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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Book on this Crisis
Review: Informative, balanced, scholarly, balanced, excellent, balanced, balanced, balanced (did I say balanced?). It puts to shame the absurd media hype cluttering newspapers and airwaves. Jenkins is realistic about the really real problem, because sexual abuse of minors is an undeniable social problem-at-large - but ridiculously and sensationalistically framed by the media these days with in a rather narrow setting as if that setting it the ONLY or the MAJOR place where sexual abuse of minors happens. Jenkins, a non-Catholic, does a service to the United States (which the media does not) to set the problem in the proper context of Western Society's near-collapse of sexual morality. Let this book be a wake-up call on this issue, and every "journalist" in America should be required - absolutely - to read it before ever again being allowed to print or utter on t-v or radio a single word on this topic. I'd like to buy ten million copies of this book and disperse them from airplanes coast to coast. Thank you, Professor Jenkins, for sorting out for us a proper understanding of what's-what .. . a positive contribution far outweighing all the negative journalism of our national press and networked t-v & radio.
Rating:
Summary: Balenced analysis
Review: Jenkins has written by far the most balanced analysis of sexual abuse by Catholic priests by placing the topic within its cultural and historical context. In so doing presents a devestating critique of the media's coverage of, and role in, constructing the "crisis" in the Church. This book is must reading for anyone trying to place the current crisis in a broader perspective based on actual data and sound balenced analysis. An eye opening book which reveals much about the current state of Catholicism and of our culture in general.
Rating: 
Summary: Prosaic....
Review: Personally I found this book to be little more than a GRE verbal refresher course. Sure, it is objective and balanced but so impassionate that such a contentious issue seems like nothing. I think you can strip away emotion from a social problem so much that it creates the question of, well, then, does this really matter? In my opinion I feel this is what the author has done. I was really disappointed in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Balenced analysis
Review: Philip Jenkins has passed off a supposed academic book with blatant lies. Without exposing myself to legal action, I find his use of clergy sex abuse as a travesty for the survivors of pedophiles. This piece of fiction is not a critical examinationof objecctive academia. I am a 30 year survivor of a priest who has not spent a day in jail and was bailed out under the discipline of a cowardly Bishop. I feel very sorry for the true priests and Christians. My book will be coming out shortly and will cause controversy. I seek no money but only the truth. For those intersted in my story, I can be reched at my email. I may sound bitter, but we have thousands of these pedophiles. Yes, the media may have blown it out of proportion but I think they are just reporting another holocaust.
Rating:
Summary: Objective, balanced and fascinating
Review: Philip Jenkins has written a first-rate book, not just about the "moral panic" over "pedophile priests", but about our tendency as a society to seek simplistic answers for complex social problems. Jenkins argues persuasively, on the basis of extensive evidence, that the portrayal of the Catholic Church as a haven for pedophiles is just the latest version of the anti-Catholic stereotype which dates back at least as far as the Reformation. The scapegoating of the Catholic Church is also facilitated, as Jenkins points out, by the bureaucratic tradition of the Curia: keeping centralized records of abuse allegations makes a Catholic diocese an easy target for litigation, in a way which a dispersed Protestant denomination can never be.Highly recommended. Very clear, accessible, and thoroughly researched.
Rating: 
Summary: Informative, objective, logical, well-written, a must have.
Review: Priests and pedophilia is a subject not easily discussed without arousing deep emotional reactions. Phillip Jenkins, however, has taken an objective scholastic approach that backs each assertion with stong quotations and clear logical arguements. He shows how a national history of anti-catholicism, a sensationalistic-hungry mass media, a changing legal environnment, new definitions of 'sex-abuse', and a factional struggle for change within the Roman Church, all set the stage for what inevitably became the 'clergy-abuse crisis'. He offers much new insight and a good bibliography. I think at times however, he overestimates the power of the laity, and democracy; and underscores the 'Divine' origin and mission of the Roman Church. The book also lacked what I had hoped for by way of statistics. I would still recommend this book for anyone interested in catholic apologetics, or anyone just looking for a more scholarly diagnosis of the 'pedophile/priest crisis'.
Rating:
Summary: Solid Social Science
Review: Professor Jenkins contributes immeasurably to the current discussion of clergy sexual abuse by doing what every social scientist should. Jenkins steadfastly refuses to add to the volume of this shrill and partisan debate by offering conjectures or personal opinions. Instead, he calmly presents the data in a detached manner, and then draws his conclusions based solely on the data. Anyone with an interest in the current crisis would benefit from reading Professor Jenkins' sane, calm, and lucid analysis.
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