Customer Reviews

The devastated vineyard

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Everything from DVH is great, but this book I can particularly recommend. In this book DVH systematically examines the evils that have entered the Church. True, alot of people are doing that today and it is a popular topic, but DVH does it with such intelligence, honesty, and love. His arguments are always very good and because he was a great philosopher, he can get down to the bottom of issues and their root causes in ways that lesser men simply aren't able to.

This book examines many trends from theology and philosophy to the use (or lack of) of Church authority. While he is never bitter, DVH is not at all afraid to call evil by its name and expose what it is doing to the Church and the world. So many of these errors are taken for granted by even many bishops and cardinals that it can be difficult for men who really want the truth to find it....even from teachers in the Church, This book will help you to withstand the world and its lies and also to help your friends and neighbors who have have willingly or unwillingly fallen prey to modernism and the spirit of the age.

While he always exhorts us to hope in God, DVH never falls into the thinking that this should stop us from confronting and combatting the evils in the Church and world. There is no bury-your-head-in-the-sand-and-put-on-a-smiley-face writing in this book. Satan has infiltrated the Church in a big way and we must thrust him out again. We are not in a "new springtime" folks.

I should note that DVH was a close personal friend of PiusXII, who called him a modern doctor of the Church. He was also a world renowned philosopher.

In brief, if you want to save yourself and others from whats going on today and please God then get this book.

I also recommend "The Charitable Anathema" and "The Trojan Horse in the City of God" and really anything else that this author has written.

I hope this helps.

I've always loved Von Hildebrand. He is very good at getting to the heart of issues, and this book is no exception.

Von Hildebrand's work, Trojan Horse in the City of God, was more reserved than this book. In Devastated Vineyard, von Hildebrand seems to be more aggressive in his criticism of theology gone bad. He helps you understand both the origins of these ideas and the (heretical) conclusions that logically follow.

If you are interested in a philosophical refutation of the madness that has infected many good Catholics, this is a critical book. Once most people hear these truths, many un-Catholic problems can be uprooted.

Those who wrote comments on this book ought to read Randy Engel's critique of Pope JPII's Theology of the Body. There they will see what a pivotal role DVH played in helping the Pope impose his own personalist and heretical opinions about Original Sin and the traditional teaching of the Church on the proper ends of marriage on the Church. See and read "JP II and the Theology of the Body: A Study in Modernism" on her website, [...] There you will see how and why TOB is based on the denial of OS and how DVH's mission to invert the traditional ends of marriage (condemned by 3 previous popes) to his own personalist philosophy was succesful, to the detriment of millions of souls. This poison has been enthroned in the new Code of Canon Law as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You will understand why, for instance, the number of annulments has increased astronomically since VAT II. In other words, DVH was guilty of promoting a heresy as evil as the ones he condemned in this book. When a theologian of his stature insists that Pope Pius II, Pope Pius XI and Pope Leo XII as well as all previous Fathers and Doctors of the Church were wrong in insisting on the primacy of the procreation and education of children over the secondary (but nevertheless important) ends of marriage (mutual aid a remedy for concupiscence) you don't have to be as brilliant as Chesterton to see that Satan has entered the Church. There is no way to explain why a Catholic philosopher and theologian, who has written so many wonderful, orthodox books, could go so far off track, except the old adage: most heresies were invented by over-educated scholars, not peasants. It is the Mystery of Evil. Engel has earned her reputation as a thoroughly reliable researcher. She documents every statement she makes. Her expose's of the extent of the Homosexual Collective's infiltration of the Church ("The Rite of Sodomy") and the promotion of sex education in Catholic schools ("The McHugh Chrinicles" and "The Final Plague") are more devastating than DV and they identify those who are responsible.