A Cardinal Offense

Father Dowling #17

by Ralph McInerny

When a friend gives him tickets to the Notre Dame-USC football game and a Vatican cardinal asks to meet him there for a conference, Father Dowling travels to Indiana, where the visiting cardinal is kidnapped during the game.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

372 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1994

About the author

Ralph Matthew McInerny was an American Catholic religious scholar and fiction writer, including mysteries and science fiction. Some of his fiction has appeared under the pseudonyms of Harry Austin, Matthew FitzRalph, Ernan Mackey, Edward Mackin, and Monica Quill. As a mystery writer he is best known as the creator of Father Dowling. He was Professor of Philosophy, Director of the Jacques Maritain Center, and Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Notre Dame until his retirement in June 2009. He died of esophageal cancer on January 29, 2010.

Reviews

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid entry in this series....particularly if you have an affinity for Notre Dame football (which I do not).

[Danielle Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.25Stars)
Ralph mcinerny's A Cardinal Offense fallows the murder of Micheal Geary who desired an annulment. I do not see where the title justifies the storyline.

All the characters had a part to play in the course of the murder. Amanda seemed maybe a little reluctant to confess to her crime.

This book could have been allot shorter , it seemed to drag and did not have enough development
or points for me to see a point in it being an 11 hour audiobook .

I found the writing very repetitive (i.e The ND game tickets) which did serve a purpose whoever i do not think that they needed to be mentioned every time there was a opening to do so.
Overall , although I liked the ideas in the plot. I think there could have been more aside points within the story. I am going to give book one a shot.

[Veronica Brandt · Rating 5 out of 5]

After someone reminiscing about Ralph McInerny as a great teacher, it seemed like a good excuse to pull out one of his detective novels.

The threads all coming together, the build up for the big game, the imagined Chicago accents, Cardinal Hildebrand's parallels with another German Cardinal serving under another long-standing Pope. All the different ways to get things wrong too.

[Anicius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed. Dialogue in flashbacks is sometimes hard to follow.

[Nolan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 17th book in the Father Dowling Series. As usual, I’m dipping in and out of the series, dancing around in it as if it didn’t matter. The thing is, I’ve read so many of these over the years that the suburban-Chicago priest is someone for whom I’ve gained a great deal of respect, so it’s ok for me to enter his life and world at odd times.

The good Father has just opened his mail as we open the book. Inside an envelope is a pair of highly valuable tickets to the Notre Dame USC game, and Father Dowling is a major Notre Dame fan. But in the moments when he is reveling in his good fortune, a man enters and announces without preamble that he absolutely will get his marriage annulled.

Things get worse from here. The suburban Illinois priest had once served on the church’s annulment bureau. Service on that bureau created so much stress for Dowling that he resorted to strong drink and nearly lost his career. His departure from the annulment bureau paved the way for his rehabilitation and reassignment to the Illinois parish. And now, here stands I the early pages of this book, someone from another parish who wants Father Dowling to help with the annulment. Ah, and those Notre Dame tickets? They’re free—well, not exactly. Father Dowling has to attend a secretive conference at which will preside a high-ranking official from Vatican City who will discuss the permissiveness of the American church regarding annulments.

Things get worse when the guy who wanted the annulment is murdered, and then a priest who apparently grants such annulments easily dies as well.

This is not among the strongest of the Dowling books. As an outsider looking in, I got the impression that the author is trying to portray the Catholic church as an organization creaking on its ancient foundations struggling for a sense of identity and relevance. The author addresses not only the idea of easy annulments but the child sex abuse stuff under which the church has labored in recent decades. It’s almost a clinical examination of the church’s woes as seen through the eyes of well-developed characters. This author’s ability to make you feel sympathy for even the bad guys to some extent is thought provoking indeed. I was surprised and disturbed by the resolution of this book. It’s still worthy of recommendation here, but it won’t have quite the same memorable effect on me as some of the other books in this series have.

[Jim Moffett · Rating 3 out of 5]

08-96

[David Reynolds · Rating 3 out of 5]

His story flows in a different pattern than I am used to..not to say I didn't like the story but it reads differently than I am used to..good book