Liebreich’s account shows not only that priestly abuse is an old problem, but also that cover-ups never work—a pointed moral...
A sordid tale of pederast priests and blind-eye bishops: a headline fit for today, that is, 350-odd years old.
BBC/History Channel researcher and producer Liebreich caught her first glimpse of the Counterreformation-era Order of the Clerics Regular of the Pious Schools, or Piarists, while conducting research in dusty archives in Rome and Florence. Founded by a Spanish priest, José de Calasanz, at the turn of the 17th century, the order was devoted to feeding, housing, and educating poor boys who might otherwise be tempted into Protestantism. Over the centuries, its beneficiaries included Victor Hugo and Mozart, and the order enjoyed influence in distant places such as Moravia and Poland. Notes Liebreich, though, the Catholic Encyclopedia “skips blithely from 1612, when the Roman school moved to larger premises, to 1748 when the founder was beatified.” What happened in those intervening years? Plenty: while Calasanz, who would come to be regarded as the patron saint of public education, worked diligently to keep his schools running against all manner of intramural politicking in Rome, priests under his charge all over Europe used their proximity to and power over young boys to commit what was then called “the worst vice.” As news of the scandals reached Rome, it was ignored, dismissed, and hushed up, while “the concern,” writes Liebreich, “was always for the sinner, the priest, never for the victim, however young.” Indeed, one of worst offenders was eventually booted upstairs, protected by the pope himself. Finally, however, the scandal could be hidden no longer, and the order was suppressed. Some of the priests entered other orders, but one took the initiative of murdering a little old lady whose confession he had been hearing, loading up her riches, and sailing away: “The crime was not discovered for a few weeks, and the ex-Piarist was never heard from again.”
Liebreich’s account shows not only that priestly abuse is an old problem, but also that cover-ups never work—a pointed moral with obvious, and timely, implications.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-8021-1784-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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