The money changers aren't just running the temple, they're planning to sell it off to cover molestation lawsuits, according to this scattershot exposé. Investigative journalist Berry (Vows of Silence) surveys a grab bag of financial irregularities in the Catholic Church: collection plate offerings siphoned into archdiocese slush funds, lavish bishops' mansions, and petty embezzlement; unfunded clergy pension funds; hush money paid to a bishop's gay lover; a scheme to flip underpriced Church properties for profit involving a Vatican cardinal and the then-boyfriend of movie star Anne Hathaway. He links it all to the American Church's sexual abuse crisis; huge legal settlements, he notes, have been followed by the closure of parishes and sale of churches, leading to vigils pitting defiant parishioners against bottom-line–obsessed bishops. The author sets his muckraking within a larger moral indictment of the Church that makes it hard to follow the money; details of financial shenanigans are dispensed in meandering, disorganized driblets amid anguished rehashes of pedophile-priest scandals and extraneous backstories of Catholic dissidents. Berry's revelations are dispiriting; he gives us a troubling if blurry portrait of a corrupt, worldly Church hierarchy that's callously out of touch with a flock that expected something holier. (June)
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Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church
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Render Unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169179248 |
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Publisher: | Penguin Random House |
Publication date: | 06/07/2011 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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