A Predator Priest

I read this probably back in August or September. I review nearly everything I read, but I just didn't have any enthusiasm for this one, any drive to talk about it. The good news is that it's a cheap read, and so if the topic interests you then you won't be losing much in the gamble. Perhaps it's a matter of this story being all too familiar, and so the stark recitation of facts just doesn't seem like more than you'd get in a newspaper story. At this point, I don't need to be convinced that the Catholic Church, for all of its positive qualities, has allowed their children to be devastated while shuffling the abusers around and hiding them. Now, I want to make sense of it all.

Father Bernard Bissonnette becomes more cliche than man as he pretty much hit every stereotype as he was allowed to abuse children for decades. A family seeks to confront him about it, and the beginning of the book promises this will happen. At the end we find out that he is pretty unrepentant, but so old and sickly that he is a pitiable figure. No one gets closure. The lack of closure for the reader is nothing compared to the lack of closure for these families. However, I'm left wondering what it all means and what the future seems to hold. Where is the context and how does this fit in with the bigger picture? Since the details, tragically, follow a familiar pattern, what does this piece offer?

I've I'd read this story years ago, it perhaps would have been enough in it's current form. The tale is no longer a new one, and even as the details should be shocking they've become too familiar. What are the answers? How is the church apt to change to respond to this? We live in a time when the word “priest” is said, and people have to will themselves not to snicker – even people who were raised Catholic. What now?