Jason Berry. 407 pp. Doubleday. $22,50
In the summer of 1983, in the heart of Louisiana's Cajun country, a nightmare became real when two parishioners of St. John's Catholic church learned that their trusted pastor, Father Gilbert Gauthe, had been sexually abusing their three sons, along with dozens of other St. John's alter boys. Horrible as the crime was, the response of the church hi- erarchy to its disclosure was nearly as appalling. Gauthe, it turns out, had been removed from a previous assignment...