Fiction but with contemporary themes of clericalism and sexual abuse with church politics and coverup thrown in. Hugh Hoffman, from a good Russian German midwestern family, is the main character. His life is followed as he finds his true love and becomes a priest. He witnesses a crime in which he eventually testifies after many years. A very timely, fictional, kind love story. ( )

This book ended up being enjoyable, but not that great over all. The very beginning threw me off. It made it seem like there was going to be this huge struggle for the main priest (Hoffman) to get people to believe him about the rape of a child by another priest, but then it completely dropped that and started off in the childhood of Hoffman. We then followed him all through his journey to becoming a priest and finally ending where the first part left off.

The majority of the story, I felt, was very misleading. ( )

This book ended up being enjoyable, but not that great over all. The very beginning threw me off. It made it seem like there was going to be this huge struggle for the main priest (Hoffman) to get people to believe him about the rape of a child by another priest, but then it completely dropped that and started off in the childhood of Hoffman. We then followed him all through his journey to becoming a priest and finally ending where the first part left off.

The majority of the story, I felt, was very misleading. ( )

THE PRIESTLY SINS, by Andrew Greeley.

I bought this 2004 book at a library sale for half a buck. Worth every penny, and maybe a little more. I'd never read anything by Andrew Greeley, although I knew about him. A Catholic priest who was often at the center of controversy, Greeley wrote dozens of books, including several novels like this one, as well as a series of mysteries starring Bishop Blackie Ryan (a la the Father Dowling mysteries, I suspect), and many others. I was sad to find that Greeley died in 2013, because I would have liked to have contacted him and talked about writers and books. Would have asked him if he was a fan of Ralph McInerny's Dowling books, or if he'd read the same author's now nearly forgotten potboiler, THE PRIEST - a book I read and enjoyed back in the 70s. Or, certainly, J.F. Powers's work, especially his darkly comic classic, MORTE D'URBAN.

In any case, THE PRIESTLY SINS was a most entertaining and near-gripping sort of story, with a most likeable and very human protagonist in Father Herman Hugh Hoffmann, whose life story we pretty much get here. Hugh grew up in a loving Volga Deutsche, or Russian German, family in the Prairie State - obviously Illinois, Greeley's own stomping ground. We learn of his youthful affair with a red-haired Irish Girl, Kathleen, and then of his strong vocation and commitment to the priesthood. The crux of the story is how Hugh becomes a whistle-blower on a fellow priest who is a serial and sadistic pedophile; how the Archdiocese turns on Hugh, ostracizes him and tries - natch - to brush it all under the rug. It's a great story, Greeley is a fine writer and a masterful storyteller.

The story was marred only by a kitschy twist of Hugh 'seeing' a long-dead great grandmother here and there at various times, an attempt to lend the tale a supernatural or ghost-story effect, I suppose. I just found it annoying and dumb, and tried to overlook it. Otherwise a very good book, one that brought to mind Canadian author Linden MacIntyre's Nova Scotia trilogy with its middle book, THE BISHOP'S MAN (which I think is a better book than Greeley's). But if you want an entertaining and thought-provoking book about the Catholic Church's sex abuse scandals, here's a good one. Highly recommended. ( )

This is the first book I've read by Greeley and after reading I am very anxious to read the rest of his work. The overall subject matter of the book was disturbing to read about, but I think that the message we get from it in the end is an important one. Father Hoffman, a young and new priest in the Catholic church, walks in on the sexual abuse of a child committed by another member of the church. The book is the account of his fight for what's right. There is an underlying message that maybe the priest who committed the actual crime is not the worst sinner of all, rather it's those that Father Hoffman informed, and instead of taking appropriate action they just hid the problem and defended the guilty members of the clergy.