Church Papers Ban Ad for Novel on Priest Pedophilia

Newspapers published by nine major Roman Catholic dioceses, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, have refused to run a paid advertisement for a new novel by Father Andrew Greeley that deals with the sexual abuse of children by priests and with domestic violence.

The banned advertisement describes “Fall From Grace” as a candid story about pedophile priests and battered women. It calls the book a passionate account of the struggle by “brave priests and lay people” against the injustices.

The decisions to ban the advertisement, made independently in each diocese, come at a time of intense concern and soul-searching by the Roman Catholic Church as well as by Protestant denominations over reports of sexual misconduct by clergy.

Just last week, Roman Catholic Archbishop Robert F. Sanchez of Santa Fe, N.M., resigned after acknowledging “relationships” with at least three women. The prelate’s resignation came two days before CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a story on Sanchez’s behavior, along with new reports of sexual abuse of children by priests in the Santa Fe Archdiocese.

Last November, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement urging all bishops to move swiftly to stop sexual abuse by priests, to cooperate with law enforcement, and to offer help to victims and their families.

Two bishops’ committees last October issued another report on domestic violence that said battered wives should not be counseled to remain at home if their safety is in jeopardy.

Greeley’s book deals not only with pedophilia but with a priest who advises a battered woman to remain at home and try to save her marriage--and her husband’s political career.

In Los Angeles, spokesman Bill Rivera said Msgr. Terrance L. Fleming read the ad and made the decision not to print it in the Tidings, the 40,000-circulation archdiocesan newspaper. “I haven’t read it (the book), but if it’s similar to others, just the contents of his books are not appropriate for a Catholic newspaper,” Rivera said. “There’s some sexually explicit passages, and improper language.”

Bucking the trend in California was the Diocese of Oakland, where editor Monica Clark of the Catholic Voice newspaper said she informed Oakland Bishop John S. Cummins of her decision to run the ad. “We assume that readers are mature adults. They can make their own decisions about whether they’re going to buy or read it,” Clark said. The book publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons of New York, did not attempt to place ads in the Orange or San Diego diocesan newspapers.

Decisions by much of the official Catholic press not to run the ads showed that the church is still in denial over the problem of pedophilia, despite the recent policy initiatives by the bishops, Greeley said in a telephone interview Monday from Tucson.

“I didn’t expect that we’d get them all (to run the ad), but I was a little surprised by this,” said Greeley, a priest, author and sociologist. “This novel is not steamy.”

In addition to Los Angeles and San Francisco, the ad has been turned down in the archdioceses of New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and St. Louis, and in the diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y.

Greeley, a professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago and the University of Arizona, has been an outspoken critic of the church’s response to pedophile priests. Last year, for example, he published an essay in the Critic, an independent journal of Catholic thought, in which he angrily assailed the denial of and indifference to pedophilia by “good priests.”

“The denial is still very, very powerful,” Greeley said Monday. “We’re not going to have reform, much less healing, until the priests are ready to acknowledge what has happened and promise to reform and to do all they can to police themselves.”

Times staff writer Tony Perry in San Diego and correspondent Geoff Boucher in Orange County contributed to this story.