The Faithful Departed

The Faithful Departed
The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture
wwwcinopsbegone.blogspot.com/ Monday, Feb. 25, 2008

The author of the above book is Philip F. Lawyer. He is the editor of Catholic World News, the first English-language Catholic news service operating on the internet, which he founded in 1995. Born and raised in the Boston area, he attended Harvard College and did graduate work in political philosophy at the University of Chicago before entering a career in journalism.

All on this page from the jacket of the book, Encounter Books, N.Y. 2008
Comments on the book:
Philip Lawler’s stunning book is a fresh look at the causes and consequences of the Catholic clerical sex-abuse scandal.
Ground zero was Boston. Lawler tells the story of the Church’s role in advancing a culture of morality and excellence within the 19th century immigrant community. But all of that good crashes into a mid-20th century wall of indifference, amorality, and hostility to orthodoxy and “the power of Faith.”
1) Lawler places the blame squarely on the lap of the shepherds, the bishops where were more interested in their public image and meeting the mortgage payments, than the safety of souls. His is powerful story of a dismal period in the life of the Church. Frank Keating, Governor of Oklahoma, 1995-2003, First Chairman of US bishops’ National Review Board.
2) Lawler’s masterful analysis is sobering and provides an urgent incentive for authentic renewal. If St. John Chrysostom is correct when he says that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops, it would be a mistake for any bishop or priest to miss this book. Most Rev. Fabian Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, Nebraska
Faithful Departed explains how the Catholic Church became the dominant cultural power in Boston, and then lost its public influence in the space of a generation…. The demise of Catholic influence in Massachusetts is an especially vivid example of a secularizing trend that is visible throughout the United States.
The collapse of Catholicism in Boston became painfully apparent in 2002, with the full explosion of the sex-abuse crisis. Nothing in the history of American Catholicism has had the same shattering impact as the sex-abuse scandal, and The Faithful Departed explains how the negligence of Church leadership – again, especially in Boston – allowed predatory priests to flourish for years.
But the sex-abuse scandal was neither the cause nor the beginning of Catholicism’s decline in Boston. In fact the scandal was itself a symptom of corruption that was already well advanced.
The public power that the Church enjoyed a half-century ago reflected a seemingly unshakable solidarity among Catholics. Nourished by their shared faith, Boston’s Catholics tended to think alike, behave alike, even vote alike. Their solidarity produced obvious practical benefits for the institutional Church, making the archdiocese an important player in the social & political life of the community.
Unfortunately, Church leaders came to see their public prestige as a primary goal…. Church leaders chose to compromise on matters of faith, in order to maintain a united public front. In practice, their compromises undermined the common core of belief that had bound together Catholic believers.
Paradoxically, the pursuit of public influence destroyed the religious solidarity upon which Catholic influence had been constructed.
George H. Kubeck, Duplicate and or translate into Spanish and Vietnamese