Download or read book A Priest and A Boy written by T J Lovat and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-29 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Priest and a Boy is a work of fiction reflecting real-world events. In 1956, Peter Madigan is an eight-year-old altar boy in a Sydney parish. Bernard Cassey is the parish's assistant priest. The story recounts the growing relationship between the two key characters, one that begins with grooming and culminates in sexual abuse. It tells of the confusion and struggles that both characters suffer across the twelve years that the story covers. Peter endures a troubled adolescence and a fractured early adulthood, haunted by the abuse. Cassey progresses through the church's ranks, protected by the church, while burdened by continuing personal struggles. Attempts by Peter and his family for justice are met with stonewalled resistance. The setting is the Australian Catholic Church of the 1950s and 1960s. Catholicism is an exclusive culture that determines all matters of faith and morals for its members. Following the dictates of the Church offers eternal salvation. Straying from those dictates promises eternal damnation. The Pope, together with his bishops and clergy, are the gatekeepers of the path to salvation. Their word is law and their personal lives beyond reproach. It is in that setting that the story deals with the impact of institutional sexual abuse on victim, perpetrator, and the standing of the institution itself.
Download or read book I Loved a Boy written by James L. Meyer and published by . This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Altar Boys written by Suzanne Smith and published by HarperCollins Australia. This book was released on 2020-08-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boys with everything to live for ... A community betrayed ... The whistle-blower priest who paid the ultimate price **Shortlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award** **Shortlisted for the 2021 NSW Premier's Community and Regional History Prize** ** Shortlisted for the 2021 Prime Minister's Award** Glen Walsh and Steven Alward were childhood friends in their tight-knit working-class community in Newcastle, NSW. Both proud altar boys at the local Catholic church, they went on to attend the city's Catholic boys' high schools: Glen to Marist Brothers, Hamilton, and Steven to St Pius X. Both did well: Steven became a journalist; Glen a priest. But their lives came to be burdened by secrets kept and exposed. Glen discovered that another priest was sexually abusing boys and reported the offender to police, breaking his vows to the Catholic 'brotherhood' in the process. His decision to give evidence regarding the cover-up of clerical abuse at a landmark trial ended in tragedy. Meanwhile, Steven was fighting his own battle to overcome a traumatic past, a battle that also ended in tragedy. Ensuing investigations revealed that at least 60 men in the region had taken their own lives. What had happened, and why were so many of those men from the three Catholic high schools in the area? By six-time Walkley Award-winning investigative reporter Suzanne Smith and shortlisted for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, The Altar Boys is the explosive expose of widespread and organised clerical abuse of children in one Australian city, and how the cover-up in the Catholic Church in Australia extended from parish priests to every echelon of the organisation. Focusing on two childhood friends, their families and community, this gripping story is backed by secret documents, diary notes and witness accounts, and details a deliberate church strategy of using psychological warfare against witnesses in key trials involving paedophile priests.
Download or read book Raped written by Jr. Larry Monte and published by . This book was released on 2010-10 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monte was raped by a Catholic priest for two years beginning in 1972 when he was 15. His story looks behind the curtain of what priest sexual abuse really is and how it permanently destroys lives.
Download or read book Death of an Altar Boy written by E.J. Fleming and published by Exposit. This book was released on 2018-04-20 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The tragic death of 13-year-old Danny Croteau in 1972 faded from headlines and memories for 20 years until the Boston abuse scandal--a string of assaults within the Catholic Church--exploded in the early 2000s. Despite numerous indications--including 40 claims of sexual misconduct with minors--pointing to him as Croteau's killer, the Reverend Richard R. Lavigne remains "innocent." Drawing on more than 10,000 pages of police and court records and interviews with Danny's friends and family, fellow abuse victims, and church officials, the author uncovers the truth--church complicity in a cover up and the masking of priests' involvement in a ring of abusive clergy--behind Croteau's death and those who had a hand in it.
Download or read book A Troublesome Boy written by Paul Vasey and published by Groundwood Books Ltd. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kirkus Reviews Best Book About the Past, and selected as an Honor Book by the Society of School Librarians International Teddy can't believe how fast his life has changed in just two years. When he was twelve, his father took off, and then his mother married Henry, a man Teddy despises. But Teddy has no control over his life, and adults make all the decisions, especially in 1959. Henry decides that Teddy should be sent to St. Ignatius Academy for Boys, an isolated boarding school run by the Catholic church. St. Iggy's, Teddy learns, is a cold, unforgiving place — something between a juvenile detention center and reform school. The other boys are mostly a cast of misfits and eccentrics, but Teddy quickly becomes best friends with Cooper, a wise-cracking, Wordsworth-loving kid with a history of neglect. Despite the priests' ruthless efforts to crack down on the slightest hint of defiance or attitude, the boys get by for a while on their wits, humor and dreams of escape. But the beatings, humiliation and hours spent in the school's infamous "time-out" rooms, and the institutionalized system of power and abuse that protects the priests' authority, eventually take their toll, especially on the increasingly fragile Cooper. Then one of the new priests, Father Prince, starts to summon Cooper to his room at night, and Teddy watches helplessly as his friend withdraws into his own private nightmare, even as Prince targets Teddy himself as his next victim. Teddy and Cooper's only reprieve comes on Saturdays, when the school janitor, Rozey, takes the boys to his run-down farmhouse outside of town, the only place where the boys can feel normal -- fishing, playing cribbage, watching the bears at the local dump. But even this can't stop Cooper's downward spiral and eventual suicide. And just when Teddy thinks something good might come out of his friend's tragedy, he finds himself dealing with the ultimate betrayal.
Download or read book A History of Loneliness written by John Boyne and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bestselling author John Boyne's A History of Loneliness tells the riveting narrative of an honorable Irish priest who finds the church collapsing around him at a pivotal moment in its history. Propelled into the priesthood by a family tragedy, Odran Yates is full of hope and ambition. When he arrives at Clonliffe Seminary in the 1970s, it is a time in Ireland when priests are highly respected, and Odran believes that he is pledging his life to "the good." Forty years later, Odran's devotion is caught in revelations that shatter the Irish people's faith in the Catholic Church. He sees his friends stand trial, colleagues jailed, the lives of young parishioners destroyed, and grows nervous of venturing out in public for fear of disapproving stares and insults. At one point, he is even arrested when he takes the hand of a young boy and leads him out of a department store looking for the boy's mother. But when a family event opens wounds from his past, he is forced to confront the demons that have raged within the church, and to recognize his own complicity in their propagation, within both the institution and his own family. A novel as intimate as it is universal, A History of Loneliness is about the stories we tell ourselves to make peace with our lives. It confirms Boyne as one of the most searching storytellers of his generation.
Download or read book What They Did to the Kid written by Jack Fritscher and published by Palm Drive Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What They Did to the Kid" is a memoir spinning as a comic novel for general-fiction readers intrigued by boys' school tales, and baby boomers who "survived Catholic school." Ryan O'Hara, coming of age from 14 to 24, is the wise adolescent narrating readers' entry into the secret culture of 1950's altar boys who go to the seminary, meet priests, and must decide their own identities. The novel's interior ticking covers the clock and calendar of boys' emerging consciences and edgy consciousness. "The San Francisco Chronicle" says, "Jack Fritscher reads gloriously." Strong characters and snappy dialog propel the character-driven plot of male-dominant pecking order. At Misericordia Seminary (aptly nicknamed "Misery"), Ryan O'Hara exposes his own story. He's trapped for oxygen-with 500 other boys-by the imperial Rector Karg, the disciplinarian Father Gunn "of the USMC," the tart Father Polistina, and the rebel-priest Chris Dryden "who knows Fellini and JFK." The storytelling Irish-American author gives each ensemble character-hero or villain, student or priest, man or woman-a rich back story. Black civil rights of the 60's as well as three interesting women characters open this tale out of the suffocating seminary and on to the hot streets of Chicago's South Side and Old Town. The compelling psychological drama hinges on the very source and aspirations of priestly vocation versus self-esteem. "Is God calling me-and what about chastity? Or is it just the 'Bali Hai' of blind ambition and social climbing-and what about sex?" Fritscher makes deeper than usual sense of soulful coming-of-age material. The hearty supply of boarding school episodes cumulatively reveals the dueling dynamic between the boyish protagonist, Ryan O'Hara, and the callous ambition of the handsome bully, Tank Rimsky, as they fight toward the finish line of "manly men's" ordination to the priesthood. "The hardest thing to be in America today is a man." The novel is based on an under-reported story: the Catholic Church recruited 200,000 boys into seminaries in the 1950's. Only 20,000 were ordained. "Kid" details, in a nostalgic and not unkind take what happened to the missing 180,000 boys and the women and men in their families. Daring to step inside Catholic culture, without being parochial, this American story reveals the 1950's roots of 21st-century "recovering Catholic" panic and angst. The millions of post-Catholic baby boomers who have exited the Church will compare notes and laugh knowingly at the dead-on characterizations. Fashionably anti-Catholic campers will say, "but, of course " Readers might catalog "Kid" in the genre of "Young Torless, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," and "Lord of the Flies." Before now, no one of the surviving 180,000 ex-seminarians has dared reveal this insider confession on the secret milieu of the Catholic education of priests. From interviews with more than a hundred former seminarians, Jack Fritscher uniquely stages their true story arcs with wit, verve, and comedy. "What They Did to the Kid" is the fourth novel from Jack Fritscher whose twelve books have sold more than 100,000 copies. Jack Fritscher is a graduate of the prestigious Pontifical College Josephinum, a Roman Catholic seminary, located in Columbus, Ohio, and directly subject to the Vatican in Rome. He received his doctorate in American Literature from Loyola University, Chicago.
Download or read book The Good Bad Boy written by Gerald Brennan and published by . This book was released on 2002-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The day to day diary of an eighth-grade boy. Of all of Fr. Brennan's great and popular books, this is the one we have had the most requests to reprint. Grade school and Jr. High boys will love, treasure, guard and re-read this favorite many times. Of course, all young Catholics will enjoy this very special book. Any parent who ever attended the old-style Catholic grade school will have moist-happy eyes throughout the entire book. Everyone will find this edition not only good entertainment but a great teacher of Catholicity. Durable sewn signatures, 60 lb. cream paper, 128 pages, hardcover.
Download or read book Priest written by Sierra Simone and published by Sierra Simone. This book was released on 2015-06-29 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are many rules a priest can't break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot forsake his God. I've always been good at following rules. Until she came. Then I learned new rules. My name is Tyler Anselm Bell. I'm twenty-nine years old. Six months ago, I broke my vow of celibacy on the altar of my own church, and God help me, I would do it again. I am a priest and this is my confession.
Download or read book Lead Us Not Into Temptation written by Jason Berry and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While seminaries, by many accounts, admit an increasing number of homosexuals, women are strictly barred from ministerial roles. The church's time-honored tradition of "avoiding scandal" also backfires. For by the shielding of fallen clerics, Berry shows, the suffering of the abused is often compounded.
Download or read book Catholic Boy Blues written by Norbert Krapf and published by . This book was released on 2014-04 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Norbert Krapf, past Indiana Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize nominee, emeritus prof. of English at Long Island University, and author of twenty-five critically acclaimed books, has written a new book, "Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing." Norbert is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. After fifty years of struggling with his past, he felt that by confronting it in writing, he could offer fellow victims comfort, healing, and a sense of freedom from the long-term effects of abuse. He also believed that the book, seven years in the making, could help caregivers who counsel and minister to survivors of abuse. "Catholic Boy Blues" gives insight and encouragement to those who have not yet confronted their abuse and to friends and family members who want to understand better the long-term effects of abuse. After Norbert began to write about the emotional turmoil which affected him, his feelings of betrayal by God and Church, and his years of troubled silence, he experienced healing and a renewal of spirit. The 130 poems he selected from the 325 he wrote came in four voices: the boy he was, the man he became, Mr. Blues (a fictional friend, mentor, and counselor), and the Priest. The honesty and power of Norbert's words convey representative emotions and thoughts of those abused. Although the poems aren't always pleasant, they give the reader a vivid look at the helplessness, anger, betrayal, and isolation any victim suffers, but in the end, as Jason Berry says, "Norbert Krapf fuses the rolling wisdom of blues singers with incantations of his own past that echo sacred ritual. Along the way he turns trauma into elegy, and takes suffering to a plateau of human triumph."
Download or read book The Boy in the Presbytery written by Monique Patterson and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When a priest promised Beverley Levey he would help put her young son Paul back on the straight and narrow, she thought her prayers had been answered. Little did she know the reason her 12-year-old son was rebelling was because the priest-Gerald Ridsdale-was sexually abusing him. But the predator-who had offended before-used the woman's blind faith in the Catholic Church to his advantage. Paul was sent to live with his abuser in the Mortlake presbytery. There he was sexually abused by the priest almost every day for about a year. Years later this secret that haunted Paul's every waking minute was revealed. But if he thought his nightmare was over, he was wrong. Paul would go on to find out that many high-ranking leaders in the Catholic Church knew Ridsdale was a child molester, and yet they did nothing to stop the evil man from snatching Paul's innocence and turning his life into a living hell. Sadly, it was a story all too common-the Catholic Church became a playground for paedophiles, a safe haven for them to commit atrocious acts. Now Paul is sharing his story in a bid to end the silence.
Download or read book Priest written by Jared Dodd and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2017-07-26 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israel is in peril. King Saul has turned away from God. Rumors grow of a new king anointed in secret, waiting to come forth. Benaiah, a young priest, desires a simple life of marriage and priesthood. But when King Saul recruits him to hunt down the traitor from Bethlehem, Benaiah will find himself in the midst of a difficult choice. Will he stay loyal to his king, or will he join the revolution of Jesse's son?
Download or read book Split written by Mary C. Dispenza and published by Mary Dispenza. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At age seven, Mary Dispenza was raped by her parish priest. The event split Mary in two, then vanished from memory. Carrying an unaccountable sense of shame, Mary clung to Church liturgy and dogma for support and entered the convent, where for 15 years she lived as a nun, separate from the world. Decades later, when a memory of the pedophile priest resurfaced, Mary's will to survive and her quest to understand the unforgivable, led the former nun to join forty-five other men and women abused by priests, in the largest-ever successful lawsuit against the Catholic Church. As scandals involving sexual abuse continue to roil the Catholic Church and survivors of abuse fight to make the Church atone for its sins, each abused person must find a way to mend the schism inside. SPLIT, the story of Mary's journey to wholeness, takes the reader from horrifying scenes of child abuse, inside the unfamiliar world of the novitiate, through the delicate and frightening process of accepting homosexuality, and culminates in epic courtroom battles. Readers seeking to understand how this terrible injustice happens, and how so much has been kept secret for so long will find some answers in this honest memoir. Mary Dispenza, now an activist for ending the epidemic of abuse, speaks passionately about one 'SPLIT' we desperately need - the one that separates the Church from its mantle of secrecy.
Download or read book The Priest written by and published by . This book was released on 1821 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Boy with the Perpetual Nervousness written by Graham Caveney and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-07-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An enthralling, emotional memoir that recounts the ups and downs of coming-of-age, set against the music and literature of the 1970s. Raised in a small town in the north of England known primarily for its cotton mills, football team, and its deep roots in the “Respectable Working Class,” Graham Caveney armed himself against the confusing nature of adolescence with a thick accent, a copy of Kafka, and a record collection including the likes of the Buzzcocks and Joy Division. All three provided him the opportunity to escape, even if just in mind, beyond his small-town borders. But, when those passions are noticed and preyed upon by a mentor, everything changes. Now, as an adult, Caveney attempts to reconcile his past and present, coming to grips with both the challenges and wonder of adolescence, music, and literature. By turns angry, despairing, beautifully written, shockingly funny, and ultimately redemptive, The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness is a tribute to the power of the arts—and a startling, original memoir that “feels as if it had to be written, and demands to be read” (The Guardian UK).
