Vows of Silence : The Abuse of Power in the Papacy of John Paul II

Customer Reviews

All the Pope's Men

The Roman Catholic Church could not have found two tougher, or more fair, investigators to root out the corruption of sexual abuse it has been unable to root out itself. This is profound and disturbing book, a detailed, dramatic and highly documented account of the arrogance of power. A bonus is a surprisingly engaging history of the Catholic Church in Mexico, but the engine of the story is the authors' revelation of how the secrecy that helped the Roman Catholic survive for nearly two millennia also created the environment for its corruption. And at the top of the pyramid is the solitary and highly conflicted figure of John Paul II, whose mishandling of the Church's sexual abuse scandal threatens the very foundation of the institution he has labored so obsessively to strengthen.

To tell their story, Berry and Renner focus on the inspiring figure of Father Thomas Doyle, a salt-of-the-earth "Everyman" foil to the monstruously disturbing self-styled "Saint," Mexico's Father Marcial Maciel. This is a well-worthwhile book, exhibiting the old-fashioned virtues of investigative reporting -- doggedness, fearlessness, surprise. The authors take us deep inside the Roman Catholic Church's medieval power structure, behind which men pledged to a life of the spirit have sinned for centuries. Vows of Silence is an intensely human story about men -- all men -- who devoted their lives to serving God, and failed miserably.

Fear and the Institution

Vows of Silence is an avalanche of a book. I felt as if I were fighting just to keep my head above the deluge of evidence and experience, all of which is carefully documented with references and footnotes. While its dry and dispassionate style make it rough going at first, that style proves to be a saving grace, completely avoiding the vitriol to which the book might have succumbed in the hands of lesser journalists. In the hands of Jason Berry and Gerald Renner, the book is a treatise on the systemic malfunction of the Roman Catholic Church, whose actions have become more concentrated on self-protection than on the mission that it continues to insist is its true identity and raison d'etre.

As such, it is a study of corruption common among institutions in general. Through the details and repugnant particulars of the church sex abuse scandal (there are "Oh, no!" moments on almost every page,) and the frustrated efforts of the victims (faithful to the end) as they begged for leadership, Vows of Silence illuminates how an institution's fear for its own security can spark a monster to life. The authors make the point that, in the Roman Catholic Church, great sums of money are involved. The reader may deduce the correlation between those sums and the ruthlessness of the monster.

The damage inflicted by a corporate monster may only be the loss of its employees' pensions; but when the monster is sparked from the western world's largest defender of the faith, the damage is far greater. We see people doubting their own worth, their own judgment, their faith in each other, and even in their God. And this is the driving force behind the book: an outrage fueled by betrayal.

The outrage comes, I think, from the utter vulgarity of the betrayal, a vulgarity of commonness, the vulgarity of the declaration that laypeople and even the subordinate ordained are neither equipped nor entitled to reach their own understanding of God. It is the vulgarity of proclaiming a single man to be unerring in the perception and declaration of the rules of conduct by which humanity can experience the love and serenity of God. For Vows of Silence lays the unbelievable sum of sexual abuse of innocents by the ordained squarely in the pontifical lap of John Paul II, who has spent his tenure on St. Peter's Throne steadfastly insisting on the concept of papal infallibility. Berry and Renner write simply, "John Paul's insistence on obedience to truth, as defined by Rome, overrode freedom of inquiry by theologians." If ever there was a meditation for 2004, it is here.

Vows of Silence

Excellent book, which shows the negative consiquences of Vatican II and JPII.

THE TIME FOR A DECISION.

We can Hide our heads in the sand and pretend that everything is all right,or we can pray to God for help in these trying times, live our Catholic Faith and research and study the situation for ourselves. Catholics of today must eventually make a choice of either following what the Catholic Church and 260 popes have taught for the past 20 centuries, or what Vatican II has taught for the past 30 years. Since they are complete opposites, both cannot be right. The practice of walking the fence cannot go on indefintely!

"What Has Happened to The Catholic Church," by Rev. Fransico Radecki and Rev. Dominic Radecki

An error which is not resisted is approved, a truth which is not defended is suprressed. He who does not oppose at evident a crime is open to suspicion of secret complicity.---Pope FelixIII