I didn't enjoy reading this book, but I'm glad I read it. It was difficult to follow at times which I think is okay here because it seemed like Breslin was trying to make sense of his loss and anger. In some ways it made the read more real...instead of something where all the heart had been edited out of the piece.

I kept thinking as I read that I should just stop reading. It really is a depressing portrait of not only the Catholic church but also our society. Some readers may walk away feeling like it's primarily a Catholic church issue, but it's not. For Breslin, that is how he experienced it because the Catholic church was his church family. For others of us, it's about our church and our society that hasn't put forth any real effort to protect its children.

I'm glad Breslin told his story. It needs to be told again and again until people start to listen and act. No, a church held in the home, as he mentions, is not the solution. But if it is led by him and he refuses to keep his loud NY mouth shut about child abusers, then I'd feel at least a little safer about taking my own children there.

God knows that many prelates in the Catholic Church deserve the beating Breslin is determined to give them. But he has things absolutely upside down when it comes to the cause of the sexual abuse crisis.

The truth is that the presence of pedophiles in the clergy is the result of liberalization under public pressure. The Vatican has been telling the American Church since the 1960s not to ordain homosexuals. If American bishops had paid attention, there wouldn't have been a problem. It's no accident that probably the worst of the offending priests was a popular and "hip" street priest in Boston.

The institutional response as well is an American one -- businessmen covering up a scandal. The exact same thing has happened in (among other places) the Episcopal Church and numerous public school systems. Breslin is right that bishops should not be conscienceless businessmen -- but often they are.

If you think Breslin is right on target about the wickedness and venality of the Catholic Church -- and especially about its worldliness and materialism -- you need only consider the examples of Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day, both of whom were radically orthodox Catholics, far more so, alas, than most American bishops.

If Breslin got his way and instituted a kitchen church, clerical sex abuse would increase, not decrease.

Still, the critique of the bishops is to some degree valid and needs to be heard.