Stephen Boehrer - The Purple Culture

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The mystery surrounding the clerical abuse scandal is not that a priest could be a pedophile. The mystery lies with the bishops.

If I achieve my purpose, my book will get under the skin of church leaders and give them a rash of a kind that impels them to examine their culture and the behaviors that flow from it.more...

Available at bookstores and through Oceanview Publishing

About Steve's Books

"The Purple Culture may be set as a novel but every character and every story in it is solidly grounded in fact. Every tragic example of clergy sexual abuse, hierarchical arrogance and lay denial has been repeated time and again in the recent past. The author's purpose however, is not to re-tell more church-based horror stories but to examine a plausible answer to the vexing question why.

His response to the "why" of it all is a brilliant analysis of the Catholic hierarchy within a multi-disciplinary context. His conclusions probe deeply into the "Purple Culture" and present the best and most plausible answer to date to the why of the destructive nightmare of clergy sexual abuse."

Thomas Doyle, O.P., J.C.D.
Author, Canon lawyer and
advocate for victims.

"In the literary tradition of Andrew M. Greeley, The Purple Culture is a legal thriller about corruption in the Catholic Church. Stephen Boehrer plumbs a sinful human essence in his villains and, in a rare twist, draws a history of hubris to bear in furnishing a finale no one in Hollywood would dare to produce."

Jason Berry
Author of the novel and script, and director of the movie Vows of Silence

"How does one who intimately knows the workings of a secret culture tell the truth about it? The novel form offers an author the means to tell the truth beyond historical and statistical accounts.

This reader thinks of Andrew Greeley's epic The Cardinal Sins. THE PURPLE CULTURE, Stephen Boehrer's fourth and best novel so far propels him into fellowship with American writers the likes of J.F. Powers, Edwin O'Conner, and Walker Percy - that is, those who love the Catholic Church at the same time are unwilling to cover up its faults and human imperfections.

This intriguing account from the inside of the clerical culture lacks some of the irony and humor of other writers, but deals deftly with some of the meanest and most distressing workings of a power system. One can hope that Boehrer continues to probe the purple culture bound by the scarlet bond of secrecy. We all, including the clerical culture will all be better off for his efforts."

A.W.Richard Sipe
Author
The Serpent and the Dove: Celibacy in Literature and Life

The harm that self-absorbed and self-serving religious leaders can bring to their own people, and to others, has perhaps never been more evident.

History records how violence and terror tactics have been used, not just by small cults, but by all mainstream religions.

I speak from my own affiliation and tradition, that of Roman Catholicism, but I believe the topic has universal application.

The attempts to cover-up the sexual abuse scandal with its protection of pedophiles, and the increasing numbers of thefts by ecclesiastics are warning signals to the laity that their judgments must enter the fray - or the scandals will continue.

In the priest/bishop pedophile scandal the conclusion is obvious that the leadership's moral compass is off-point.

Church embezzlements on today's scale bring the leadership's management abilities into question.

"The Purple Culture," speaks to components of a culture that are causal in episcopal behavior. It presents a foundation for and gives focus to action by the laity. I hope you will read it.