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When Jorge Mario Bergoglio became Pope Francis last month, nearly every Vatican insider, observer, and commentator remarked that he had inherited leadership of a church that was troubled and in upheaval. For nearly three decades, the Catholic hierarchy had struggled with the challenges of a catastrophic sexual abuse scandal, a profound crisis of faith, and a lingering public-relations disaster.
Michael D'Antonio's "Mortal Sins,'' perhaps the most comprehensive history of the wrongdoing to date, will only fuel those dilemmas.
This is a devastating chronicle not only of sexual abuse but also of abuse of power — or, rather, of the inclination of those in power to avert their eyes from abuse.
Every page ripples with lurid tales of dysfunction, corruption, exploitation — and, ultimately, of heartbreak, both inside and outside the church. The calamity is that this scandal, spanning cases coast to coast and spilling across the globe, seems so repetitive — so utterly familiar — with revelations prompting revelations until the reader, like the church, can barely tolerate the next episode.
All this threatened the spiritual authority of the institution and endangered its solvency ($3 billion in civil suits so far, with more to come) even as it marked its victims, (mis)shaped their outlooks, and in many cases wrecked their faith — and their lives. No more dreary or depressing book will likely be published this season.
For "Mortal Sins,'' produced from documents, interviews, legal records, and secondary sources, serves as a broad indictment of both the rape of children and the damage done to a great religion, with D'Antonio arguing that the church, with its culture of secrecy, proved irresistibly appealing to men with psychological problems, with deep immaturity, and with the inability to care for themselves as adults. The result was criminal abuse, a conspiracy of silence and coverup, and spiritual betrayal.
D'Antonio, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former Newsday reporter, argues that at the heart of this crisis was the church's inclination to treat these episodes as sins rather than crimes, and as a result the official response all too often was to seek healing rather than investigation and punishment.
By David M. Shribman
1 comment:
Snopes: thia is a satire written by someone from The Beaverton
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