Not unlike a booklength Reader’s Digest anecdote. Not that there’s anything wrong with Reader’s Digest.
The prolific Jesuit chronicler of lusty Catholic life in America weighs in on the priestly sex scandal, putting the bulk of the blame on the bishops.
Father Andrew usually casts Irish-Americans in his lead roles, but for this look at the dark side of the altar he has set his drama in a minor Illinois city settled by Volga Deutsch, those twice-removed Bavarians imported by Catherine the Great to provide technical know-how to her subjects. The story opens with the courtroom interrogation of tall, handsome, blond, broad-shouldered, slow-moving, right thinking, straightly lusty Father Herman Hugo Hoffman, Ph.D., witness to the brutal rape of an altar boy by a priest now dead of AIDS. Father Hoffman has dared to defy the archbishop and his shopful of toadies by appearing as a plaintiff’s witness. How he came to sit in the box is told in flashback, in a long trip through the journal the priest has kept since his youth. Reared on the farm in a Russian German community, Hoffman decided early on to become a priest, a decision that did not prevent a long-term relationship with beautiful red- and hot-headed, equally brilliant, and equally lusty Kathleen Quinlan: a half-orphaned girl who sought warmth with the happy, hardworking, musical Hoffman family down the road. Keeping his priestly ambitions to himself, Harman played sports, worked on the farm, got good grades, and enjoyed the sexual favors of pretty Kathleen. Much as he enjoys sex and, later, academic success, Hoffman stays fixed on the priesthood, failing to inform Kathleen until pretty much the last minute. The heartbroken girl flees for California, and Hoffman heads for the seminary, where the future rapist is among his classmates and where the self-described (far too often) bumpkin is an academic star who rubs bureaucrats the wrong way. He, of course, turns out to be a wonderful priest and excellent golfer, and justice prevails.
Not unlike a booklength Reader’s Digest anecdote. Not that there’s anything wrong with Reader’s Digest.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-765-31052-X
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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