Rating: 
Summary: Where there's smoke...
Review: The title of the book indicates that Wills' target is the intellectual dishonesty the hierarchy uses in defense of some of its teachings. He goes beyond that, however, and challenges the teachings themselves. This is, to an extent, unavoidable but it confuses the discussion. The book is excellent as an explanation of various controversies, regardless of its thesis. I didn't understand the controversy over Edith Stein until I read the book, for example. Wills's discussion of Vatican I is an eye-opener. I most enjoyed the final chapters dealing with Augustine, and I note that Wills has written a biography of Augustine. I'll have to read that. I should say that I am not a Catholic (I'm sort of a fellow-traveller, I used to sit in the back at Mass and never, of course, took communion) and I have no trouble dismissing the Pope's teachings I disagree with. Catholics in conflict with the Vatican may be more deeply troubled; Wills' book offers an intellectual justification for those who can't simply take Cardinal Ratzinger's word as law. I suspect, though, that Newman (quoted by Wills) is correct when he says that people adopt and modify their views not by logic and reason alone but with their whole experience, and so most folks won't need this book. I'm putting my copy, however, on my re-read shelf.
Rating: 
Summary: Polemical, yes -- but very good nevertheless.
Review: Some people have described Wills as a "liberal" Catholic. I hardly think so. He is merely honest and intelligent, which sets him apart from the vast majority of conservatives in the Church today. For the most part, I admired the book. Wills deftly dismantles the preposterous arguments put forth by the Vatican to buttress erroneous teachings in the interest of maintaining this ridiculous charade of infallibility. He writes very clearly, and his sources are credible and well-documented. I find it amusing how so many reactionaries have dismissed this book as little more than angry polemics in reviews that are even angrier and more polemical. I suppose having your security blanket taken away from you can be upsetting.
Rating:
Summary: The truth never harms, but sets one free.
Review: Garry Wills successfully attempts to highlight the outstanding abuses of authority and power within the Vatican and curia. If only he would have access to the detailed documents that remain buried in the vaults of the Vatican archives! As it is, he does a very good job at disecting the deceits. His reference to John Ford, S.J., and the collusion he had with Octaviani on the contraception battle was very revealing, especially since I had John Ford for my professor in moral theology at the time at Catholic University. According to my theological training from this pontifical university, Wills is accurately and painfully right on the mark. My appreciation for honesty and openess was served in reading this book. And the real saintly hero of our time remains John XXIII, the farmer who called for Vatican II against all odds to rid the Church of such deceits. The grossest deceit of all is how his predecessors have tried to bury the tenets of Vatican II. But the Spirit will win out.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but longwinded
Review: Wills makes some compelling points about the ongoing intellectual dishonesty of the Catholic hierarchy. The official teachings of the church often do not agree with the closely held beliefs of the vast majority of the individuals who comprise the church and sometimes conflict even with the positions of church leaders. Those teachings, Wills argues, are the result of the Vatican's own vested interests or the personal whims of certain popes. But the author's arguments are longwinded and often repetitive. He deals at length with the church's refusal to acknowledge its history of anti-Jewish positions and actions, the declining number of priests, the rising percentage of homosexuals in the priesthood, papal infallibility, the rise of Mary worship, the issues of female and married priests, the church's puzzling views on contraception, etc. At one point, he strays awkwardly into the issue of abortion. That seems a mistake, as the author himself seems to strongly oppose abortion and struggles to find inconsistencies in the church's position on that issue (perhaps that chapter will be edited out if this book is ever reprinted). Wills also wrote somewhat sloppily about gays in the priesthood, choosing at one point to combine a dicussion of homosexuality with a discussion of pedophilia. (Those things may occasionally be related but the terms are hardly interchangeable, and I'm certain that homosexual readers would have appreciated separate chapters for those matters!) But Wills generally makes effective arguments and provides valuable reference material (the guy knows his Augustine) to pinpoint the moments when the Vatican - seeking to protect its reputation and enhance its power - has deliberately moved the church in illogical and biblically indefensible directions. Plenty of footnotes and a useful index.
Rating: 
Summary: An angry diatribe
Review: I came to this book as a fan of Wills' "Bare Ruined Choirs," an excellent survey of the contemporary crisis of Catholicism. That book is carefully nuanced, and while it is critical, it is also affectionate of Catholic culture. "Papal Sin", however, is quite a disappointment. The best part of it is a reworking of the material from "Bare Ruined Choirs" on Paul VI and Humanae Vitae. The rest of it has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, and as another reviewer said, is full of errors both factual and typographic. Early on in the book Wills mocks a priest who calls The Trinity a "rather abstruse doctrine" (what, then, is essential to Christianity?) but Wills himself evidences the same vacuum at the heart of his "faith." To call him a "devout Catholic" is ludicrous. To cite an example, he repeatedly uses "contemporary scripture scholarship" as a criterion to judge the inadequacy, folly, naivete, what have you, of the magisterium, but the scripture scholarship he cites presupposes philosophical naturalism. Another example that bothered me tremendously involved the miracle attributed to St. Theresia Benedicta (Edith Stein). Wills claims that the attending physician who cared for the little girl miraculously cured of Tylenol poisoning, Dr. Ronald Kleinman, denied it was a miracle, and that the Vatican called it a miracle in the face of scientific consensus to the contrary. That is flat-out false. Dr. Kleinman was on an ABC news special with Elizabeth Vargas ("It Takes a Miracle") in 1998, and he says right on camera that he considered the event "miraculous". This program also profiled the work of the Consulta Medica in the Vatican, and the careful scrutiny they gave to the case (they originally passed on it, but came around when they brought Kleinman to the Vatican for a 5 hour interview). When the errors, tendentious interpretations, and sloppy generalizations pile up, the reader is left with an overwhelming impression of Wills' basic animus against Catholicism. Makes the perfect gift for atheists, freethinkers, and angry post-Catholics like Wills.
Rating:
Summary: So-So
Review: The book is okay from an historical viewpoint. How could anyone argue with his thesis - the papal systems and papal-like systems (Dalai Lama etc) are created as trusteeships of the revisionism that accommpanies anything arrogant and presumptous as kingships, divine authorities and everything else that is undemocratic. To be sure our own worst enemies are our own leaders with divine birthrights and apostolic successions - be they Tibetan or Roman. Who would think otherwise.
Rating:
Summary: A Refreshing New Slant: This is not about the carnal Borgias
Review: The author of this book is a devout Catholic, and his work displays wonderful candor and great intelligence. He has won a Pulitzer for another of his books. This is an awesome intellect! We have all read the anti-Catholic smear campaigns about the hedonistic popes of earlier times. This book, however, completely ignores all that stuff and the use of the word "sin" in the title does not refer to that sort of thing at all. It has been my personal opinion for years that the Catholic Church is going to have to change if it is to survive, but that is just exactly what it has always done when the chips are down. This author makes mincement of some of the practices, such as celebacy, which the Church requires but which were never a requirement of scripture. I am myself not a Catholic (nor anything else, for that matter) but I am interested in these things academically, and this book was such a good read that I could not put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Counting Papal Sins.
Review: I agree with Timothy Haugh's prescient review. Discussion of good and bad within the Church is in the long run healthy and necessary. We can take the truth and hopefully make the Church better for it. While I did not agree with all of Wills' conclusions, I found the book provocative and informed. It sent me out to check facts and threw new light on problem areas i.e. contraception, married priests. The first chapter was right on the mark on the deficiency of the Church's apology for anti-Semitism. I think we need to get rid of this idea that information such as this can shake people's faith. Faith is not or should not be that fragile...particularly for "educated" Catholics. Not only do we have a right but a duty to pursue the truth. I've thought a lot about Wills' take on Catholicism. I think he basically sees faith in a pure, idealistic sense as truth--a la Augustine--and can bear no equivication. This is the true aim of the Christ's church and immersed in history and politics we have never completely filled it. We're grateful for the Church's positive action, its stand against Communism, its bulwark against modern morals. But I believe we have not only the right but the duty to investigate its theological byroads and mistakes. In the end, we are in essence a spiritual body and only the full truth can help us to become the real body of Christ. Perhaps if we can clear away some of the past mendacity and debate these issues the Church will at last fulfill Christ's promise.
Rating: 
Summary: as dry as the wine they use at communion
Review: there is no question that mr. wills knows what he is talking about. but, i prefer quality over quantity. what i mean by this is that his knowledge of the topics is impeccable but, his delivery is lacking. many of the subjects drown in legalese. in my opinion, wait for the paperback.
Rating:
Summary: Torn
Review: I debated for a long time over how to rate this book. As a Catholic who is interested in my Church, I would rate this book with five stars. I think it is very important for Catholics to be aware of both the good and bad in the Church, especially if we want our Church to survive and thrive in the next millenium. This book certainly reminds us of some important background of some of the most important theological controversies of the last century--the nature of Mary, religious celebacy, women priests, and contaception to name a few. Most importantly, the book is framed around the issue of papal infallibility and how that is part of what Willis calls "stuctures of deceit" within the Church. Most Catholics are unaware of such a simple fact as that papal infallibility has been part of the Church for only about 150 years. And yet this issue alone has allowed stands to be taken by the Church that prop up Church decisions that could be changed. All of us in the Catholic Church need to be more open to the fact that our Church has changed and grown over the course of two millenia and, if we aren't careful, the Church will stagnate in an unhistorical conservatism. The problem with this book is that it is relentless in its examination of the negative. For someone like myself, whose faith is not shaken by a look at the negatives in the Church, this is not a problem. But it gives a lot of ammunition to people who are anti-Catholic and could very easily shake the faith of those whose belief is not strong. For this reason, I considered rating the book with only 3 stars. Ultimately, I settled on four stars. I think this book is important and well done but it is not for the unwary or hateful.
| 
