Blurb
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A boy grows up Catholic, detests it, and in twelfth grade tells his mom he’s an atheist to get out of going to mass. Soon he heads off to college, graduates, and moves to Los Angeles to pursue a career in engineering. He has a profound religious experience while gazing at the ocean and decides to quit his job and dedicate his life to ministry. He enters a Catholic seminary for five years, experiencing many adventures, wrestling with his commitment to celibacy, and noticing morally questionable acts. He’s ordained a priest and makes formal promises of celibacy and obedience to his bishop. As a new priest, he discovers that many of his fellow priests are fostering clandestine romantic relationships.
While providing pastoral guidance to couples challenged with connection and intimacy, he comes to appreciate that relationship is a primary tool God has given us to grow. Soon he himself is at a crossroads—should he live a gratifying two-faced life and cope with the guilt of secret liaisons, or leave the ministry he loves and properly pursue love, romance, marriage, and family. |
 A young man's journey entering and leaving the Catholic priesthood |
This coming-of-age story is a raw exposé of the challenges a young man faces when deciding to embrace celibacy, with the irony that he’s still quite attracted to women, romance, and sex. He chronicles his adventures in adolescent and college life, seminary living, and the fascinating and sometimes scandalous episodes of living the life of a parish priest.
His personal story is funny, poignant, erotic, and scandalous, yet throughout there is a reverence for the Divine. The reader will be delighted to learn arcane and inspirational Catholic and Christian trivia in the process. Paul readily reveals the sins of the organizational Church without malice but rather a fierce love intent on reforming a flawed institution; this is his contribution to a more authentic experience of the Church that Jesus intended.
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