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Garry Wills:
Taking on the Catholic Church

Heidi Schlumpf -- 5/29/00
Garry Wills
Garry Wills is certainly not the first person to criticize the Catholic Church, but he may be the first Pulitzer Prize winner to do so. The renowned historian, scholar and author--not to mention lifelong practicing Catholic--has turned his critical eye and pen toward the modern papacy, whose intellectual dishonesty he declares to be nothing short of sinful. In Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (Doubleday, June) Wills argues that the Church hierarchy's distortions, evasions and flights from the truth have led to a lack of credibility that threatens to render the institution irrelevant. "There's a tremendous diversion of energy in defending positions that have nothing to do with the Gospel," says Wills, adjunct professor of history at Northwestern University.


Like many Catholics, Wills has found himself frustrated by the Church's attempts to ignore, cover up or lie about priest pedophilia scandals, as well as by its teachings about women and priestly celibacy and its silence during the Holocaust. Although several authors have tackled these subjects, Wills sees them as part of a larger problem--an overarching attitude that insists that the Church is always right.

Wills, considered by many a modern Renaissance man, is no stranger to cultural critique. He has received numerous awards for his nearly two dozen books, including two National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for Lincoln at Gettysburg (Simon & Schuster). He possesses the appropriate Catholic pedigree, complete with years of Catholic schooling (including a stint as a Jesuit seminarian), longtime membership at university-affiliated parishes and scores of friends who are priests. In fact, concern about priest friends who were expected to defend teachings even they found to be deceptive prompted Wills to write Papal Sin. "These men are asked to go along with a lie, essentially," he tells PW, suggesting that such expectations may help account for the dramatic decline in vocations to the priesthood. The alternative, Wills contends, is that the Catholic Church listen to the great "truth-tellers" from its history, especially St. Augustine, who considered ecclesial dishonesty the worst kind of lying. Wills claims Augustine as a personal hero. He wrote a biography of Augustine for the Penguin Lives series and is currently translatingAugustine's Confessions from the Latin.

As a lay person teaching at a non-Catholic school, Wills isn't worried about retaliation from Church authorities for the stinging critique in his new book. "I can say what my priest friends can't," he notes. As for those who suggest that Catholics who disagree with the Church should just leave it, Wills takes issue with their definition: "It's a misnomer to call the magisterium the Church. The pope isn't the Church. The teachings of the Church are not the Church. The Church is the people of God."

Doubleday senior editor Trace Murphy expects Papal Sin to be an influential book "because of the intellectual rigor Wills brings to the subject matter." Doubleday has already gone back to press for another 25,000 copies after an initial print run of 32,500. The publisher plans a major advertising campaign and will be sending copies to Catholic and mainstream commentators. "This is of interest to more than just a Catholic audience," explains publicist Angela Baggetta. A five-city tour in June will take the author to New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. Papal Sin is a main selection of the Book of the Month Club.
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