Newsweek has an excerpt on its site of the new book “Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal”, which is written by the investigative editor at Newsweek who covered the Scandal.
I don’t know about the rest of the book (especially with that title), but the excerpt online is an interesting look at how the story first broke. We see how a reporter at the local alternative rag, the Boston Phoenix, which runs classified ads for prostitutes and deviant sex among other things, first started researching a suspicious pattern of lawsuits against the Church when the first John Geoghan lawsuits were filed. Then we see how the Boston Globe picks up the trail and begins to ferret out information while challenging confidentiality orders on legal filings. It was the overturning of those orders that bust the whole thing wide open.
I wonder how much the author is pumping up the suspense in his story. We’re supposed to believe that the Globe never challenged the Church until plucky outsider Marty Baron was named as editor of the newspaper. That’s not exactly the case, although something of this scale had never occurred in Boston before anyway. I may pick up the book to see what else it has to say. I found this excerpt interesting anyway.
