34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Excerpts from Church documents not in context., November 5, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Rome Has Spoken . . .: A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements, and How They Have Changed Through the Centuries (Paperback)
Many of the excerpts from Church documents that this book used exclude material from the same paragraph that puts a much different light on the topic. The book doesn't come across as being very honest.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Telling, but unsympathetic, July 18, 2001
This review is from: Rome Has Spoken . . .: A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements, and How They Have Changed Through the Centuries (Paperback)
This book uses two techniques, with differing effects, to illustrate its point. First, it uses actual quotes from past papal and magisterial pronouncements in order to paint a picture of the Church's opinion on any given topic at various times through history. This first technique is admirable and effective. The stars I give are merited because of this, and so the book is a useful reference tool, if nothing else.
The actual text of the book comes in the form of commentaries, which follow the aforementioned quotations. This text, as well as the introduction, tell more about the biases of the authors than of the church. Biased though, it may be, the opinions expressed are not invalid. They are, however, unbalanced. In the introduction of the book, the authors identify themselves as largely feminist activists who support new translations of Scripture that attempt to use gender-neutral language in every verse (leaving out he and she, and substituting "spouse" for husband or wife). I fail to see how such relanguaging does anything to help the feminist cause, as it only disguises real sexism that clearly existed in the first century and other times. I also find it curious that, when it suits their needs, Church documents are *not* rewritten in gender neutral terms, presumably so that early church "sexim" can be exposed. While I am sympathetic to the authors' aim at revealing such things, I would much rather they do in an intellectually honest fashion.
On the whole, if you are looking for a compendium of actual church documents (no amount of bias has altered the utility of the quotations that make up the lion's share of the book's merit) then this book is worth having. Better yet, once you have the book, look up their quotations for yourself to get a better historical perspective on what they selected.
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23 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dangerously Misleading, June 24, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Rome Has Spoken . . .: A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements, and How They Have Changed Through the Centuries (Paperback)
While the articles in this book are well-written, the documentation given in the book on papal, council, and scriptural statements is dangerously misleading and inaccurate in some circumstances. The attempts to put the comments in their historical context does not always reflect the complete events or context. It is a good starting point for some thorough research, however, and I would strongly urge anyone who reads this to check out the authors' sources on their own. In general, it appears that the authors of the individual articles only cited examples that, if construed in a certain way, would support their argument. Dangerous and full of half- truths.
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