Book Reviews

About the author: David Plotz is the editor of Slate.   Before becoming Slate’s editor in 2008, Plotz worked as a staff writer, political columnist, media columnist, and as the Washington editor for the magazine. He has also freelanced for many magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, New Republic, Washington Post and GQ.

Notes on the book: In Good Book, David Plotz, a self-described “pork-loving Jew,” takes notes on a year-old experiment: “What happens when an ignorant person actually reads the book on which his religion is based?” As he plodded through an English translation of the Hebrew Bible–unaided by teachers or commentaries–Mr. Plotz recorded his responses in “Blogging the Bible.”

The project began a few years ago, when Plotz, bored at a bat mitzvah, picked up the Torah in front of him and, opening at random, fell upon the story of Dinah. Its rape, forced circumcision and mass murder shocked him. He discovered in the Bible a book far less bland than the he had been led to expect.

At times he admires the Bible’s grand notions of justice or finds its laws–e.g.,injunctions in Leviticus 19 to render justice blindly, to love the stranger and to feed the poor–”monumental and beautiful.” He senses the experiment in close reading has joined him in new ways to Jewish life.

But more often, Plotz finds the Bible a big, contradictory, and stunningly violent opera. “We’ve been sold a Bible that’s blander and kinder than the real thing,” he writes. “Instead, let’s revel in its messiness, humor and cruelty.”

Read “Blogging the Bible” here.

See Plotz discuss the book here.

About the authors: Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler are professors at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska. They have both written extensively  on sexual ethics and have a thorough knowledge of current theological debates. They stand firmly within the Catholic tradition even as they argue for significant change.

Notes on the book: Two principles capture the essense of the official Catholic position on the morality of sexuality: first, that any human genital act must occur within the framework of marriage; second, each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.

In this comprehensive overview of Catholicism and sexuality, theologians Salzman and Lawler examine and challenge these principles.

The authors, both theologians, compare the Catholic hierarchy’s willingness to adjust and adapt its teachings on social issues with its refusal to do the same with its teachings on sexual ethics.

The main contribution of the book is its clear articulation of a person-centered natural-law ethic that offers Catholics an authentic way to think about sex in relation to their faith.

Although the authors embrace reasoning from natural law, they argue it is impossible to gain knowledge of nature. We can only reflect on our limited human experience of nature, aknowledging that it is always partial, evolving and in need of application. Thus, traditional assertions about the unnaturalness of certain sexual acts are flawed.

The authors posit that making good sexual decisions means discerning whether or not actions contribute to human flourishing. Sexual acts that are “truly human” must be loving, just and able to meet the test of “holistic complementarity.” Complementarity is defined in relation to sexual orientation. For persons with a homosexual orientation, sexual relationships with a person of the same sex are complementary and can be loving, just and moral.

The book points the way to a thorough revision of Church teaching on birth control, premarital sex and homosexuality.

About the author:

Daniel C. Maguire is professor of Moral Theological Ethics at Marquette University and president of the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health and Ethics. Dr. Maguire has a degree in Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Notes on the book:

In Whose Church? noted social ethicist Dan Maguire explains what Catholicism actually says about good sex, women’s equality, social justice and the environment.

In this pithy guide to progressive Catholicism, Maguire shows how tragically far conservative Catholic politics have strayed from the best Catholic social teaching.

Whose Church? takes special aim at the “pelvic politics” that have dominated official Catholicism, skewering the Church hierarchy’s rigid positions on sex and reproduction and revealing a “spiritually healthy” alternative approach that is in line with Catholic tradition.

About the author:
Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universitat Berlin, and taught philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University. She is author of Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin, The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant; and Evil in Modern Thought. She lives with her three children in Berlin.

http://susan-neiman.de

Notes on the book:
Susan Neiman is a moral philosopher committed to making the tools of her trade relevant to real life. In Moral Clarity, she shows how resurrecting a moral vocabulary—good and evil, heroism and nobility—can steer us clear of the dogmas of the right and the helpless pragmatism of the left.

In search of a framework for forming clear opinions and taking responsible action on today’s urgent political and social questions, Neiman reaches back to the eighteenth century, retrieving a set of virtues—happiness, reason, reverence, and hope—that were held high by every Enlightenment thinker. She shows that the pursuit of moral clarity is not a matter of religious faith but is open to all who are committed to these ideals, believers and nonbelievers alike.