Rating: 
Summary: Structures of Deceit
Review: The title is accurate inasmuch as the book deals not solely with papal sin but that of the entire institutional hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Corruption of power in the Church has apparently a certain tradition, as evidenced by the inclusion by Medieval painters of images of the Pope burning in Hell. Sin by sin, Wills picks apart some of the fallacies on which modern Church doctrine is built, descending into detail to reveal their intellectually flimsy and ludicrously tenuous basis.
The power struggles at the very top of the hierarchy, and the lengths to which it goes to bend its own dogma to plaster over its past errors are to me strangely reminiscent of a similar self-protective autocracy of the Soviet Union which could stretch the infamous Article 58 to justify any kind of misbehavior. With disappearances of reports and committees that refuse to toe to the papal line, the book paints an institution that is much more concerned with power and control over the thoughts and deeds of its members than with their spiritual salvation.
It is not that difficult to understand why the Church is losing this control. Science begins almost from the standpoint of being wrong, and pours all its efforts and energies into continually correcting itself so that it becomes more True in time. The Catholic Church, on the other hand, starts with the premise of infallibility so every new papal proclamation or encyclical can only serve to add error into its dogma. Whereas Science is forward-looking, the Church becomes more and more preoccupied with the rearrangement of the internal inconsistencies of its past. The growing refusal of the laity (and even the priesthood) to endure self-serving reasoning on topics such as contraception, the status of women and homosexuals, or papal authority itself, simply reflects this tension.
The priesthood is changing face, as fewer train to become priests and heterosexual priests resign in droves, reporting seminaries that are almost three-quarters homosexual. The rate of death due to HIV/AIDS in the priesthood is four to eight times that of the general population, and one survey of priests reported an average of 226 sexual partners each. The failure of the Church to come to terms with this reality is further evidence of its disconnect from reality.
Wills reveals some rot also in the lower hierarchies of the Church, with priests easily covering up the most grotesque betrayals of their flock. In the name of their religion they condemn the victim and exonerate the abuser.
Another instance of this dishonesty (Wills gives many) is the manner in which Pope John Paul II acquits the Catholic Church for its treatment of Jews throughout history, in particular in World War II and the kidnapping of Jewish children in the late 19th century, letting itself off the hook on the legalistic technicality that any discrimination that may have occurred goes against Christian teaching, and is therefore by definition not perpetrated by Catholics. Adding insult to injury, there are now convents established at the very concentration camps where the horrors of the Holocaust took place.
At the conclusion of the book, it is not at all surprising to me why Wills found it necessary later to write a justification of his Catholicism, as I wonder how the edifice of the Catholic Church still bears the weight of its followers' trust. Wills hearkens back to a quite different kind of Catholicism practiced by Augustine, whom he clearly admires.
The book is at times quite technical. Certainly the Greek, Latin, and Catholic jargon make hard reading for this atheist, although it is likely to be more meaningful to someone brought up in the Catholic terminology. Nevertheless, it is an heroic effort and well worth reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Papal sin revealed!
Review: Visceral and eloquent on all the hot button issues of the modern papacy, Papal Sin will touch nerves and raise salvos of praise or blame depending on which side of the conservative/liberal divide readers fall. Wills marshals impressive historical argumentation (from mostly secondary sources)--wound thematically around his much-loved phrase "deep structures of deceit"--to convict the papacy of lying in Augustine's rigorous sense. Ultimately he fails to convince, because he has to prove willful intent to deceive--an exceedingly difficult task. Hans K"ung provides a more temperate and convincing approach--socially contextualized--in Christianity: Essence, History, and Future (CH, Oct'95), arguing that the Roman Catholic Church labors under a centuries-old paradigm that traditionalists shore up by whatever means possible. Outsiders sometimes see these means as less than moral; insiders excuse them as needed to preserve the Church's notes--one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Surprisingly, Wills nowhere invokes the notion of societas perfecta, propagated by the Vatican since the Reformation, most vigorously after the French Revolution. Wills says much that needs saying about Church reform but harms his cause by overblowing the prophetic and coming off as a latter-day Savonarola. Theologically questionable on some points (e.g., sacramental priesthood), this important, thought-provoking work belongs in every serious library. Upper-division undergraduates and above; general readers and practitioners.
Rating:
Summary: Puts it all in focus
Review: With his usual clarity, insight, and wit, Garry Wills probes the current state of the Catholic Church and the papacy, and he delivers a book that penetrates the fog and mist surrounding many of the Vatican's pronouncements. It is very clear to a reader of Wills's book that the current pope, like many others, has a strong desire to propagate his own vision of the world, even if it means disregarding the sound advice of other, equally (or more) intelligent church figures. John Paul II's odd ideas about women and sexuality would never pass muster in the most basic college level course, but with the power of the papacy behind them, they magically become law. Wills also shows, with painful clarity, how the Vatican consistently prefers making a series of new and asinine mistakes to honestly admitting making one in the past. His chapter on pedophilia on the priesthood, for example, written many months before the disasters in the Boston archdiocese were made public, is devastating.On one hand, the Vatican's recent "fast-track" canonization of the founder of Opus Dei, as extreme a figure in modern church history as you are likely to find, and its deadly serious attempts to beatify two popes, Pius IX and Pius XII, who have shameful records on a score of issues, indicate that the situation is not likely to change any time soon. On the other hand, for Catholic readers, this book signifies a wise and thought-provoking alternative to the blather and hot air that comes from Rome these days. I applaud Wills for his courage in writing this book. It is very refreshing to see "common sense" and "Catholicism" unashamed to appear in the same sentence together.
Rating:
Summary: Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit
Review: I am sure that whatever you will feel after reading this book, you will feel it strongly. I am not a Catholic (or anything else with a recognized name for that matter other than being everyone's rank heretic), so I will leave comments about the nature of the subject matter alone. I found it a well written appeal to current Catholics by a member of their religion to reconsider Augustine's amplification of "Let your yeas be yea and your nays be nay." in the context of the current state of affairs. Sort of a "Say Cat'n Smith, dondja think we oughta be looking for icebergs?" appeal to reverse the effects of institutionalized deception before it totally destroys Catholicism. In particular his chapter on the approach of the Church to pedophelia has more than special meaning given the current state of affairs with Cardinal Law and the state of the Church in the Boston area as I write this. This book should be read by anyone with interest in the current state and recent past of the Cathloic Church, as a thought provoking essay on what might be necessary to change to ensure its relevance and vitality into the future.
Rating:
Summary: FOR THOSE WHO DOUBT AND THOSE WHO BELIEVE
Review: This book permits to put in historical perspective some aspects of John Paul II's recent doctrines and the crisis of the Catholic Church. Wills documented call for the renewal of the institution and the clergy, and the rescue of the doctrine of the Fathers of the Church (St. Augustine and St. Thomas), in a modern conception, constitutes required reading for those who love Jesus and want to see its Church grow. Certain prejudices and mechanisms of deception that could have been explained in the past, according to the author find no place in these times of fundamentalisms and fanatical illusions, that are filling with grief and misery the world. While millions are starving, scores of innocent kids lie abandoned around the world, AIDS is the plague of the moment, and the number of new catholic priests is smaller, maybe it is time to reassess, with the heart and the mind, Roman Catholic Church's stance on contraceptives. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the historical motives for the inception of the dogma of papal infallibility. But also read Hans Kung's works, for another perspective, regarding the theological doubts that dwell in a catholic's mind in modern times.
Rating: 
Summary: Papal Sin.
Review: ...P>Not surprisingly, Christ's Church on Earth has been infested by some of the most malignant serpents in the past two millennia. The Church has embarrassed itself in it's opposition to science: Newton, Galileo, Darwin, as well as lesser known figures such as Michael Servetus and Giordano Bruno. Pedophiles, homosexuals, freemasonic cultists, and swindlers of all sorts have smuggled their way into the priesthood and the church hierarchy. The God-complex has driven men to the brink of madness, grandiose delusions and megalomania. Indulgences have been sold and annulments have been bought. This of course is well documented and not really denied. These are all disturbing aspects of the Church that the everyday Roman Catholic must somehow live with. However, despite this, the postmodern Garry Wills has presented us with nothing new here but a collection of politically correct pap. Based on the first entire section, you'd think that the Jews were the only people slaughtered by the Nazis in the concentration camps. The rest of the book is a regurgitation of stale "feminist ethics" and "homosexual theology". Commit it to the flames and find something more fulfilling to spend your time with.
Rating:
Summary: Why are Will's critics so blind?
Review: Scholars like Garry Wills and James Carroll seem to outrage and provoke tremendous response from Catholic fundamentalits in their attempts to further illuminate the already glaring faults of their beloved Catholic Church. I read Papal Sin several months before I became aware of Constantine's Sword, and wonder that any rational, informed person can quarrel with Wills' thesis. Wills, unlike Carroll in his attempt to highlight Christianity's two thousand year history of anti-semitism, doesn't try to cover nearly all Papal "sin", only tries to point out Papal sins that are current and ongoing; sins which continue to make the Church a much less effective institution in fostering acheivement of goals which almost all peoples can agree are good and desirable ends. Christianity in general, and the Catholic Church in particular, has been so hung up on, indeed, obscessed with, sexuality that Catholic theology as it pertains to relations between males and females living their lives in the non-cloistered world resembles nothing so much as church sanctioned medieval astronomys attempts to rationalize Ptolomy's account of the heavens with what were then contemporary scholars' observations of the heavens. How can any rational person, knowing the history of the church, accept the "truth" of Papal Infalability? Whether concerning issues of importance to both Catholics and non-Catholics such as birthcontrol and abortion, or those which pertain solely to Catholics - like issues of gender and marital status of clergy - the doctrine of Papal Infalability has been soundly rejected by nearly all non-Catholics and a significant majority of Catholics. And while the Church loudly and constantly proclaims birth control and elective abortion a sin, the Church only continues to etch in acid its own refusal to come to terms with the ongoing "sins" of the Pope and the Curea. Like most Americans of a certain age, even those like me who have no investment in the Catholic Church, I, like Wills, consider Pope John XXIII the Good Pope. All Christiandom waited hundreds of years for a "good" Pope to show up: I pray it doesn't take that long for another.
Wills' book, Papal Sin, is a brave and noble effort by a well known Chatholic theologian and historian, who comes not to bury his Church, but to try to save it from those who would bury it in silly and indefensible doctrines and dogmas which have nothing to do with being either Christian or Catholic, but have everything to do with preserving the perks, the status and the power of a heirarchy, and the blind, unthinking belief of a minority of the "faithful", who are terrified of the implications of the truth. I give Papal Sin my highest recommendation, especially for the majority of rational Catholics still faithful to their Church. Catholic Fundamentalists, like Protestant Fundamentalists, should avoid it like the plague; it might infect them with doubt, a dis-ease deadly to religious fundamentalism.
Rating:
Summary: This is a terrible book
Review: This is a terrible book, but a predictable one. By that I mean that in the last fifty years argument about almost any vexing issue has increasingly been fueled by Agenda--and Wills goes at it with a vengeance.
Consider: He is clearly right about Pius XII who was probably worse than anyone has made him out to be. In the best of all worlds he would have been a mediocre canon lawyer. As it is he has become a disgrace to Christianity. That is a provable or disprovable point. I happen to agree with Mr. Wills. But Wills will not leave it at that--his real target is the theological anthropology of Paul VI and John Paul II. Using Pius XII to attack Paul VI and John Paul II is a rhetorical trick I would give a student an F for using. This makes me question the good faith of the first part of the book. The inner workings of the Vatican are of no interest to me and the stuff of B movies. What is interesting is a good discussion of a contraceptive vs. a noncontraceptive anthropology--not an argument of progressive and conservative--silly words. Mr. Wills supports a woman's right to choose an abortion--fair enough--but the deal is that in supporting that position one thereby excommunicates oneself from the Church. Mr. Wills is free to found his own religion if he chooses. But you can't say I want to play tennis and have four serves--it would be a game but it would not be tennis. One final and really detestable point about the book--a small one. Wills reachs to find an anti-semitic quote made by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in 1933--he of course does not go on to mention how thoroughly Bonhoeffer apologized and repudiated that position (see his Ethics). He calls him a "protestant liberal" (Bonhoeffer was an Orthodox Lutheran) and he adds-damning with feint praise-- "who however protested the holocaust" (he did more Wills fails to mention project 7) Protested? Being hanged by the Nazis counts as "protested"? Just as I suppose Mr. Wills "protests" the present structure of the Catholic Church. This book is an offense not only toward Catholics but toward all Christians--and it is condescending toward Judiasm--though I doubt Mr. Wills notices.
Rating:
Summary: A Breath of Fresh Air
Review: As a Catholic layman, I was heartened to read a forthright treatment of matters the Church hierarchy has refused to face squarely. Although Wills writes without malice, he pulls no punches -- especially when discussing sexual misconduct in the clergy. Nonetheless, as the work of a devout Catholic and recognized scholar, the book is more than a sensational expose and ought to be taken seriously. Instead of the knee-jerk condemnation in other reviews, I'd welcome a thoughtful rebuttal by someone of similar scholarly credentials. For me, the most disturbing chapters dealt with the hierarchy's shameful attempt to whitewash the Church's institutional anti-semitism, its silence on the holocaust and complicity with the perpetrators. In my opinion, such revelations ought not cause a crisis of faith per se insofar as they reflect the failings of imperfect human beings. The question a person of conscience is left with, however, is how to justify fealty to an institution that seems incapable of facing its own culpability.
Rating: 
Summary: outrage or decoy?
Review: So one Pope died in child birth, another in the bed of his married mistress. The Borgia Pope had 61 children and in his spare time he managed to poison a couple of people before the poison got through to him. So what? I really couldnÕt care less, even if the Church as institution wouldnÕt be what it is and always had been. In fact to be blunt, I consider WillisÕ book as a typical diversion from the real issue. I shall not hold it against the men of the cloth, that they are human and behaved as human beings - even if one or the other behaved more like a pathological serial killer. The Church is an old firm, the oldest around. Old institutions have old cabinets full of old skeletons. They shouldnÕt. But they do. ItÕs the way things go in this fallen world. Soon there will be more cabinets.
So before concerned Catholics and less concerned infidels fall for the decoy, letÕs consider the real issue. It is by her fruits that we come to know the ways of the Church. How well the Church is keeping her own house in order is family business and not our concern. So when even an apologet feels compelled to find fault with the ChurchÕs conduct over such a long period, shouldnÕt we rather wonder how it is that so many generations of learned and intelligent functionaries could have been so consistent in getting it wrong? ShouldnÕt we scrutinize the rationale behind their conduct a bit closer? Perhaps we may discover that they hadnÕt got it wrong after all. Only we are misled to expect from the Church something she wasnÕt meant to deliver?
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