Practicing Catholic

James Carroll delivers a tour-de-force look at what it means to be a Catholic today--set against the rich history of the Catholic Church in America.

Brilliantly wresting meaning from the historical, social and religious strands of his story, Carroll illuminates the Church's transformation from reactionary monolith to an institution in which the deepest aspects of faith are being called into question. Carroll reveals his own story--as a Catholic boy in the 1940s and '50s, as a seminarian and priest in the crucible of the 1960s and early '70s, and as a committed but questioning Catholic today--with an emotional impact reminiscent of his An American Requiem.

Practicing Catholic is for the millions of practicing, questioning, or lapsed Catholics and others who are searching for a way to reconcile the acts of Church leaders with the faith and the Church they still want to claim as their own.

Publishers Weekly

Carroll, a former Catholic priest who wrote of his conflict with his father over the Vietnam War in An American Requiem, revisits and expands on that tension in this spiritual memoir infused with church history. Here, Carroll traces his life as a son of the Catholic Church, showing how he and the church changed as he moved from boyhood into adulthood. Ordained a priest in 1968, the year Humanae Vitae, the controversial encyclical on contraception, was released, Carroll discovered by 1974 that he could no longer keep his vow of obedience if it meant heeding teachings with which he disagreed. Leaving the priesthood freed him to pursue more fully his life as a writer, but also to be the kind of Catholic he believes the reformers of his church envisioned in the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. Although he laments what he calls the more recent "conservative reaction" to the council, he remains Catholic. Readers who, like Carroll, remain Catholic but wrestle with their church's positions on moral issues will most appreciate his story. (Apr.)

James Carroll was raised in Washington, D.C., and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1969. He served as a chaplain at Boston University from 1969 to 1974, and then left the priesthood to become a writer. His New York Times Bestseller CONSTANTINE'S SWORD is now the subject of an acclaimed documentary, directed by Oren Jacoby and distributed nationally by First Run Features and Red Envelope Entertainment.