PAPAL SIN and its expos of a fundamental dishonesty at the heart of the papacy provoked both praise and heated debate. Accused by some of harboring deep resentments against the church, Wills counters with a powerful statement of his Catholic faith.Wills begins with a reflection on his early experience of that faith as a child, and later as a Jesuit seminarian, revealing the importance of Catholicism in his own life. He goes on to challenge, in clear and forceful terms, the dogmatic claim that criticism or reform of the papacy is an assault on the faith itself. In a sweeping narrative covering two thousand years of church history, he reveals that the papacy, far from being an unchanging institution, has been transformed dramatically over the millennia and can be reimagined in the future. Wills ends with a moving meditation on the significance of the creed, the timeless core of the Catholic faith, which endures even as the institution of the church changes.Posing urgent questions for Catholic and non-Catholic readers alike, Wills argues for the continuing relevance of a papacy newly understood. He has already stirred up controversy about the failures of the church. Now, at a time when the selection of a new pope is imminent, he is sure to spark an equally heated conversation about its future.