Mortal Sins
Sex, Crime, and the Era of Catholic Scandal
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Narrated by:
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Paul Boehmer
About this listen
An explosive, sweeping account of the scandal that has sent the Catholic Church into a tailspin - and the brave few who fought for justice.
In the mid-1980s, a dynamic young monsignor assigned to the Vatican's embassy in Washington set out to investigate the problem of sexually abusive priests. He found a scandal in the making, confirmed by secret files revealing complaints that had been hidden from police and covered up by the Church hierarchy. He also understood that the US judicial system was eager to punish offenders and those who aided them. He presented all of this to the American bishops, warning that the Church could be devastated by negative publicity and bankrupted by its legal liability. They ignored him.
Meanwhile, a young lawyer listened to a new client describe an abusive sexual history with a priest that began when he was 10 years old. His parents' complaints were downplayed by Church officials who offered them money to go away. The lawyer saw a claim that any defendant would want to settle. Then he began to suspect he was onto something bigger, involving thousands of priests who had abused countless children while the Church had done almost nothing about it. The lawsuit he filed would touch off a legal war of historic and global proportions.
Part history, part journalism, and part true-crime thriller, Michael D'Antonio's Mortal Sins brings to mind landmark books such as All the President's Men, And the Band Played On, and The Informant, as it reveals a long and ferocious battle for the soul of the largest and oldest organization in the world.
©2013 Michael D’Antonio (P)2018 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right - a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong. Backed by years of research and delivered in energetic prose, Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me) offers a fascinating explanation of self-deception.
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If you're a liberal hater - this book's for you
- By MRN on 11-13-20
By: Carol Tavris, and others
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The Fall of the House of Zeus
- The Rise and Ruin of America's Most Powerful Trial Lawyer
- By: Curtis Wilkie
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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The Fall of the House of Zeus tells the story of Dickie Scruggs, arguably the most successful plaintiff's lawyer in America. A brother-in-law of Trent Lott, the former U.S. Senate majority leader, Scruggs made a fortune taking on mass tort lawsuits against "Big Tobacco" and the asbestos industries. He was hailed by Newsweek as a latter-day Robin Hood and portrayed in the movie The Insider as a dapper aviator-lawyer.
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The title says it all - The fall of Scruggs
- By Placeholder on 03-11-12
By: Curtis Wilkie
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Emmett Till
- The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement
- By: Devery S. Anderson
- Narrated by: Brandon Church
- Length: 21 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Emmett Till offers the first truly comprehensive account of the 1955 murder and its aftermath. It tells the story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago brutally lynched for a harmless flirtation at a country store in the Mississippi Delta. His death and the acquittal of his killers by an all-white jury set off a firestorm of protests that reverberated all over the world and spurred on the civil rights movement.
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An important story narrated with power and warmth
- By R. Nance on 10-04-16
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Going Clear
- Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief
- By: Lawrence Wright
- Narrated by: Morton Sellers
- Length: 17 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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A clear-sighted revelation, a deep penetration into the world of Scientology by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, the now-classic study of al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack. Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists—both famous and less well known—and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative ability to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology.
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Shockingly Great
- By Michael on 01-27-13
By: Lawrence Wright
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The Death of Right and Wrong
- Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values
- By: Tammy Bruce
- Narrated by: Tammy Bruce
- Length: 11 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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A woman of contradictions, "a gun-toting, lesbian, feminist, voted-for-Reagan activist", Tammy Bruce is standing in line to become the next Ann Coulter. The "left wing" is engaged in an enormous conspiracy to make moral values relative, to undercut pride and patriotism in our country, to destroy Christian ideology at any cost, to pollute the minds of our youth by means of leftist professors who rewrite history, and to hijack the justice system through morally bankrupt trial lawyers.
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A thoughtful analytical review of moral relativism
- By Book and Movie Lover on 07-26-04
By: Tammy Bruce
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The Burglary
- The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI
- By: Betty Medsger
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot, Betty Medsger
- Length: 25 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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The never-before-told full story of the history-changing break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists - quiet, ordinary, hardworking Americans - that made clear the shocking truth and confirmed what some had long suspected, that J. Edgar Hoover had created and was operating, in violation of the U.S. Constitution, his own shadow Bureau of Investigation.
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Forget Ocean's 11
- By Susie on 02-06-14
By: Betty Medsger
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Road to Jonestown
- Jim Jones and Peoples Temple
- By: Jeff Guinn
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 17 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In the 1950s, a young Indianapolis minister named Jim Jones preached a curious blend of the gospel and Marxism. His congregation was racially mixed, and he was a leader in the early civil rights movement. Eventually, Jones moved his church, Peoples Temple, to northern California, where he got involved in electoral politics and became a prominent Bay Area leader. But underneath the surface lurked a terrible darkness.
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An Important Accurate Historical Report
- By Julia on 08-24-17
By: Jeff Guinn
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A Woman in Charge
- The Life of Hillary Rodham Clinton
- By: Carl Bernstein
- Narrated by: Dick Rodstein
- Length: 24 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Carl Bernstein's stunning portrait of Hillary Rodham Clinton shows us, as nothing else has, the true trajectory of her life and career, with its zigzag bursts of risks taken and safety sought. Marshaling all the skills and energy that propelled his history-making Pulitzer Prize reporting on Watergate, Bernstein gives us the most detailed, sophisticated, comprehensive, and revealing account of Hilary Rodham Clinton yet.
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in depth and well-written
- By Katherine on 07-20-07
By: Carl Bernstein
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The Bettencourt Affair
- The World's Richest Woman and the Scandal That Rocked Paris
- By: Tom Sancton
- Narrated by: Amanda Carlin
- Length: 13 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Heiress to the nearly 40-billion-dollar L’Oréal fortune, Liliane Bettencourt was the world’s richest woman and the 14th wealthiest person. But her gilded life took a dark yet fascinating turn in the past decade. At 94, she was embroiled in what has been called the Bettencourt Affair, a scandal that dominated the headlines in France. Why? It’s a tangled web of hidden secrets, divided loyalties, frayed relationships, and fractured families, set in the most romantic city - and involving the most glamorous industry - in the world.
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A Juicy Chronicle
- By Jean on 10-24-17
By: Tom Sancton
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The Eichmann Trial
- By: Deborah E Lipstadt
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 6 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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The capture of SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann by Israeli agents in Argentina in May of 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem by an Israeli court electrified the world. The public debate it sparked on where, how, and by whom Nazi war criminals should be brought to justice, and the international media coverage of the trial itself, was a watershed moment in how the civilized world in general and Holocaust survivors in particular found the means to deal with the legacy of genocide on a scale that had never been seen before.
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Avoid this one
- By Alan on 04-08-11
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The Price of Justice
- A True Story of Greed and Corruption
- By: Laurence Leamer
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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This nonfiction legal thriller traces the 14-year struggle of two lawyers to bring the most powerful coal baron in American history to justice. Don Blankenship, head of Massey Energy since the early 1990s, ran an industry that provides nearly half of America’s electric power. But wealth and influence weren’t enough for Blankenship and his company, as they set about destroying corporate and personal rivals, challenging the Constitution, purchasing the West Virginia judiciary, and willfully disregarding safety standards in the company’s mines - mines in which scores died unnecessarily.
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A good story
- By Mr. on 10-06-13
By: Laurence Leamer
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Malcolm X
- A Life of Reinvention
- By: Manning Marable
- Narrated by: G. Valmont Thomas
- Length: 22 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Of the great figure in 20th-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age 39. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better lives and stronger communities while establishing the template for the self-actualized, independent African American man.
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invites further reading on Malcolm X
- By connie on 05-14-11
By: Manning Marable
What listeners say about Mortal Sins
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- David Maddux
- 01-14-20
Good info book about the scandal but meandering
I'm very well read on the subject, so many of the players are familiar (Villains: the church hierarchy, Ratzinger, Mahoney, the many apologists like the always nauseatingly defensive (and enabler of abusers) William Donohue of the Catholic League. Heroes: like S.N.A.P., Jeffrey Anderson, the Boston Globe and Mike Rezendes and Walter Robinson, the many lay people who both in America and throughout the world who decided to say "No more" to this systemic crime.) Most of the source books cited and documentaries referenced I've read as well.
And I wanted to like this book so much more than I did, but the Audible version of it (the presentation read by Boehmer is amazingly well-done) is unabridged. Which I would be fine with, but D'Antonio just spirals off for 15-20 minutes at a time on things which don't move the story forward at all. Yippee for Anderson and Doyle getting sober. But starting around the 13th chapter and going to the end you'll get 75-90 minutes of minutiae about AA. And AA meetings. And sponsorship in AA. And Anderson's problems with certain steps. (So he has trouble with 'god as we understand him' in steps 3 and 11. Not sure this merits so much time and in-depth analysis.) That hour and a half spent dissecting his struggle getting sober, and talking with other people in recovery on the phone, and all that goes with it could have been discussed in a paragraph. Almost NONE of it was relevant to the story.
There are other examples where D'Antonio wanders off on a tangent that left me shaking my head and asking "Precisely what does that have to do with this scandal?"
Speaking of the story . . .
He does a great job diving in on pieces of the investigation that, while not unknown, haven't been thoroughly tackled in other works like Deliver Us From Evil and Lead Us Not Into Temptation. And for the most part is great with following up on the lack of change and pointing out the MASSIVE amount of hypocrisy and the repeated covering up, and lying, and victim blaming,
D'Antonio connects the dots between the obvious (and denied) orders where higher ups from Cardinals all the way to Ratzinger/Benedict XVI were all too willing to allow to continue even when pre-Pontiff and after, he continued to deny and deflect, and do everything is his power to shield the church and its assets from lawsuits, often behind the shield of a wall of lawyers and lame attempts to hide behind the American Constitution.
Throughout the work though, I think the author maintains a fairly objective stance, constantly reminding the reader of the many good nuns and priests and the service the vast majority of them do.
But if you're only peripherally acquainted with the Catholic Church cover-up this will be a great primer into the depths of the scandal.
And if you're not acquainted with the disgusting William Donohue of the Catholic League, this will show him in his apologist and defensive best: blaming the 1960s for the priests molesting kids, blaming gays for the problem, blaming feminist nuns for the problem, blaming lawyers for the problem. He 'pooh-poohs' the actual rape of children and adolescents all the while toeing the line of The Church Can't Be At Fault. Donohue is so thoroughly delusional that the one group he DOESN'T blame for raping children: the rapist priests. But then this is a "sanctity of marriage' guy who's divorced, so hypocrisy is his calling card.
Overall, even with some of the asides into alcoholism/recovery and other subjects, the subject is thoroughly and rigorously researched and reported.
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- Victorine
- 11-08-19
Too biased to be believed
I am a faithful Catholic who loves and believes in the Church. With trepidation, I decided to read this book and was hoping it would offer insight.
From page one the constant use of the term pedophile priests was more of a distraction than a helpful description. We know young children were abused yet it represents a small percentage of the overall abuse patterns. As bad as that is and as heartbreaking, I really wanted the data and an unbiased presentation of the facts.
I pushed on hoping the tone and tenor would move beyond the apocalyptic destruction of the church. But, the book I was looking for never materialized and so my rating is what it is. One star.
It is easy to bash the Catholic Church. Make fun of certain tenets of the faith. How does that help anyone? Certainly not the victims who lost their church, yet I pray not their faith in God.
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