As Threatened--Greg Tobin, Conclave a Review
Title: Conclave
Author: Greg Tobin
Recommendation: If you don't have anything else to do and need some light, moderate-to-liberal Catholic Fiction.
Ok, so first off--it's hard to say for certain where this author stands on many Catholic Issues, until one gets to the end of the book. That said, he's no Andrew Greeley, and that is much to the good. We do get a "married priest" and a priest who is involved with a married woman, and a priest who contemplates breaking his vows, and then through the courage of a woman friend ends up not doing so. However, all of these things are tastefully (unlike the tabloid trash-writing of the unsurpassably lurid Fr. Greeley) and they are all germane. In fact, they provide a nice backdrop for thinking about the comments that we make about others.
The conclave of the title is the gathering after the death of the present Holy Father (May the Good Lord protect and preserve him). In the course of the conclave, we learn much about the life of a papabile American Cardinal of moderate to liberal sympathies. There are a couple of twists and turns. And the author seems to not much care for the work of certain conservative groups, and Opus Dei comes under particular attack, although that is not the name given.
Your life will not be noticeably enriched by reading this book, but I also suspect that it sha'n't introduce moral error. So in the scale of things, this is a good thing to read when your brain is too tired for anything serious, and yet you don't want to fill your mind the with vast wasteland that is much of modern television.
Mr. Tobin has a second book in the series--Council which I anticipate is likely to be a good deal more irritating that I found this little volume.
