UNITED STATES
Windy City Times
Special to the online edition of Windy City Times
by Joe Franco
2015-08-04
By Gregory Alexander, $14.99; Mill City Press; 290 pages
I am going to start by giving you, gentle readers, a caveat to this review: I am culturally a Roman Catholic.
Anne Rice is quoted as having loved this book, saying it’s “irresistible, profoundly compelling…” That being said, I do not share Rice’s unmitigated high praise of The Holy Mark. It is not that I did not like the book, but I had a rather severe reaction to some elements in it. I thought, “Perhaps it is my inculcated loyalty to the Church.” But, no, it isn’t that, since I do not take any offense to the subject matter. The Catholic Church has perpetrated an enormous crime that has touched every corner of the Catholic world in ways that resonate with the protagonist, Father Tony.
My biggest issue was the background story—the origins of Fr. Tony. There is so much background story that the actual plot—”dirty priest from powerful, Italian, New Orleans family is disgraced and sent to work at crappy parish in huge cover up”—is relegated to not more than perhaps a hundred or so pages. Honestly, the author could have removed the first 90 pages right off the get-go and the reader would not have been lost at all, since he mentions the priest’s past so much already throughout the book. I would have rather read more on the goings-on after the priest’s childhood, even if that childhood were moderately interesting.
I also think the premise of the book could be construed as dangerous for gay men. Fr. Tony is a pedophile because he has repressed same-sex longings for his ridiculously hot cousin. Sure, that’s messed-up but it also strongly suggests that pedophile priests are latent homosexuals with terrible body dysmorphic disorder.
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