From Publishers Weekly
Against the backdrop of the Catholic Church's historic Second Vatican Council, Kaiser, a former reporter for Time magazine, recounts the remarkable story of how his first marriage was destroyed by his wife's affair with the Jesuit priest Malachy Martin. Kaiser's life in the 1960s was inextricably caught up with the Council, and he relates as much about the assembly's inner workings as he does his personal crisis. To learn what was going on in the closed Council sessions, Kaiser cultivated its key players, primarily those promoting a liberal agenda, and invited them into his home, which became known as "a center of the Council's progressive wing." One of his frequent guests was Martin, who offered Kaiser help with research for his book on the Council and also managed to charm his wife, Mary. By the time Kaiser began to suspect a liaison between Martin and his wife, it was too far gone to stop. When he tried to expose it, he discovered that, at least by this account, Martin had conspired to have him admitted to a mental hospital. Kaiser, who spent 10 years with the Jesuits but left before he was ordained, paints himself as a victim of Martin, but also acknowledges his own failure to "grow up," an attitude he says was fostered by the church and the Jesuits. Although this memoir is based on a true story, it reads in many places like a novel, and a few elements strain credulity. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

The Observer, 17/03/02
"Like a Shakespearean saga of innocence, ambition, betrayal, farce and tragedy, played out amid...a church breaking with the past."

National Catholic Reporter, March 8 2002
"Great entertainment. A genuine page-turner...like a fast-paced thriller. Kaiser provides discrete chunks of cameo, first-class Catholic history."

The Dallas Morning News, April 11, 2002
"His views of the Vatican are compelling."

Susan Hogan, The Wichita Eagle
"A steamy soap opera. Kaiser's views of the Vatican are compelling."

Catholic New Times, 2002
"...[a] riveting read....A timely and prophetic book, which you will not be able to put down."

National Catholic Reporter, March 8 2002
"Great entertainment. A genuine page-turner. It races along like a fast-paced thriller."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Bob Kaiser was Time's man at Vatican II, and he told the story of that council in his bestseller of the early sixties, Pope, Council and World. It was a work as well informed as Xavier Rynne's Letters from Vatican City and probably more influential. "No reporter knew more about the council," said Michael Novak. "In the English-speaking world, at least, perhaps no source was to have quite the catalytic effect on opinion outside the council and even to an extent within it."" This is a different story. It is the tale of an intrepid reporter who is so intent on covering the Vatican beat better than anyone else that he doesn't notice that one of his best informants is playing around with his wife. When Kaiser blows the whistle on the man, a charming Irish Jesuit named Malachy Martin, Martin persuades Kaiser's clerical friends (including Archbishop T. D. Roberts and John Courtney Murray) to send him to a psychiatric clinic. The story is at once hilarious (Martin was one of the great clerical con men of all time) and sobering. The "clerical error" - the refusal to see what Martin was up to - was as much Kaiser's as that of his clerical friends, who defended their fellow priest simply because he was a member of the club. Their naivete and blindness simply mirror the church's inability to update the ancient institution called priesthood or to deal realistically with any issue touched by sex: birth control, remarriage after divorce, priestly celibacy, clerical child abuse, or the ordination of women.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly