The Priestly Sins by Andrew M. Greeley
THE PRIESTLY SINS tells the story of Father Herman Hoffman, a gifted and innocent young man from the distant prairies of the Great Plains. In the summer of his first parish appointment, Hoffman is swept up in The Crisis after witnessing child abuse in the parish rectory. He tells the pastor, the father of the victim, and the local police, but is rebuffed by the Archbishop. Soon Hoffman is vilified for denouncing a priest who has been cleared by the police and learns the harsh fate of the whistle-blower in the contemporary Catholic church: he faces exile not only from his parish but from the priesthood itself. Written from the author's fifty years of experience as a priest, The Priestly Sins will be criticized by some but embraced by most for its candid story of all-too-human priests. The Priestly Sins is Father Greeley's most electrifying novel in three decades, a novel sure to rise up the bestseller lists.