An eye-opening account of corruption and secrecy.
Why Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, became the first pope to be cited for crimes against humanity.
Gawthrop (The Rice Queen Diaries, 2005, etc.) focuses on the complaint before the International Criminal Court to explore the deeper roots of the crisis within the Catholic Church. The author shows how resurgent opposition to discussions of reform initiated during the pontificate of John XXIII—e.g., birth control, abortion, ordaining female priests—provided the ground under which the now-exposed coverups of priestly rape and sexual abuse could take root. Because Ratzinger's rise within the church’s hierarchy spans 30 of the 50 years that have elapsed since John XXIII's reign, Gawthrop forcefully establishes that he had the power to stop the abuse. The author traces the origins of the coverup back to 1962, when John XXIII commissioned the policy document Crimen Sollicitationis. Key in this was the maintenance of “pontifical secrecy…the utmost confidentiality…permanent silence.” There were no provisions for investigation, no acknowledgment of crime and no suggestion about turning offenders over for prosecution by the criminal authorities. As head of the Congregation for the Defense of the Faith, Ratzinger continued this policy and ensured that all cases were referred to him personally. Detailing specific cases where Ratzinger intervened and how he affected their outcomes through stalling, delay and other means, Gawthrop shows how the succession of investigations and the arrogant responses of the hierarchy contributed to bring things to a head. The author also thoroughly documents the broader context of the hierarchy's theological and political commitment to overturn the legacy of Vatican II.
An eye-opening account of corruption and secrecy.Pub Date: June 26, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-55152-527-3
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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