Garry Wills

discusses

Why Priests?:
A Failed Tradition

This event includes a book signing

Date

Feb
14
Thursday
February 14, 2013
8:00 PM ET

Location

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

Tickets

This event is free; no tickets are required.

Harvard Book Store is pleased to welcome Pulitzer Prize­–winner GARRY WILLS for a discussion of his new book, Why Priests?:A Failed Tradition.

Before becoming the bestselling author of Papal Sin and Why I Am a Catholic, Garry Wills spent five years as a young man at a Jesuit seminary and nearly became a priest himself. But after a lifetime of study and reflection, he now poses some challenging questions: Why do we need priests at all? Why did the priesthood arise in a religion that began without it and opposed it? Would Christianity be stronger without the priesthood, as it was at its outset?

Meticulously researched, persuasively argued, and certain to spark debate, Why Priests? asserts that the anonymous Letter to Hebrews, a late addition to the New Testament canon, helped inject the priesthood into a Christianity where it did not exist, along with such concomitants as belief in an apostolic succession, the real presence in the Eucharist, the sacrificial interpretation of the Mass, and the ransom theory of redemption. But Wills does not expect the priesthood to fade entirely away. He just reminds us that Christianity did without it in the time of Peter and Paul with notable success.

Garry Wills
Garry Wills

Garry Wills

Garry Wills is an adjunct professor and cultural historian whose many books include studies of George Washington, Richard Nixon, the Kennedy family, Ronald Reagan, and religion in America. His numerous prizes include the Merle Curti Award of the American Historical Association, the National Book Critics Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and an honorary doctorate from the College of the Holy Cross. 

Harvard Book Store
1256 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02138

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