Rating: 
Summary: Finally The Truth
Review: Sandy Moore,my review Finally the truth behind the power of the Church and the harm that is caused by those in power that belive they are above God and Mortal man. Other books to look for about abuse: Nightmares Echo,Courage To Heal,Running With Scissors
Rating: 
Summary: Truth and fiction
Review: The authors have it right when they say that there is corruption in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, especially when it comes to those who covered up the sex abuse scandals of (...)priests. The sad reality is that untold numbers of faithful Catholics have had their faith destroyed by those whom they should be able to trust the most--the parish priest. The best exposition I have read on the topic is George Weigel's book, "The Courage to Be Catholic: Crisis, Reform, and the Future of the Church".
Having said that, one must remember that the most convincing lie is the one that is closest to the truth. What I wrote above is true. It is also true that there are Catholics on the "far right" who are rigid, fearful and oppressive. But it is a lie that Fr. Maciel, the Legion of Christ and Regnum Christi are part of a right-wing conspiratorial cult that seeks to steal the freedom of its members in a slavish submission to Catholic hierarchy. The truth is that they seek to know, love and follow Jesus Christ in total freedom, wherever that leads, and to bring many others to know, love and follow him, as well.
In this book, their zeal for souls is interpreted as fanaticism; charity is interpreted as deception; prudence and fidelity are called secrecy; heroic silence in the face of persecution (as modeled by Jesus Christ) is interpreted as a tacit admission of guilt; orthodoxy is seen as rigidity; and adherence to Christ and the legitimate teaching authority of the Catholic Church is interpreted as naive at best, slavish at worst.
Please don't allow the clever mix of truth and fiction in this book to scare or confuse you. A detailed response to the charges against Fr. (...) And you can get a real sense of the man from his own words in the book "Christ is My Life", found here on amazon.com. Since we know a tree by its fruits, I encourage you to judge the Legionaries, Regnum Christi, and Fr. Maciel by their many beautiful apostolates throughout the world and by the Christian ideals they promote. That they have been and will continue to be persecuted is a given. Christ said as much.
Rating:
Summary: Silent no more
Review: The research into this book is exceptional. It is a good companion book to Jason Berry's "The Sins of the Fathers" and to Gerald Renner's journalism in the Hartford Courant and National Catholic Reporter on this same subject of the Legion of Christ. "The Vows of Silence" has helped to clarify and substantiate my concerns about the secretive Legion of Christ and its founder. This book connects the dots of years of data. Although this is a painful account, I am heartened to have the truth about this outfit revealed and known and not covered up. It cries out for justice, and it is to be hoped that the hierarcy hears the message. The good news of the Gospel and the True Church, which has been held hostage by this clever organization, will survive and shake off this current shadow of scandal, but not through cover-up and silence. I am grateful to Renner and Berry for their courage and research in writing this long-awaited book.
Rating:
Summary: All the Pope's Men
Review: The Roman Catholic Church could not have found two tougher, or more fair, investigators to root out the corruption of sexual abuse it has been unable to root out itself. This is profound and disturbing book, a detailed, dramatic and highly documented account of the arrogance of power. A bonus is a surprisingly engaging history of the Catholic Church in Mexico, but the engine of the story is the authors' revelation of how the secrecy that helped the Roman Catholic survive for nearly two millennia also created the environment for its corruption. And at the top of the pyramid is the solitary and highly conflicted figure of John Paul II, whose mishandling of the Church's sexual abuse scandal threatens the very foundation of the institution he has labored so obsessively to strengthen. To tell their story, Berry and Renner focus on the inspiring figure of Father Thomas Doyle, a salt-of-the-earth "Everyman" foil to the monstruously disturbing self-styled "Saint," Mexico's Father Marcial Maciel. This is a well-worthwhile book, exhibiting the old-fashioned virtues of investigative reporting -- doggedness, fearlessness, surprise. The authors take us deep inside the Roman Catholic Church's medieval power structure, behind which men pledged to a life of the spirit have sinned for centuries. Vows of Silence is an intensely human story about men -- all men -- who devoted their lives to serving God, and failed miserably.
Rating:
Summary: Superb, balanced treatment of Papal and clergy filth
Review: The work speaks for itself. Urbane writing makes the evidence more devestating-- evidence of massive clerical pedophilia, Vatican cover-up, lies and secretiveness as common policy of Karol Woytyla. He is clearly a gross failure as Pontiff of a Church which is simply paying the horrific price of his "all religions have value", "no religion possesses the full truth" nonsense. I expect more books like "Vows of Silence" in the future, if not for a number of decades, until the once lustrous and holy Church is brought to its knees in abject denigration and is lifted up once more-- but only after it has paid the price it must for its lies, filth, slime, and excrescence. I recommend Vows of Silence with a 5 star ranking. It is a must read.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing blend of fact and fiction
Review: There is little new in this book, except a strained attempt to link unrelated events and suggest the Pope is tolerant of child abuse. That attempt is so strained as to deny logic. The authors quote from their own newspaper articles and a group of men who claim they were abused some 50 years ago -- charges dismissed long ago. If you don't like the Holy Father and think the Church should change its views on morality, especially sexual conduct, you will like this book. If you support the Holy Father and the teachings of the Church, this book will be puzzling at best, disgusting at worst. Read the Gospel, go see The Passion of the Christ but don't waste you time on this.
Rating:
Summary: The Authors Tell the Painful Truth
Review: This book paints a devastating picture of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. It does this through two angles. The first is by reporting the story of Father Tom Doyle, a man who sacrificed a career as a Vatican diplomat to address the crisis and minister to the victims and their families. This segment of the book details hundreds of errant priests and their victims. These stories are very discouraging. Father Doyle's actions are in stark contrast to the cover-ups, distortion, inaction and mean spirited approach of most of the bishops and institutional Church. The second vantage point is an examination of Father Marcial Maciel, a favorite of the Vatican, founder of the controversial Legion of Christ (or Legionaries of Christ) and Regnum Christi movement, and an alleged pedophile. The authors carefully examine the history of Father Maciel, the Legion and the claims of sexual abuse against Father Maciel. The case is quite compelling, but has been met by stony silence and complete inaction by the Vatican. The authors also detail some of the misadventures of the Legion in the United States and Canada. This was particularly interesting to me because I and my family have been a victim of their tactics at one of their schools in Atlanta. The patterns of abuse repeat across the continent and similar stories are reported in Legion facilities in Naples (Florida), Columbus (Ohio), Sacramento and in Canada. The authors present a balanced view of these stories. The authors are investigative journalists and Catholics. Both are established writers on Catholic issues. Gerald Renner is a veteran journalist and recently retired staff writer specializing in religion for the Hartford Courant. From his vantage point there, he reported on the secretive Legion of Christ which has facilities in Connecticut. He first broke the story of the former seminarians who accused Father Maciel of the molesting them. Jason Berry has reported extensively on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. He cut his teeth reporting on the Diocese of Lafayette, Louisiana where some of the early cases came to attention. This book is a must read for Catholics of all stripes. It shows that the pedophile crisis runs very deep and, that at least a part of the problem is abuse of power in the Church.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard truths told with scrupulous care
Review: This is an unsettling book. It exposes a level of hypocrisy, cynicism, and fraudulent spirituality in high places that most Catholics would rather not look at. But there it is, and the authors, whose research is in the best and most exacting traditions of investigative journalism, pull no punches in exposing the unpleasant truths about the Roman Curia and the founder of the Legionaries of Christ. But it is also a chronicle of heroic struggle against the malignant forces at work in the church, and in the end one is left hoping that the clear, bright light shone on the abuse of power will finally be its undoing. Not a perfect book--sometimes the names, dates, and people come flying at you without pause--but a real service to those who love the Catholic Church and care about its future.
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Summary: You are in my prayers
Review: To all supporters of this book and it's authors, I ask you to remember that CHRIST commanded us to LOVE one another! If we say that we are Christ 's disciples , then we are called to live and speak with gospel charity. I am saddened by your apparent hatred for all of us who love Christ and His church. ..but Jesus told us that we would be hated because of His name. All of you will be in my prayers that our Lord grants you the peace that you are looking for.
Love in Christ
Rating:
Summary: A Sad Tale of A Tragic Time Never To Be Forgotten
Review: Vows of Silence brings a sense of completion to the whole story of the pedophilia scandal in the Catholic Church. While this is no light leisurely read, it is a story that informed Catholics should take the time to consider. Jason Berry reported some of the earliest news stories on the pedophilia scandal as it broke open in the 1980's and early 1990's. His 1992 book, Lead Us Not Into Temptation is a significant part of the canon on this tragic time in the Catholic Church's history. Unfortunately, what Berry knew and thoroughly reported in 1992 had to be broken open on a wider scale once again in 2000 as a result of the abuse cases in the Archdiocese of Boston and many other Dioceses around the country.
He and Renner are serious journalists who have done an outstanding job of documenting that history all the way to the present time. In Vows of Silence they focus on the Church through the stories of Thomas Doyle and Marciel Maciel Degollado, two Roman Catholic priests, one an embassy diplomatic staff member and the other the founder of a conservative group of controversal priests who have gained tremendous influence under John Paul II. In Thomas Doyle we see a priest punished for sounding the warning in the early 1990's that the Church has a serious problem on its hands with clerical pedophilia in the United States. Doyle was on the staff of the equivalent of the Vatican Embassy in Washington DC for a number of years and he became aware of the numbers of abused individuals that were asking for help during that time. As a responsible man, he followed up and learned all he could about the scope of the problem and he report this to his superior, the Papal Nuncio to the United States and to the American Catholic Bishops. All of a sudden, Doyle was persona non grata. Talk about Killing the Messenger. Here's a hardworking moral priest who does the right thing and loses his job and is essentially banished. Fortunately Doyle, a military reserve chaplain was able to activate his enlistment and escaped the possible wrath of the Church if he was left to be assigned by the normal means to some outback mission post by way of clerical banishment and an order to be silent. Doyle continued to be engaged even after he became a military chaplain by reaching out to the victims of the priest abusers. His story is one lonely journey of speaking the truth and doing the right thing when the brotherhood of which he was a member were all mute. Undoubtedly a truly difficult role to play as a Catholic priest trying to see appropriate change take place. In the case of Father Marciel Maciel Degollado, we see a priest guru who founded his own order and gained tremendously powerful footing in the Catholic Church by giving significant sums of money to the Vatican. Father Marciel was also a known pedophile. Yet, his influence in founding a new order that attracted many vocations to the Church and his ability to court the rich to build new schools and ministries made him the darling of the Vatican. And, he has never been held accountable to this day for his own personal behavior. While the tale of two priests framework may seem simplistic, Berry and Renner document the history and facts of the pedophilia scandal and the Church hierarchy's denial on the matter in astouding detail. Vows of Silence almost reads as a novel. Tragically it is factual. The Catholic Church has a long road of forward movement to make in the years to come. Berry and Renner add to the compelling case for some major changes to the male hierarchical and very paternalistic ways that the Church has continued to conduct its affairs. While we would have believed that men who had devoted their lives to God would have done the right thing when they learned children were being harmed, they didn't. And, while some healing has been extended to the victims of pedophilia through financial settlements and numerous apologies, for the most part, it was all too little, too late. Before the story of this tragic time in Church history is brushed under the eccesliastical carpet, it would do the Church hierarchy a great deal of good to honestly consider changes that are needed to return the Church to the People of God -- the children, women and men who are Gods' people -- who constitute The Church -- and to reframe their leadership toward that end. Am Excellent Book On A Tragic Time In the Catholic Church
Highly Recommended Daniel J. Maloney Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA
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