Rating: 
Summary: a welcome change
Review: David Gibson clearly presents the issues associated with sexual abuse in the American Catholic Church in its historic perspective and looks forward to a future where such behavior will not occur.
Rating: 
Summary: A Fascinating Look at the Roman Catholic Church in America.
Review: David Gibson presents a broad and thoughtful analysis of the major issues confronting the Roman Catholic Church today. Moving beyond the headlines of the recent abuse scandal, he examines the changes not only in the Catholic Church itself, but also in secular society which have exacerbated the inherent conflicts between materialism, consumerism (among many "isms") and the life of the spirit.
THE COMING CATHOLIC CHURCH (published by HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.) focuses on issues confronting the laity, priesthood and the hierarchy, carefully exploring the background and composition of each intertwined segment of the church from a recent historical standpoint, current challenges within the church itself - locally, nationally and even globally - and opportunities for the future. Mr. Gibson's opinions and prescriptions regarding the future direction of the institutional church will undoubtedly generate controversy depending upon whether one favors more orthodox doctrine or embraces a more liberal approach to the faith. However, his ideas are based upon thorough research and a good understanding of the human institutions and composition of the church itself.
The book is an important one: regardless of whether you agree with Mr. Gibson or not, he presents the major issues and concerns which confront the Catholic Church in times of increasing challenge within a rapidly changing secular culture and society. How the Church - laity, clergy and hierarchy - deal with these challenges will determine its effectiveness in remaining true to the fundamental Gospel message.
Rating: 
Summary: TV Reporting Can't Handle a Church
Review: Don Hewitt (of 60 Minutes) famously tells his reporters to 'tell me a story.' Storytelling may be appropriate for a TV report, but when you take on a complex topic in a book-length analysis, stories can get in the way. The reason is simple: the likely audience for this kind of a book already has their own story. The likely reader of this book already has his own history with the Catholic Church. There is no need to tell stories with human interest, because any story a reporter might tell will pale in comparison with the richness of the reader's own experience.
Telling a story can get in the way of analysis. In one arc, Gibson tells the story of Wilton Gregory, the bishop who headed the post-scandal Episcopal conference. As Gibson presents it, Gregory's story is almost a fall from grace. Gibson presents Bishop Gregory as the insider who sensitively sees the need for the hierarchy to confront itself. However, in this story, the hierarchy is the villain. Instead of Gregory redeeming the hierarchy, the hierarchy uses Gregory to further protect and isolate itself. This makes a compelling story (even assuming it's true) but what's missing is analysis.
There are, in the bishop's dilemma, two important values to protect, but which are currently at odds. The first value is the pressure to hold predatory priests accountable. The second value is to protect innocent and honest priests from unfair accusation. Not being a member of the clergy, Gibson is plainly unaware of why that second value is so important. It isn't always personal vanity. Because of the business he's in, a priest's personal reputation is vital. Unfortunately, a reputation is the easiest thing for an enemy to destroy, simply by offering accusations that leave a stain. It doesn't matter whether such accusations stand up to proof; the accusation alone does the damage. It's also clear that Gibson doesn't appreciate how often a priest's reputation comes under attack. Plenty of people would gladly start/spread every rumor about a priest. (Ask any priest.) Most people would be surprised at how often, and how vicious, these attacks actually occur. About this, Gibson says little.
The bishops, we all agree, went too far in protecting their priests' reputations. Of the two values (accountability and protection), many bishops chose wrong. Therefore, what's truly needed in this book is a thorough discussion of how to draw that line. It isn't easy. You can't believe every accusation, but you can't dismiss them all, either. You can smugly say that the bishops drew the line poorly, but that's not enough. You have to further explain how to draw the line properly. That takes analysis, and sober reflection.
That's what this book is lacking. This book is basically a story, not an analysis. In this story, the laity are heroes who will one day triumph over the tyrannical bishops and nefarious Vatican curia. That may be a story, but it isn't analysis.
Rating:
Summary: A balanced examination, crowned with hope
Review: Gibson's evaluation of the current state of Roman Catholicism in the United States is something of a rarity in the world of contemporary Church discussion. Balanced, fair, and level-headed, he illustrates the impact the 2001 priest scandals have had on the faithful, but also touches on such phenomena as the shrinking number of clergy and religious, the disaffectedness of many of the faithful before, during, and after the scandals hit, and the effects various factions (left- and right-wingers, among others) have on what direction the Church is taking. Gibson's work, while delivering some sobering news, is nonetheless possessed of a sense of hope for a better future, as well as deep faith in what the Church means to Her many children. All in all an excellent and well-worth-reading examination of the current American Catholic Church.
Rating:
Summary: good, not great.
Review: Gibson's writing is direct, if almost painfully colloquial at times. His incessant insertion of quips and jokes can lighten the tone but also distract readers from the gravity of the discussion at hand.
His consideration of the three camps in the Church is accurate thought not incredibly balance. The laity, for all their relative powerlessness seem to take an inordinate weight in the text.
The concerns expressed by the reader from Indianapolis are pointed out in the text; in fact the church, especially in Africa, is experiencing clergy power abuses of a different sort which can be solved by a similar system of decentralization of power away from the Vatican.
The need for a stronger, though not necessarily heavier-handed, church leadership at all levels is evident. The solidarity of the priests and bishops and the remoteness of the laity can only be remedied by a resolution among all three factions to move beyond this scandal and to enter a relationship where the respect for all three parties is restored. This final conclusion is brought out only in the very end of Gibson's book.
In all, Gibson provides a well informed, though poorly documented, examination of the paths that have lead all three camps of Catholics to the current impasse and examines possible routes for all of them. His conclusion is optimistic and exhortative, that "the adventure of Catholicism is beginning anew".
Rating: 
Summary: from a convert
Review: Gibson, a journalist who covered the Vatican and then converted to Catholicism, offers a rare perspective on the American Catholic Church--one that is at times quite moving. Although the sexual scandal is nominally the focal point of the book, Gibson sees all of its horrors as a symptom of a deeper problem; namely, a Church whose fixation on the structure and form of worship blinds it to the human problems caused by that structure. He examines these human problems and possible solutions as seen from three perspectives: the laity, the priesthood, and the hierarchy. He neatly lays out Church history to show how it has shaped current happenings and conditions. His book is well researched, clearly written, and generally balanced. He is not, however, impartial. He lays most of the blame for the sexual scandal on the American bishops and Vatican Curia, seeing these bodies as arrogant, cut off from the "real world", and protective of their power based in part on centuries-old relationships with priests and the laity that have become dehumanizing and ultimately, unsustainable. As one might expect from an American journalist, Gibson believes the solution is less emphasis on structure, less unquestioned central authority, and more involvement from the laity in Church affairs. As he describes the heartrending experiences of various lay members and priests who have been victimized and ignored by "the system", one begins to feel that Gibson has a point.
Rating:
Summary: Informative and Provocative
Review: Gibson, a journalist who covered the Vatican and then converted to Catholicism, offers a rare perspective on the American Catholic Church--one that is at times quite moving. Although the sexual scandal is nominally the focal point of the book, Gibson sees all of its horrors as a symptom of a deeper problem; namely, a Church whose fixation on the structure and form of worship blinds it to the human problems caused by that structure. He examines these human problems and possible solutions as seen from three perspectives: the laity, the priesthood, and the hierarchy. He neatly lays out Church history to show how it has shaped current happenings and conditions. His book is well researched, clearly written, and generally balanced. He is not, however, impartial. He lays most of the blame for the sexual scandal on the American bishops and Vatican Curia, seeing these bodies as arrogant, cut off from the "real world", and protective of their power based in part on centuries-old relationships with priests and the laity that have become dehumanizing and ultimately, unsustainable. As one might expect from an American journalist, Gibson believes the solution is less emphasis on structure, less unquestioned central authority, and more involvement from the laity in Church affairs. As he describes the heartrending experiences of various lay members and priests who have been victimized and ignored by "the system", one begins to feel that Gibson has a point.
Rating:
Summary: from a convert
Review: I am a convert from Protestantism, where my father was a minister, and I cannot tell you how poorly the various Protestant sects have fared in having what is essentially a POLITICAL philosophy, democracy, destroy what unity was left among them over the course of the last century. Luther himself was said to have muttered, late in life, "I set out to bring down one pope and created a hundred popes..."--and this is the onus of "the Protesters", to continue to split exponentially as each dissenting panjandrum reserves the right to interpret Scripture as he or she wishes, regardless of the wishes of Christ as expressed in John 17:20-6.
David Gibson, on the other hand, would have you believe that The Church is too top-heavy a kingdom, even if this is exactly what Jesus Himself described it as--A KINGDOM, not a democracy, and as every school child knows, a KINGDOM has a hierarchy: Christ's Vicar atop, laity at the base. But, oh, how this grates on our very American sensibilities! Nevertheless, do we not stop to consider that the hierarchy are nothing more than LAITY ORDAINED? That the pope himself doesn't come from some elitist aristocracy, but was an orphan and a common student-seminarian like so many of us? Why do we hold authority figures in general in such disdain? To whom did so many turn to whenever the recent scandals broke for answers, for solutions, for redress? Why, the very authority figures they--and this author--hold in contempt, of course! In short, AUTHORITY IS GOOD--any honest parent, teacher, judge, soldier, officer of the law, or any other person would tell you so: and The Church, top-to-bottom, is, spiritually speaking, all of those things. American Catholics should see her for what she is or follow the footsteps of so many found in the footnotes of history--LEAVE the orthodox to worship in peace in THE community of believers Christ Himself founded some twenty centuries ago.
Besides, Gibson betrays his ethnocentrism by the very cover he's chosen for his book, the two flags flanking his prophetic title, as if--as one astute reviewer observed already--the AMERICAN Catholic Church isn't but a fraction of the gargantuan whole, and let's face it: the LEAST observant, the LEAST "catholic" (as in universal) fraction of the whole it is. I would not trade an iota of The Church's authority and autonomy--painfully won through centuries of struggle with emperors and kings and schismatics of old--for a more "democratic" church for all the world, for you can gain the world, dissenters, and still lose your soul.
Rating:
Summary: The Coming Catholic Church
Review: I found this book wonderfully thought-provoking. I agree with the author that the church needs change, and he presents the obstacles and challenges we as church will face in the coming years. Should be required reading for the laity in America, as well as our bishops, priests and seminarians.
Rating:
Summary: Medicine for a Church in Need of Healing
Review: In the past two years it seems as if more books seem to have been published on Roman Catholicism than at any other time. The most recent books have focusing not as much on the Church, but ht clergy sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Church and how the Church ought to respond. David Gibson's book The Coming Catholic Church belongs in this genre.Gibson divides the book into three sections: one devoted to the laity, another devoted to priesthood, and a third section focuses on the episcopacy. Gibson seems very hopeful that the laity can and should play a significant role in reform. He does have some criticisms of the laity and while he does not blame the current scandal on lay people or take a simplistic view that if lay people had more of a say, none of this would have ever happened, he does warn against the danger of putting clergy members on too high a pedestal (something that will probably not happen anytime too soon). Gibson is both sympathetic and critical of the priesthood. He basically sees priests as good hearted people, but also caught in the traps of clericalism. While he supports a married clergy, he also sees the value of celibacy in some cases. He supports a broader membership in the clergy so that the Church will not only be relevant, but will also have enough priests to maintain the Sacramental life of the Church. Gibson is most critical of the bishops, and seems to believe they are hopelessly irrelevant and while he is hopeful of changes in the laity and priesthood, he seems less hopeful as far as the episcopacy is concerned. While he admires Pope John Paul II, he seems to present a thesis that the problem with the bishops is that there are too many John Paul II clones. For this reason he hopes that the Pope's eventual successor will have John Paul II's dedication and enthusiasm, but will also be open to reform. The book is accurate and well researched something that is probably due to his talent as a journalist. A bit of editing could help, for some parts are a bit repetitious. He has many opinions, but is able to back up his opinions with fact. His voice offers a different perspective, which is probably why I found this book quite significant. Gibson is a journalist, not a theologian, member of the clergy, or religious life. Many of the most recent books about the scandal are written by Church insiders, both liberal and conservative, who often times have an agenda. Gibson has a point of view, but this comes from his love of his Church, and purely from that love. Gibson also offers his point of view from the eyes of a Catholic, but not a life long Catholic. As a convert, Gibson seems to be able to see what is essentially Catholic and offer a fresh and balanced point of view. In my opinion, this is what Gibson attempts to do, and in many ways did it satisfactorily.
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