"Although the Inquisition ceased torturing and burning heretics in the eighteenth century, its lineal descendent, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), is still at work today, investigating and punishing dissidents with excommunication, banishment from official teaching positions, and by other means.

In this book - and for the first time in the 450-year history of the Roman Inquisition and its modern incarnation, the CDF - a group of Catholics who have recently undergone examination by the Vatican's inquisitorial procedures talk openly about the experience. Collins himself was recently investigated by the Vatican for alleged heresy; the examination began in 1997, when his book Papal Power was singled out for supposed doctrinal problems."--BOOK JACKET.