The Church that Forgot Christ

The book flap of Pulitzer Prize-winner Jimmy Breslin's The Church that Forgot Christ claims that this book will detail the reasons that Breslin has been torn about his allegiance to the Catholic church. Apparently, Breslin makes a call to give Catholicism a booster shot of Christianity. The back cover features favorable reviews from the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and Frank McCourt (2 of my absolute favorite writers), as well as one of my favorite historians, Studs Terkel. I thought this had a lot of promise!

Instead, it became my first 0-star review.

Breslin does indeed take on the Catholic Church, of which he is a member. He challenges three areas. First (and by far foremost) is the sex abuse scandal. At least 2/3 of the book covers that. The rest covers criticism of their supposed monopoly (at least in New York City) of cemetary plots and of the amount of money made by Bishops. He also goes on several tangents to talk about other issues, that I'll mention later.

Oh yeah, and he DISSES MOTHER THERESA. Yes, you read that correctly.

Breslin has some good material to work with. The sexual crimes committed by priests and then covered up by some members of the church heirarchy was and still is horrific. His point about Bishops making too much money (and cathedrals being over-decorated) has some weight. There are also significant issues with Church heirarchy. He held all of the ingredients for a wonderful argument but instead wrote a stinking turd.

Let's begin with his main issue - the pedophile priests. This issue was (and is) absolutely horrific. The criminal acts are disgusting, of course, but equally to blame are all of the Bishops who didn't do anything except reassign the priests. This coverup happened all the way up to the level of Pope. Terrible and awful. However, the viciousness with which Breslin attacks virtually all priests (with the exception of a few close friends of the order) far exceeds the limits of reasonability. Yes, many awful things happened. But only a VERY small percentage of priests committed sexual abuse of some kind. There's a lot of priests in the U.S., though, so that leaves a large number of stories to pull from. There are an awful lot of really excellent well-behaving priests out there.

The two chapters about Catholic funeral plots was lost on me. Breslin seems to think that one of the greatest crimes of the Catholic churches is that they own funeral plots in NYC and charge people to use them. Um, what? What does this have to do with "forgetting Christ?" Or pedophiles? Or legitimate criticism?

His two chapters on the excesses of Bishops were a nice break from the other angry chapters. Bishops are like royalty. Major cathedrals are filled with gold, jewels, and other unnecessarily expensive decorations. They come off very much like televangelists who make millions and revel in it. That's a legit concern, but Breslin mostly glosses over this.

Breslin's greatest flaw in this book, though, is the inane assertion that the Catholic church uses issues like abortion, homosexuality, and the sainthood of Mother Theresa to make people forget about pedophiles. WHAT? Abortion is undoubtedly a terrible, terrible tragedy. Breslin seems to think it's pretty great. Homosexuality may be a smoke screen, but honestly I don't hear much from the Catholic church concerning that issue. Finally, the sainthood of Mother Theresa...I have no words. He gives a rather unfavorable opinion about her, saying that she was a mean-spirited nasty privileged  woman who only did her service in India to get media attention. And because she is so anti-abortion, she contributed to the coverup of pedophiliac priests.

This book has no journalistic integrity whatsoever. Crazy stats are referenced, but not cited or given any source whatsoever - just "some sources say..." Some of these "estimates" are later referred to as facts. Terrible.

This book is complete garbage. Any good points that Breslin makes are marred by all of the nonsense - the anger, the illogical points, and the ridiculous fake stats and assertions. This ranks down there with the worst Fox News drivel. There's nothing to recommend about this book, and absolutely no reason to read it unless you are a mindless zombie with destroying the Catholic church on your agenda. I left the Catholic church (but not Christianity), but even I could find almost nothing of merit to add to the discussion about some of the issues surrounding the Catholic church. (As a side note, while I have my issues with it, I still think the Catholic church is mostly good, and a definite denomination through which one can know Jesus and experience his love and grace). In my opinion, NOBODY should EVER read this book.

Rating: 0 out of 5 stars (Breslin should have known better than publish this)


63/100 books, still on track