Father Roger Dowling acquires a rare treasure: two prime-location tickets to the Notre Dame vs. USC football game, the gift of an old friend in the Church. But the tickets come with a catch, for at Notre Dame he is expected to attend a conference on American annulment practices - a meeting with the powerful Cardinal Hildebrand, which will tear Dowling from the welcome obscurity of his parish in Fox River, Illinois. The eroding sanctity of a marriage vow made before God underlies the gripping plot of A Cardinal Offense, the seventeenth novel to feature Father Dowling and the first set at Notre Dame.