In Philip Shenon's bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept, he says, "Two events led me to write this book. One was the 2013 election of [Pope] Francis, who seemed easily the most compelling public figure in the world at the time - a pope who, like [Pope] John XXIII, had the potential to bring about a revolution" (p. 8).
"The other event that drew me to this subject took place in 2009, when the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles revealed it was under federal investigation for covering up the crimes of pedophile priests. During more than two decades at The New York Times, I often reported on the American criminal justice system. For three years, I was the paper's Justice department correspondent in Washington; then in 2010 I was asked to write about the Los Angeles investigation and had a chance to see for myself what the church there had been determined to hide. How was it possible that once-admired churchmen could be so corrupted that they allowed sexual predators to shatter the lives of children? That question helps explain this book's title. It is drawn from what is - at two words - the shortest verse in the King James Version of the Bible" (p. 9). The two words appear in the Gospel of John 11:34-35 about Lazarus. Also see the Gospel of Matthew 23:37-39 and the Gospel of Luke 19:28-48.
The priest-sex-abuse scandal and the accompanying bishop-cover-up scandal figure prominently in Philip Shenon's bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept.
For a broad indictment of the priest-sex-abuse scandal, see the Australian author Kiernan Tapsell's book Potiphar's Wife: The Vatican's Secret and Child Sexual Abuse (ATF Press, 2014).
For some historical perspective of the priest-sex-abuse scandal, see the American medievalist Dyan Elliott's book The Corrupter of Boys: Sodomy, Scandal, and the Medieval Clergy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
Incidentally, on the dedication page, Philip Shenon dedicates his new 2025 book Jesus Wept "To the memory of the man born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli (1881-1963), who might have been forgotten" (p. v; Shenon's italics). Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli was Pope John XXIII.
On the epigraph page, the longest of the three epigraphs is at quote from Pope John XIII at the opening of the Second Vatican Council: "The Catholic Church . . . desires to show herself to be the loving mother of all - benign, patient, full of mercy and goodness toward the brethren who are separated from her" (p. vii).
Now, the American Catholic author Mary Jo McConahy published a generally favorable review of Philip Shenon's bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept in The New York Times titled "A History of Modern Catholicism Puts Sex Abuse Front and Center: Philip Shenon's Jesus Wept looks at the church since World War II. With particular focus on the clerical abuse scandal and the ideological battles that followed the Second Vatican council" (dated February 15, 2025). In her generally favorable review, Mary Jo McConahay says, among other things, that "the word sex or its derivatives appear some 400 times in 514 pages of text."
In the "Index" of Philip Shenon's bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept (pp. 567-590), we find the following sex-related terms as main entries or as sub-entries, about each of which the Roman Catholic Church has official moral teachings: abortion, abstinence, annulment, birth control and (sub-entry), on divorced parishioners receiving Communion (sub-entry), homosexuality and (sub-entry), priestly celibacy and (sub-entry), on priests marrying (sub-entry), on sex-change surgery (sub-entry), on in-vitro fertilization (sub-entry), birth control, child sexual abuse by clergy, condoms, on divorced parishioners receiving Communion (sub-entry), homosexuality and (sub-entry), birth control commission and (sub-entry), homosexuality and (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), celibacy, priestly and (sub-sentry), divorce and (sub-entry),married priests and (sub-entry), on sex-change surgery (sub-entry), sexual morality and (sub-entry), HIV, abortion and (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), homosexuality, gay priests and (sub-entry), Humanae Vitae [1968 encyclical of Pope Paul VI], in-vitro fertilization, abortion and (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), divorce and (sub-entry), homosexuality and (sub-entry), priestly celibacy and (sub-entry), on priests marrying (sub-entry), sexual misconduct of (sub-entry), marriage, annulment (sub-entry), priests secretly married (sub-entry), masturbation, molestation of boys and young men (sub-entry), sexual abuse of, by priests (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), priestly celibacy and (sub-entry), AIDS and (sub-entry), sexuality of (sub-entry), Roe v. Wade, same-sex marriage, sexual abuse, sexuality, priestly, sexual morality, on priestly celibacy (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), child sexual abuse by clergy (sub-entry), birth control and (sub-entry), and priestly celibacy and (sub-entry).
Digression
At this juncture, I want to offer here a short digression about and brief reflection about the openly gay French sociologist and journalist Dr. Fredric Martel offers an extraordinary account of homosexuals in the Vatican in his best-selling book titled In the Closet of the Vatican: Power, Homosexuality, Hypocrisy, translated by Shaun Whiteside (2019) - a book that does not have an index. In Philip Shenon's "Notes" in his bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept (pp. 515-551), he mentions Martell's extraordinary 2019 book In the Closet of the Vatican twice: (1) on p. 527, in a note about something on p. 204; and (2) on p. 530 in a note about something on p. 250. But I mention Martel's extraordinary 2019 book In the Closet of the Vatican here as a springboard for making a somewhat larger suggestion here about the most consistently troubling material in Philip Shenon's bleak new 2025 book Jesus Wept - the material about the enormous priest-sex-abuse of boys.
In Martel's extraordinary 2019 book In the Closet of the Vatican, he discusses the reigns of Pope Francis (pp. 1-152), Pope Paul VI (pp. 153-190), Pope John Paul II (pp. 191-417), and Pope benedict XVI (pp. 419-532).
In Martel's "Prologue" to his extraordinary 2019 book In the Closet of the Vatican (pp. viii-xv), he says that he has formulated "14 general rules in this book" (p. xii). I will now list the 14 general rules he has formulated for interpreting the homosexual tendencies of Vatican clerics and give the page where you can find each rule:
Rule (1): "For a long time the priesthood was the ideal escape-route for young homosexuals. Homosexuality is one of the keys to their vocation" (p. 8).
Rule (2): "Homosexuality spreads the closer one gets to the holy of holies; there are more and more homosexuals as one rises through the Catholic hierarchy. In the College of Cardinals and at the Vatican, the preferential selection process is said to be perfected; homosexuality becomes the rule, heterosexuality the exception" (p. 10).
Rule (3): "The more vehemently opposed a [Vatican] cleric is to gays, the stronger his homophobic obsession, the more likely it is that he is insincere, and that his vehemence conceals something" (p. 34).
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