Portrait of Pope Francis %282021%29 FXD.
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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) April 25, 2024: The aging Pope Francis (born in 1936; elected pope in March 2013), the first Jesuit spiritual director ever elected pope, is ailing physically. Nevertheless, his spirit is strong.
The strength of the pope's spirit is abundantly clear in his accessible new 2024 A Good Life: 15 Essential Habits for Living with Hope and Joy, translated from the Italian by Oonagh Stransky (Worthy Publishing/ Hachette Book Group; orig. Italian ed., 2021). For scripture quotations, she uses The New Jerusalem Bible and, occasionally, the Revised Standard Version.
For Pope Francis, "A Good Life" means a good life of Christian sainthood.
Not surprisingly, in the pope's new 2024 book, he does not even mention any hot button issues in our contemporary polarized American political culture.
For a rather grim assessment of our contemporary polarized American political culture, see Thomas B. Edsall's column titled "Why Losing Political Power Now feels Like 'Losing your Country'" (dated April 24, 2024) in the New York Times:
Now, in connection with Edsall's grim new column, I should also mention Cathleen Kaveny's still timely 2016 book Prophecy Without Contempt: Religious Discourse in the Public Square (Harvard University Press).
Now, as I will discuss below, Pope Francis does say certain things in his new 2024 book that could help alleviate out current polarization.
Now, in terms of familiar categories that Barnes & Noble might use, I would categorize the pope's accessible new 2024 book as a self-help book for young Catholics. As a self-help book for young Catholics, it calls to mind the Canadian author Jordan B. Peterson's wildly popular 2018 book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote for Chaos (Random House Canada).
But your guess is as good as mine as to whether the pope's accessible new 2024 book will be as widely read as Peterson's 2018 book was. But my guess is that it will not - my guess is that it will not even be widely reviewed (which is one reason why I am writing this review).
My guess is that the pope's accessible new 2024 book will not be widely read, or discussed, is informed by the Italian philosopher and papal biographer Massimo Borghesi's 2021 book Catholic Discordance: Neoconservatism vs. the Field Hospital Church of Pope Francis, translated by Barry Hudock (Liturgical Press Academic; orig. Italian ed., 2021).
Simply stated, certain conservative American Catholics have generated so much anti-Francis literature that young American Catholics most likely are not interested in hearing what Pope Francis has to say in his accessible new 2024 book addressed to young Catholics.
Ah, but older American Catholics might also be edified by the pope's accessible new 2024 book. But they also have been tainted by the anti-Francis polemics of certain conservative American Catholics.
In Rule 8 of the "Fifteen Rules for a Good Life," in Pope Francis' new 2024 book, he says, "Work for peace among people. Do not listen to those who spread words of hatred and discord. Do not listen to those voices! As different as human beings may be, they were created [by God] to live together. If there is conflict, be patient: one day you will learn that every single person holds a fragment of truth [-- including those voices of hatred and discord?]" (p. viii; his italics).
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