The Faithful Departed

Pre-order your copies of The Faithful Departed in paperback!

2009-09-16T19:33:00.000-07:00

The paperback edition -- which is updated with corrections and a new preface -- is due out this coming April!

You can already pre-order on Amazon! And honestly, you could take care of so many people on your gift list with this book. Although the subject is dire, the way it's treated grips and leaves the reader not depressed but hopeful. Many people have told me that they were almost reluctant to start reading, but on the very first page they were drawn in by the sheer delight of Phil's prose.

He sure can tell a story. And what a story -- starting with the very earliest moments of Massachusetts history and building, both chronologically and conceptually, right up to the present day. Those same people told me they stayed up late, unable to put the book down. And I really don't think they were just saying this because I'm his wife :) I did it too.

So there you go! Pre-order today!
Also note that the book is available on Kindle! You won't even notice your flight if you take this book along.

The Kennedy Funeral: Boston's Latest Scandal

2009-09-05T06:42:00.000-07:00

In a chapter of The Faithful Departed, Phil tells the story of the gathering of prominent theologians and political heavy hitters at the Kennedy compound. Their mission? To make the legalization of abortion palatable to the Democratic party.

This event is a huge marker in the timeline of The Scandal -- pedophilia committed by priests and sanctioned by bishops.

The epicenter of The Scandal is Boston.

Thus, the virtual canonization of Ted Kennedy at his funeral is indeed part of the continuing scandal. Read Phil's essay on The Kennedy Funeral: Boston's Latest Scandal at Catholic Culture. Then buy the book!

Second Printing!

2009-05-03T16:09:00.001-07:00

The Faithful Departed is now in its second printing!

I have not seen it, but Phil says that the mistakes have been corrected! Yes!

People often ask Phil if he's interested in writing a sequel. For sure, the story of the scandal is not over.

And Phil has been talking about a follow-up book. I think that some readers have the thought that has occurred to him as well: what to DO about the whole mess.

And the follow-up book would be an answer to that question, which has to do with reviving Catholic culture.

You know, for a long time people "on our side" thought that the problem was with orthodoxy -- that if people had their doctrine straight, there wouldn't be problems with practice.

I know I thought that as well.

But as The Faithful Departed shows, many orthodox priests were very much at the center of the scandal.

I remember very clearly a friend from Hingham telling me that the reason "they" were after Fr. Geoghan (the priest who molested hundreds of children and died in jail) was because he was "so conservative".

Yes, I think we've learned that the problem has to do with how you live. Of course, what you believe is a big part of how you live -- but not all!

And how you live is about your culture, which shouldn't just be sentimentally attached to your religion, but an organic outgrowth of it, encompassing your whole being -- not just how you worship, but how you live in your family, how you work, and how you rest.

Anyway, that's some of what we've been talking about in the Lawler household these days. We'd love to hear from you!

Happy Birthday, Faithful Departed!

2009-02-11T07:17:00.001-08:00

For official purposes, The Faithful Departed was published one year ago today. After a year, and now into its second printing, I'm happy to report that my book is still selling well, still having an impact.
In one of the earliest reviews (appearing even before the official publication date), the late Father Richard John Neuhaus offered a few friendly criticisms but concluded with the generous observation:

The Faithful Departed is the best book-length treatment of the sex abuse crisis, its origins and larger implications, published to date.

Writing for Inside Catholic, John Zmirak went much further, calling it…

…the most important work about the Church to appear in the last two decades…

Not everyone has enjoyed the book. In Religion and Liberty, Kevin Schmiesing pinpointed the reason:

American Catholics and their bishops have not yet learned the lesson, Lawler thinks, and the evidence is with him.

Exactly. Even at this late date, all too many Catholic leaders would prefer not to confront the tough issues. The Faithful Departed has been quietly taken down from the shelves in many Catholic bookstores, presumably after calls from local chancery offices. In one less quiet episode, my speaking appearance at the Catholic University bookstore was cancelled.
Still the word is getting out. My calendar still shows several speaking dates that remain from the burst of invitations that came after the book's publication. (And there's room for more; if you have a group that might be interested, please let me know!) More and more Catholics-- and sympathetic non-Catholics-- realize that while it's sometimes painful to combat an infection, it's deadly to let the infection spread. As George Weigel put it:

Many Catholics understandably want to put the Long Lent of 2002 behind us. No one should do so without reading The Faithful Departed.

Too grim? Alas, the evidence suggests otherwise

2008-11-11T07:46:00.000-08:00

As many readers have observed, The Faithful Departed is not a cheery book. Several reviewers have said that the book's chief flaw lies in my failure to indicate how we can move forward from here: how we can restore the vitality of the faith and recover a genuinely Catholic culture. I can accept that criticism as valid. I plan to spend the next several years in an effort to plot out that road forward, and invite loyal Catholics to join me in traveling it. (For details, watch the Catholic Culture site.)

In a friendly and perceptive review that appears in the November issue of New Oxford Review, Dan Flaherty makes that same criticism. OK; I'll cop a plea: Guilty as charged. I hope the court will agree to a sentence of "community service," because that's what I plan anyway.

But I'm afraid I'll have to pour cold water on another part of Flaherty's review, in which he suggests that I take an unduly grim view of Massachusetts history. The key paragraph involves my coverage of the local response to the Roe v. Wade decision. Let me take it in three sections:

In a previous generation, Mayor Curley would have immediately denounced the decision and any wayward Democrats would have fallen in line behind Cardinal O'Connell.

True. Mayor Curley and Cardinal O'Connell might not have cooperated-- they rarely did; their relationship was frosty-- but they would have worked separately toward the same end.

Here though, Lawler does overlook evidence that all was not lost in the early 1970s. Tip O'Neill, after some initial waffling on Roe, fell into line after a scolding from the clergy, and went on to compile a solidly prolife voting record until his retirement in 1987.

Technically true but thoroughly misleading-- at least for the purposes of my analysis. Tip O'Neill did everything in his considerable power to ensure that the House of Representatives never held a vote on any effort to ban abortion. Yes, he retained a pro-life record. And he made it possible for dozens of other Democrats to retain their pro-life credentials without lifting a finger to stop the slaughter of the unborn. My argument is that Catholics did not resist the decision; Tip O'Neill, alas, is a case in point.

It is impossible to imagine former Speaker of the House John W. McCormack, a man from Irish Boston and a devout Catholic who'd just retired before Roe, ever choosing Planned Parenthood over Holy Mother Church.

Absolutely true. But notice: McCormack was no longer on the scene as an active politician when the roof caved in during the 1970s.

The disease is contagious

2008-11-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

Yesterday 53% of the American Catholics who voted in the presidential election cast their ballots for Barack Obama: the most radical pro-abortion candidate ever to win a major-party nomination.

But wait: According to those exit polls, John McCain won a majority among those Catholics who attend Mass each week-- that is, the active Catholics.

What lesson can we learn from the voting? I think it's simple: The people who have stopped paying attention to Church teaching on other issues have, not surprisingly, stopped paying attention to Church teaching on abortion as well. Why should we expect otherwise?

In other words, when Catholics stop acting as Catholics, and praying as Catholics, and thinking as Catholics, they will inevitably stop voting as Catholics, too. Does that theory sound familiar? It's the main theme of The Faithful Departed, of course.

I've made this same argument in a bit more detail over on the Catholic Culture site.

Election Day

2008-11-04T05:34:00.000-08:00

It's election day. We're hanging on by a thread in this country to whatever cultural stability we have left. We've fought for so long against a nebulous enemy and on so many fronts.

What's on the mind of many faithful Christians is that when we seemed to be gaining...not victory by any means, but perhaps some measure of ground -- we will suffer today a loss that will set us right back to the beginning: right back to the late sixties and the ascendancy of the destructive socialist mindset.

Homosexual activists are very much involved in this destructive process. Somehow they've gotten a lock on the family and the priesthood, the cornerstones of society. They won't let go.

In The Faithful Departed Phil shows how homosexuals rose to the top in the Church, and he shows how compromising their influence has been. They are still very much in control, conditioning every relationship for the worse.

As discouraged as I am over the secular matters of the day, and as frustrated as I get when I see people acting as if the scandal is over, there are signs of hope -- hope that I believe has been nurtured by Phil's work.

Today on the Catholic World News site you will see a story about a Vatican official's explanation of why even celibate homosexuals cannot be ordained to the priesthood. This teaching is hopeful in its delicacy and careful affirmation of what is so needed today: a strong faith in the true nature of the priesthood as a spiritual fatherhood, one which mirrors the love of God the Father.

‘He can even be without sin. But if he has this deeply seated tendency, he cannot be admitted to priestly ministry precisely because of the nature of the priesthood, in which a spiritual paternity is carried out. Here we are not talking about whether he commits sins, but whether this deeply rooted tendency remains.

I give thanks for this teaching and hope and pray that it will help heal today's challenge, and the challenge of every day as we continue to battle for the truth.

plain brown wrapper?

2008-10-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

It's happened again. A friend of a friend-- we'll call him Mr. A-- asked about The Faithful Departed in a Catholic bookstore, and was told the store didn't carry the book. When Mr. A asked why, the sales clerk replied quite honestly that his boss didn't want to cause any trouble with his bishop.

Mr. A persisted a bit, telling the clerk that he'd heard good things about my book. At that point the clerk, after glancing over his shoulder, leaned over the counter and said that he'd read the book, liked the book, and just happened to have a copy available for sale-- not on the shelves, but right there under the counter.

So Mr. A got his copy, the bookstore got its sale, and I'll get my commission. Everybody's happy, right?

Yet I can't help thinking that something is wrong-- yes, even morally wrong-- when a store sells a book that it won't allow on display.

(I don't want to identify the bookstore, because I don't want to cause trouble for the clerk. It was not the National Shrine bookstore-- where the same sort of thing was happening a few months ago-- but it was a store located in a major East Coast city.)

Catholic University newspaper picks up story of Shunning at the Shrine

2008-10-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

I myself never really made a connection between the fact that our daughter attends Catholic University and the banning of Phil's book. I thought of the Shrine bookstore as a separate entity from the University, to tell you the truth.

But Elizabeth Grden, author of an article appearing in the Oct. 5 edition of The Tower, the student-run newspaper on campus, thought there was a connection, and her piece has a couple of quotes from Deirdre. According to Deirdre, Elizabeth thought it was a bit embarrassing on the part of the school.

As Phil says, the bookstore can carry whichever books it likes. It's an interesting question, though -- what constitutes building up the solution to the terrible problem of sex abuse in the Church, and what is detrimental, preventing true healing from taking place?

And another question. Is this what's really bothering the administration of the Shrine?

It just seems like common sense to me that if you want to know what causes a problem, you must do more than a) bandy about superficial explanations and b) put on a happy face. Everything I had read on this terrible topic left me with an uneasy feeling -- that feeling you get when you just know that the real issues are being hidden.

On the one hand, the liberal media promoted their own agenda by claiming that the problem was due to priestly celibacy. Well, that can't be true -- priests have been celibate in the West for centuries, and while this problem comes and goes, it hasn't been endemic by any means, and has never been so much a fabric of Church life as it is now.

On the other, conservatives alternated between two ideas. Some claimed a media conspiracy, which would truly be a feat -- neither Phil nor I can have a conversation about the Scandal without someone telling us that they know someone abused by a priest. The Boston Globe isn't behind that.

Some strong Catholics attribute it to a breakdown in doctrine. This latter explanation can't be the whole story -- so many of the perpetrators and their bishops were considered among the most conservative or orthodox among us. Whole Traditionalist and conservative movements were disbanded or compromised because of this problem.

I remember very well a good friend telling me a decade ago that she was convinced that the liberals were out to get Fr. Geoghan because of his liturgical rectitude.

Well, Geoghan turned out to be one of the worst, a man who molested hundreds of children right under their parents' noses. Cardinal Law was always called one of the most conservative bishops (I wouldn't agree), yet he is the most disgraced for his stunning refusal to deal with even the most brazen examples that flounced their way across his diocese. (You can read about examples in Phil's book -- you will be beside yourself with anger!)

Only Phil's book gets at the root of the problem and brings about what one friend termed "a catharsis" (I'll try to get her letter to post here -- it's masterful). Only Phil's book explores the breakdown in authority by the bishops and the abdication of religious and ascetic practice.

Think about it: you can believe what you want, but it's how you act that really lends conviction to your beliefs. And right action takes quite a bit of practice; practice in denial of self. Have the bishops been practicing this denial? Have the priests? Do we find the means to teach them denial in the seminaries?

These are the questions that The Faithful Departed answers. And these are the answers that will bring true healing.

To take the other option, namely, putting on a happy face, well, it can be done. I suspect in the Curious Case of the Shunning at the Shrine the higher ups want to use "healing" as an excuse to run away from the surgeon's knife as fast as they can!

Fancy Nancy, Writer Ordinaire

2008-10-03T15:40:00.000-07:00

I had heard that Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi had written a book and it was basically bombing- this in spite of the fact that her PR team was working overtime to promote it. She was on TV, radio and there was actually print advertising.

It wasn't even banned from bookstores.

I checked today to see how bad, bad was and found that the book: "Know your Power: A Message to America's Daughters" is Amazon ranked #83,999.

Phil's book, "The Faithful Departed" is ranked at #31,951. (not his finest showing, that was in the #2K range)

Nancy Pelosi's book has received an average of 1.5 stars.

Phil's book has received an average of 4.5 stars.

Now I'm not surprised by these statistics, especially after seeing how dreadfully Ms. Pelosi has performed as Speaker of the House. In fact I bet she is just as good a writer as she is Speaker, something right around 1.5 stars.

So contrast that to Phil who while very well known in that state of Massachusetts and D.C. does not have the PR machine (as evidenced by this blog)and had book signings canceled and the book banned has far exceeded the woeful 1.5 rating. And his book sales have far outpaced Ms. Pelosi's sad showing.

So if you have a choice between buying Ms. Pelosi's book and Phil's book, I hope you will make the right choice.

The bishops can't take it.

2008-09-26T11:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday's Washington Times carries a story about how some Catholic bookstores have banned Phil's book.

In particular, the National Shrine bookstore had invited Phil to a book signing -- then they reneged and pulled the books off the shelves! Someone thought the book was important enough to warrant a visit by the author. Then, someone higher up thought this would cause a problem.

It's so odd, because first, Phil's book is written from an orthodox Catholic point of view. Second, most readers agree that although it's painful to read, in the end it gives the hope that only really understanding a problem can bestow. Third, it's not as if Catholic bookstores refrain from carrying books that could be described as controversial, a point made on the NRO blog by Mike Potemra.

"Contradict our theology if you want to, but don't you dare criticize the hierarchy," writes Potemra.

Hmmm....is protecting bishops from any criticism such a high priority that those in authority are willing to risk the embarrassment of such a blatantly self-serving move? Um, yes, that's what it looks like! Pathetic and ridiculous.

Bishop McCormack's legacy

2008-09-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

Bishop John McCormack has been leading the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, for 10 years now, and that milestone earns him a remarkable favorable piece in the Union Leader.

According to a sociologist from the University of New Hampshire, the bishop-- severely tarred by the sex-abuse scandal-- has "won back, I guess you could say, his credibility to lead the diocese."

How? By striking a plea-bargain deal with prosecutors, ignoring demands for his resignation, riding out the storm of criticism, and... surviving? Is that what passes for leadership?

The same sociologist argues that the bishop's deep involvement with the shuffling of predator-priests will "be like a passing incident or episode that has to be noted, but it won't end up defining his legacy."

What does define his legacy, then? Read on; the information is in the article.

When Bishop McCormack was installed, there were 130 parishes and 37 missions in the diocese. Now there are 102 parishes and 16 missions. There were 158 active priests. Now the number is under 100, headed for 75.

That's one legacy: a diocese in decline. As in Boston (where McCormack had previously handled priest-personnel problems-- with memorable results), so in New Hampshire the diocese is contracting. The Catholic faith is in retreat. The scandal and the contraction go hand in hand.

But in New Hampshire there is more: As I explained in The Faithful Departed, Bishop McCormack reached an agreement with the state's attorney general, surrendering his own autonomy. The bishop accepted state supervision of ecclesiastical affairs as an alternative to prosecution because-- as he conceded in a legal document-- the state had evidence "likely to sustain a conviction" on criminal charges.

Now there is a legacy.

Meet Phil for Breakfast in Virginia!

2008-09-22T05:56:00.000-07:00

Phil will be speaking at the Annual Brent Society Mass and Breakfast this coming Sunday, September 28.
There will be a Solemn High Mass at 10:30 with breakfast at 12:15 at St. Catherine of Siena parish, 1020 Springvale Rd. Great Falls, Va.

The topic is Building a Catholic Culture in an Often Hostile Environment -- and Phil always has a question-and-answer period and would love to discuss his book with you. There will be copies for sale and of course he would be happy to sign yours! Reservations are required: call 703-808-4277.

Phil's book has been selling well -- but people buy it at Barnes and Noble or on Amazon. It's not readily available in Catholic bookstores -- we've gotten comments from people mentioning that they asked for it at their local Catholic store and were told it wasn't there!

I find this puzzling, because as the topic of Sunday's talk shows, Phil is interested in working for a Catholic culture built on the firm foundation of truth and love. That's what the book is about. Fallen human nature means that facing faults squarely is the first step on this pilgrimage.

It seems to me that the establishment -- particularly here in the Boston area -- is more concerned with protecting their turf than with this perennial project of bringing Christ, the way and the truth, to every human endeavor.

Question for readers (and would-be readers)

2008-09-21T05:10:00.001-07:00

Has anyone found The Faithful Departed in a Catholic bookstore?

Please let me know. I'm curious to learn how far the informal 'boycott' stretches.

thanks

a generational perspective

2008-08-31T05:33:00.000-07:00

My cousin, who's a bit older than me, reports that after reading The Faithful Departed she bought a half-dozen copies to give to her friends. She loved it; but then maybe she wasn't completely objective. Now she's getting feedback from her friends.

Those friends, my cousin tells me, are also mostly older than me; in fact their children are roughly my age. The friends, she says, found the book very helpful because it gave them a better understanding of why their children have "just given up" on the Catholic faith.

That's a common phenomenon, don't you think? One generation is disappointed by what's happened to our faith; the next generation just stops practicing. The parents keep going to church, and coming home disappointed. The children, when they become adults, stop going.

It wasn't always that way. It doesn't have to be that way. It shouldn't be that way.

To reverse the trend, however, we need a different attitude, especially among Church leaders. We need to make pastoral plans on the assumption that we are spreading the faith, not trying to manage its decline.

Years ago, after moving back into my hometown of Dedham, I asked the pastor whether he had any plans to re-open the Catholic grammar school that I had attended. No, he replied; that's impossible now. We'll have to let it sit empty for a generation, he told me, so that maybe the next generation after that could re-open it.

That's not how it works. If today's children aren't being educated in the faith (and they aren't), their own children won't feel the need for a Catholic school. They won't be thinking about how to re-open the school, because they won't be thinking about the faith at all.

It's really very good to know that I've helped some parents to understand why their children have fallen away from the faith. I'd feel much better, though, if I thought that The Faithful Departed was helping some of those younger Catholics to realize what happened to them-- to realize that they were offered only an anemic version of the Catholic faith, and the full-strength version is still available, if you know where to look for it.

more friendly criticism

2008-08-16T05:47:00.000-07:00

One of the brothers lent me Philip F. Lawler's The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture, and I couldn't put it down.

Thus begins a very perceptive review by Brother Charles on his blog. He's a reader who understands the book-- largely because he understands the situation that the book describes.

Brother Charles has one significant criticism, which I can accept: that I should have been more careful in the use of the terms "liberal" and "conservative" as applied to Catholicism. It's true that those can be misleading terms. I'd have to disagree with Brother Charles when he claims the US bishops' pastoral letters on nuclear weapons and on economics were successful. (For a critique of the peace pastoral, see my book The Ultimate Weapon). But that's another argument.

Brother Charles is dead wrong when he describes his own entry as a "rantish and verbose review." Not at all. It's well written and insightful.

"a verifiable page-turner"

2008-08-11T14:38:00.000-07:00

It's not an entirely favorable treatment, but the review in the Metrowest Daily News definitely encourages readers to try The Faithful Departed.

Sample:

And even if you don’t agree with everything Philip F. Lawler has to say, you will still find this book verifiable page-turner with great history, personal stories and more than occasional moral dudgeon.

George Weigel reviews The Faithful Departed

2008-08-04T21:33:00.000-07:00

Weigel, who is known to everyone (you can read a short bio here), has written and edited 19 books and is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center ,has reviewed The Faithful Departed.

Weigel aptly describes the author when he says:

"Finally, there is The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston's Catholic Culture, by Philip Lawler: editor of Catholic World News, Red Sox zealot, and maker of legendary mint juleps on Derby Day."

Yes, exactly, someone who understands what really distinguishes a man from his contemporaries.

In summary, Weigel pretty much agrees with us that you have to read this book because:

Lawler's account of the unholy trinity that brought Boston Catholicism to its present, unhappy state - clerical sexual misbehavior, episcopal irresponsibility, and homosexuality - is right on the mark, and explains a lot beyond the Hub. The tale is told in sorrow rather than anger; the lessons drawn are the proper ones. Many Catholics understandably want to put the Long Lent of 2002 behind us. No one should do so without reading The Faithful Departed.[Emphasis mine]

So, don't believe us, take it from George Weigel, who has written a few books of his own.

To buy it now before the kids go back to school and life becomes a morass of details, go here.

The Iconic Tale -- a Review in The Catholic Response Magazine

2008-07-20T13:54:00.000-07:00

Not everyone gets Phil's book. The dumbest comment I've seen so far is from David Frumm, in which he takes Phil to task for misleading folks as to the book's content. Well, had Frumm read the book, he might not have been confused.

In contrast, Fr. Phillip W. De Vous understands that

Lawler’s book is really two books in one. Lawler gives extensive
background on the historical foundations of Catholicism in Massachusetts,
placing it within the context of the historical anti-Catholicism
that has been so much a part of the Church’s experience in
America....

In light of this history of the Church in Boston, as well as the development of
the cultural, moral, and political power the Church amassed over
the decades is where Lawler’s second book emerges – the story of
the priestly sex abuse crisis that has led to the most destabilizing
moment in the Catholic Church’s history in the United States. In
this regard, the history of Boston Catholicism’s “success” and its
subsequent collapse becomes the iconic tale through which the
general crisis affecting every corner of the Church in the United
States can find meaning and intelligibility. [my emphasis]

You might be interested in this perceptive review of Phil's book in Fr. Stravinskas' magazine, The Catholic Response. This review isn't available online except here.

the silent treatment

2008-07-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

The Albany Law School library has announced some new book purchases, and The Faithful Departed is on the list.

What's so remarkable about that? Nothing, really. I assume that many libraries have bought my book. But I'm beginning to wonder whether any Catholic schools would be willing to announce the purchase of this book-- which is, after all, about the contemporary problems of the Catholic Church.

This past weekend, a friend went to the desk at the bookstore of a major Catholic university and asked for The Faithful Departed. The bookstore manager was happy to provide a copy-- from under the counter; it wasn't on the shelves. The book wasn't actually wrapped in brown paper, but the message was clear nonetheless. My book is being sold on the sly, so that the bookstore won't catch flak from the clerical powers-that-be.

My friend's recent experience is not unique. In a different church-owned bookstore, in a different city, another friend asked for my book. The cheerful woman behind the counter said that she would be happy to order it. But hadn't it been on the display rack just a few days earlier, my friend inquired? Wouldn't the store order a new shipment, if they'd run out? The clerk smiled and repeated that she would be happy to order it, pointedly ignoring the questions. Notice that the clerk didn't ask my friend to repeat the title, nor did she need to consult her computer records to determine availability. She was evidently carrying out a policy that had been recently established in that store. There too my book had been pulled off the shelves, apparently as the result of a call from Someone Important.

AN INVERSION OF PRIORITIES

2008-07-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

[Interesting article about the abuse case which echoes many of the themes of The Faithful Departed.]

Why the Church Should Not Oppose Extending Statutes of Limitation

June 2008 By Charles Molineaux

The mission of the Catholic Church is evangelization -- the bringing of the Good News to mankind, the bringing of mankind to Christ. The word "evangelization" has been reclaimed from the televangelists, but to put it in the vernacular, we might say that it is about public relations, about putting out a message. The Church has had a continuing evangelization disaster, a public-relations disaster, on its hands since 2002, when revelations surrounding its internal abuse-and-cover- up scandal first came to light, partly as a result of an inversion of episcopal priorities: placing concern for property and the institutional Church ahead of concern for souls. The present public opposition, by most dioceses, to extending statutes of limitation continues the same mindset and exposes the institutional Church to the charge of hypocrisy.

Statutes of Limitation: 'Equity Aids the Vigilant'

A statute of limitation is a legislative act that limits the time within which a legal action must be brought. Statutes of limitation are, in short, pragmatic and practical devices to preclude stale legal claims. In a sense, the idea of statutes of limitation embodies the maxim (and maxims are often merely slogans, not necessarily embodying legal principles, much less natural law): Vigilantibus et non dormientibus aequitas subvenit -- that is, the law aids those who are vigilant, not those who sleep on their rights.

To read the rest from New Oxford Review- go here.

Charles Molineaux, K.M., is an attorney, international arbitrator, and freelance writer living in the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia. His articles and poetry have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Georgetown Academy, the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly, and The Catholic Lawyer. This article is based on a talk given at the October 2007 meeting of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists in New York. The opinions expressed are those of the author alone and do not necessarily represent those of organizations of which he is a member.

Symposium on Humanae Vitae -- Come meet Phil and get your book signed!

2008-06-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

This coming Saturday, June 28, St. Brendan's Parish in Bellingham, MA, will host a symposium on Humanae Vitae. You can read about the offerings here (scroll down for the information).

Phil will be speaking on the effects of dissent from this pivotal document. It seems like a very worthwhile program in general, and of course Phil will bring a box of books for sale. Get your copy signed!

We’ll see you Saturday!

Just when you think the dust has cleared....

2008-06-23T06:43:00.000-07:00

... tornado season hits.

Some objections that I hear to reading The Faithful Departed are-

1. Isn't the crisis pretty much over? Can we please get back to our regularly scheduled programming now?

Well if you've been following the story in Vermont (of personal interest to me since I grew up there and had not 1 but 2 pedophile priests in parishes from a total of 5! )you may be familiar with the latest blow. With only one judgment the Diocese is on the hook for $ 8.7 million. (This perpetrator has 17 more pending suits and in another show of stunning incompetence, they claim they have an insurance policy that will cover some of it but can't find it and have sued the insurance company for a copy. Really.)

2. Secondly I hear, "Isn't the book depressing? I mean we all know what happened."

I didn't know what had happened even though I've been following the story slavishly (as family commitments allow) and ever since I saw the jaw dropping press conference in Boston when the Archdiocese's files were finally released. And the lies were exposed. Finally.

This book identifies the way efficiency (with apologies to Frank Gilbreth) was substituted for ministry and led to an environment where such abuse was able to continue for years. Victim after victim, parish after parish, lawsuit after lawsuit.

3. Finally, with the pending closure of Holy Trinity in Boston scheduled for June 30th we are reminded that our loss will continue into the near and perhaps not so near future. And the future isn't bright, but as the conclusion of this book reminds us, Our Lord needed only a dozen men to evangelize the whole world. Surely we've grown some since then.

I don't know, this book fired me up to continue working for a transformation of the culture to reflect Catholic principles. It reminded me that the Church will prevail, she's worth fighting for, and is still something to be proud of.

I think there are still a few First Editions left. But I wouldn't wait.

Inside the Vatican review of TFD

2008-06-21T13:19:00.000-07:00

My review of The Faithful Departed has just appeared in the June/July issue of Inside the Vatican magazine. That version was edited for space; here is the full-length version:

Dangerous Men: The Faithful Departed: The Collapse of Boston’s Catholic Culture, by Philip F. Lawler; Encounter Books; 2008; Reviewed by John Mallon

Thanks,
John
JohnMallon.net

Spectator review

2008-06-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

Here's a review of Faithful Departed that appeared in the May 2008 issue of the American Spectator.