I’ve been reading this book for several months. I won’t buy it, so I always find it in Barnes and Noble when I stop in for a coffee. It is a very interesting story about pre Vatican 2 life in the seminary and convent. It then spins out of control into the 60s when liturgical “renewal”, liberation theology, and other regressive moves occurred.

You see what seems to be a very pious priest question his vocation to celibacy and a nun who begins to question her vocation as a nun. They are eventually married and have children. Their son relates their story and his confused life.

I picked it up with reservation, but I think the son does a pretty good job at being honest. Thus far, it seems the priest’s son does not understand or fully respect his father’s decision – and yet he is glad to be alive and exist. Talk about existential angst!

If anything, it shows that 1950s American Catholicism was not the Shangrila that traditionalists like to make it out to be. The anecdotes about seminary life in Boston make you frown while you laugh about them. One particular instance includes the juvenile correspondence of seminarians writing notes of invitation and refusal on the subject of taking walks together around seminary grounds. You see a very unhealthy mechanized system of manufacturing priests. You can see the inception of the paedo-homosexual crises planting its seeds.

Anyway, it’s vey interesting. Has anyone else out there read it?