Angela Senander's lucid prose helps make chapter 1, “Talk about Scandal,” the best discussion of clergy sexual abuse that I have read. She uses wide-ranging sources—from the New Testament to Thomas Aquinas, Vatican I and II, a sociologist, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church—to relate abuse to an extensive tradition with multiple ideas of scandal. Abuse leads to sociological, moral, and theological scandal. Indifference to famine causes scandal. Doing good contrary to social expectations, like Christ's healing on the Sabbath, can evoke a sociological condition of scandal.
Senander consults the Catechism on laws and institutions that induce theological scandal. Individual priests perpetrated the abuse, but bishops involved the institution. Seeking to prevent scandal led to greater scandal, whereas Aquinas opted to let the truth be scandalous rather than abandon the truth. Replete with ample footnotes, chapter 1 of Senander's book could serve as the centerpiece in an upper-division undergraduate class on sin, the Church, scandal, social justice, or church/world relations.
Chapters 2 through 4 leave a number of topics incompletely analyzed. Many difficult matters—revelation, faith, the Church, the relation between Vatican I and II, liturgical language, theological presuppositions operative in perceptions of scandal, criteria for scandal, homosexuality, abortion, contraception, and women's nonordination, among others—are surveyed. So rapid and assured a discussion from a single point of view could conceivably be a point of departure for discussing further questions and more complicated understandings.
Real and potential scandals due to decisions by church leaders predominate in chapter 5. Which caused greater scandal, a policy of refusing or of offering communion to John Kerry? Senander comments on the difficulty Catholic institutions face in preserving the integrity of their mission when secular standards impinge, yet recommends more caring about sin within the Church. A theological perspective of hopeful love for the Church, buoyed by a theology of grace and dialogue, characterizes the book and especially its conclusion. I am left, however, with a question: Would it have been advisable to return to clergy sex abuse in chapter 5 so as not to lose track of it in a wider framework?
