Rating: 
Summary: What's News?
Review: I am a Catholic and suggest that Wills read the book "POPE FICTION" by Protestant turned Catholic Patrick Madrid. In Pope Fiction Madrid describes all of the good, bad and ugly in papal history. The church does not deny John XII or Alexander VI for that matter. My point is simple - that people fail to take to the time to understand the "infallibility" issue. It doesn't mean that the Pope knows the next lotto numbers or whether it's going to rain next Thursday. It means that on issues of FAITH AND MORALS (speaking from the chair of Peter and when in-line with the bishops) - he speaks infalliably. Every generation raises up and says "the Catholic church is dead" - our generation is no different. If you want to understand the papacy -begin at the beginning - Matthew 16:18-19 - Peter (not a perfect man) was given "keys" (see psalm 22:22) it means authority, and a promise from Christ himself that "the gates of hell would not prevail against it ..." We are on our 265th consecutive Peter - AMAZING 265TH - unbroken history - With all the various nations, principalities, wars, .... change in the world during 2000 years, the church remains - it must be divine. Finally, the Bible didn't fall from the sky one sunny day. Anyone who believes the Bible is the infallible word of God (which the Catholic church professes in every century) puts their faith - like it or not - in the Catholic church of the late 4th Century (Councils of Hippo - 393 AD and Carthedge 397 AD) to allow the Holy Spirit to work through them to infallibly pick which books belong in the Bible (it didn't come with a table of contents).
Rating: 
Summary: Catholicism with a good head on its shoulders
Review: I was raised Catholic and still remember how enraged I was as a tyke because I was denied the priviledge of being an altar server--only because I am a girl. Reading this excellent book by Garry Wills brought back that sense of outrage, but not in a single-minded, one-sided way. Wills' book is not an argument for destroying Catholicism and stringing up the Pope. It is a laundry list of the wrongs committed by fallible human beings in the name of God, and how those humans then do not have the courage to admit their mistakes. Wills is a devout Catholic and makes no bones about it in the book, but like many of us in the faith, he's not blind, and he's certainly not dumb. This is a wonderful book, giving words to feelings that many have carried for so long!
Rating:
Summary: Just Read the Book First!
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: tedious and predictable
Review: Gary Wills is a smart guy--his books on Chesterton, Lincoln at Gettysburg and St Augustine are first rate--but it seems he has come to accept the rather tiring and annoying liberal agenda of the late twentieth century. His last books (with the exception of the book on Augustine) are different versions of the same late twentieth century liberal narrative. In effect hee is writning the same book over and over again. It is true that like many liberaltheologians Wills wants to be his own Pope. One wonders why he chooses to stay in the Catholic Church--after all no one is forcing him to and he knows the rules. He reminds me of a tennis player I knew who demanded four serves because he did not like the first two. Sorry but the rules say two. If you don't like it go and make up your own game.
Rating:
Summary: Desperately timely book
Review: This book is desperately needed. The altruism of the present Pope, as well as well-intentioned ecumenism on the part of Protestants, has made us forget about the Papacy's history. This book correctly points out that the evils committed by the Popes were done because the institution of the Papacy itself - an infallible God-emperor who cannot be questioned or held accountable to the teachings of the Bible - is innately corrupt itself. The Papacy is an institution based on a lie; it is Caeser resurrected in the guise of Christ. Unlike the author, I don't think the Catholic Church can be reformed. Fortunately there are other, Bible-based, evangelical and vibrant churches in the world.
Rating:
Summary: Praise the lord! Someone had to say this.
Review: As a practicing Catholic, I cannot say that I always agree with those estranged from the church. But I am nonetheless aware of the need for reform and it seems to me that this work from Garry Wills will be the catalyst to bring it about. It is a passionate polemic, but it is also a work of history that is carefully presented, well documented, and devastating in its inevitable conclusions. In another author's hands I don't think the subject would have faired even nearly as well. But through Wills the case against papal absolutism has been given an undeniable, irrefutable voice.
Rating:
Summary: Catholic Anti-Catholicism
Review: Will's book must make Dave Hunt and Jimmy Swaggert proud. In his evident, and long-running, anger at the Church for not approving contraception he attempts to undermine the authority of the papacy with its alleged sins. The authority of the papacy is no more undermined by these real or alleged papal sins than the presidency is by Bill Clinton's real or alleged sins. However, not only is this ad hominem argument a logical fallacy, it is also a theological fallacy, since Christ did not promise impeccability to his Church, only infallibility and indefectability. The result is that Will comes off as a purveyor of gossip, rather than a journalist. Both the faith and the papacy will easily survive this little temper tantrum.
Rating:
Summary: PC Infallibility
Review: I presume that both Catholics and apostate Catholics like myself alike are finding some entertainment in speculating just what fate in the Inferno Dante would assign to the turncoat Mr. Wills for his latest screed, an annoying attack on the Vatican for a variety of failures to conform absolutely to the true revealed religion: modern politically correct small liberalism . Wills knows with revelatory assurance that the Church of Rome is guilty of sin for its failures to endorse birth control, sexually integrate the priesthood, and allow clergy to marry. He also knows as a similar article of faith that the radical Left and the Holocaust exploitation industry is fully correct in condemning the Vatican in general and Pius XII in particular. The Catholic Church is, in any event, guilty of insufficient philosemiticism historically, and must be blamed for the whole thing anyway. Wills simulaneously has a fine time condemning the 19th century church for adopting the controversial doctrine of papal infallibility, while asserting the infallibility of contemporary fashionable opinion. The Virgin Mary, too, is in deep trouble with Mr. Wills, who finds insufficient scriptural justification for her extensive medieval and modern cult. Wills is perfectly informed, of course, on the minutest detailed opinions and practices of the original church in the beginnings of the Christian era, and finds no basis therein for either Mariolatry or the Apostolic Succession. In Wills' view, congregations should elect their priests and bishops, _just as they did the early church_, and church doctrine should be established by the consensus of the sorts of people who publish in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
Rating:
Summary: Inspiration amid desperation
Review: Gary's book provides new hope by its call for a rebirth from above. It is heartening proof that the Spirit is well and alive in Her church. It should achieve a new Pentecost!
Rating:
Summary: An important book
Review: 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.
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