Charles J. ChaputRecensioni

rediscovering the basics

Archbishop Chaput has always been one of my favorite authors on the internet, particularly when he was in Denver and had opinions in the local "paper." I was very pleased with this collection of essays about life, God, faith, and values.
His style is so captivating, and the anecdotes from his life was so interesting, I found it a pleasure to end each day with a chapter. It was more like having a conversation with a friend than reading a book.

He retired in 2019, after serving as Archbishop of Philadelphia.

In "Render Unto Caesar," Chaput gives us a condensed history of 2000 years of Catholicism & how Catholics have lived (& died for) their faith under various forms of government during that time. But, his primary focus is Catholicism's effects on the history of the U.S., & where & how Catholics should be living their faith in today's society.

I received this book and struggled through it. I am not Catholic, so was not my cup of tea.

Addressing the difficult question of what it means to be a Catholic in the twenty-first century, Archbishop Charles Chaput offers a sound, contemporary vision for understanding the teachings of the Church and shows how you live them out with a spirit of love and obedience. How can you experience a fresh, active spiritual life? Find out as you rediscover the vital basics of Living the Catholic Faith.

Great book for any Catholic looking to grow in their faith. There is alot of truth in here that not everyone would agree with, but if you believe everything the Church believes you should agree with it.

Archbishop Chaput discusses the Catholic faith in todays world from a very theoretical point of view. Many thought are very pertinent aqnd honest but many come from a person who has not been in the trecnches. He is not even willing to discuss , in the book , why people are the way they are or why they make different choices.

Strangers in a Strange Land is both a depressing and an inspiring book. I think that many of us have a sense that American society is rapidly devolving, and from a Christian perspective it’s not difficult to draw a line between that decline and the gleeful haste with which much of that society is attempting to abandon God. But it is dispiriting to see the connections drawn out and defined clearly, as Archbishop Chaput does here. Truth be told, I struggled to get through the first part of this book because I hated to be think of what is happening around us. But, of course, Chaput continues with a note of hope, reminding us of how we as a Christian people are to face such challenges and to be light in a darkening world. Recommended.

I quickly scanned this book, but intend to dig into it. This is part of my reading for Lent 2017. As a "cradle Catholic," I can identify with the author's viewpoint. I recently read an editorial in a Catholic archdiocesan newspaper. The article addressed "faith shaming," a practice that derides people for openly expressing their faith. I have had this experience, so found this book to be of interest, since it fits the theme.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my review.

Definitely not a light read, this took me a couple of months to digest. I should say that I'm Catholic and do fall in line pretty closely with the teachings of the Church, so I suspect that I struggled less with some of the author's perspective than others might. The most insightful part for me was early on where we get perspective on the unique history of this country. As Americans we don't come from a common ethnicity or race, and the individualism at the root of our values perhaps put our sustainability in jeopardy from the beginning. Other themes of the book: with great freedom comes great responsibility, and true change can only come from within each of us.

Reading this book was a movement of my heart. I had once been a stranger in this land I call home, and yet, without knowing it, had become a resident - a citizen - of this land. I had lost my roots, and this reading has re-invigorated them and planted them in good soil again. The book speaks of the long history of faith in our country, its morals and beliefs that have helped to shape it, and us, in all that is America. Yet, the distractions created by all of this have helped to pull people from the faith, morals and beliefs of their founding, creating new "truths" and confusion in life. The book speaks of restless hearts, hearts ever restless until they rest in God. By resting our lives, our beings, in God and his love, we find truth again. We come to see that in order to truly live in this land, we must use the good and the bad that we receive, and bear fruit for all things - but, never losing site of our true home in heaven. We become joyful in the land because we are not of it, but are of God and His love.We find our true purpose. "We're here to bear one another's burdens, to sacrifice ourselves for the needs of others, and to live a witness of Christian love - in all our public actions, including every one of our social, economic, and political choices; but beginning with the conversion of our own hearts." What we do in this journey of life through this strange land we call home, makes all the difference if we are truly to get home again. Wonderful read!

Strangers in a Strange Land by Charles Chaput is an excellent example of a well composed book. That is what first impressed me about the book. The grammar, structure and logic from the initial pages invited me to read on. The author is a Catholic Archbishop, so his point of view may be assumed to be that of a bishop of the Church. The foundation he lays from the earliest pages is used as the basis for pages that follow and subsequent develop follows in like steps. That alone would be praiseworthy for an author.

The book is unabashedly about the need, in an "invented" republic without place or heritage as its raison d'etre; for a common set of beliefs to underscore its creation and continued growth. He starts by explaining the need for hope, as understood from a biblical perspective, not naive optimism. Hope requires faith and hope makes possible true charity.

He refers often to the philosophers and historians, as did the founders, fearing the danger of misled majority rule inherent in simple democracy, built check and balances like the governors used in clockworks to moderate the actions of government. Tocqueville understood and described the dangers in democracy and the ease with which it can be overtaken by despotism. He understood that democracy doesn't encourage strong characters but rather self-absorbed ones. Many of those checks are based on the assumptions of common understanding of truth. The constitution's Article IV Section 4 reads in part "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government..."

The book then proceeds to demonstrate by many references to examples and respected thinkers how when by majority opinion swayed by convenience and public acceptance self-evident truths are allowed to be re-defined. Its logic will be very uncomfortable to many, but to an open mind it is solid. Constitutional guarantees of rights are not easily challenged. Instead, the more convenient path is the change the definitions of the words contained in the guarantees.

For example: Life is self-evident. Sex is self-evident How life begins is self-evident. If one gets the governmental authorities to redefine one, then we have obliterated the basis of the formation of the United States expressed in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

If, instead of relying on self-evident truth the government's agents accept that they may define when life begins, it is an easy and very logical step to redefine how it may begin, if it does so then it is easy to redefine what life is and when it may be deemed not worthy of rights. With the authority to define life comes the ability to define if one has a right to life. For me, Chaput's development of this line was particularly elegant.

He logic is easy to follow and persuasive. He cites innumerable scholars and authorities from Aristotle to Augustine to C.S. Lewis to contemporary scholars. He proceeds to the end of his book assuming the reader was able to accept the logic and its conclusions and the tone becomes much more pastoral, almost sermon like. The most difficult part of reading the book is realizing the frequency that one has used excuses or popular culture to choose convenience over right. For those who celebrate the many current excesses of re-definition, I would expect it is very uncomfortable or impossible.

He closes by examining the question, "Who is man?" explaining what faith permits one to know. "God is not a supreme being within reality, but the author of reality itself, outside the envelope of time and space..."

For anyone who is a sincere thinker this is a book that should be read.½

Although I'm Catholic, I don't consider myself overly religous. I do, however, like to read books about faith which allows me to open my mind to different perspectives. It was difficult for me to get through this book. I found myself "zoning out" and rereading a lot. I liked the information about the influence of religion in our country. Other than that, I didn't get much out of it. Perhaps someone with stronger beliefs and interest in this topic would enjoy this book.

I didn’t give this book a high rating and I expected to do so. Here’s what you need to know about me: (1) I love books on spirituality and (2) I hate to read political text. I became a Catholic last year so I’m fascinated with books about Catholicism. I anticipated that this book would be heavy on the “living the Catholic faith” and light on the “post-Christian world.” Wrong. The author is taking wild swings at all the usual bugaboos in our world. “Seems to me I’ve heard this song before.” I’d expected more...well, faith.

I’d love to hear from you if you liked this book. Maybe I missed something.

I'm grateful to have received an Early Reader copy of this book. As a progressive Protestant, I'm perhaps not the target audience of this book, but the blurb sounded interesting: "...an empowering guide to how Christians - and particularly Catholics - can live their faith vigorously, with confidence and hope, in a post Christian public square." It's one of the odder reading experiences I've had in the last year - I found myself alternately, paragraph by paragraph, weaving between strong agreement and strong disagreement.

Where Archbishop Chaput is coming from politically is made clear in a passage in the middle of the book: "The White House elected to power in November 2008 campaigned on compelling promises of hope, change, and bringing the nation together. The reality it delivered for eight years was rather different: a brand of leadership that was aggressively secular, ideologically divisive, resistant to compromise, unwilling to accept responsibility for its failures, and generous in spreading blame." (123) If, like me, you think this formulation is wildly off the mark, it's worth reading the book not to see if you agree with it - you won't - but to see how he gets where he goes.

The first half of the book is a critique of America's globalized culture. I agree with much of Chaput's concern about consumer society, and appreciate his call to welcome immigrants. But what really surprised me is the degree to which the book is obsessed with human sexuality. I appreciate that Chaput reflects Church dogma, but the book's focus is so intense that it seems to have forgotten there are any deadly sins apart from lust. All non-procreative sex, and any sex outside a heterosexual marriage, is bad; and he draws lines from modern sexual freedoms (including, especially, abortion and gay rights) to virtually every social and political pathology you can name. This analysis is, in my experience, simply and deeply wrong, and the attitude it reflects has caused untold suffering for my LGBTQ friends and for straight women (and for a lot of straight men too, actually).

The last chapters were something of a surprise as well. Based on the framing of the book, and the emphatic social critique of the early chapters, I expected a discussion of public policy. There's virtually none. Instead, Chaput delivers a series of homilies to the effect that, in the midst of a fallen world, we are called simply to have our families live faithfully. It's a very 'the personal is political' view, but without any other kind of politics. Here's his ultimate thesis: "What does God ask us to do in a seemingly post-Christian world? The first thing he asks from us is to realize that the words "post-Christian" are a lie, so long as the fire of Christian faith, hope, and love lives in any of us." (242) I can't disagree with those words, but I do wish there were a lot more love and hope in this book, and a lot less dogma and - especially - less fear of human sexuality, in its full spectrum of expression among us, each of us loved so generously by God.

Strangers In a Strange Land is a book by the Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles J Chaput. In this book he delivers what he has come to see as a diminished religious belief especially among young people and he goes and demonstrates how this particular diminished belief has caused quite a bit of non Catholic beliefs to arise.

While I am not a Catholic, I am a Protestant, I do agree with a lot of the material presented in this book. I do see a lot of similarities where certain things have either been ignored or challenged because of societal changes or in some cases a complete disregard for Christianity. The message that Archbishop Chaput is discussing in his book is a concern to me. However, my personal opinion is that there is a different way to go about resolving this issue.

That said, I hold the belief that a lot of Christianity is stuck in doing things a certain way rather than allowing a freedom that can be found in Jesus Christ. Follow a method put forth by a group of people has deterred some and perhaps this is why many have abandoned Christianity.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my review.

The Roman Catholic Church has changed dramatically in the last 50 years since Vatican II. The Philadelphia seminary has a Muslim teaching in it. And yet, the author wonders why it is a post-Christian world. Not only does he lament the anti-Christian spirit of the age he specifically pointed out numerous times how Muslims kill Christians. Thus, that the church hierarchy does not maintain the same theological and academic standards of the past should give him pause. You cannot affect outside influences but the church itself has not insisted upon its own integrity. Nonetheless, the need is great since the country is most certainly post-Christian and there is a need for theological leaders to assert themselves.

The author approvingly quotes Saint Augustine but can one imagine an archdiocese such as the one that Chaput governs during the age of Saint Augustine? Practices that are common today would never have happened for the acclaimed Bishop of Hippo.

Also, I felt his prose was rather disjointed and paragraphs do not flow smoothly from one to the other; this point is more of a stylistic point than a critique of the work itself nonetheless I believe it should be mentioned.

22 February 2018 the Archbishop addressed Villanova and I attended his lecture. After his talk I went up to him and handed him my business card. I told him about the local priest and that he contrasted the gospel again the America culture of “Make America great again.” The Archbishop asked me what church I attended but I did not say the priest’s name. He said he can’t comment directly on the sermon because he didn’t hear him but he said he would hope the priest pointed out the positive side of the Presidency and how we should pray that President Trump will do a good job.

http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20170319_Archbishop_Chaput_writes_aga...

"Addressing the difficult question of what it means to be a Catholic in the twenty-first century, Archbishop Charles Chaput offers a sound, contemporary vision for understanding the teachings of the Church and shows how you live them out with a spirit of love and obedience."

a priest I had only corresponded with suggested I read this book, and I am glad he did. Bishop Chaput makes the case for the involvement of people of faith in the public square, but he goes beyond that to make the case that we cannot be people o9f faith unless we engage with the issues of our day from the perspective of our beliefs.

Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., D.D. posits that American democracy depends on an engaged citizenry to survive. He discusses the separation of church and state, pro-choice politicians, and the role of religious believers in politics. The short discourse on the history of Catholics in America is interesting and would make a very long and interesting book on its own. In this book the archbishop urges Catholics to practice their faith openly.

Living the Catholic Faith; Rediscovering the Basics. Charles J. Chaput. 2001.
This is a brief, readable guide to the essentials of the Catholic faith in which Chaput explains what it means to be a Catholic in the modern world. He also provides suggestions on living the faith each day, and he gives advice on how to strengthen your spiritual life. He suggests that we ask ourselves the following question at the end of the day, “I have paid one day of my life to do what I did today. Was it worth it?” That is great advice for everyone!

Archbishop Chaput believes a Catholic politician who does not vote to criminalize abortion should not be given Communion. His stance is not supported by many other Catholic bishops, though all agree, as of course I do, that abortion is a horrendous evil since it terminates the life of an unborn innocent child. But I think a Catholic can in good conscience vote against criminalizing abortion, even though I would not so vote. And certainly there are good reasons often to vote for a Catholic even though he does not vote to criminalize abortion, especially since the pro-life politicians of the Republican stripe often use the issue not to end abortion but to garner votes. The book is well written and is a good exposition of the author's view.

This sounds very sensible. Apparently at least of the younger bishops have decided the best defense is to go on offense.

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Denver Bishop is one of the best!