Looking for a light summer read? NOT!
Comprehensive and extremely well researched, this critique of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI places him in context of the most important developments in the Catholic Church for the past 50+ years. The presentation is totally enlightening.
Many of the preceding reviews posted here reveal the attitudes of the reviewers towards not the author but the subject of David Gibson's study. My review on the other hand tries to sum up Gibson's own perspective rather than my own reactions to the new Pope himself.
The modern world is a disaster. Battle on Holy Father!
This book by David Gibson, is a high quality work with an intelligent combination of historical accuracy and artistic description. You can immediately tell that it is written by a true Vatican "insider" with both an American and an Italian heart.
David Gibson does an outstanding job of presenting the core controversy regarding the Ratsinger years of the CDF and fairly presents the principles underlying the actions of Cardinal Ratzinger and the early directions of his papacy. Benedict XVI would say there is a core of truth well established by Scripture and Tradition that is no longer fertile soil for argument.
I do not like this book because I think Pope Benedict is a very holy man, strong as a rock in his love for Christ and His Church! This is the type of leader the world needs!
Outstanding book - extrodinarily fair, lucid and complete description of the first years of Pope Benedict and the recent history debates currently enveloping the Catholic Church. Highly recommended read.
This beautifully written book (certainly Gibson is the best writer of solid prose of any of the major religious journalists or present-day religious writers) has force, insight, and deep research, and it moves along with constantly modulated critiques of the best and worst, and middle, in Benedict XVI. It is absurd to say that Gibson's book is partisan, for here he lays out crisp information that ANY papal historian, or any lay observer, simply has to know.
Please, save your money. It's a well known fact that the biggest Catholic bashers are the ex Catholics, the fallen Catholic clergy, and the rest of the me, me, generaton.
While Gibson deserves significant praise for a thoroughly written, superbly researched historical approach to the background that provides the setting for the life of then Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, this is a clearly polemical work set out against Ratzinger from the start. Having studied the theological work of Joseph Ratzinger over more than a forty-year career, read all of the biographies currently on the market, and read the CDF promulgations and Benedict XVI's recent speeches and first encyclical - I feel that I have a relatively good understanding of the life and work of this man.
Four REMARKABLE Stars!! A deeply incisive, but very early, look at the current Pope of the 1.
