Rating: 
Summary: Wills should start his own church
Review: Wills claim that he is a practising Roman Catholic is amusing. I guess showing up for mass on Sunday is his idea of "getting it". I have never read any of his other books. This book was lent to me. I am delighted that I had nothing to do with supporting his obvious sell-out. His book adds fuel to anti- Roman Catholic hysteria that he attempts to cash in on.I assume that his next books will be titled "Wills Translations of the New Testament" followed by " Pope Wills Papal Honesty". Save your money ! Spend it on a science fiction novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Wise As Serpents?
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Fear of truth
Review: There's certainly deceit here, but it is not the Vatican's. Consider Wills's violent treatment of the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion. He claims that the church is denying its own "pro-choice" tradition. His evidence, however, is risible: 1. He claims that the New Testament never condemns abortion. Why should it? The early church was predominantly Jewish. Abortion was a practice foreign to early Judaism. Wills neglects to note, of course, the great value placed by the new Testament on fetal life (eg. the infancy narratives in Luke). He also conveniently ignores the great value placed on fetal life in the Psalms and Jeremiah. Leviticus specifies that assault on a pregnant woman resulting in miscarriage will receive stiffer penalties because of the death of the child. 2.Wills claims that the early church never condemned abortion. He cites Augustine's views on delayed animation (the theory that human soul appears a few months after conception). He ignores, however, that as soon as the Church become predominantly Gentile (and surrounded by the pro-abortion views of the Hellenic world), it became militantly anti-abortion. The Didache (1st century) denounces anyone who practices abortion. Tertullian (2nd century) says that abortion is equivalent to infanticide. It is true that Augustine (and later Aquinas) thought that the rational soul emerged later than conception. But neither ever drew the conclusion that abortion was acceptable. And this theory of the soul was based on a faulty biology of gestation which no one has taken seriously for hundreds of years. If the Church can evolve on capital punishment, why not on the need to provide legal and moral protection for the child in the womb? On this and the other issues, Wills rants that the popes are not honest. In fact, the popes are scrupulously honest. It's just that Wills (and his fans on the Upper West Side) don't like the popes' conclusions---when they don't suit the prejudices of the academic-journalistic elite. A shoddy work serving a sad anti-Catholic agenda.
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Summary: What a long strange trip it's been...
Review: Over 35 years ago, Garry Wills wrote "Politics and Catholic Freedom," and I respected him for it, even though I disagreed with much of what he had to say. But "Papal Sin" is different. It reads more like an intellectual tirade. It covers much of the same ground, but in a notably slipshod manner. In the end, I learned more about the author and his new politically correct dogmatic beliefs, than the subject itself. Too bad. Where is the old Wills? Or is THIS the "OLD" Wills? Too tired to proofread. Too close to retirement to bother with careful argumentation. Northwestern University deserves better scholarship than this from its professors. And so do we.
Rating:
Summary: Substandard
Review: The book claims to be a scholarly study of the papacy. It is in fact a complete distortion of papal history that raises questions about the prejudices of the author. Wills, for example, attacks Pius IX for alleged anti-Semitism. But the use of the evidence is selective. Pius IX was in fact praised by the Jewish community of the mid nineteenth-century for his work in destroying anti-Semitic segregation. As soon as he became pope, he ordered the walls of the Roman Jewish ghetto to be torn down. He invited Jews to live where they wanted in the papal states and to leave the old ghetto restrictions. He ordered the papal states police to guard Jews who had been threatened by Gentile neighbors in their new neighborhoods. He also ordered protection for Jews during the Carnival season, when anti-Semitic hoodlums routinely attacked Jewish merchants. He authored numerous laws and decrees expanding the civil rights and legal protection for the Jews. The Jewish press warmly praised the pope for his efforts. Wills, of course, simply ignores this evidence. He focuses instead on the case of Edgardo Morata, who was removed from his Jewish family in Bologna. A Catholic teenage maid had baptized Edgardo when the infant fell seriously ill. (This baptism clearly violated the rights of the parents and canon law.) The law of the papal states required a baptized Christian to be raised in a Christian environment. Since the family (rightly) refused to raise the child as Christian, the child was placed in the custody of the church. Pius IX became a personal friend of the child, who ultimately became a priest and who was reconciled with his family. This separation was an outrageous violation of parents' rights, but this law covered all citizens in the papal states: Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Moslem, indifferent. Jews were not singled out. Wills then suggests that somehow this removal of the child indicates pedophilia on the part of the pope! This is an outrageous charge with no evidence whatsoever. The entire book is composed of such distortions. This is malice disguised as scholarship.
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Summary: Scholarly Deceit
Review: When I first read this, I was impressed with the style: punchy, brilliant, mordant. But the more I studied the content, the more I realized what a deceitful book it is. It is a tissue of errors, distortions, and theological howlers that falls far below scholarly standards or beneath basic honesty. Take the chapter on contraception. Wills contends that the bishops at Vatican II were ready to approve the use of contraception. Not so. Vatican II explicitly condemned the use of contraception in Gaudium et Spes. The Council fathers added references to famous condemnations of contraception by Pius XI (Casti Connubi) and Pius XII to dispel any confusion. Wills claims that Paul VI only opposed contraception in order to avoid reversing earlier Church teaching. Not so. Humanae Vitae condemns contraception because it assaults the unitive and procreative purposes of conjugal union. While this is certainly taught by earlier popes and councils, the reason contraception is wrong is not because earlier Church figures said so. Paul VI accurately describes the moral squalor of a society based on contraception. It is ours. Wills then mocks the anticontraception argument as a foolish argument that "a high school sophomore" can see through. Nowhere does he mention the many serious scholars who oppose contraception: Oxford's Anscombe, Princeton's George, Norte Dame's Finnis, to cite just a few of the distinguished supporters of Humane Vitae. Wills stamps his foot, inisists that the popes aren't honest in opposing contraception, but it's his own caricature of history and of the anticontraception case that is dishonest. This antipapal fit of pique is not a serious argument.
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Summary: Rhetoric of Deceit
Review: The book claims to identify papal deceit, but it reveals the author's own deceit. Where do you begin? The author criticizes the pope for canonizing Edith Stein as a martyr for the Catholic faith. But she was. The Nazis spared Dutch Jews of Catholic descent until the Dutch bishops courageouly denounced the anti-Jewish persecution from the pulpit. The next day the Nazis arrested Catholics of Jewish descent and many Catholics of non-Jewish descent who opposed anti-Semitism. Edith Stein, A Carmelite, was among those arrested. She was killed precisely because she was both Catholic and Jewish. The Church rightly honors her. "Pro-choice" Wills claims that the early church didn't oppose abortion. He misquotes Augustine and completely ignores the categoric censure of abortion present in the earliest Christian texts: the Didache, Tertullian, etc. The rest of his "history" is full of such howlers. Even on noncontroversial issues he can't get his facts straight. Where in the world is the "infancy narrative" in the gospel according St. Mark? And who was Pope John Paul VI? This screed did have one salutary effect. I founded the Pius IX Fan Club after reading the book. Wills's book helped me to savor every step of the good man's beatification on TV.
Rating: 
Summary: Garry Wills creates room for agnostics -
Review: I began life by reading the Bible and the more I read the more I became persuaded that the Bible was secular. It was written by and for people worried about their political and tribal existance. This reality makes it impossible for men to talk about God, who never shows to defend or advance himself. And, Garry Will is writing for me. Because I have never known a person who talks about God who is not also blind to his own mortality; the Pope included. I think that the Holy Roman Catholic Church has not advanced as far as I have in this matter. So, it can't be different than described by Garry Wills. He gets very close to the point of saying, 'belief' is not enough to prompt wisdom - wisdom comes from understanding the creation, that takes study, comparison, testing, data, sharing, and more of the same over and over.... we have shown that by doing this we can approach the power alledgely ascribed to god - we can have civilization. Garry Wills longs for this from the Church, and rightly so, because it is not alien to the simple aspects of the faith with out politics. It should be courageous to tolerate all observation and to test and share all evidence for all all the time. To stop worrying about heaven and to dwell on the need to live a life till you die now. He doesn't say abandon heaven, but that would help, for heaven can't help - when your eyes are on heaven you can walk off the cliff easily. Warren Dahlstrom Sr
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Summary: Papal sins ... historical revisionism
Review: In his book, Garry Wills' objective appears to be to "expose" the truth about two millenia of papal abuse of power. Arguably, Wills has written a compelling story. Sadly, he has squandered his considerable talents writing a history that didn't happen. Not that the events, by themselves, didn't occur, but Wills, like so many other historical revisionists makes his point by taking literary license and using individual events out of historical context to serve an agenda that, in this case, is all too obvious. Is this papal history or US current events? Did Wills put himself in the context of the times to attempt to develop compelling conclusions or did he look through a modern-day, politically supercharged lens to fit facts to commonly held beliefs (a trap that is all too easy to fall into)? It seems to be the penchant of modern academe to ignore historical context ... a context that could help illuminate the facts ... but that might lead the reader to draw independent conclusions. The conclusions might or might not be the same as Wills draws, but intellectually Wills hasn't given readers the opportunity to draw their own conclusions from either neutral or unbiased writing. Facts and footnotes don't equal truth. Truth is a far more precious commodity ... and it can only be derived by careful, thoughtful, thorough study. It must be the product of selfless research and humble (even prayerful) writing. Wills should know about that, because St. Augustine was such a faithful servant of truth. Wills, unfortunately, has written third rate literature that will change few minds but will inflame the passions of people who either love or hate the Church. Obviously this is the product of a publish or perish policy ... the honorable thing would have been to perish rather than publish this work. But honor obviously has no place at Northwestern.
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Summary: The worst of Papal Sins
Review: The institution's protection of priest-pedophiles is the worst of its many sins. Jason Berry calls it "soul murder," and so it is. The children are tortured in mind and body, scarred beyond belief, and discarded. In some cases, the children are then counter-sued. Anyone in the helping professions who has tried to help victims of priest pedophiles by approaching church authorities knows the anguish of one certain truth: They simply do not care. Nothing will move them, not the tears of a mother or evidence that the pedophile is till active [he is still in charge, unbelievably, of altar boys and boy scouts!]. Is there not one priest courageous enough to speak the truth? Apparently not.
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