Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church

The stories in this book, which was first published in 1962, centre on the actions of some priests during the 1950s, echoing stories from today's front pages. However, former Franciscan priest and bestselling author of People's Padre and American Culture and Catholic Schools, Emmett McLoughlin focus in Crime and Immorality in the Catholic Church is less on the priesthood, and more on the parishioners.To investigate his theory that the Catholic religion promotes criminal behavior rather than preventing it, he conducted a survey of all the prisons in the country in 1960. In every state, the percentage of Catholic inmates was greater than the state's percentage of Catholics in the population, even using the church's inflated figures. He then performed a similar survey of institutionalized mental patients, exploring the theory that Catholic beliefs drive people crazy, and came up with the same results.A courageous, thought-provoking book.