A Gospel of Shame: Children, Sexual Abuse, and the Catholic Church

by Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni

Book Overview

The relentless crescendo of revelations of sexual abuse in the nation's Catholic churches has rocked the nation. Just how widespread is child sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy? And why hasn't the Catholic church done more to stop it? In A Gospel of Shame , Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalists Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni provide the answers to these questions and more. The answers, however, turn out to be infuriating and heartbreaking, difficult...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060522321
• ISBN13: 9780060522322
• Release Date: June 2002
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Disturbing

Very well written. Very hard to read. The stories in this book are horrifying. Even more horrifying are the continuing efforts of the Church to protect these abusers, as witnessed by the latest round of revelations (2002). I also find it mystifying that Catholics in general want the abuse covered up, often persecuting parents who try to expose the abusers. I guess that is why they are still in the Church.

GOSPEL OF SHAME--A MISNOMER

The word "gospel" means "good news" and there is little good news in this book about pedophile priests and the massive coverup by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. It is a "must read" for all of those who, like me, were completely unaware of decades of sexual abuse of children by pedophile priests.When I saw the movie in the 1980s about Father Gilbert Gauthe, a predatory priest in Louisiana whose story is told in this book, I thought it was an isolated incident by an evil priest. I knew nothing more about this appalling corruption in the Catholic Church until 2002 when terrible stories of thousands of abused children started being publicized in courageous newspapers, magazines, and books.I classify this book as courageous also and commend the authors for all the dedicated research and unbiased reporting. The book was originally published in 1993, so the shock waves of scandal that erupted in the year 2002 are not contained therein except in the Introduction and Afterword.The chapters of the book are divided into stories about the main players--the abusive priests, the victims and their parents, the uncaring hierarchy who wanted only to protect their priests and the image of the Catholic Church and cared nothing about the victims, and the unspoken covenant between the hierarchy and the court system, the mental health workers, the social workers, and the media, which kept these dark, ugly events shrouded in secrecy for decades.The book details a possible path to redemption for the church, which I feel will be a road not taken by the hierarchy. They revere their power and control more than their desire to protect helpless children from evil priests.The book ends by describing the group called VOCAL (Victims of Clergy Abuse Linkup), now renamed The Linkup. The victims, getting no help from the Catholic Church, started suing the abusers and the dioceses. The revolt has begun.After reading this book, I understand more about why abusive priests prey on helpless children and why the church protects the priests by transferring them from parish to parish, thereby putting other innocent children in harm's way. I feel absolutely no empathy for the priests or bishops/cardinals. When reading one horror story after another, I found myself thinking that abusive priests at least have an excuse. They are either sick or evil. However, there is no excuse for the hard-hearted bishops/cardinals who threatened the victims and concerned parents and lied with impunity. I like to think that the bishops/cardinals were good men at one time. After all, they were priests themselves so that means they had a pastoral calling to shepherd their flock. This book made me question what happened on their climb to the top of the corporate ladder? The book describes them as clones of each other--pompous, arrogant, self-righteous liars. Their love for their own image and that of the medieval institutional church has eclipsed their love for the people in the church (incl

It May be old, but it is still relevant today

I agree with the Detroit reader that it is important to remember that this book is 10 years old. With that said, I do not think that this book is irrelevant because of its age. Bruni and Burkett do an excellent job of documenting how this mess started and the culture and atmosphere that caused it. Great Book!

Lackof Integrity, Lack of Remorse, Catholicism in Trouble

Bruni and Burkett have written a decent, balanced book on the explosive subject of priests' and nuns' sexual abuse of children. What strikes the reader is that even though this book was written 9 years ago, little has changed in terms of the level of abuse and the ignorance, intransigence, insensitivity and immoral choices of Church officials in dealing with the burgeoning scandal. There is a preface and afterword to the 2002 edition that offer some new information and developments but one wishes for more updated information. Some of the accounts in the main body of the book are truly horrific: priests abusing 3 year olds, a child in traction in a hospital bed,violent rapes,etc.; a priest orchestrating a group of boys in a sick and blasphemous nude rendition of the stations of the Cross and Crucifixion, priests forcing prepubescent girls to defecate on them, etc. The authors do give us some psychological insights into priestly abusers, their stunted emotional growth and lack of sexual maturity and the lack of psychological insight of bishops who forgave the abusers and allowed them to continue their patterns of abuse. There is also a brief historical perspective tracing child abuse back to Roman and Medieval times. The expulsion of the Muslims from Spain was followed by a celebration in which Church authorities passed around liquor and small children to be used for sex. We are also told about the devastatingly adverse affects on the lives of more current victims. Bruni and Burkett also write compassionately about another group of victims, innocent priests who have had to bear the insults of bigots. Many priests have also suffered a loss of confidence about their calling and often feel there is an unspoken presumption of their guilt on the part of parishioners who are less friendly, less trusting. This is a good book, well worth reading, but one hopes for a more thoroughly updated account with a deeper probing of all aspects of the problem.

Fleshes out the details

Yes, this book is a decade old, but don't pass it up just because it was published before there was a popular demand for it. Many of the cases being discussed in today's news date back decades, and this book puts the whole scandal in perspective. All these well-organized victim groups and all this anger against Cardinal Law and other bishops the media is covering today didn't just come about in the last few months. The child abuse scandal has been building over a number of years. There was the diocese of Lafayette, LA and there was the Santa Fe, NM scandal, there was a sociopathic priest named Porter who was moved from parish to parish where he molested dozens of children in the Boston diocese, and who got away with it all until his victims came back as adults to confront him. This history is documented in a readable narrative style in this book. What led some priests to abuse, how the victims were treated, and how the hierarchy tried to deny it and cover it up are all covered in this book. Written by a pair of journalists, there's no ultra-conservative agenda here, no simplistic suggestion that if they'd all just get back to fundamental pre-Vatican II theology and "pray pray pray" everything would be all right. This is a thoughtful book that fills in a lot of details you don't get by reading the daily paper or watching 2-minute interviews on cable news. It's detailed without being sensationalistic or blatantly anti-Catholic. Enlightening and interesting.