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Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with C
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A Civilization of Love: What Every Catholic Can Do to Transform the World |
Author: Carl Anderson
Published: 2008-04-01 |
List price: $19.95
Our price: $14.57
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As of: December 03rd, 2008 10:06:22 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Understanding the REAL crisis facing modern society.
This book is written by Carl Anderson, the Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, one of the largest Catholic fraternal organizations. Prior to reading this book, I knew nothing about Mr. Anderson's background. Since reading the book, I have come to realize that he is a gifted writer and thinker. While having a respectable educational resume, he has an excellent ability to explain things in terms that the average reader can understand. The reason for this is because he does not focus on abstract ideas, but rather shares from his own experience, and experiences that most people can identify with.
The purpose of the book is to explore what is the underlining crisis facing the modern world. He notes that it is not dichotomy between liberal and conservative, nor between developed nations and developing nations, nor East and West, nor Northern hemisphere vs. Southern hemisphere. Rather it is between what Pope John Paul II called the Culture of Death and the Culture of Love/Life. After all, both communism and fascism reduces the human person to objects to be controlled and used, instead of subjects to valued and cherished. It is the dichotomy between those who see human beings as only having value based on some algebra of how much they contribute to society (and/or take away from society), or those who recognize that each human being has an intrinsic value just because they Exist, because they were made in the image and likeness of God. Mr. Anderson then applies this basic understanding to a number of more specific circumstances.
This is an excellent book to read, and the reflection questions at the end of each chapter help the reader to apply what they have read to their own lives, so that they can verify what is proposed in their own experiences.
 Excellent Critique of Modern Society from an Authentically Catholic Viewpoint
"A Civilization of Love" is a quick read but it packs a lot of authentic Catholic social teaching. What I really liked about this book is how it focused on a broad set of social issues that span the political spectrum. Too often prominent Catholics focus their attention on either conservative issues (abortion, homosexuality, divorce, contraception, euthanasia, etc.) or liberal ones (poverty, environmentalism, workers' rights, immigration, etc). Mr. Anderson discusses the importance of ALL of these things to Catholics and how they are ALL part and parcel of our "culture of death".
All of these issues stem in his view from a society that "sees human beings as the products of blind, mechanical, and amoral forces, one in which human life has only a kind of quantitative, economic value. Individuals are see as units of production or consumption, and those who cannot prove they have value in these terms are increasingly subject to removal."
As noted in previous reviews, the author does have a rather annoying tendency to name-drop. I think he was trying to lend credence to his arguments by implying that they are supported by high level members of the Church hierarchy. But it came off as rather un-Christian boastfulness. Jesus got his message across pretty effectively without constant mention of His high-level connections, know what I mean?
All in all, I highly recommend this book for all Catholics interested in making this world a better place.
 Geared more toward the board-member and UN-ambassador set
I found the book a little dry and, for the most part, not very relevant to my life. If I were on a board of directors, or working for the UN, I might have found this book more relevant.
Some excerpts:
p. 50: "Ironically, this French intellectual embraced by the political Left had breathed new life into the legacy of the German philosophical icon of the Nazis: Friedrich Nietzsche - at least in regard to how Sartre had advanced the rejection of Christianity, Christian morality, and indeed any traditional criteria for judging moral conduct."
p. 100: "But our experience of industrialization within Western nations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries should make us better appreciate the experiences of the equally dramatic course of economic development globally, especially the impact on poor, developing countries."
p. 150: "Fears of an imagined Catholic fifth column or the alleged subservience of American Catholics to a 'foreign prince' are, for the overwhelming majority of Americans, a thing of the past."
Lost in the masquerade
Carl Anderson has written a scholarly-sounding book that is well-written and informative with regard to a certain reading of history and of the important papal encyclicals over the years. But it is impossible to read what he has written as an honest paean to love in light of what he leaves out of the book, and in the severe partisanship that characterizes his other political writings and activities over the years.
Like George Weigel, his writing is littered with references to his own frequent conversations with Pope John Paul II and other high Church officials. These stories come across as more self-reverential than illuminating with regard to the issues under discussion.
As a former Reagan Administration official, who welcomed George Bush to speak before the Knights of Columbus during the heat of the 2004 presidential campaign but publicly shunned and disparaged his fellow Catholic John Kerry, Anderson seems challenged when it comes to practicing what he preaches. His recent open letter belittling another Catholic Senator, Joseph Biden, focuses in the same way on the criminalization of abortion, like so many conservative authors who choose to elevate a single Supreme Court decision as the unparalleled moral test of our time.
In contrast, Anderson's book tells the story of a woman whom he and his wife assisted with an adoption in response to an unintended pregnancy. He also rightly boasts about the efforts of the Knights of Columbus to support the needs of women during pregnancies stressed by poverty or social circumstance. He cites Pope John Paul's encyclical Evangelium Vitae in insisting that we are called to promote life not only by condemning the evil, but also by promoting the good. Indeed, the US Bishops' Conference offered the same citation in their Faithful Citizenship document in November 2007, while going on to suggest that constructive measures to deal with abortion are as important as efforts to criminalize it.
But when it comes to politics, Mr Anderson has no patience for lilly-livered abortion reducers like Biden and Obama. He focuses in his open letter on Biden's discomfort with criminalization, while ignoring Biden's expressed determination to work for abortion reduction. What the open letter to Biden made explicit, the book offers implicitly in the subjects it leaves out. There is no discussion of the $3 trillion war in Iraq, the neglect of the global warming problem that the Vatican has spoken of relentlessly for the past year, and no talk about the unfolding global economic crisis that has resulted from the conservative obsession with deregulation.
It is telling that all of the other Amazon reviewers to date have loved this book with 4- or 5-star ratings. One suspects that the large swath of the Knights of Columbus who will be voting for Senators Obama and Biden have chosen to spend their money on less political treatments of the wonderful subject of love.
Practical encouragement
The author has offered a very practical challenge for living in a loving manner in today's world. His approach is intelligent and encouraging.
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