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The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture

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This book's title claims that the book is about the history of the church in Boston but it is really about the Church in America as well. It tells this history with a mixture of facts, fascinating stories, funny anecdotes and sometimes alarming statistics. It details closely how the Church intersected with politics in Massachusetts but also in the country as a whole. Lawler shows how the Kennedys influenced Catholic political thought and how their carefully constructed views and the lack of response from bishops helped shape the political landscape. His book also touches on the "reforms" supposedly instituted by Vatican II, the liberal ideology of universities, feminism, woman priests, contraceptives, homosexuality within the priesthood, Roe v. Wade, stem cell research, gay marriage and abortion.

It goes on to demonstrate the influence of the media, particularly the Boston Globe, and how it has replaced a position held a couple of generations ago by the archbishop. It even helps explain one seeming paradox that has always puzzled me, namely why is Massachusetts both the most Catholic and most liberal state in the union? But the principle focus is on how a combination of silence and political posturing by bishops in this country has lead to the crisis in the Church of the evaporation of the Catholic faithful and the sexual abuse tragedy. This book sees the sex abuse scandal as a horrible symptom of the failure of Catholic bishops that were more interested in the earthly institution of the church than in living its faith and protecting that faith within their flocks.

None of it makes particularly cheerful reading for a Catholic, but it is definitely both fascinating and instructive. What is truly amazing is that it does this all from a position of strong love for the Catholic Church and an unquestionable orthodoxy to Catholic teaching and tradition. It also avoids emotional and inflammatory statements but does not shy away from seeking truth. His book is obviously a very personal work for him because his life intersects with the story told in the book (apparently Cardinal Law hired him to edit the diocesan newspaper). It is also a quick easy read which is something that always makes me more likely to read a book!


The book also contains a couple of very moving passages and thankfully it ends on a note of unquenchable hope. I would highly reccomend it.

Many books on the scandal have been written with this simplistic narrative: evil self-hating homosexuals shielding child predators because Catholicism has incoherent and destructive doctrines on sexuality. This is not a book in this category.

This is the first book to detail how this is the scandal of the bishops as much as it is of criminal priests. They failed to act to prevent these crimes against children when it was their power and responsibility to do so. Lawler not only investigates this but can answer why this happened. He also connects the dots from the wider loss of faith by Catholics, to the isolation and morale of the clergy, and the ability of the scandal to be under the radar for decades. There is so much new material here that anyone with an interest in the scandal or the state of the Catholic Church today should read this book.

I almost hesitate to recommend this book, since reading it was like tearing open a psychic scab. Still, I think that anyone who cares about the Catholic Church should acquire and read this, what I can only characterize as a masterpiece.

It is not simply a re-encapsulation of the scandal that broke in 2002-2003. Rather, it is an incisive history and analysis of the culture American Catholic Church entire, focused on the Arch Diocese of Boston as an archetypal case study.

Lawler's essential thesis is that the pedophilia scandals that are now scourging the Church are only symptoms of a deeper malaise, one that is rooted in the "suburbanization" of Catholic culture, and it's loss of focus. Instead of of hewing to her ancient prophetic charism, her essential mission of evangelizing and sanctifying, the Church has lost its way. And this didn't happen suddenly in 1968 or 2002. The tepidity and mediocrity began seeping in long ago, back when the Irish, Italian, French and German immigrants first began arriving here, and began attempting to fit into the American milieu.

It's now reached the point that most American Catholics - to include most of our bishops and priests - now conceive of the Church as primarily a political and civic association, rather than a mystical entity with radical and essential moral & spiritual claims on us all. There is a distinct lack of urgency, and a tendency to relativize and abdicate all accountability when it comes to any difficult aspect of the Faith. Most notoriously, that of course means any teachings involving sexuality or gender, but even issues related to violence and economics are fudged away. It's all go along to get along, and what many refer to as "cafeteria Catholicism" is now firmly ensconced as the order of the day.

The recent scandals only rip the lid off the sepulcher. They only reveal who we, who our shepherds, have become. How compromised we all are. For even if only two thirds of our bishops have colluded to protect the 2 or 3% priests proven guilty of gross criminal sexual malfeasance (to the point of often engaging in what amounts to criminal conspiracy) they are only representative of most of the rest of us. Creatures of our culture of materialistic excess and sexual decadence.

So the bishops cannot hold themselves accountable. But neither, apparently, can we.

Re-reading Cardinal Law's correspondence with serial rapists such as Fathers Geoghan and Shanley is heart wrenching and soul numbing stuff. But nevertheless, I think it is salutary.

The bishops may have indeed "gotten away with it." Many of the most derelict ones (such as Roger Cardinal Mahoney) still hold their positions. Despite their irresponsibility. Despite all the scandal and bankruptcy, moral and otherwise. Most of them have kept their "jobs," while holding the vast majority of innocent priests and engaged laity "accountable" with all their invasive background checks and sex ed programs.

With this book, Phil Lawler has given us a difficult, even brutal, yet profoundly needed self- examen. I say that if you care about the Church, you should buy and read this book.

And wonder if we do not have the bishops we deserve.

Philip Lawler has written a history of my life in the Boston church since 1941. I suppose many of the "faithful" were naive and had no idea of the political tensions over the years, but we did see the destruction of our places of worship in the "spirit of Vatican II" and the wholesale repudiation of Catholic piety and devotion valid for centuries. The 60's and 70's popular culture invaded seminaries and changed the thinking of church leaders. The sense of the sacred departed and capitulation to politically correct attitudes robbed the bishops of their moral leadership. The consequences were empty churches and a thundering stampede from convents, monastaries and the priesthood. This book is essentially a damning condemnation of the US cardinals, archbishops and bishops. The confusion and lack of leadership created the climate for defying moral authority, indifference to church pronouncements on divorce, contraception, and other moral issues set the stage for the sordid child abuse scandal. The covering up of scandal was the only motive and we all suffered immeasurably. In a way, we in Boston are going through purgatory at the present time. Mr. Lawler is optimistic that the church will overcome this, and I am too. The gates of Hell shall not prevail.

With "The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture," Author Philip Lawler has performed a great service for the American Catholic Church. The book is nothing short of fabulous and readers will find it very difficult to put down. The book seeks to answer the question, "What happened in Boston?...How did the Catholic Church in Boston, which had built up its public influence so steadily during the 20th Century, lose all that influence within the span of a generation?"

Lawler is well equipped to tackle this subject. He was born and raised in the Boston area and attended Harvard. In 1986, he became the first layperson to edit "The Pilot," the Boston Archdiocesan newspaper. He worked under Cardinal Law, was an original supporter of his, then with testimony related to the sexual molestation cases, realized that Cardinal Law was complicit and was not honest about his role in the matter.

The book begins with rise of Catholics in Boston which by the close of the nineteenth century had become the most important group in Boston society and thoroughly shaped the society in which they lived. It continues with the seeds of the decline and the slide into the abyss leading to the very damaging sex-abuse scandal, the total collapse of the Catholic Culture and the "Dash-2" Bishops.

The decline began in the 1950's with the top leadership when Boston's Archbishop stopped a priest from his public preaching of a defined Catholic dogma...some people found that dogma offensive. This same person, ten years later and now a Cardinal, announced "that Catholic legislators should feel free to vote in favor of legislation that violated the precepts of the Church" (in conjunction with Kennedy's presidency). He essentially was yielding religious authority and encouraging Catholic faithful to yield as well.

Refusing to publicly challenge society on critical moral issues led to the loss of influence and the collapse of the Catholic Culture. Once Church leaders moved away from religious solidarity and from nurturing the faith publicly, they moved away, as well, from nurturing the faith of the clergy, and, in turn, the faith of the laity. Church leaders gave into the temptation to build up influence and power through accommodation and compromise, thus selling the soul of the Church in the public square.

Today, "former Catholics constitute the largest religious bloc in the Boston area. Practicing Catholics are once again a small minority in Boston, barely tolerated by a society that finds their views alien and potentially dangerous." Lawler points out that "the same general pattern can be seen in other Catholic dioceses all across America."

With the demise of Catholic moral leadership within the hierarchy and the clergy, the sex-abuse scandal is really no surprise. Lawler segments the scandal into three scandals. The first scandal is the sexual abuse of young people by Catholic clergy which has been acknowledged and addressed. The second scandal is the prevalence of homosexuality among Catholic priests which has been acknowledged but not been addressed. And the "third scandal is the abdication of authority - or worse, the complicity - of American Bishops when they were confronted with the evidence of clerical abuse." In short form, the re-emergence of a Catholic Culture will be hindered until the hierarchy deals within itself and begins to provide true moral leadership.

"The sex-abuse scandal in American Catholicism was not only aggravated but actually caused by the willingness of Church leaders to sacrifice the Church by focusing on building up the human institution to the detriment of the divine mandate. Catholic culture lost first its integrity and then its power. The church that caters to public opinion may enjoy a short burst of superficial success, but in the long term it will lose both its integrity and popularity."

This is a must read for all serious Catholics.

This work, from a deeply invested observer, is well worth the read for anyone interested in making sense of the debacle served up by the ranks of American Catholic prelates over the past 30 years.

A small caveat: It provides a very conservative Catholic's view of the mess, and there is little patience displayed with things Catholic that arose post-1960.

This book deserved a much better editorial effort and a much more professional publishing house. Sadly, a reader often has to supply entire missing words, and re-reread whole passages to make sense of poorly punctuated text.

This book is essential reading for anyone -- Catholic or non-Catholic -- who wants to understand better the root of the sex-abuse crisis and the current state of the Catholic Church in the United States. In a clear and extremely readable way, Mr. Lawler shows how the entire hierarchy of the American Church -- from the bishops on down -- let down the faithful.

If Boston is viewed as the epicenter of the abuse crisis, it also can be seen as the archetype for the decline in the Catholic Church's influence in the U.S. and many other parts of the world. Mr. Lawler ties this together better than anyone else.

Lawler uses the failings of the Boston Archdiocese not only recently but over its history as a platform to review the scandals besetting the Catholic Church in America that have been so much in the news.

He rejects the notion that the sex abuse scandal was a series of aberrations, but had at its root the unwillingness of bishops and priests to be faithful to Catholic dogmas and discipline. Outstanding analysis - and a critically important book for understanding not only the sex abuse scandal but also the contemporary situation of the Catholic Church in America today.

I was not familiar with the political flavor of Boston Catholicism described in this book, but now I understand the development of underlying culture of deceit that enabled the attitude of "keeping quiet." Americans for the most part are law abiding members of society, and what really disgusts me is that this trait of "protection of the bishop" is pandemic across the US in many Catholic diocese's.

The most telling sentence of the book is on the back cover where a conservative bishop tells "the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." That told by St. John of the Cross who had his own problems with bishops in his native Spain nearly a thousand years ago.

In my own case, I grew up with a priest who was elevated to the episcopacy and now retired but is embroiled in a abuse case back in his home town. I personally don't think he did it, but then one has to ask, how many priests are guilty of abuse and are not fingered...and, how many are not-guilty of anything but are being charged anyway.

Mr. Lawler doesn't make a distinction between guilty or not, but he does write a compelling expose' of the catholic church in the US. The real problem is that he thinks the problem is still among us with the bishops not learning from Cardinal Law's mistakes. In fact, he tells tales of other "princes of the church" who are still part of the problem. I believe that pressure has to come from the "pew Catholic" in this matter, according to the book, the Vatican is neither unable to or impotent in this problem. I suspect, the Vatican is afraid of loosing its most financial prosperous givers to the till.

A great read and I wish more expose's would come forth.

I was a little worried that this book would be hard to get through, but the writing is clear and uncomplicated and the subject matter absolutely fascinating!