How about a big book about how there's been a crappy response to sexual abuse within the Church over the years? Wouldn't that be edifying and useful?
The lesson to be learned is, of course, to turn away from sin and embrace the Truth. But do we need a book like this to understand that? This will probably be used by malcontents and detractors as a source of unending Church bashing.
There is plenty of sin in the world and with as many Catholics as there are, I would think a book like this is a minor avenue of material for the Church basher. The Church basher is going to bash on the basis of sin regardless. The idea of the wheat and the chaff seems to have totally missed those judging entire religions based on supposedly being able to know them by their fruit.
Like Chesterton says, you wouldn't judge a medicine by those who refuse to take it ...
I doubt Thomas Deary will even bother to read it.
I think Chesterton is right: you can't judge The Church on the basis of the behaviors of those who refuse to follow her teaching.
On the other hand, if it was revealed that a pharmacist was dispensing arsenic instead of medicine, I'd scream like hell. If it turned out the pharmacist's activities were well known, and even documented, by other pharmacists AND by their supervisors, and that the only thing done was to move the poisoning pharmacist from store to store and district to district? And then to have such supervisors, when their mendacity, and depraved indifference are revealed, to try and cloak themselves in false humility and claim they were acting out of love???
Why, I could NEVER trust them again, could I? Only a fool with a death-wish would.
I blogged on this book back in April when I received the press release for it. It's basic thesis is that the very structure of the Church is at fault and the problem in the sex abuse crisis is, wait for it... celibacy!
In other words, it's the same old heterodox baloney in a new package.