The most recommended books about clerics

The main author of this book, Father Thomas Doyle, served at the Vatican Embassy in the 1980s and became an expert in the canonical and pastoral dimensions of priestly sexual abuse.

He has worked with the victims and their families, the abuser priests, the bishops, and superiors, and has developed policies for dealing with cases of sexual abuse by the clergy.

His advocacy work for the victims has resulted in large settlements for many of them, and his exposure of this ugly problem has caused huge financial and psychological stress for the Catholic Church worldwide.

At this point, most people in the world realize priestly sexual abuse is a critical threat to the integrity of Catholicism, and this book is the best source on this deep-seated problem.

This deep book reveals the Church has grappled with this devastating internal problem from its earliest years.

I read Death Comes for the Archbishop when I was fifteen. It was my first encounter with literary prose that was not assigned by a teacher, and it changed my life for the better by giving me a better understanding of myself and the human drama. I thought at the time: This is the best book I ever read. I re-read the novel in 2017 and thought: This is the best book I ever read. There’s no sex in it, but it’s a love story between two men. Cather’s novel has guided my work as a writer for more than sixty-five years.

Devious might bit a bit heavy-handed with the religious references, but it makes sense given its location and the types of murders occurring in this book.

I enjoyed how the author worked those references into the overall mystery with not just the location, but the clues and other discoveries along the way. There also is a big twist behind the true killer in this book that I really enjoyed reading, too.

I wish I could explain it in more detail, but that would give away major spoilers! 

Garrow’s Pulitzer-prize winning biography is the first complete, almost minute-by-minute, account of King’s life based on extensive research in the King documents, interviews with dozens of his associates, and a deep understanding of American history in that period. Garrow picks up the story just as King comes to Montgomery, and there are other books to read about the young King before 1954, but from there forward, Garrow’s is the indispensable account, and was the first book to really delve into the FBI’s surveillance of King.

This book is based on reports, reflections, and correspondence of prison chaplains who interacted with imprisoned Nazi perpetrators awaiting trial and, in some instances, execution.

What the prisoners confessed to the clergy and, even more, the criminal behavior they failed to acknowledge I find so revealing. The prisoners felt guilty for individual personal transgressions (like cheating on their wives). Here, they had chosen to sin. But they felt no guilt about their participation in genocide since they saw themselves as having acted perforce on behalf of the community of the “Volk.”

Kellenbach brings this astonishing fact home in a way that is simultaneously horrifying and empathic. After reading her book, I finally came to understand what Adolf Eichmann meant when he claimed that he was “the victim of a fallacy” at his trial in Jerusalem.

A short book even by our standards, The Warden was Trollope’s first novel. He went on to write forty-seven more, as many short stories and nonfiction books as well, all while working as an important official with the Royal Mail. I love Trollope’s books because he was a master at creating life-like characters who may be filled with flaws, but are always portrayed with loving humour. While The Warden is about a controversy over how the Church of England manages a poor house, the story is carried by the complex people and relationships at the centre of the squabble. This is the first book in the Chronicle of Barsetshire series which spins out the lives of these characters across decades.

Whether it’s moving onto a new home, job, school, or cellphone, we can all relate to upheaval. Having done much of the latter, I get why young Turner Buckminster doesn’t like Maine much. He sees his life on one trajectory, and now he’s cut adrift on another.

I’m in awe of the way Gary D. Schmidt uses this simple setup to tell a wider story of a friendship that develops between Turner and local black girl Lizzie Bright Griffin that transcends the harsh racism of the times.

The gut punch came when I learned the basis of this book is the true history of Malaga Island, Maine, where an entire village of nearly fifty people was uprooted. Some, like Lizzie, were condemned to life in a mental institution.

John Updike, writing about golf? Well, why not? This novel, from one of America’s greatest writers, is something of a riff on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, in a story about a disgraced minister sent off on a sabbatical. He keeps a daily journal, which is what makes up the novel.

Naturally, this being Updike, there are stories about his affairs, his drinking, his family relationships, and more. But there are also wonderful passages about his golf game. Like much of Updike’s work, this book is thought-provoking and an interesting window into the American mind of the 20th century.

In this engaging read, Patricia Bell-Scott explores the close relationship shared between Black feminist activist, lawyer, and writer Pauli Murry and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. This is a story of two divergent lives becoming intertwined as both women fought for self-definition and for their respective causes. One of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, Murray did not hesitate to criticize the Roosevelts. Nonetheless she was not only able to secure support from Eleanor Roosevelt for civil rights causes but also transform, in many instances, the First Lady’s thinking on racial affairs. This book takes us beyond FDR’s death and demonstrates the lasting impact that Black leaders, who emerged during the 1930s and 1940s, and Eleanor Roosevelt subsequently made on Black American lives specifically and the nation as a whole.

What persuaded a priest to join El Salvador’s largest guerilla organization, the FPL (Popular Liberation Forces)?

This biography explains the metamorphosis of “Padre David,” as he was known. The book also places his experience within the larger context of the role progressive priests and nuns played in helping the poor to realize their worth, which inspired many to then demand change in society. Because the state crushed all peaceful opposition, especially through violence, many Salvadorans concluded that the only way to work for change – and to simultaneously protect themselves – was to join an armed movement. Padre David was no different. He felt an added sense of responsibility because he trained catechists to work for change who were later killed because the state saw them as threats to the status quo.