The Priestly Sins

This extremely topical novel by the prolific author, priest and sociologist, has a particular perspective on the crisis facing the Church today; Greeley, who has been humanizing the Catholic hierarchy for readers of popular fiction for decades, makes it all too clear how and why pedophile priests were protected by their superiors, shuffled from parish to parish, allowed to victimize so many youngsters for so long--and are cointinuing to do so even now. Father Herman Hoffman, Greeley's sympathetic protagonist, is a whistle-blower whose efforts to do the right thing are so forcefully resisted by his superiors that his parish, his priesthood, and even his own faith are put to the test. In this somewhat wooden docudrama, the evil archbishop is routed, the bad priest dies, the good priest is promoted, the victims are avenged, and the road to the bestseller list paved with good intentions. --Jane Adams