Appointment in Rome: The Church in America Awakening [Hardcover]

Richard John Neuhaus (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1998

Father Neuhaus served as a delegate to the Synod for America held in Rome in 1997. In this book he provides an account of the proceedings of the Synod that is both insightful and entertaining. Moreover, he offers an acute and knowledgeable analysis of the central issues on the agenda of the Synod, reflecting on the current state of the Church and the challenges it faces in North and South America.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 184 pages
• Publisher: The Crossroad Publishing Company (December 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824515552
• ISBN-13: 978-0824515553
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,805,693 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A marvellous book which I'm sure the Pope himself enjoyed!, May 21, 1999

By 

Michael Novak (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Appointment in Rome: The Church in America Awakening (Hardcover)

The Pope named Fr. Neuhaus as his personal designee to the Synod, and a splendid choice it was. Neuhaus is one of the best chroniclers of events in the whole field of religion--and some other fields, too. Full of engaging detail and profound reflections, this memoir conveys the day-to-day argument but also the background to make it intelligible, and is infused with a love for the Gospels and Catholic social thought. Its realistic and probing questions give evidence of a powerful desire actually to help the poor to move out of poverty. Neuhaus punctures the simplicities of those who have failed to follow the successive cutting edges of this particular great Pope's thought. For some reason, I note in two or three reviews, it has infuriated the more doctrinaire leftists--probably because it reports their opinions as reflected at the Synod, and dares to question what facts they are based on, and then lets out their hot air slowly and wittily. Richly entertaining as a memoir, and good to read in a prayerful, reflective frame of mind as one tries to think with the Church--this lumbering, concrete, often crashingly human Church at the Synod. Neuhaus describes the daily boredom of listening to speech after speech (as happened many days at Vatican II, too, I remember) but also those moments in which every so often the event was lit up by great flashes of illumination. The deft pen portraits of famous personalities are sometimes wickedly funny, and always candid. The book glows with affection for the Church in all its messy, angular variety. If you love reading about great events and vast panoramas of people--and about Rome--you will delight in this book. It took me some months to get to it, but the great pleasure it gave will stay with me.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wise and Affectionate Look at the Church in America, August 3, 1999

By 

George Middlebrook ([e-mail]) (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Appointment in Rome: The Church in America Awakening (Hardcover)

It is little wonder that orthodox Catholic thinkers everywhere, including the Holy Father, hold Fr. Neuhaus in such high esteem. Appointment in Rome is must reading for anyone interested in getting a clear-eyed but affectionate look at the key figures in the American Catholic Church hierarchy. A true joy after the stale rehash of 60's liberalism that taints so much of U.S. Catholic journalism. Neuhaus' snapshot of Fr. Thomas Reese S. J. is worth the price of the book!

11 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More cafeteria Catholicism, April 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Appointment in Rome: The Church in America Awakening (Hardcover)

Fr. Neuhaus has written a book that is scandalously at odds with the teaching of Pope John Paul II, as most recently given in his apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia in America, presented at the close of the Synod for the Americas that Fr. Neuhaus is writing about here. If you are looking for an orthodox, faithful to the magisterium, review of the Synod, this ain't it. Instead, what you will find is warmed over Protestant Calvinism and political partisanship, where the poor are poor because they are bad people.