Customer Reviews

A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church

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James Kavanaugh tells us amazing and startling things about the priesthood and the Catholic Church in general. As a Roman Catholic, I find this book very enlightening and informative.

Poet and former priest James Kavanaugh continues to write and publish poetry that changes lives, encourages souls, inspires unfettered spirituality, and helps us embrace the love that is loose in the world and beyond. This title, one of his earliest, and the many more that he's written since, have sold over 16 million copies, and every poetry reading he gives is sold out. This quiet man writes prose and poetry that sings of the love of God that we return to God and share with each other, and it helps us recognize the sacred in our lives.

Bought this for my Aunt and she said this guy was in her head. She would've like to have met him as she shared a lt of the same perspectives.

James J. Kavanaugh (1928-2009) was a former Catholic priest, who left the priesthood several months after this book's 1967 publication (he had earlier written an anonymous article for the Saturday Evening Post entitled, 'I Am a Priest, I Want to Marry'), and married that same year in an Episcopalian ceremony. He later wrote other books, including some bestselling books of poetry (e.g., There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves).

He states in the Preface that after he wrote his article, "Most, however---ten to one, in fact---approved of what I had said... Letters poured in from hands that had never responded to an article before. These were not the letters of brief and cold comment, but the personal and touching stories of broken hearts. I had spoken to them and they had answered with the words that no one else had heard. To these I dedicate my book, to those that have suffered as I, and more... I need my Church, for without the strength of Christ it gives I cannot live. I have known its comforts for almost forty years, and feel the right to speak out as a son."

Here are some representative quotations from the book:

"No, we do not need a Pope to tell us that Catholics are permitted to use the pill. We need a God to tell us that we are free. We need a Church to deliver us from the legalism that has buried us in guilt and fear and taken away our God." (Pg. 8)

"The Catholic man is an organized answering service whose first obligation is to protect his Church. He is not concerned with overpopulation, but only with guarding the Catholic position on the pill. He is not troubled about public education, but only about the growth of Catholic schools." (Pg. 37)

"Nothing has really changed... We will continue to preserve the system that has paralyzed us and only offer reforms that are dull or out of date. The authority that forbids us to be persons remains untouchable. The theology that protects this authority is afraid to face itself." (Pg. 67)

"Why are there only one or two Protestant theologians at Catholic universities? Why are there so few theological schools at our state universities? Mainly because theology has become a frightened and defensive discipline, afraid to meet in open discussion the questions which a man must face in the barbershop or cocktail lounge. What are we afraid of? Truth?" (Pg. 155)

"Can we not be grateful that it is difficult to recognize a Christian in our society since so many men and women do Christian work? Is there no work for a parish without fences, for a Church without schools. Once we were the Church of the poor and the hungry. How came we to be the Church of the middle class?" (Pg. 157-158)

I read this book in the early 70s & remember thinking: Blow out your lantern Diogenes, here is YOUR MAN! After that, I read every thing James Kavanaugh wrote. And am still reading. Not only honest, he has style, class and a way with words unequaled in modern poetry. Nuff said.

If you're looking for a book that will free you to think for yourself independent of church rules, this is the one.

I first read the book in 1969 and have re-read it many times over the years. It helped tremendously with guilt I felt from being raised in a strict religion and freed me to find my own spiritual path. An honest and exceptional book.

I read this at the age of 14.....I have read better books over the years but to me, it was as influential a book as I have ever read. I am a former Catholic clergyperson hoping to be ordained in the United Church of Christ. If anyone reading this knows how to contact James Kavanaugh, please thank him for me. If you know his email, please get it to me!