Announcing Cardinal Mahony, a bold new novel by Robert Blair Kaiser
An American bishop gets kidnapped outside his cabin in the High Sierras one snowy morning in November 2008 by three
liberation theologians who look like terrorists. They take him off to southern Mexico in his own helicopter and put him on trial
for his sins in front of an international television audience.  A jury of his peers, six retired Latin American bishops, find him guilty,
and give him a surprising sentence. The bishop falls in love with his kidnappers and leads the American Catholic Church into
a radical new way of being, still Catholic but aggressively account­able to the people, which is to say, aggressively American.

This work pushes the envelope. It is both “fiction” and “non-fic­tion,” set in the reality of the current priest-sex-abuse scandal
 and projecting ahead in time to tell the story of a colorful crew--and a new Cardinal Mahony--working to give Catholics
a voice, a vote, and citizenship in their Church. Utopian? Yes!  Why not dream?
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Ever since his coverage of Vatican II for Time magazine, Robert
Blair Kaiser's journalism has illuminated the darkest corners
of  the Church.

Now his cunning, mischievous first novel cuts behind the scenes in a
different way, with a cast of characters drawn from real life, who turn all
of their old assumptions about the Church (and ours) upside down. 
A mesmerizing work.
                                                                                    Eugene Kennedy
Kaiser writes with the impatience and tenderness of a true believer.  No one has better journalistic instincts, or more experience reporting on the Vatican and and Catholic Church politics.  His novel will irritate as many readers as it is sure to delight.
                                                                                     Robert Mickens

 
NOW FOUR WAYS TO ORDER CARDINAL MAHONY:
(1) With your credit card, you can now get a copy of 
Cardinal Mahony signed by the author. $19.95 plus 2.05 S&H 
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(2) By phone, you can order an autographed copy at 
(602) 358-7274.
(3) You can get a discounted copy directly from Amazon.com 
by clicking on the image of the cover to your left.
(4) Click on to order as an ebook.

also, see below for how to order Rome Diary
Read interviews with Robert Blair Kaiser:
(1) (2)


        book cover    
FORTY YEARS AGO THE WORLD WAS STUNNED BY THE MURDER OF A CHARISMATIC POLITICIAN SEEKING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.  MANY HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT RFK AND HIS DEATH.  ONLY ONE MAN WROTE ABOUT THE MIND OF HIS KILLER.  NOW ROBERT BLAIR KAISER RETURNS TO UPDATE THIS JOURNALISM CLASSIC.

read what Los Angeles Times book editor David L. Ulin had to say in his review on June 1, 2008:

For the rest of the story, there's Robert Blair Kaiser's " 'R.F.K. Must Die!': Chasing the Mystery of the Robert Kennedy Assassination." Originally published in 1970 and now substantially revised, Kaiser's book is a definitive account of the shooting and its aftermath. The author talked his way onto Sirhan's defense team and spent more than 200 hours in interviews with him; he came up with the "Manchurian Candidate" theory, which suggests Sirhan was programmed (by himself or someone else) to fire on Kennedy and then programmed to forget.

Of all the RFK conspiracy theories, this is the most compelling, for Sirhan dabbled in Rosicrucianism and self-hypnosis and always claimed not to recall what took place at the Ambassador. Still, the real value of Kaiser's book lies in its methodical re-creation of the crime and the investigation, as well as its insights into Sirhan. In one particularly vivid scene, Sirhan "re-enacts" the shooting under hypnosis: "Sirhan's right hand pounded climactically on his right thigh -- five times. His right forefinger squeezed and twisted three more times in a weakening spasm. Then he was still." Later, in an unguarded moment, Sirhan talks about the killing. Asked by a defense investigator why he didn't shoot Kennedy between the eyes, he answers calmly, "Because the son of a bitch turned his head at the last second."

That sounds like a confession, and it's to Kaiser's credit that he includes it, even though it casts doubt on his own theory. In the end, however, it matters less how the assassination happened than what we lost.
Also by Robert Blair Kaiser:



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From Gustavo Arellano’s review in the San Francisco Chronicle, 19 March 2006.

      Catholics have floundered in desperation since Benedict's election, but we finally have our gospel: A Church in Search of Itself: Benedict XVI and the Battle for the Future, by Robert Blair Kaiser.

      The various maneuverings, murders and malaise Kaiser describes are enough to make any Catholic turn Episcopalian, but Kaiser remarkably and bravely maintains that the solution to the church's problems is within the church. He profiles six cardinals he believes can lead Roman Catholicism back toward the light.

      "When the people of God wake up to the fact that they can exercise the art of politics and remain good Catholics," Kaiser writes at one point, "changes will start to occur in a Church where they can claim ownership, and, just as important, citizenship."

From Scott Appleby’s review in The Washington Post, 7 May 2006:

Kaiser is correct: The Catholic Church is “in search of itself” and faces multiple crises, from the massive financial drain due to sexual-abuse litigation to the decline in the priesthood to lay indifference. “No change” is not an option. The real question is how the Church will change.

Kaiser offers a hint in the closing pages, where he envisions the eventual emergence of a democratic people's Church in the United States. But he leaves the reader wondering how such a radical change could occur in a Church so divided and leaderless. Either the analysis is wrong, or the hope for change is misplaced.


In Cardinal Mahony: A Novel, Kaiser rises to Appleby’s challenge by imagining in great and entertaining detail exactly how such a radical change might happen – with inspired leadership by a bishop and a team of laypeople who possess heart and wit.


cover for "Clerical Error"


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< EXCERPTS FROM TWO REVIEWS, ONE BY A FORMER MEMBER OF
THE ROMAN CURIA IN ROME, THE OTHER BY AN EDITOR OF THE
NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER.

Kaiser was not only a reporter who wrote about Vatican II.  He was also a
participant who helped shape Pope John's Council and, in the process, found
his life was shaped in ways he could not have imagined and would not have
wished.  An inspiring account of one man's journey to self-awareness and
maturity. This book is honest, painfully so.

Resigning in frustration from the Jesuits, Kaiser recounts how he became a
journalist and how, though sexually inexperienced, he quickly fell in love and
married.  The story of his marriage reads like a Greek tragedy.  It is one of
developing emotional distance, which ends in deception and betrayal ...
orchestrated by a manipulating and malevolent sociopath, who sets out to destroy
him and his marriage.  That man is a Jesuit priest and biblical scholar and a
notorious and brilliant liar, who tainted everything he touched.  Mr. Kaiser's portrait
of Malachy Martin is accurate, for he was a man well known to me.

In the end, this is a saga about healing and forgiveness.  Maturity comes not
with age but with understanding of who we are.  He writes: "I would rather think
that all of us will grow up insofar as we are able to turn off those inhibiting voices
of authority within us that keep telling us what we can and cannot do.  Those
voices are nothing more than idols, projections of our own childish attitudes that
stop us from being free—that is, grown up—men and women."

                                                                                        ALBERT WILKINS

 

Strutting aside, Kaiser provides discrete chunks of cameo, first-class Catholic
history here. There are lots of names, but not name-dropped names. These were
the figuresthat changed the church until this present pope and his henchmen took
charge and halfway changed it back.

If the book staggers at all, it did for me on a couple of council coverage pages and
pages covering the release of Humanae Vitae. Then, amazingly enough for the
enthusiastic page turner of mystery stories (as I am), the narrative picks up speed,
with a tension rooted in mounting sadness. What’s going to happen? This is
tragedy without much comedy, a tragedy the description of which the finicky
reader may regard as a tad voyeuristic. Not so in my judgment. Candor, not
prurience, is the key to understanding what Kaiser is about. He’s trying to
exorcise Malachy Martin, the best-selling author and authority on exorcism, the
wicked priest....

There are private detectives. There are letters lifted from people’s pockets. There’s
the venal, vicious, unsinkable Malachi Martin outwitting everyone -- Kaiser, his
Jesuit superiors, his publishers, other men’s wives  -- while working his wiles on
visiting French girls.

Quite honestly, this book would be unbelievable were Kaiser not telling it with
such frankness. It rings accurate because it oozes such pain. Did we need to
know all this?   For its insights into a wicked Martin, yes. Martin becomes the
example in a complicit church of the self-perpetuating, sexually screwed up
institution that so needs reforming. On those grounds alone I think we need to
know.

                                                                                     ARTHUR JONES





cover for Rome Diary
 
My Rome Diaries started out as e-mail notes to my family 
and friends. They were breezy, often sassy, always uncensored, 
and compelling in their immediacy and detail. I often thought 
of them, so strange, so various, so often surprising even to me, 
as “my dappled things.” 

My family and friends started forwarding them to their friends 
around the world, and many of them, perfect strangers from Detroit 
to Darwin, wrote to ask that I put them on my list.

That list grew to more than two thousand men and women, and some
of them started forwarding the Diaries to their friends. Only the Lord 
knows how many men and women were reading them in the end. 
One missionary stationed in Rome told me he was zipping them off 
to one thousand religious superiors around the world who, he thought,
were eager to learn what I was learning about Rome during these 
final days of the second millennium. 

Historians will be able to judge whether my impressionistic snapshots
in time would be important enough to land in their future accounts 
about the way it was in the Church at this moment in history.  For now, 
you can ponder the meaning of what I heard and saw in Rome, 
and put your own spin on it. 

RBK
You can order Rome Diary in either an Acrobat Reader (PDF)
or a Microsoft Reader format.  
Price: $12.95 for immediate delivery to your email address.
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