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The Inside Story of How the Vatican Really Thinks
Doubleday
July 2004
400 pages ISBN: 0385509669 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Biography
A fascinating and enlightening look at the world’s oldest
and most mysterious institution, written by an American
journalist with unparalleled knowledge about the Vatican's
past and present. The sexual abuse scandals that shook American and British
Catholicism in 2002 brought to light a long-standing
cultural gap between the English-speaking Catholic world
and the Vatican. In Rome, the crisis was often seen as an
attack on the Church mounted by money-hungry lawyers, a
hostile press, and liberal activists who used it as a way
to turn attention on such concerns as celibacy, women’s
ordination, and lay empowerment. When the Vatican struck
down the U.S. bishops’ draft for handling allegations of
sexual abuse, many saw it as an attempt to curb an
independent American Catholic church. Yet, as time passed,
it became clear that the Vatican’s well-founded concerns
about due process were shared by most liberal U.S. bishops
and canon lawyers. ALL THE POPE’S MEN is a lucid, in-depth guide to the
sometimes puzzling, often incomprehensible inner workings
of the Vatican. It reveals how decisions are made, how
papal bureaucrats think, and how careers in the Roman Curia
are shaped. It debunks the myths that have fed the distrust
and suspicions many English-speaking Catholics harbor about
the way the Vatican conducts its business, explains who
really wields the power, and offers entertaining profiles
of the personalities, historical and present-day, who have
wielded that power for good and for bad. A thoughtful
analysis of the recent sexual abuse crisis sheds light on
how the Vatican perceives the Church in the United States. Balanced, lively, and filled with Vatican history and lore,
ALL THE POPE’S MEN provides the general reader with an
authoritative picture of the highly charged relationship
between the Vatican and the richest, most influential
national Catholic church in the world today.
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