Gethsemane

The book begins from the view that readers today need plain clarity amid so much clever wordplay. Many have bent the meanings of sacred truths, and faulty readings of theology, combined with unchecked independent thought, have set off a shift that recasts what people mean by love and by knowing. In this account, rewriting the past has shrunk Christ to an admirable human figure, the eyewitness testimony of the apostles is brushed aside in favor of a pluralism that treats every claim as equal, and the denial of objective truth leaves people with a lasting unsteadiness in their existence.

Written for Catholics who are weary of misguided philosophies and want firm grounds for their faith, this reprint of Gethsemane: Reflections on the Contemporary Theological Movement by Cardinal Joseph Siri examines the work of four prominent twentieth-century theologians: Henri de Lubac, Jacques Maritain, Karl Rahner and Hans Küng. Siri sets out where their teaching goes wrong and surveys the leading errors of the period, including relativism, rationalism, modernism, cosmic monism, pantheism, anthropocentrism, dogmatic evolutionism, subjectivism, intellectual esoterism, and secularization within the Church.

Siri's remedy for the confusion of the age is to show that the entire inherited outlook shaped by historicism must be dismantled from within. He also explains how to steer clear of a jumble of unreal ideas that gets wrongly tied to eternal truth. Along the way, the book makes the case for holding fast to divine revelation, acknowledging Original Sin and humanity's need for salvation, and steadily affirming Catholic doctrine and dogma. Without revelation, Siri argues, objectivity is lost and the mind sinks into a kind of existential darkness. Truth is disclosed only when one imitates the fiat of Jesus and Mary, entering into unity and adoration.

Siri stresses that Christ affirmed the Church is His Mystical Body, and that Jesus did not leave us alone in His agony. Believers are therefore called to remain faithful to His teaching until the end.