A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future [Paperback]

A deeply informed look at the intensifying struggle over the future of the Catholic Church.

Robert Blair Kaiser examines the most important and divisive issues confronting the Church: the sex abuse scandal, a shortage of priests due to the insistence upon celibacy, the ban on contraception, the roles of women in the Church, the increased participation of laypeople in Church affairs. He gives us an in-depth and behind-the-scenes view of six of the cardinals who gathered in Rome in April 2005 to choose a new pope and through them makes clear why Catholics worldwide are increasingly leaving the Church or defying Church doctrine. With passion and heartfelt concern, Robert Blair Kaiser brilliantly illuminates the issues and the combatants in the battle for the soul of the Catholic world.“An exceptionally informative, candid, evenhanded description of the congressional process.” —Choice

“Mr Kaiser depicts the gruesome business of legislating in the wickedly honest fashion only a journalistic veteran, liberated from the restraints imposed on daily reporters, could get away with…[he] names names and spares no one.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“Like [Robert] Caro, Kaiser has a gift for writing a legislative page-turner…This should be a book on every informed voter’s reading list.”
—New York Journal of Books

“If you want to know how Washington really works, read this book. It’s the ultimate inside story of a major piece of legislation that will affect the way the country does business for decades to come. Robert G. Kaiser, who knows the terrain like few others, was given unique access to the key players as they pasted this complicated package together. Kaiser shows us the personalities, thlC’