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THE SCANDAL OF SILENCE by Edward M. Keating

THE SCANDAL OF SILENCE

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Pub Date: April 13th, 1965
Publisher: Random House

Edward M. Keating is editor-in-chief of Ramparts magazine. This book is a series of ten exhortatory essays, directed towards his fellow Catholics, on the state of the Catholic Church in the U.S. Keating is highly critical, both of the antiquated apparatus which the church as an institution represents and of certain Catholic attitudes which he feels prevent the Church from being taken seriously as a viable moral force. He devotes considerable space to what he regards as the Church's lagging position on the matter of segregation, ""official"" statements to the contrary notwithstanding, (and here he is at his most authoritative, as the work of Ramparts would bear out). He deals with what he considers to be the Church's irrelevant, when not ridiculous, mentality toward sex censorship, art and literature. He also feels that the entire concept of Catholic education ought to be re-examined with a view towards making Catholic education less insular. He would have the roles of the laity within the structure of the Church greatly increased, thus freeing the clergy for more suitable sacramental responsibilities. Keating is an intelligent and concerned convert to Catholicism and doubtless many of his proposals will be ""charitably"" disposed of, by the abused clergy, as the product of overzealousness. But his concerns are real and his book may have a salutary effect if one trusts that ""logic and sermons"" sometimes ""convince...