeys in faith. But I really recommend it to the ladies too because by reading subjects from a male point of view it made me appreciate my feminine role in life as a wife and mother. So I think it’s an important book for all people across the board. Can not recommend high enough
Author: Rushmoor
Rating: 3
Review: There's a lot to like about this book, this "misty evening talking philosophy over beers at a bricked street pub" brand he's cultivating. He deeply understands this faith more than most raised in it and is an eloquent ambassador. What holds this book back is the fact he is not (yet) a mystic, despite revealing glimpses of that realm, awareness of its space within Catholicism. One moment, like page 100, he writes eloquently of our call to become God, how Catholicism is uniquely structured to facilitate that growth. The next, perhaps still subconsciously beholden to his Baptist Oklahoma background, he frustratingly insists that Jesus is the only way. It drags this beautiful, robust faith down into the thin realm of fundamentalism and Evangelicals. He conflates Christ, the sentient force that has existed for billions of years and been accessed by all cultures in different ways (see Fr. Richard Rohr's universal Christ work), with Jesus, the guy who modeled what humans are capable of when fully embodying that force. He writes of the necessity to be a child to Mary, but many are ready for a spiritual manhood. He may well be there, too. It's hard to say since he seems to hold contrasting dualities simultaneously, like any good Catholic should. He seems to be looking backward for cues more than forward. His version downplays the revolutionary social justice of the Church, the saints pushing new frontiers to answer their era's questions and injustices, the emphatic call by St. Francis to connect with and care for nature, the evolutionary spirituality by the likes of Fr. Tielhard Chardin or Benedict. He fixates on dressing nice but ignores the filth and poverty Joseph Lebrae lived in before being canonized as a Saint. The author's version of activism is mostly limited to the family and middle class trappings. He plays it safe, seeks comfort in the familiar, but largely avoids the systemic societal issues. It is beautiful when he writes about the fact that Catholicism is not a consumer faith like Protestantism, that it's rooted in tradition, communalism and ritual. But he could have acknowledged how Catholicism's traditions might learn from, integrate with, or support indigenous wisdom, eastern traditions, and others, as Thomas Merton so eloquently did. Take it from someone who's gone to the frontier - Jesus isn't the only way. That's a dangerous and limiting view for any wisdom tradition to hold. So use this book to get excited about the faith, maybe straighten yourself out and update your wardrobe. But read others as well that go deeper in addressing Catholicism's universal ("catholic") destiny so you can properly contextualize what you read here.
