Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Garry Wills comes an assured, acutely insightful, and occasionally stinging critique of the Catholic Church and its hierarchy from the 19th century to the present. Wills describes a papacy that seems steadfastly unwilling to face the truth about itself but also reminds the reader of the positive potential of the Church.
About the Author
Garry Wills is an adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University. Wills received a Ph.D. in classics from Yale and has had a distinguished career as an author, with books such as Lincoln at Gettysburg, John Wayne's America, a biography of St. Augustine, and A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government. He has received numerous accolades, including the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (for Lincoln at Gettysburg) and the NEH Presidential Medal.
Wills is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his articles appear frequently in The New York Review of Books.
Table of Contents
Remembering the holocaust -- Toward the holocaust -- Usurping the holocaust -- Claims of victimhood -- The tragedy of Paul VI: prelude -- The tragedy of Paul VI: encyclical -- Excluded women -- The Pope's eunuchs -- Priestly caste -- Shrinking the Body of Christ -- Hydraulics of grace -- Conspiracy of silence -- A gay priesthood -- Marian politics -- The gift of life -- The age of truth -- Acton's reckless truth -- Newman's cautious truth -- Augustine vs. Jerome -- Augustine vs. Consentius -- The truth that frees.