Customer Reviews

Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal

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David France has done an interesting job of bringing together many threads in a very complex story. He starts well back with the seminary days of some of the figures that will come to be players in this story. Much of what he does is to place this story in context - in context of the church during this period, and of society in general. Was the non-celibacy of priests a problem that came to light in the past decade an aberration? Was it a product of the sexual revolution? Was it a reflection of society in general? Or was it an exposed side of a more deeply rooted problem? France leans towards the latter, but gives each of these ideas some thought.

Upon first glance, one would assume it is about the recent priest child molestation cases. But the author moves beyond this, to note a range of sexuality related problems, not only with the child molester, but also with the priest engaged in illicit sexual affairs, and the self identified gay priests. I give France high kudos for his work sifting through thousands and thousands of pages of legal records and history to distill the important points into his narrative. The book is anything but dry. While not light reading, it is captivating and introduces you to a whole spectrum of players in this drama.

No, the book is not positive. In fact very few from within the church leadership come across in much positive light, though there are some. Rather the positive light is shone upon the laity, trying to take back the church and correct the wrongs that have been perpetrated. It's the David and Goliath story of people moved to bring change facing an entrenched bureaucracy, and one that for many is unassailable. A bureaucracy that could and would not see a pattern until too late, and then would be too tied up in the problem to face the issue. French has done a very good job trying to show all the sides in these issues, and try to find where the motivation for their reactions come from. While he is sympathetic to the victims, he does not blindly anoint them with right. Rather he does entertain the possibility of some mistaken "memories" that came about from supposed 'repressed memory' therapy. No one in this story is above reproach.

As a lapsed Catholic, the most common reaction I had as I read this was sadness. Sadness for what had happened, and what had been allowed to happen. And anger at how it was allowed to happen. The second half of the book is centered around Cardinal Bernard Law, and how his actions, and inactions, while not causing the scandal, certainly helped bring about the eventual explosion of allegations, and his lack of reaction fueled the fire of anger burning within the victims, and many members of the church.

This is a sad story, and a sad chapter in history. This book helps to tries to bring together what happened, and to try and untangle the threads that make the story so complex. A must read for anyone who wants to try and understand what happened in the Catholic Church, and hope that it cannot happen again.

It all started back in the 1950's, and the story and horror of what happened to thousands of boys across the country is simply unimaginable. Somehow, David France's book "Our Fathers" manages to encapsulate the events into a very approachable, readable tome that documents thoroughly the eventual unmasking of the American Catholic church in its response to child abuse.

The scope of abuse in the Catholic church, and the equally vile attempts to cover it up, rivals the atrocities of Watergate. Certain priests, who violated boys, some even in there own homes, were merely reassigned to another parish to start victimizing a new batch of boys. Some were sent to a wayward house, and after spending a few months there, deemed themselves "cured" and then were foisted out on more unsuspecting parishoners. France details these accounts accurately and honestly, including the total destruction these boys and in some cases girls faced in their lives, without going into too graphic descriptions.

Painstakingly researched, France has made this huge topic extremely accessible. One great problem with reading non-ficiton books is that there are usually a host of characters, all with important roles, and it's very easy to confuse one with another. France goes out of his way in this book to delinate between the different priests, and often will remind you of a certain trait or habit of a priest to trigger your memory. I never once was confused as to who was who, thanks to France's effort.

This is a must read book for anyone; part mystery, part historical record, you are rooting for the vicitms to have their day, and when the last page is turned, you are somewhat releaved as to the results, but still enraged that anything like this happened; and hopefully enraged enough to ensure it will never happen again.

David France did an excellent job getting the story out. Until now, I heard only fragments of the fifty year span. He brought the history of my childhood and adulthood together into perspective in relation to the Catholic church which I belong. Everything makes much better sense to me. Hopeless is not understanding. Understanding is power. Thank you David.

Most of us non-Catholics followed the breaking story of the sex-abuse scandal within the Catholic church that rocked the nation a few years ago in news reports that originated from the Boston Globe and spread throughout the nation. David France's book brings the fascinating, horrifying tale together in this volume whose chronology spans half a century. France, a senior editor for Newsweek magazine, has combined original reporting with a wealth of sources to paint a picture of a deeply afflicted institution that seems incapable of healing itself. The individual tales of predatory priests unpunished and the young men and women whose lives they destroyed are difficult enough to read; even more appalling is the systematic defensive reaction of church superiors, who shuffled offending priests from parish to parish, sent them to inadequate treatment facilities, and never reported their criminal offenses to secular authorities. Then, when the scandal broke and lawsuits began pouring in, their defense was to stonewall and obfuscate at every possible opportunity.

France juggles a large cast of heroes and villains with a sure hand, though his quasi-cinematic technique of cutting back and forth between different stories occasionally makes the narrative too fragmented. His only serious failing is that, by keeping himself consistently in the background, he does not tie the entire tale together, so that the reader is left wondering what, if anything, has come of this whole sorry saga. One would guess that the death of John Paul II and the ascendancy of Cardinal Ratzinger to pope, both of whom come off in the book as insensitive to the crisis, bodes ill for any meaningful reform within the church for years to come.

Our Fathers is an outstanding, truthful, report on the sexual abuse by priests and the cover-up by the bishops of many thousands of children in the Roman Catholic Church. It is astounding and astonishing to find that the hierarchy of the church, (popes and bishops) knew for decades about the holocaust of children and acted as cold, secretive, indifferent, blind, deaf men for decades in order to protect their clericalism and power over people.

David France reported on the scandal as it unfolded. It is a compelling read and should be a "must read" for every catholic who wants Jesus Christ to stop mourning, wailing and weeping.

RD0512 from Boston states that the book is, "NOT VERY POSITIVE". There is nothing positive about the sexual abuse, rape, pornography, threats, suicides, drugs, secrecy, lying, sex rings, destroying of files, accusing the children of causing their own rape and priests sitting in prisons. The guilty bishops have not yet been held accountable and they don't have the common sense, the common decency, or the morals, or the spirituality to resign, etc.

What has happened in Boston happened across the USA and in almost every country where the catholic church exists. rd0512 also states that, "we should pray more and stop writing novels". What has happened to the children are actual crimes and true facts. The guilty Bishops who passed pedophiles around to the different communities in the world and who refuse to acknowledge their own crimes have lost the credibility to speak publically about moral issues for many years to come.



What has happened to the Church is both another Gethsemane and Calvary. The truth must be faced, sadly and shamely accepted and the systemic causes of this cancer must be completely examined and eliminated. Catholics blame the media and who refuse to face the truth are as guilty as the silent, guilty bishops. The Pope should have called for the guilty Bishops resignations long ago. The Catholic Church needs an Easter Sunday. I strongly recommend that the highest persons in the Vatican on down study and act on the information in Our Fathers and Vows of Silence by Jason Berry.

Just when you think you didn't want to read another word about those creepy priests and those even creepier Church demigods along comes the last word in real reporting. I am not even Catholic but I was really moved by the faith of the broken-hearted faithful. (O.K., the ending made me cry!) The stories as told here read like a series of movie plots - fast, compelling, and sharp with details without lingering over the salacious. I was amazed to find myself feeling sorry for some of these young, sheltered, priests who seemed "set-up" by the Church hierarchy like mad dogs and then let loose (repeatedly) on a witless flock. It was equally revealing to get to know the victims and their previously untold stories. Without seeming "preachy" this scandal wasn't (isn't) just about Good v. Evil or Choirboys v. Pedophiles, but about what can happen to ordinary men when their souls are caged at an early age by an indifferent man-made Institution out to protect it's own misunderstood and misperceived self-interest. And while the Church suffers an indictment that it really can't defend, the real and living "Church" - that is, the members, are an inspiration. Just a great read.

While "inspirational" may seem a strange word to describe a book about the scandal of the sexual abuse of children by priests and other church figures, David France's compelling read is exactly that. While taking the reader into the depths of the despair that any decent human being - that excludes, if one follows the story, many high ranking church officials - ought to feel when confronted with the abuse, France also inspires with his story of the abuse victims who had the courage to take on not only their abusers, but the institution that protected those perverts. A must read.

This is the most readable and complete history of the church crisis I have yet to see. The author brings together views from every facet in an emotionally involving story; I couldn't put it down. Years from now it will be recognized as the definitive work on the subject, for its unflinching focus on the church's errors and for its clearminded treatment of a group of priests coming out of seminaries at a time our culture was confronting its history of dealing with sexual mores. Most moving to me is France's compassion for this victims, and his acknowledgment of their struggles to retain their faiths in the face of these awful crimes.

David France deserves to be congratulated for his meaningful and enlightening work. Not unlike Sartre, France's aim is not to comfort his readers by helping them to ignore or blur the truth. He wants readers (especially Catholics) to know the transgressions of the church, so the situation may be addressed head-on - and so that important questions will be asked: (1) Are individuals who observe religious dogma prone to be more or less moral? (2) Does practicing the religious observances on one's faith have any impact at all on morality? (3) Is it the repressive attitude of some religious organizations (ie, the Catholic church) that contributes to the "sins of the fathers"(ie, pedophilia). Indeed, France reminds society that it is time to address these critical issues without being intimiated by the clergy and by the Vatican. (Review by: Jerry Marcus, author of The Last Pope: A Novel)

As other reviewers have commented this book is a page turner. You can't put it down because of the tight, fast paced style, the incredibly colorful characters (with colorful language to match!).

Not being a Catholic I can't comment from that perspective but from the perspective of someone who has followed the story, it was sadly fascinating to read about the process of obtaining information, bringing legal action, creating support systems and the Church's reaction to the attacks. At the end though I didn't feel the writer connected the dots well and that would be the major hole in the book. Maybe the 'end' coincided with the departure of Cardinal Law but I felt that there was much more to the story than the fall of one very powerful church offical.

Obviously this was written from the viewpoint of the victims but their overall focus seemed more on running Cardinal Law to ground and removing him from office than in changing the institution so that such horrors would not happen in the future. Cardinal Law as an individual was *a* problem, not *the* problem. Predatory priests were an institutional problem and I didn't see either side really trying to determine how this happened at this time period. Was it a function of the times and rapidly changing mores? Was it a lack of screening both prior to and during a priest's career to identify and treat mental health issues? Was it the emergence of gay activism? Were church officials simply ignorant of the terrible consequences of predatory priests or did they simply think they could hide the problem? As a reader I was left with as many questions as answers and I hope the writer does something to follow up on this book. It's a great read but I wish a few of the loose ends had been tied up at the end.