Most of us non-Catholics followed the breaking story of the sex-abuse scandal within the Catholic church that rocked the nation a few years ago in news reports that originated from the Boston Globe and spread throughout the nation. David France's book brings the fascinating, horrifying tale together in this volume whose chronology spans half a century. France, a senior editor for Newsweek magazine, has combined original reporting with a wealth of sources to paint a picture of a deeply afflicted institution that seems incapable of healing itself. The individual tales of predatory priests unpunished and the young men and women whose lives they destroyed are difficult enough to read; even more appalling is the systematic defensive reaction of church superiors, who shuffled offending priests from parish to parish, sent them to inadequate treatment facilities, and never reported their criminal offenses to secular authorities. Then, when the scandal broke and lawsuits began pouring in, their defense was to stonewall and obfuscate at every possible opportunity.

France juggles a large cast of heroes and villains with a sure hand, though his quasi-cinematic technique of cutting back and forth between different stories occasionally makes the narrative too fragmented. His only serious failing is that, by keeping himself consistently in the background, he does not tie the entire tale together, so that the reader is left wondering what, if anything, has come of this whole sorry saga. One would guess that the death of John Paul II and the ascendancy of Cardinal Ratzinger to pope, both of whom come off in the book as insensitive to the crisis, bodes ill for any meaningful reform within the church for years to come.

Here it is; it's all here -- all the sordid details about the horrid clergy sex scandal. This is journalism at its best and most thorough. Each chapter is like reading the headlines in a newspaper (specifically a Boston paper, but that's okay). It is such a sad story but it needs to be told. Actually, of course, it is not A story, but story after story after story...... Unfortunately. Thank goodness there are still journalists out there who can tell a story without inserting themselves into it. Excellent book, albeit difficult to read about so much needless human suffering at the hands of trusted adults.