We Will Be Like Him "Growing Toward Got at Every Age of Life" is a new book by Msgr Vincent Rush. If I had not gone past the title page I would have liked this book. Unfortunately I read the book instead.

There is a popular saying now "that there is not there there" and with this book there is mostly no "Him" there. Jesus is not even really mentioned until the next to the last chapter. You would think that a book with this title would be about growing closer to Christ and would focus on the spiritual life.

This book mainly focuses on self-awareness, transformational change (not necessarily spiritual transformation), and the development of understanding, psycho-sexual Development. and development of ego. There is some interesting information of developments in psychology that have covered these areas in how we understand ourselves and relate to others. There are plenty of tables of development in multiple areas that show the various levels of development. The book uses examples of the interrelationships between some made-up people to describe how these relate to the real world. The stages of moral reasoning as outlined by Kohlberg’s stage theory seem to partly ring true, but they are not without criticism in the academic world.

The examples used in the book are somewhat annoying such as using a draft-dodge as an example of the higher stages of moral reasoning. Surely there could have been much better examples used. Much of the book has a very secular feel to it and this is partly understandable since is uses much from the field of psychology. I would have found it much more useful if the author had translated it into a Catholic moral view and to see it within the framework of Catholic understanding. Instead much of the book is ambiguous and confusing since there is no clear relation to the Catholic worldview.

Not surprisingly the most problematic chapter was on Psycho-Sexual Development and discussions that reference masturbation (though not directly), sexual fantasy, etc are totally isolated from the Church’s sexual ethic. There are no disclaimers or caveats or any reference points to this development in relationship to Church teaching whatsoever. Plus most the discussion in this chapter seemed to me to walk the edges of Catholic teaching without really ever really saying anything against them. A lot more could have been done to clarify this to avoid this confusion. A comment about how a sex addict and an anti-pornography activist probably being closely related I think gives the idea of the type of moral relativism the author holds.

Towards the end the chapter that actually deals with spiritual practice is rather vapid and says nothing new or says anything in a way that can help you in the spiritual life. Blurbs like:

Practice is the way we master a skill to get better at doing something. We improve our accuracy at fitting our performance to the requirement of the situations.

The other italicized blurbs in the book are not that much more insightful either. You can read any random paragraph from the Gospels or the Imitations of Christ and would have done yourself much better than anything this book had to say. The other thing that annoys me about this type of book is that once again out of all the examples of holiness of the saints of the Church you pretty much always get referred to as examples Gandhi, Buddha, Martin Luther King, and of course Thomas Merton. Now I have read a lot of Thomas Merton and like his diaries and earlier books, but please he is not the best example that you can find when looking at the treasury of the Church. Now to be fair a couple more traditional saints are mentioned later in the book briefly, but they are called moral geniuses like the others.

The other thing that annoyed me about this book is that it only confirmed my general prejudices concerning Paulist Press. Sure occasionally they have some solid titles, but for the most part they are not exactly orthodox. Though I do have a review coming of another Paulist Press book that was excellent and never set off my theological spidey senses.

I just finished Questions and Answers by Pope Benedict XVI put out by Our Sunday Visitor which is a collection of various question and answer sessions from various audiences that includes sessions with children, youth, and clergy at multiple locations. This s a very worthwhile collection and with the amount of these type sessions I am sure we will see more of these books in the future.

Pope Benedict XVI really opens himself up to these types of sessions which I think for the most part of quite unique in the history of the Church. The questions themselves are interesting, but it is the way the pope answers these questions in his own style that is quite remarkable. Reading through his sometimes lengthily answers you would think he had days to work on responses to questions put before him ahead of time. He is an amazing extemporaneous speaker and his answers reveal just how thoroughly he has integrated the faith and is able to speak on almost any topic to reveal his knowledge and contemplation on a subject. It is obvious as to the level of detail that he has given to these subjects in his own mind before hand.

I also found it quite amazing his ability to really answer a question and put together a synthesis of Church teaching and his own practical experience to give almost a mediation on a question. The book opens up with questions from children and I think they way he answers them is the very model that people working with children and youth in regards to religious education should follow. He is able to answer serious questions to them in a serious manner that does not "talk down" to them, but at the same time making it understandable to them. He sees no reason to water down a serious subject just because he is talking to children and is able to tailor it to their intellects in such a way that even as an adult I found his answers fruitful for me.

His answers, especially to fellow priests, are often long discourses – but he doesn’t talk just to hear his voice. In one question he felt that the questioner had answered his own query and the Pope simple said for other to listen to what this priest had to say and not feel the need to add anything to it. You get the feel of his real humility when he answers questions in that he defines the limits of what he is able to answer and when speaking to clergy talks about their pastoral experience in taking his suggestions in.

The questions run the gamut and some of them overlap. I especially enjoyed his discussions on marriage and his insight in regards to marriage. I loved how he referred to one large family as a parish. Some of his answers in regard to science are quite interesting especially in regards to the recent controversy and protests at the La Sapienza University in Rome calling the Pope anti-science. In on answer he talks about Galileo the great and the proper and supporting roles of faith and science. In another he talks about the false tensions between creationists and evolutionists and where they both go wrong and makes a fairly strong statement in regards to the science of evolution. When Pope John Paul II made a comment about evolution it got a lot of press and so I find it rather strange the Pope Benedict’s comments in this regard did not get the same publicity. I guess it didn’t fit their template.

This book was edited by Michael Dubruiel and the Latin translation footnotes were provided by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf which as you would expect are quite informative.