When Rigelhof wrote his award-winning memoir A Blue Boy in a Black Dress, the wall of silence erected by the Roman Catholic hierarchy around the sexual mistreatment of boys remained intact. Nothing Sacred: A Journey Beyond Belief, picks up the threads of his earlier book and sets the revelations of the past decade into the context of his own experience. Rigelhof became an altar boy at Holy Rosary Cathedral in Regina when he was only five. As a youth, he found the church both seductive and disturbing. Yet, his five years of preparation for the priesthood, which spanned the tumult of Vatican II, nearly ended in suicide. Although his allegiance to the Catholic Church ceased with his vocation, the same spiritual passion that drew Rigelhof to the church still fuels his interest in the future of religion and the meaning of faith in contemporary society. In Nothing Sacred, he looks ahead to the fate of organized religion in the 21st century, probing the forces of the human spirit and exploring the meaning of ritual and the human need for myth-making. Hugo Meyell, referring to A Blue Boy in a Black Dress, writes in the Globe and Mail, “I hope that this book will be widely read by those who wonder what the religious future will bring.” Jeet Heer, writing in the National Post, says “Rigelhof combines the urgency of good journalism with the depth of a true scholar . . . Canada needs more Rigelhofs to stir up debate.” Uncompromising and provocative, Nothing Sacred will do just that. Nothing Sacred was a finalist for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction ).
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Editorial Reviews
From the Back Cover
When T.F. Rigelhof wrote his memoir A Blue Boy in a Black Dress, the wall of silence erected by the Roman Catholic hierarchy around the sexual mistreatment of boys remained intact. In Nothing Sacred: A Journey Beyond Belief, Rigelhof sets these revelations into the context of his personal experience. Nothing Sacred encompasses and builds upon A Blue Boy in a Black Dress. Rigelhof reflects on why he loved serving as an altar boy and why his five years as a seminarian, which spanned the tumult of Vatican II, nearly ended in suicide. Looking ahead to the fate of organized religion in the twenty-first century, he probes the driving forces of the human spirit and speaks up for a more fully human world.
About the Author
T.F. Rigelhof teaches social analysis at Dawson College in Montreal. His story collection Je t’aime Cowboy was a finalist for the 1994 QSPELL Award for fiction. His 1996 memoir A Blue Boy in a Black Dress was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award and won the QSPELL Award for non-fiction.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
"Nothing Sacred" veneer for religious skepticism,
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This review is from: Nothing Sacred: A Journey Beyond Belief (Paperback)
After watching an interview with Terry Rigelhof, I was convinced his new book was nothing more than a dishonest foray into organized religious practice. At the outset, Mr. Rigelhof has left the Christian faith for what he calls the possibility of "living with a non-traditional faith." This amounts to a euphemism for atheism, and his distaste of Christian denominations is clear, and I would say tragic. In his own personal dilemmas, such as a recent stroke, he fails to realize some of the good that came out of his illness. He readily discounts the benefits that can arise out of difficult situations, opting instead for a materialistic bent on events. What others may call miraculous and providential, Rigelhof simply dscounts as "interesting." He doesn't really mention anything about the founder of the Christian faith, Jesus; should not any cosmological or ontological tests for who God is be based on the founder's claims? Yet, he lays at the feet of church leadership certain epistemological questions that can only be answered by God himself. What appears to be a honest heart felt expression of one's struggles with belief, ends up being a myopic and scattershot criticism of religion, and Christianity in particular. I found this book hard to read because it was too melodramatic, and often to the point of absurdity. Which further points out Mr. Rigelhof's obssession with emotion laden arguments against instutionalized faith, not realizing the subjective foundations of such arguments actually work against him. I certainly think people should read this title, but I would caution against its clever subterfuge of honest inquiry.
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