The Red Hat »

Ralph McInerny, popular author, editor and teacher, presents a novel of suspense, humor and spiritual insight about the Catholic Church rocked by schism, scandal and contested papal elections early in the third millennium.

Thomas Lannan, the archbishop of Washington, D.C., is threatened by a scandal dating from his youth just as he is named Cardinal. The Pope dies before Lannan and other nominees are inducted into the College and they are excluded from the conclave. This leads to widespread criticism and the new pope, having enlarged the College of Cardinals considerably, is killed in a plane crash. The next conclave elects the controversial Pope Timothy from Tanzania. Schism threatens as the decadent West resists its marginalization because of the massive demographic shift to the east and south.

In Avignon, an anti-pope is elected. Thomas Lannan, against the grain of his brother bishops, remains loyal to Timothy and rallies a remnant of the American church. His moral triumph is threatened when he is accused of having fathered a child when he was a seminarian. He becomes the subject of a sensational trial. This issue will be settled by DNA evidence. The suspense builds. Did he or didn't he?

Publishers Weekly

There's plenty of incident in McInerny's new thriller. The mother of a priest's illegitimate child is murdered. The controversial author of a book about the decline of the church in America is named U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican and battles a wily fundamentalist senator. Two popes die. Archbishop Tom Lannan of Washington, D.C., is twice named a cardinal and twice denied his red hat by ironic circumstance. Liberal clergy approach schism by setting up an independent American Church. But incident can't save this broadsheet in novel's clothing. McInerny, a Notre Dame philosophy professor and author of the Father Dowling mystery series, shows more flair for polemicizing than for telling a story. If the author's jeremiads ("Most Catholics have become Protestants" and "yesterday's dissent has become today's orthodoxy") ring true for some readers and enrage others, the fiction will bore them universally. Characterization is bland. The characters all sound exactly the same, and anyone without Latin and a deep knowledge of church history would have benefited from a glossary and footnotes.