The Bishop's Man

by Linden MacIntyre

Overview

Father Duncan MacAskill has spent most of his priesthood as the “Exorcist”—an enforcer employed by his bishop to discipline wayward priests and suppress potential scandal. He knows all of the devious ways that lonely priests persuade themselves that their needs trump their vows, but he’s about to be sorely tested himself.

While sequestered by his bishop in a small rural parish to avoid an impending public controversy, Duncan must confront the consequences of past cover-ups and the suppression of his own human needs. Pushed to the breaking point by loneliness, tragedy, and sudden self-knowledge, Duncan discovers how hidden obsessions and guilty secrets either find their way to the light of understanding or poison any chance we have for love and spiritual peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781582436210
Publisher:	Counterpoint Press
Publication date:	10/01/2010
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

Editorial Reviews

Fr. Duncan MacAskill has spent much of his career acting as his bishop’s clean-up man. Known as the “Exorcist,” Father MacAskill makes priests disappear, shifting anyone accused of sex abuse, scandal, or other improprieties to remote locations. Father MacAskill tells his story, shifting in time and place from the recent past to his “exorcisms” of the ’80s and back to his exile in Honduras in the ’70s, where he was sent after accusing the bishop’s mentor of molestation. In the present day, Father MacAskill serves as the parish priest of Creignish, the small Irish town where he grew up; the bishop gave him this easy assignment to keep him away from lawyers looking into the coverups. Rather isolated there, Father MacAskill has plenty of time for reflection and slowly comes to understand the havoc his transferred predatory priests have wreaked upon these communities. MacIntyre, an award-winning Canadian investigative journalist, sheds light on a disturbing subject, but offers no easy answers. Many of the abusive priests, for instance, also take advantage of adult women, acts that Fr. MacAskill says are not about sex. As the priest confronts his role in this web of scandals, he must also exorcise his own demons in this engrossing, lyrical page-turner. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Bishop's Man

"The Bishop's Man [is] a sombre evocation of realization and regret in the person of Father MacAskill, the titular bishop's man, as he awakens to the scope of the tragedy and his possible role in it." —The Toronto Globe and Mail

From the Publisher