In the Closet of the Vatican


Book Description

The New York Times Bestseller - Revised and Expanded "[An] earth-shaking exposé of clerical corruption" - National Catholic Reporter The arrival of Frédéric Martel's In the Closet of the Vatican, published worldwide in eight languages, sent shockwaves through the religious and secular world. The book's revelations of clericalism, hypocrisy, cover-ups and widespread homosexuality in the highest echelons of the Vatican provoked questions that the most senior Vatican officials--and the Pope himself--were forced to act upon; it would go on to become a New York Times bestseller. Now, almost a year after the book's first publication, Frédéric Martel reflects in a new foreword on the effect the book has had and the events that have come to light since it was first released. In the Closet of the Vatican describes the double lives of priests--including the cardinals living with their young "assistants" in luxurious apartments whilst professing humility and chastity--the cover-up of numerous cases of sexual abuse; sinister scheming in the Vatican; political conspiracy overseas in Argentina and Chile, and the resignation of Benedict XVI. From his unique position as a respected journalist with uninhibited access to some of the Vatican's most influential people and private spaces, Martel presents a shattering account of a system rotten to its very core.




The Vatican Diaries


Book Description

The New York Times–bestselling inside look at one of the world’s most powerful and mysterious institutions For more than twenty-five years, John Thavis held one of the most remarkable journalistic assignments in the world: reporting on the inner workings of the Vatican. In The Vatican Diaries, Thavis reveals Vatican City as a place struggling to define itself in the face of internal and external threats, where Curia cardinals fight private wars and sexual abuse scandals threaten to undermine papal authority. Thavis (author of The Vatican Prophecies: Investigating Supernatural Signs, Apparitions, and Miracles in the Modern Age) also takes readers through the politicking behind the election of Pope Francis and what we might expect from his papacy. The Vatican Diaries is a perceptive, compelling, and provocative account of this singular institution and will be of interest to anyone intrigued by the challenges faced by religion in an increasingly secularized world.




The Pope Is Not Gay!


Book Description

The Pope is Not Gay! is an irreverent history of homophobic and sexist obscurantism in the Holy Roman Church and an endoscopic examination of its greatest contemporary advocate, Pope Benedict XVI. In his inimitable style, Angelo Quattrocchi traces the evolution of Joseph Ratzinger's life, beginning with the pope's childhood in Nazi Germany, his membership of the Hitler youth in Bavaria and his conscription into the German anti-aircraft corps. His has been a startling career, a story that helps explain his development as a reactionary theologian and culminates in his carefully planned election to the papacy in 2005. Quattrocchi contrasts the Pope's doctrinal rigidity on issues such as birth control, abortion, and homosexuality to his extravagant attire and his controversial relationship with his private secretary, Cardinal Georg Gnswein. Rigidity on all fronts. Illustrated throughout and including Ratzinger's key writings on homosexuality as an appendix, The Pope is Not Gay! sheds new light on the Catholic Church's sustained interference in contemporary politics and society and the hypocrisy of its pontiffs past and present.




God's Bankers


Book Description

New York Times Bestseller: A “deeply researched” exposé of the money and the clerics-turned-financiers at the heart of the Vatican (Chicago Tribune). From a master chronicler of legal and financial misconduct, a magnificent investigation nine years in the making, God’s Bankers traces the political intrigue of the Catholic Church in “a meticulous work that cracks wide open the Vatican’s legendary, enabling secrecy” (Kirkus Reviews). Decidedly not about faith, belief in God, or religious doctrine, this book is about the church’s accumulation of wealth and its byzantine financial entanglements across the world. Telling the story through two hundred years of prelates, bishops, cardinals, and the popes who oversee it all, Gerald Posner uncovers an eyebrow-raising account of money and power in one of the world’s most influential organizations. God’s Bankers is a revelatory and astounding saga marked by poisoned business titans, murdered prosecutors, and mysterious deaths written off as suicides; a carnival of characters from popes and cardinals to financiers and mobsters to kings and prime ministers; and a set of moral and political circumstances that not only clarify the church’s aims and ambitions, but reflect the larger tensions of more recent history. Posner also assesses Pope Francis’s potential to overcome the resistance to change in the Vatican’s Machiavellian inner court and rein in the excesses of its seemingly uncontrollable financial quagmire. “As exciting as a mystery thriller” (Providence Journal), this book reveals with extraordinary precision how the Vatican has evolved from a foundation of faith to a corporation of extreme wealth and power. “Reads like a sprawling novel, full of complex characters and surprising twists. . . . Readers interested in issues involving religion and international finance will find Posner’s work a compelling read.” —Library Journal “An extraordinarily intricate tale of intrigue, corruption and organized criminality. . . . Posner’s gifts as a reporter and storyteller are most vividly displayed in a series of lurid chapters on the American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the arch-Machiavellian who ran the Vatican Bank from 1971-1989.” —The New York Times Book Review




The Pink and the Black


Book Description

[While acknowledging that the development of France's homosexual communities was influenced by America, Martel highlights the differences arising from the fact that homosexuality has not been criminalised in France as in the United States] -- back cover.




The Silence of Sodom


Book Description

The past decade has seen homosexual scandals in the Catholic Church becoming ever more visible, and the Vatican's directives on homosexuality becoming ever more forceful, begging the question Mark Jordan tries to answer here: how can the Catholic Church be at once so homophobic and so homoerotic? His analysis is a keen and readable study of the tangled relationship between male homosexuality and modern Catholicism. "[Jordan] has offered glimpses, anecdotal stories, and scholarly observations that are a whole greater than the sum of its parts. . . . If homosexuality is the guest that refuses to leave the table, Jordan has at least shed light on why that is and in the process made the whole issue, including a conflicted Catholic Church, a little more understandable."—Larry B. Stammer, Los Angeles Times "[Jordan] knows how to present a case, and with apparently effortless clarity he demonstrates the church's double bind and how it affects Vatican rhetoric, the training of priests, and ecclesiastical protectiveness toward an army of closet cases. . . . [T]his book will interest readers of every faith."—Daniel Blue, Lambda Book Report A 2000 Lambda Literary Award Finalist




African Catholic


Book Description

Elizabeth Foster examines how French imperialists and the Africans they ruled imagined the religious future of sub-Saharan Africa in the years just before and after decolonization. The story encompasses the transition to independence, Catholic contributions to black intellectual currents, and efforts to create an authentically "African" church.




A Gospel of Shame


Book Description

The relentless crescendo of revelations of sexual abuse in the nation's Catholic churches has rocked the nation. Just how widespread is child sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy? And why hasn't the Catholic church done more to stop it?In A Gospel of Shame, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalists Elinor Burkett and Frank Bruni provide the answers to these questions and more. The answers, however, turn out to be infuriating and heartbreaking, difficult to accept but impossible to dismiss. The authors thoroughly document dozens of cases across the country and reveal how this heinous abuse of trust has been tacitly sanctioned by the Church's silence.




Radical Reinvention


Book Description

As someone who clocked more time in mosh pits and at pro–choice rallies than kneeling in a pew, Kaya Oakes was not necessarily the kind of Catholic girl the Vatican was after. But even while she immersed herself in the punk rock scene and proudly called herself an atheist, something kept pulling her back to the religion of her Irish roots. After running away from the Church for thirty years, Kaya decides to return. Her marriage is under stress, her job is no longer satisfying, and with multiple deaths in her family, a darkness looms large. In spite of her frustration with Catholic conservatism, nothing brings her peace like Mass. After years of searching to no avail for a better religious fit, she realizes that the only way to find harmony—in her faith and her personal life—is to confront the Church she'd left behind. Rebellious and hypercritical, Kaya relearns the catechisms and achieves the sacraments, all while trying to reconcile her liberal beliefs with contemporary Church philosophy. Along the way she meets a group of feisty feminist nuns, a "pray–and–bitch" circle, an all–too handsome Italian priest, and a motley crew of misfits doing their best to find their voices in an outdated institution. This is a story of transformation, not only of Kaya's from ex–Catholic to amateur theologian, but ultimately of the cultural and ethical pushes for change that are rocking the world's largest religion to its core.




The Dark Box


Book Description

A bestselling journalist exposes the connection between the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse crisis and the practice of confession.