Rating: 
Summary: same old rhetoric
Review: Same old silly agruments. We have heard it all before. I can't imagine why anyone would bother to write such silliness. I did not think that Wills carried around so much psychic debris...including anger and guilt...but it is obvious that he does...big time! Don't bother to read this book. Instead do some that would be more constructive...like shine your shoes.
Rating: 
Summary: A voice crying in the wilderness
Review: Gary Wills reminds me of John the Baptist. In "Papal Sin" he is guaranteed to draw the scorn of today's "scribes and pharisees". His methodically documented work is certain to appeal to people who know something is terribly "wrong" with the Church they love, but who couldn't quite put their finger on the problem.It has been clear to me for sometime that many of today's bishops seem incapable of or unwilling to engage in rigorous intellectual honesty. It is well known in clerical circles for instance that a large number of American bishops are very open to the notion of ordaining some mature married men as one way of dealing with the priests' shortage, but that they fear saying so out loud for fear of ticking off the Pope or some of his more conservative appointees. At their recent meeting in Milwaukee the bishops spent three hours discussing a long report of several of their committees on the issue of diminished numbers of priests and seminarians. The topic of ordaining married men even as a possible solution was not even mentioned. Duh! If you want to know why Bishops who are consecrated to serve and love their flock wouldn't think to do so, read "Papal Sin". Perhaps this book will serve to provoke a more public discussion of the problems plaguing the Catholic Church today. It was very disturbing and rewarding to read this book. I recommend it highly.
Rating: 
Summary: Church of Gary Wills?
Review: If Wills stuck to the point that power, including papal power is subject to abuse, few sincere people would be able to take issue with him. The problem is that he tries to sell the reader on a different vision of the Church, the Church of Gary Wills et. al. and he does this with all the zeal of a televangelist. No Roman Catholic, progressive or traditional would recognize Wills' new (or "reformed" to give him his due) Church. It would be a church without Sacraments as we understand them today, without teachings grounded in absolute truth, and where conceivably women priest may avail themselves of abortion. It is ironic how Wills' in "Necessary Evil" almost scolds us for not trusting big government, now cautions us against the Church structure. I don't think the Catholic Church needs to hide from its failures, both past and present and with John Paul II we need to seek forgiveness, but to ask us not to be Catholic is beyond what should be expected from us.
Rating:
Summary: Mature, thoughtful analysis of the crisis of Catholicism
Review: Garry Wills has come along ways since he wrote a review of my book, "The Human Church," in 1966, in which he dismissed my appeal for a democratic reform of the Catholic church. A lot has happened since then. For one thing, there has been a flood of scholarship covering the details of church history, the life of Jesus, and the early Christian church. A careful historian and a practicing Catholic, Wills ponders the widening gaps between official church teachings and the historical record. He writes: "Truth is a modern virtue in the sense that it took on new urgency in the last century. That period saw the birth of human history as a scientific discipline, the professionalization of inquiry, the secularization of truth-seeking institutions like the university.... To profess a dedication to such standards and yet to deploy evasions and distortions and cover-ups is to be self-condemned, even in the world's eyes, to say nothing of higher calls to truthfulness." Wills centers his work on the mischief created by Pius IX who, in reaction to the loss of the papal states to Italy in 1870, set about to centralize and solidify the Pope's authority. In 1870, he strong-armed the bishops at the Vatican II council in Rome to declare the Pope infallible. This act, according to Wills, set up an official "structure of deceit" that characterizes the modern church, which sacrifices truth for the pretense of infallibility. Wills' best writing is the description of Vatican II and the efforts of Lord Acton and John Henry Newman in leading the opposition to the declaration. While Wills is correct in making the papacy accountable to historians, he neglects the need to make it politically accountable to the church. He overlooks Lord Actons statement, "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely." The problems with the papacy did not begin with Pius IX, but with ancient, monarchial structures that choke off the message of Jesus. In calling for truth from the papacy, Wills also overlooks the damage and horror caused by its belief in absolute truth. Wills knows well the complex, delicate, and shifting nature of truth (which he discusses in his chapter on Newman). The philosophical belief in absolute truth is perhaps Catholicism's greatest error, for which it has yet to be made accountable.
Rating:
Summary: Why did it take him so long?
Review: As I write, somewhere on this planet a Christian is being murdered for the crime of being a Christian, as hundreds are every single day. Under those circumstances, Papal Sins is not a clever polemic, not a timely critique, nor a first-rate piece of work (Wills has never writtena nything first-rate; a piece of work cannot rise above the level of its source). It is, quite simply, a sin. Wills might want to think about that a bit before he next faces an altar.
Rating:
Summary: A for effort
Review: I like Wills as an author. Honestly, I do. Lincoln at Gettysburg was the best Civil War book I've ever read. Even Papal Sin is well written, thoroughly researched, and passionately delivered. My problem with this book is that it completely misses the point of Catholicism. It is a principal tenet of the Catholic faith that the Holy Spirit guides Church leaders. That does not mean that these leaders are always infallible--the Church has never made that claim, except on very specific points (a point which Wills acknowledges but then repeatedly ignores). Accordingly, Wills efforts to show that many popes have sinned fantastically is a blow directed at a man of straw. Wills also misses the point when he criticizes the Church for being out-of-step with the times. According to Catholics, matters of contraception, the ordination of women, etc., are not for human beings to decide. It is an article of faith that these are GOD's decisions. God is not a committee. The Catholic Church is not a democracy. It is perfectly acceptable, in my view, to argue that the Catholic Church is WRONG about what God's rules are. Martin Luther founded a Church by doing so. However, the Catholic Church must always look to God for answers, not to humans. For those of us who have chosen to stay in the Church (or who have returned to it after absences), it is this philosophy of submission to God's will that is attractive. Granted, this is not for everyone, but there are plenty of more democratic Protestant churches that see things more the way Wills does. I'm not knocking those churches--I have no doubt that they provide a path to God for many people. What I don't understand is the attitude of Catholics like Wills (Protestant Catholics, I call them), who seek to rob the Catholic Church of the one thing that its followers think makes it right for them. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from reading this book. It's a good read, and I can't quarrel with Wills' scholarship. However, for Catholics who believe that the Church should be guided by what it believes is God's will, rather than man's will, this book will leave them cold.
Rating:
Summary: You can read it or you can stick your fingers in your ears
Review: My devout Catholic mother-in-law tells a joke: God and John Paul II are talking and God asks the Pope if there will ever be women priests. "Not as long as I'm Pope," he says. Then John Paul asks God if there will ever be another Polish pope. "Not as long as I'm God," God says. For all the media's adulation of the admittedly charismatic John Paul II, the fact that my mother-in-law tells this joke says something about the way that a certain old-Europe attitude in her Church has alienated even the remaining, traditionalist portion of the American faithful (let alone the millions who simply walked away after Humanae Vitae). She is who Garry Wills' book is addressed to: the people of good faith (in more ways than one) who he wants to see reclaim their church from the dark, conspiratorial politicos of the Curia, the defenders of Pius XII and protectors of molesting priests, the unrealistic hardliners caught up in the sophistry of natural law over the reality of human life. If a single one of the one-star readers has actually read this book I'd be surprised. "This is the way God said He wants it on contraception, so tough!" they say, when the very point of the book is demonstrating that the historical/Scriptural basis of these assertions is dubious-- against contraception (the Church abandoned the medieval arguments that led to an anti-contraception stance, then kept the stance), against married clergy (something that plainly existed for centuries in the Church), against female ordination (the Church insists it's ordaining only those whom Jesus ordained, when He didn't ordain ANYBODY and had apostles of both sexes, some of whom have literally had name/sex changes in later translations!) What he demonstrates clearly is that the Church, like any large bureaucracy, finds it easier to prop up a bad idea than admit a mistake. John Paul may have helped bring down Communism, but he is more Brezhnev than Gorbachev when it comes to the perestroika his own Church so badly needs. I don't know that this would be the first Wills book one would recommend, even on the subject of religion-- Under God is a superb survey of the entire topic of religion in American political life, where this is more of a Catholic-specific work, aimed at insiders and concerning issues that even the "liberal" side of may strike some of the rest of us as being too far to the right. All the same there's no denying its thoughtfulness, its intelligence, its sincerity, its piety. At least no denying them, that is, if you've actually read it.
Rating:
Summary: The Klan does it better
Review: At least the Klan doesn't pretend to be intellectual when it is crudely anti-Catholic. The usual haters of the Church and morality will love this.
Rating: 
Summary: Intellectually demanding, if you can handle it
Review: You can certainly label this book as opinionated, but you cannot fault its quality of research, writing, or readability. I do not recommend this for those who are distressed by criticism of the Vatican-this book is a bit more mentally rigorous than someone with that sort of worldview can handle. At times Wills does seem to dwell too long on what appear to be minor points, but ultimately his digressions are often justified. But there is something important happening in these pages. Of course there have been many critics of the papacy in recent years, but never before has anyone with such effective scholarship so thoroughly pinned down the flaws of this institution in its current state. I hope Papal Sin gains a wide readership. It could help to reawaken the minds of those who have felt that they must set critical thinking aside if they want to have a life of faith.
Rating:
Summary: Spiritually Challenged Hierarchy
Review: The roman catholic church is run by a bunch of spiritually challenged men who in order to save their own necks have distorted history, tradition, and scripture. Garry Wills' book is brilliant, and I hope millions read it, including the pope and all his appointees.
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