Practicing Catholic

At a time when millions of Catholics are questioning the deepest aspects of their faith, James Carroll delivers a tour de force, a searching book about what it means to be a Catholic today. Brilliantly wresting meaning from the historical, social, and religious strands of his personal story, Carroll delivers a loving critique of the Church and offers an incisive vision for renewal.

He vividly brings to life the people and events that have shaped American Catholicism—from JFK and Cardinal Richard Cushing to the Second Vatican Council and the ascendancy of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the papacy. Catholics and lapsed Catholics alike will recognize their own stories in Carroll’s reflections on his religious upbringing and his journey to discover a new Catholic identity.

Practicing Catholic creates space for the millions of practicing, questioning, or doubting Catholics who are looking 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.