Crimes of the Father
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From one of our greatest living writers comes a “powerful story” (New York Post) about sin cloaked in sacrament, shame that enforces silence, and the courage of one priest who dares to speak the truth.
Sent away from his native Australia to Canada due to his radical preaching against the Vietnam War, apartheid, and other hot button issues, Father Frank Docherty now enjoys a satisfying career as a psychologist and monk. When he returns to Australia to lecture on the future of celibacy and the Catholic Church, he is unwittingly pulled into the lives of two people—a young man and an ex-nun—both of whom claim to have been sexually abused by a prominent monsignor.
As a member of the commission investigating sex abuse within the Church, and as a man of character and conscience, Docherty decides he must confront each party involved and try to bring the matter to the attention of both the Church and the secular authorities. What follows will shake him to the core and call into question many of his own choices.
This riveting and timely novel is “the work of a richly experienced and compassionate writer [with] an understanding of a deeply wounded culture” (Sydney Morning Herald). It is an exploration of what it is to be a person of faith in the modern world, and of the courage it takes to face the truth about an institution you love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The scandal involving the sexual abuse of children by the clergy of the Catholic Church in Australia fuels this well-intentioned if oddly passive novel by the author of Schindler's List. Set in 1996, the story follows likeable and intelligent Father Frank Docherty, exiled to Canada decades earlier for his liberal political views, who returns briefly to Sydney to see his aging mother and deliver a speech on the relationship between celibacy and child abuse. Coincidentally, the woman who drives his cab from the airport was abused as a girl by "smarmy" Monsignor Leo Shannon (the brother of a woman, Maureen, with whom Docherty was once tempted to break his vows of chastity). So was another young man who recently committed suicide, Docherty discovers. The novel moves awkwardly among scenes from Docherty's earlier life, a case history of the cab driver, the memories of Maureen, and the present building of a case against Monsignor Shannon. While the subject matter is timely and relevant, and Keneally makes a clear distinction between the virtues of the "misrepresented and abused" Jesus and the "apparatchiks of the Church," the novel comes across as closer to essay than effective narrative.
