3 comments about Cronkite Remembers.

1. Walter Cronkite narrates his life, with comments from his friends and family. His life, however, is filled with special moments that make it very interesting. With humor and very personal opinions, he will take you from the day Kennedy was assassinated, to Russian bombs and Nazism, while at the same time providing insights about the American Presidents he met. In this narration, Cronkite shows a very human side, including comments about his mistakes while assessing news. I found this book very enjoyable to listen to, and if you have an interest in history, I think you will enjoy it too. Or as Cronkite would say: And that's the way it it!



2. Don't confuse CRONKITE REMEMBERS with A REPORTER'S LIFE. The latter is a genuine memoir from TV's second greatest journalist (next to Edward R. Murrow). The former is a brief tape that breezes through events so quickly as to be wholly unsatisfying. Walter Cronkite has lived a long enough life and had a rich enough career to merit two autobiographies, but CRONKITE REMEMBERS is so superficially brief as to trivialize his career and the events he covered rather than add to our understanding of them. This isn't a terrible tape. It isn't unpleasant to listen to. I liked hearing Cronkite's voice, which I could only imagine while reading A REPORTER'S LIFE. But I was left wanting more - much, much more. That's why CRONKITE REMEMBERS merits a low rating. Skip this and get A REPORTER'S LIFE.



3. This is a celebration of Cronkite's more than 50 years of journalism. Cronkite shares some of his early childhood memories with us, like how he got his first start in journalism- -selling papers on street corners. He traces his career through writing for newspapers and acting out baseball games on radio. He also tells us about the war years, when he covered the war in newsreels from Europe. He describes how, in the days before satellites, film footage of Queen Elizabeth's coronation had to be flown across the ocean before it could be broadcast on this continent. He reminisces about his relationship with each of the presidents from Hoover through Reagan- -just the fact that he met and worked with so many presidents is a great indicator of his reputation as journalist. But in all of these interviews, recorded with Cronkite, his family, and co-workers, Cronkite never comes across as being overbearing or egotistical.
   
   Towards the end of this tape, Cronkite looks back and selects the most important stories that he covered. Among these are his famous opinion statement on Vietnam, when he set aside the goal of trying to remain objective and spoke his mind, based on what he saw on the ground in Vietnam. Later he talks about the Lunar landings, and how they left him unexpectedly speechless. For younger audiences, this could be an interesting overview of the main stories of the Twentieth Century. For older listeners, it's a walk down memory lane.

No comments about Journals and Letters of Stephen Mackenna.

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No comments about Hemingway: Life and Works.

5 comments about Clerical Error: A True Story (Handbooks of Catholic Theology).

1. This book is well worth the read. In view of the fact that it was written prior to the breaking of the current scandal, it seems almost prophetic at times. When the author gives his scathing critique of celebacy, however, he assumed that the indescretions of the clergy involved adult men and women. Even Kaiser could not imagine the depth of horrific betrayal of trust in the abuse of children that so many clergy would be capable of.

   This book is a "must read" for anyone seriously interested in reform in the Roman Catholic Church. It so speaks of its systemic abuse and misuse of power.

   One more reason for RCs to get out of our pews and take back the church.




2. From The
   History of Vatican II by James Hitchcock:

   Time magazine, which was a much more influential journal then, than it is now, was represented at the Council by a reporter whose name was Robert Blair Kaiser. He had been at one time a Jesuit. He was not a priest but he had been a Jesuit, had studied for the priesthood, and was therefore somebody who knew something. He wasn't an ignorant man who had to learn it all from scratch; he was fairly sophisticated in religious matters. But Robert Blair Kaiser's reporting was very much along the same lines as that of Xavier Rynne, the good-guy liberals versus the bad-guy conservatives. Every day there was a shootout at the O.K. Corral over some issue or other. Fortunately most of the time the good-guy liberals managed to disarm the bad-guy conservatives. They shot the guns out of their hands. But unfortunately the bad-guy conservatives kept getting more guns, and so there would be another shootout maybe a week or two later.

   As it turned out in some of the autobiographical things which he later wrote, Kaiser had a very clear agenda from the very beginning. One major part of that agenda was birth control. He had been poking around in that area and making contact with certain theologians who were privately or secretly supportive of birth control before the Council. He had made contact with certain influential Belgian and Dutch theologians. When he went to the Council he understood that there was a liberal agenda, the modernist agenda as we've called it, and he was going to use his magazine, Time magazine, to push it. And he did so, and very effectively. Unfortunately the average American Catholic, and this includes most priests and most nuns, learned what the Council was all about more from Time magazine and The New Yorker than from any other source.

   There is a massive failure of education here on the part of the Church. One would assume that given an event like the Council that the hierarchy would have put into gear a massive educational project. They would have been lining up books, they would have been training teachers, they would have been announcing schools, workshops in every parish, whatever. And they would have insured the fact that what was presented to people as the authentic teaching of the Council really was the authentic teaching of the Council. To an amazing degree this task was neglected. There was, in fact, as far as I can see, practically no systematic effort to educate Catholics as to the meaning of the Council. They were left to discern its meaning in just about any way they could. And if they were reading the New Yorker they got it from Xavier Rynne, and if they were reading Time magazine they got it from Robert Blair Kaiser. Some variation on the views of those two men appeared in most of the secular press. So not only did there persist a good deal of confusion as to what the Council was all about, but there was even a completely skewed, even false notion of what it was all about. Victories that could not be won on the floor of the Council itself, victories that could not be ratified in the Conciliar decrees, were won after the Council in terms of what people thought the Council said as opposed to what it actually said. The obligation of obedience was used over and over again to get reluctant people to go along with the Council's changes, until such time as obedience had outlasted its usefulness and then the shift was to independence and freedom.




3. I just finished reading Clerical Error after making copious notes throughout.
   
   As a sedevacantist his book validates my position held by a growing group that the vatican ii council has produced untold damage to the faith of millions of souls.
   
   By recounting the idealogy of many liberals to attempt to change the unchanging doctrines of God's Church Kaiser has unwittingly pointed out that fruits of vatican ii and the new religion (novus ordo) has decimated the true faith throughout the world and brought the full impact of satan and his minions upon the soul of the Church.
   
   I also bought the book to validate some other sources concerning Malachy Martin. I admit being duped into buying Martin books especially during my novus ordo days as a "conservative". Now I will be trashing or burning any books that I still have of his.
   
   Martin, if he did not repent before his death, will be burning in Hell along with the last 3 antipopes and another Martin (Martin Luther).
   
   This book should bring to those Catholics of good faith still trapped in the novus ordo religion that the purpose of vatican ii was to CHANGE Jesus' teaching as well as impose a new religion.
   
   The Fruits of vatican ii are evident: widespread apostasy, priests shortages, homosexuals in the seminaries. The devil couldn't be more proud of his handiwork.
   
   There are two websites I would recommend to give a better understanding of the new religion and its antipopes:
   
   http://www.novusordowatch.org/archive.htm
   http://www.mostholyfamilymonastery.com/



4. Svengali, Rasputin, Martin. If what Mr. Kaiser says in this book is true, then it's too bad that Malachi (why does Kaiser spell it Malachy?) Martin died before INTERPOL, and whatever other law enforcement agencies should be interested, got to him.
   
   I'm not Catholic and I don't think the story in Mr. Kaiser's book is Vatican II at all. The story is about a master con-man and even a cult master of international proportions.
   
   Malachi Martin is connected so much like a spider to so many people and "things" that someone ought to do a really IN DEPTH rundown on the man. I live in a little, out-of-the-way midwestern state, I'm not Catholic, and even I know of people connected in a bizarre, almost cult-like way to Martin and perhaps a mysterious, grissly, unsolved murder or two.
   
   I don't think that Martin was incapable of it, assuming that what Mr. Kaiser says in this book is indeed "a true story."



5. I agree with the previous commentator---I could not put the book down. Tolle et lege.

1 comments about Over the Top With Jim.

1. This book was a great read, especially for an Aussie, and provided a great look at 50's Australia. This book is autobiographical, and Hugh Lunn really know how to let us into his head, and he definitely isn't afraid to pull any punches. It is amazing to see how far we have come. With plenty of historical info, as well as a few good laughs, I recommend this book.

No comments about Walter Cronkite His Life and Times.

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