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e11ietran's review against another edition
5.0
left speechless so many times reading this book. Just unreal. Great piece of journalism!
amydavis770's review against another edition
3.0
A difficult read....I wonder if the movie would be better. The writing is so matter-of-fact it was hard to take in. But an important subject and a book worth reading.
eileeners's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of those books where I'm not sure if I should rate it a 5 or a 1. There's a part of me that feels wrong rating a book about such terrible things a 5, but I suppose I'm rating the book not what happened. So I'm going with 5.
I'm amazed at how little of this I knew after living through it as a Catholic. Granted I was only 12 when the story broke, but what I remember being told about this was so little it can hardly be counted as true. I have a lot more processing to do on this...
I'm amazed at how little of this I knew after living through it as a Catholic. Granted I was only 12 when the story broke, but what I remember being told about this was so little it can hardly be counted as true. I have a lot more processing to do on this...
jbrieu's review against another edition
5.0
Hard to read but essential to understand how endemic the problem is. It’s not a coincidence that those things happen under this organization. It’s a direct cause.
tracya210's review against another edition
3.0
After watching the movie Spotlight I wanted to learn more- however this does not really offer additional insight- probably one of the few times that the movie is more enlightening than the book.
actually_juliette's review against another edition
4.0
When I was in grammar school, we had an hour of religious instruction by the one of the priests every week. During one class, the priest took off his plastic Roman collar, and we were all scandalized. He laughed and said, “This is just part of my uniform. It doesn’t make me special. I’m not different from your mom and dad.”
I don’t remember much from those classes, but I remember that, and it’s colored my perception of the clergy. It was so different from what we were told until that moment. Priests aren’t a higher class of people. Ordination didn’t bestow mystical powers. Priests are just people.
I don’t think anyone can be emotionally prepared to read Betrayal unless they read the original Spotlight reports. I didn’t. I only knew the outlines of the scandal, and that alone shocked and angered me. I expected to be horrified when I read the details, but I didn’t expect the waves of nausea and the profound shame that my Church did this.
Betrayal documents the abuses committed by priests, notably in the archdiocese of Boston, on children. Some of those children were as young as four-years-old when they were sexually assaulted or raped by the men their parents told them they could trust. These priests used the respect that their vocations brought them so that they could insinuate themselves into families. They used the prayers we are taught as children while raping the children.
When these children finally told their parents and their parents confronted the hierarchy, the hierarchy did not punish the abusers. They simply moved the abuser to a different parish with no warning to the new parish. When other priests and religious sisters found out the truth, they covered for the abuser: there are accounts of another priest witnessing the crime and walking away. In fact, the Church blamed the parents and the children for the abuse.
When the Globe's story broke, other Catholics turned against the families who reported the abuse and sought justice for their children. They, too, put the institution before their neighbors.
It was one betrayal after another betrayal after another.
I wondered Law thought when he sought to conceal the crimes. Did he think he was doing God’s work? Did he think children were less important than men who masqueraded as priests? Did he think that this rampant abuse would stay hidden? Did he forget that Christ said, “Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known” (Matthew 10:26)?
And it was revealed.
I have no sympathy for the members of the Church hierarchy who put the crimes of men ahead of children. I believe in divine justice, and I look forward to the day when they own their sins to God and their victims and are punished forever.
Every Roman Catholic needs to read this book so they know the heinous crimes that the Church perpetrated. Law may not have thought about the laity when he hid crimes of the men who worked in his diocese, but we are all one body. The hierarchy’s sins are our own if we allow this to happen. If we allow future crimes to be hidden and if we do not believe (God help us) future victims, then we will be complaisant in the sins of these rapists.
I don’t remember much from those classes, but I remember that, and it’s colored my perception of the clergy. It was so different from what we were told until that moment. Priests aren’t a higher class of people. Ordination didn’t bestow mystical powers. Priests are just people.
”I remember reading the first Spotlight reports and just getting furious,” recalled Massachusetts Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly . . . . “I found myself yelling out loud, My God, this is about children!”
(p. 125)
I don’t think anyone can be emotionally prepared to read Betrayal unless they read the original Spotlight reports. I didn’t. I only knew the outlines of the scandal, and that alone shocked and angered me. I expected to be horrified when I read the details, but I didn’t expect the waves of nausea and the profound shame that my Church did this.
Betrayal documents the abuses committed by priests, notably in the archdiocese of Boston, on children. Some of those children were as young as four-years-old when they were sexually assaulted or raped by the men their parents told them they could trust. These priests used the respect that their vocations brought them so that they could insinuate themselves into families. They used the prayers we are taught as children while raping the children.
When these children finally told their parents and their parents confronted the hierarchy, the hierarchy did not punish the abusers. They simply moved the abuser to a different parish with no warning to the new parish. When other priests and religious sisters found out the truth, they covered for the abuser: there are accounts of another priest witnessing the crime and walking away. In fact, the Church blamed the parents and the children for the abuse.
When the Globe's story broke, other Catholics turned against the families who reported the abuse and sought justice for their children. They, too, put the institution before their neighbors.
It was one betrayal after another betrayal after another.
I wondered Law thought when he sought to conceal the crimes. Did he think he was doing God’s work? Did he think children were less important than men who masqueraded as priests? Did he think that this rampant abuse would stay hidden? Did he forget that Christ said, “Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known” (Matthew 10:26)?
And it was revealed.
I have no sympathy for the members of the Church hierarchy who put the crimes of men ahead of children. I believe in divine justice, and I look forward to the day when they own their sins to God and their victims and are punished forever.
Every Roman Catholic needs to read this book so they know the heinous crimes that the Church perpetrated. Law may not have thought about the laity when he hid crimes of the men who worked in his diocese, but we are all one body. The hierarchy’s sins are our own if we allow this to happen. If we allow future crimes to be hidden and if we do not believe (God help us) future victims, then we will be complaisant in the sins of these rapists.
sjswenson22's review against another edition
4.0
4.5/5 — A terribly interesting book about a horrific subject.
plc7carinosa's review against another edition
4.0
Betrayal is a very appropriate title for this book, with a very simple moral to the story... there are bad people everywhere and anywhere.
I find my biggest frustration is living in a country that claims to separate church and state and yet priests seem to be above the law.
Having parents believing a stranger over their own children, baffles me. What's worse is the lack of resources to help victims. All of our systems are so diluted and lack preparation that in the face of crisis would rather pretend the issue doesn't exist rather than facing it head on.
I don't place blame on one person, the danger children were put in the hands of priests extends to many people. The worst part is that many victims could have been saved if the church would get its head out its own ass and stops believing that conditions can be "prayed away." This is why society digresses so much.
Women have little to no say in the church and yet they are the ones that give birth to future priests, canon law does not mandate celibacy and yet it is enforced as if that's helping, homosexuality is seen as a sin and yet child molestation is hidden. People who have been divorced are shunned and yet priests who commit crimes are only sent to another ministry. This is not something that happened in the 18th century, all of these scandals were still coming out even a couple of years back.
As a disclaimer I am not proclaiming a war against the Catholic religion, I identify as a Catholic myself, what I can't stand is the ignorance that is building ministries today. People who are blinded and don't seem to care to question what goes on in a church. I have also served many ministries and I can personally say that people take their roles as God given and only seem to serve as a plug preventing change to enter the church. People, like myself, who begin to question are slowly pushed out.
You want to know why young men are no longer choosing to become priests, why women don't want to become nuns, or why people don't associate with the church? It's not a lack of faith, it's the old people still sitting in the front desk judging you the second you walk in. Reading this book doesn't surprise me, it doesn't make me paranoid but it does keep me in alert for my future children.
I find my biggest frustration is living in a country that claims to separate church and state and yet priests seem to be above the law.
Having parents believing a stranger over their own children, baffles me. What's worse is the lack of resources to help victims. All of our systems are so diluted and lack preparation that in the face of crisis would rather pretend the issue doesn't exist rather than facing it head on.
I don't place blame on one person, the danger children were put in the hands of priests extends to many people. The worst part is that many victims could have been saved if the church would get its head out its own ass and stops believing that conditions can be "prayed away." This is why society digresses so much.
Women have little to no say in the church and yet they are the ones that give birth to future priests, canon law does not mandate celibacy and yet it is enforced as if that's helping, homosexuality is seen as a sin and yet child molestation is hidden. People who have been divorced are shunned and yet priests who commit crimes are only sent to another ministry. This is not something that happened in the 18th century, all of these scandals were still coming out even a couple of years back.
As a disclaimer I am not proclaiming a war against the Catholic religion, I identify as a Catholic myself, what I can't stand is the ignorance that is building ministries today. People who are blinded and don't seem to care to question what goes on in a church. I have also served many ministries and I can personally say that people take their roles as God given and only seem to serve as a plug preventing change to enter the church. People, like myself, who begin to question are slowly pushed out.
You want to know why young men are no longer choosing to become priests, why women don't want to become nuns, or why people don't associate with the church? It's not a lack of faith, it's the old people still sitting in the front desk judging you the second you walk in. Reading this book doesn't surprise me, it doesn't make me paranoid but it does keep me in alert for my future children.