The Church That Forgot Christ

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant and on fire!
Review: I kept waiting for somebody--preferably a Catholic--to make sense of the pedophile scandal within the Church, and here at last is that book. This book burns with all rage, bitterness and feeling of betrayal that the daily newspaper headlines never captured. It's like the autobiography of a Catholic during a very disgusting time in the life of the church. Leave it to Breslin to tell it like it is--the powerful princes of the church are the ones who abandoned Christ and what He taught and stood for, and took advantage of the people. It's practically Biblical, the stories he tells are so unforgettable. This is a must-read.

Rating:
Summary: An important book.
Review: Jimmy Breslin gets my vote for the next Bishop of Brooklyn. Keep the faith, Jimmy, and change the Church.

Rating:
Summary: Honestly felt but deeply flawed tirade against the Church
Review: Jimmy Breslin is angry about the scandal in the church. As a practicing Catholic , I share his anger. I may not have expressed it exactly as he does in this book but I admire his honesty and the way he writes has a personal gut level approach that is lacking in some of the other writing on this difficult and painful topic. This is certainly true however his style is rambling and often his point is obscured as he digresses from lurid tale to personal reflections on his own past , etc.
There are more analytical scholarly books out there that disect the how, why and where do we go from here aspects of the church scandal but Breslin's is more of a streetlevel emotional tirade from a man who feels betrayed by an institution that was a significant part of his past.
I like Breslin even when I don't agree with him which, frankly , is quite often. His anger with the Church is apparently connected as much with it's finances as it is with the abuse scandal. His style doesn't really connect the two in any meaningful way. Reading Breslin is like sitting in a bar on the Westside and getting involved in a heated conversation with the slightly drunk guy on the next stool.

Rating:
Summary: understand
Review: jimmy breslin wrote this book to tell everyone what is going on, he feels he has lost his faith from seeing all this. and i have found many other people have too, and not only from reading this book. its expresing the anger towards the church, after all the preists, bishops, and Cardnials are supposed to set a good example of christian morality. how can they if they are to buzy having sex with kids, and hiding it?? this is the truth what he wrote, you cant blame him, many people feel like this and if you feel that the church is not to blame then who? the bishops and cardnials all hid that these abuses were going on, he would change the preists parish, thats it. and there are thousands of people out there who have been sexualy abused, who 20 years later cant move on. Imagine someone making you have sex with him, that your family trusted and liked. Imagine being told that your strongest beleifs would go againest you of you told anyone. thats what happened to these kids.

Rating:
Summary: The truth about Bishop Murphy
Review: This is an angry book that will make you uncomfortable. Read it anyway. Read it and learn the truth about what's going on in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Think about the victims of clergy abuse. Think about their abusers, who have gotten a free pass from the likes of Mansion Murphy and others. Think about the hundreds of thousands of parishioner dollars that have gone into the renovation of Murphy's Mansion--his wine cellar, his kitchen, his crystal, his furniture. Think about the six elderly religious who were evicted to make way for him. And then think about what you should be doing to get him out of Rockville Centre.

You don't have to agree with all of Breslin's views--for instance, he is pro-abortion. And the book is written like a longer version of a rambling Breslin column; it's full of his memories of family and friends, and the memories are sometimes painful, but they are brutally honest. If you're from Long Island or NYC, you will recognize some of the names and places. After reading this book, you will be angry, too--and you should be.

Rating:
Summary: The rights of the Laity to have a voice
Review: Too many people want to forget about the scandal and the failings of the church in following its own mission. Mr. Breslin seems to be trying to think this through at street level. This is a good thing.

The voice of the laity is too important to put back in the box. The Catholic Church has failed so many of us that its reactionary political activities, its protection of law violators, and its attack on women the world over, is no longer something that many people of faith are willing to put up with. Too often conservative elements ask us to forgive blindly those who have failed the church laity and support the push of some within the church to line up with the most conservative pre-Vatican II readings of doctrine and blindly back the Republican Party's attack on the poor and the weak.

Going backwards is not the way to go, and this book is one of many voices calling on the church and its people to remember that the church must be accountable, honest, and remember where it came from, and the faithful must also remember where they came from, and also where they are heading. Confused theology is not the problem, as we all know, the Church in Rome has always fought to maintain its own power (changing its arguments as it goes!), and now reactionary local church leaders are entering politics and closing the doors of the church to Catholics -- what of Christian charity, forgiveness, and understanding? The more voices the better.