Customer Reviews

Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit

5 star:		(62)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(47)

 

 

Disclaimer: I am neither a practicing Catholic nor was I raised as a Catholic.

I noticed this book on the bargain table at a local book store, read the jacket and the table of contents and I was intrigued. The book is divided into four sections: Historical Dishonesties; Doctrinal Dishonesties; The Honesty Issue; and The Splendor Of Truth. I recommend using the "search inside this book" option to review the table of contents and the first chapter.

I found this book a challenge. I read a chapter or two and then did not pick up the book for weeks. At times reading Papal Sin was laborious, yet like physical exercise the mental exercise was beneficial. Of particular interest were the chapters on women (Excluded Women), celibacy of priests (The Pope's Eunuch's and Priestly Caste), priests as sex offenders (Conspiracy of Silence), homosexuality (A Gay Priesthood) and contraception (The Gift of Life).

To a non-Catholic, Papal Sin is educational and fascinating. To a devote Catholic who believes in the infallibility of the Pope, this book is likely blasphemous.

Four plus stars.

It is a hard time to be a compassionate, intellectually disciplined, forward looking Catholic. The papacy of John Paul II has grown increasingly humorless, pessimistic, autocratic, and fideistic over the years. In recent weeks alone the Vatican declaration on the supremacy of the Catholic Church, coupled with the trial balloons involving canonizations of the Piuses IX and XII, have caused thoughtful Catholics to wince in embarrassment.

Reformers in the Church need a rallying point. As it becomes more politically dangerous for career pastors and theologians to lead such a renewal, the task may very well fall to a new breed of Catholic thinker, the lay philosopher-theologian beyond the pale of ecclesiastical harassment or sanction. Gary Wills is certainly such a candidate. His passion, his research, his breadth of insight, and his religious faith are beyond question.

But Papal Sin? A provocative title, to be sure. Too many Catholic reformers over the past half-century have discredited themselves from the starting block by letting their angers gestate whining diatribes that, for all their erudition, sound like the ranting of petulant teenagers. Papal Sin teeters on the edge. This is an angry work which portrays the popes of the past two centuries as constitutionally incapable of leading the Body of Christ with beatific purity of heart. For Wills the papacy has consumed its best energies in a titanic effort to preserve its own past, heaping generations of misrepresentation, disingenuous readings of Scripture and history, and outright lying.

A scathing indictment, yes. But his arguments are, at the very least, salient. The first section of Papal Sin is devoted entirely to Catholic relations with the Jews. The timing of this could not be more fortuitous, given the recent Vatican declarations on world religions and the recent appearance of a spate of books defending Pius XII. [One might include here the nomination of Joseph Lieberman as the Democratic candidate for the vice-presidency, for that matter.] Wills avoids getting snagged into the tedious arguments of what Pius XII did or did not do during World War II. Rather, he traces the behaviors of the popes toward Jews through Pius IX, citing among other examples Pius IX's "kidnapping" of Edgardo Mortara through John Paul's motivations for the canonization of Edith Stein. Pius XII's behaviors are examined in this fuller historical context. Wills divines a cultivated attitude of Catholic hegemony in its behavior toward the Jews, as when he views the canonization of Stein as a papal effort to hijack the Holocaust from the Jews and establish a cult of Nazi persecution of Catholics.

Much of this work, however, is an in-house examination of the papacy's management of birth control, priestly celibacy, the shrinking numbers of ordained ministers, annulments, priestly pedophelia, homosexual priests, excesses of Marian dogma and devotion, abortion, and infallibility. In nearly all of these chapters Wills draws attention to the discrepancies between papal practice and the evidence of Scripture and history. His research is provocative and colorful, but there is little new ground broken here. Intellectual Catholics have lived with this discrepancy for centuries. What is distinctive is the author's bluntness in charging that the recent popes have been guilty, at the very least, of culpable ignorance, and in some cases, worse. John Paul II in particular, perhaps the most gifted thinker of the past two centuries, appears to be singled out as the pope who really should have known better.

Not for three hundred pages do we find the spiritual soul of this book. While John Henry Newman gets honorable mention, not surprisingly it is Wills' hero, Augustine, against whom modern popes pale. Papal Sin describes Augustine's ten year battle with Jerome for intellectual honesty in interpreting the Bible, and his straightforward handling of a case of mishandling of funds entrusted to his stewardship in his own diocese. There is in this section an almost desperate desire on the part of the author for a pure and dependable teaching authority, a hint of Luther's passionate search for bedrock of confident faith. The Newman-Augustine treatments put into context Wills' sense of outrage at the pragmatic modus operandi of the Vatican bureaucracy.

There are theological flaws here. Wills venerates honesty as something of a beatitude, forgetting that in theory and practice the Church has approached the beatitudes as ideals, not institutional operational principles. He appears to have difficulty with another of Augustine's teachings, that of pervasive original sin. [Jesus' dictum that his disciples be wise as serpents would not cut the mustard in this book.] Wills complains that standard Vatican language carries the message it is above the Church, not part of it. But if the papacy is indeed of the common clay of the church militant, then it should come as no surprise that popes share the sinfulness and duplicity of its members. Wills shows great sympathy for the "victims" of papal dishonesty, particularly loyal parish priests. But would not modern psychology have something to say about those who choose to live in chronic victimhood? Nor does Wills put forward anything resembling a self-reforming model of church leadership. [As a graduate student, I asked my canon law professor how a more democratic might look. "Like the 1972 Democratic Convention," he quipped.]

Papal Sin is not a banner for discouraged Catholics. It is the sincere outcry of a Catholic layman who wants better example from those who would lead his communion of faith. It is not an unreasonable request.

I can't believe this book is causing as much controversy as it is when so many people obviously haven't even read the book in the first place! Wills is a scholar of the highest standing, and while this book is passionate and provocative it is NEVER offensive or anything less than scholarship of the highest order. People's reaction only further proves his point that the Church has become an all or nothing entity wherein anyone who doesn't agree with something the Pope says is condemned by unthinking people as a bad catholic! Anyhow, I really did enjoy reading this book, particularly his chapter on the Holocaust and on the ordination of women. Read it and give it some serious thought--you won't be disappointed.

I am Catholic and I picked this book up because I am truely alarmed with the path the magisterium has taken in the recent past. A lot of what the Catholic Church teaches, it demands its people to follow without question. However, in the modern age it simply isn't good enough to say "Do this because I say so". Especially when some of the teachings, such as issues like celibacy, contraception, papal infallibility, and women in the priesthood that this book brings up, defy not only common sense but also gospel teachings.

Contrary to what some Catholics may say, it is normal and healthy to question and criticize institutions, especially one as important as the Catholic Church. Without this, an institution will not continually grow and mature, only stagnate. This book actually strengthened my faith with the Catholic Church because many of the questions and misgivings I had about the church were addressed here with loads of historical evidence. It showed me that I am not the only one that has problems with some of the official teachings, and there are plausible, historic, and theological reasons that others have these same problems. I think the most important message this book has is that no one individual is infallible, the Gospels teach that only the Church as a whole is infallible.

Now, off my high horse and down to some book criticisms. Wills presents many topics throughout this book, and I think he does a good job interrelating each. However, this can create a tough read for someone that is not passionate about the material. Also, Wills does take some liberties with some of his arguments. Some may not agree with some of the conclusions he draws in this way, so keep a careful eye out for where the evidence ends and his opinions start. Lastly, I didn't really like the chapter on abortion. It seemed muddled and like he didn't want to take a stand one way or the other on the issue. By doing this, he really doesn't make a very important contribution to the argument, making this passage inconsequential.

Very good book. I would recommend it to anyone that has an open mind about their faith.

When you say "papal sins," everyone thinks you're talking about promiscuity, incest, and the Renaissance popes. People get bored and roll their eyes. Since the modern popes don't sin in this way any more, it doesn't seem relevant.

This reaction is itself a measure of how our view of Christianity has been distorted over the years. If you read the gospels, it's clear that Jesus did *not* see his primary task as teaching sexual morality or family values. He was up to something different.

In this book, Garry Wills keeps his eye on the prize. As leader of the church on earth, the pope should be in charge of teaching and doctrine, and it is here that Wills finds that the popes have sinned. Over and over again, the pope and his advisors have turned their back on divine inspiration and church history in order to avoid being seen as having made a mistake. Institutional pride, and not a concern for truth, have guided the popes' attitude toward doctrine and teaching.

*That* sin has very much haunted all the modern popes. It even keeps the popes from acknowledging that their predecessors have made mistakes on questions on which infallibility is not an issue, such as acknowledging that the Roman Catholic church has at times encouraged anti-Semitism.

Wills does a great job making this case. I found the chapter on birth control at Vatican II particularly interesting, since (as Wills notes) divine inspiration seems to have been leading the Vatican's own committee in a new direction. But, in the end, the Vatican hierarchy feared looking like it had made a mistake. (And, once again, an obsession with sex led the Church astray.)

This institutional pride is also the major obstacle to ecumenism in the Christian church today. Understanding it makes this book important to non-Catholics -- who, if honest, may see similar sins in their own church.

Because Wills remains Roman Catholic, he makes his argument more with sadness (and some anger) than a Catholic-bashing outsider would. He has good reasons to remain Catholic, as do many others who would agree with him. Still, to accept the Roman church honestly and openly means acknowledging when human pride gets in the way of the divine. Every Catholic should read this book.

There is a clerical joke going around that when the papal bull authorizing the ordination of women is issued it will begin, "As we have always said...." Corporations and their spokesmen tend to avoid ever admitting error, to interpret their actions in the best possible light, and even to bend the truth. The Catholic Church is like other organizations in this regard. However, the Church's mission reliably to proclaim truth has, as Wills observes, made it particularly inclined to continue asserting its position in the face of contrary evidence and has made its failures in truthfulness all the more reprehensible. That is unfortunately true. His book is a call for honesty, but it is not itself a totally honest book. Wills is not anti-Catholic. He is rather a faithful but angry son in a somewhat dysfunctional family. He is trying to persuade, but in his anger and advocacy is not himself beyond misunderstanding or misinterpreting the evidence. He presents lots of interesting facts and arguments for his side of various issues, but not for the other. His interpretations make more of a point about future direction rather than past fact. He will be very informative to the average reader, and the general drift of his argument may be true, but the devil is in the details, and the details are not necessarily trustworthy scholarship. A must read book, an important message, but don't swallow it whole.

Every since Lincoln at Gettysburg brought Garry Wills to my attention, I have kept an eager eye out for any new work from him--whether it be reviews in the Times, articles in the NY Review of Books, or new books such as this one. Religion isn't always my reading subject of choice, but Wills' biography of Augustine was a brilliant jewel of a book (albeit a bit short). This new work obviously takes a different path, but in a sense it's a worthy companion to that bio. It's a great overview of a fascinating aspect of world (mostly European) history.

Gary Wills is professor of history at Northwestern University and also a practicing, notably liberal Roman Catholic. "PAPAL SIN" is a popular book which draws selectively on scholarship both solid and speculative, biblical, historical and theological, using up to date sources. It dashes angrily across too many topics: contraception, abortion, a celibate priesthood, the role of Catholics in the Holocaust, freedom of expression and on and on.

Professor Wills complains that the Roman Catholic church has become needlessly over centralized and administered top down. This makes the church too prone to the book's subtitle, "structures of deceit." These structures predispose clerical leaders to mislead rather than admit that the church has been seriously wrong at any time on any issue.

Wills does, nonetheless, identify individuals who stood out against boneheaded errors by top officials and who were later judged correct by the consensus of the faithful. The list of heroic deeds begins with Paul publicly rebuking Peter in Antioch for backsliding on what Jewish practices pagan converts to Christianity must practice (Galatians 2: 11-14). St Augustine of Hippo took on St Jerome of Jerusalem over this very passage. In 1870 Lord Acton, John Henry Newman and many bishops were appalled by Pope Pius IX's deceptive and dishonest tactics promoting papal infallibility .

Garry Wills argues that the entire Church must follow Jesus who is Truth and be led by a Holy Spirit breathing the New Testament Greek grace of parrhesia: etymologically "pan-rhesia" or "speak all," i.e., "holding nothing back." For spiritual sins are vastly worse than bodily: lying more soul-killing than fornication.

In moral situations the church should stop teaching with false precision when solutions are not apparent, notably in key areas of sexuality. Wills offers the following principle from Epistle 190 of St Augustine:

"When a thing obscure in itself defeats our capacity, and nothing in Scripture comes to our aid, it is not safe for humans to presume they can pronounce on it."

Both Augustine and Newman fought for a church in which God speaks to everyone: clergy and laity alike. Our knowledge is always provisional, in unceasing outreach for ultimate truth.

Wills gives an honest, well written reflection on his own Catholic tradition and the conflicting voices within it. He chooses among those voices, deciding for himself which ones best reflect Jesus' teaching. Like many Catholics before him, he concludes we are called to use our freedom wisely, not give it up completely. We are urged to a personal relation with God, not blind submission to a human authority who claims to mediate between God and other people.

Wills also takes Jesus' teaching on forgiveness and sacrifice with the seriousness it deserves. Where Jesus argued "If you had known what that text means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice', you would not have condemned the innocent", Wills boldly concludes: "... Jesus is not a sacrifice. His Father is not the one whose aggressions need to be bought off. Jesus is not an item of barter in the exchange system set up by sacrifice. God does not accept victims. He sides with the victim against the slayers, reversing the whole logic of placation." (p. 307)

I think Wills stands for the real orthodoxy in Catholic faith, along with a whole lineage of other Catholic thinkers, leaders, or saints from the first century forward.

--author of Correcting Jesus

Catholic doesn't have to equal anti-intellectual. But, as Wills shows, the intellectual dishonesty of the modern papacy has fostered an environment where the one requirement for being Catholic is one's complete submission to the Pope. One's love for God, for neighbor, and for Truth all seem to take a back seat to subservience to another human being. The Pope=the Church=God? It has not always been this way, says Wills. In fact, recognition of the pope as human, capable of error, has been more the rule than the exception throughout the history of the Church. It is only over the past two centuries that this notion of absolute, inerrant authority has been developed. Papal Sin is not at all an anti-Catholic book-in the end Wills' clear vision is probably the best thing that could have happened to Catholicism.