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The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture | 
 enlarge | Author: Philip F. Lawler
Publisher: Encounter Books
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 75736
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 280
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6 x 1
ISBN: 1594032114
Dewey Decimal Number: 282.74461
EAN: 9781594032110
ASIN: 1594032114
Publication Date: February 11, 2008
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Product Description
Faithful Departed traces the rise and fall of the Catholic Church in Boston, showing how the Massachusetts experience set a pattern that echoed throughout the United States as religious institutions lost influence in the face of rising secularization. The collapse of Catholicism in Boston became apparent with the explosion of the sex-abuse crisis. Lawler shows that the sex-abuse scandal was neither the cause nor the beginning of Catholicism's decline in Boston.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Facts & Analysis on Target August 16, 2008
Lawler uses the failings of the Boston Archdiocese not only recently but over its history as a platform to review the scandals besetting the Catholic Church in America that have been so much in the news.
He rejects the notion that the sex abuse scandal was a series of aberrations, but had at its root the unwillingness of bishops and priests to be faithful to Catholic dogmas and discipline. Outstanding analysis - and a critically important book for understanding not only the sex abuse scandal but also the contemporary situation of the Catholic Church in America today.
 Stinging truth July 31, 2008
The author sees the basic problem clearly, the effort in Boston to "make it" by Catholics as if they constituted a sort of race rather than a religion. I think he errs in suiggesting that this atttude was universal in the USA.
Thoughtful, well researched June 6, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Well written, well researched and carefully thought out book proposing the hypothesis that the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church was only the most visible manifestation of a general malaise in moral leadership among the hierarchy.
I would have liked footnotes to many of the assertions in the book.
An Accomplished Book of Horrors May 7, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
I was not familiar with the political flavor of Boston Catholicism described in this book, but now I understand the development of underlying culture of deceit that enabled the attitude of "keeping quiet." Americans for the most part are law abiding members of society, and what really disgusts me is that this trait of "protection of the bishop" is pandemic across the US in many Catholic diocese's.
The most telling sentence of the book is on the back cover where a conservative bishop tells "the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops." That told by St. John of the Cross who had his own problems with bishops in his native Spain nearly a thousand years ago.
In my own case, I grew up with a priest who was elevated to the episcopacy and now retired but is embroiled in a abuse case back in his home town. I personally don't think he did it, but then one has to ask, how many priests are guilty of abuse and are not fingered...and, how many are not-guilty of anything but are being charged anyway.
Mr. Lawler doesn't make a distinction between guilty or not, but he does write a compelling expose' of the catholic church in the US. The real problem is that he thinks the problem is still among us with the bishops not learning from Cardinal Law's mistakes. In fact, he tells tales of other "princes of the church" who are still part of the problem. I believe that pressure has to come from the "pew Catholic" in this matter, according to the book, the Vatican is neither unable to or impotent in this problem. I suspect, the Vatican is afraid of loosing its most financial prosperous givers to the till.
A great read and I wish more expose's would come forth.
Boston as Epicenter of Sexual Abuse Scandal May 2, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I have read many publications attempting to highlight the cause(s) of the wide-spread sexual abuse of children and teens by the Catholic clergy, but this book is particularly interesting in that it is a long-range examination of this using the Boston Archdiocese as the epicenter. This book proposes there were numerous "fault lines" that gradually led to conditions that permitted this horror to continue and grow. It also dissects the reponse of the American Bishops to the scandal. I highly recommend this to all, but particularly to Bostonians, Bishops and Catholic clergy.
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