Overview

No issue divides the Christian community more than homosexuality. Father Paul Murray's story provides an intimate look at life on both sides of the liberal/conservative divide that crosses through church and society alike. Ordained a priest by Pope Paul VI in 1975, Murray was first drawn to Roman Catholicism as a young man through association with prominent, traditionalist Catholic writers. His personal odyssey and eventual self-acceptance of his homosexuality chart a radical transformation in his understandings of God, church, and society.Murray's coming out engages and challenges several presumed dualities: between spirituality and sexuality, Catholicism and homosexuality, priesthood and freedom. His quest, as much interior journey as worldly exploration, finds its point of resolution where seeming opposites meet. The more deeply he accepts his gayness, Murray finds, the more does he realize the truth of life in Christ. This parable of freedom challenges deeply held assumptions about the boundaries between the sacred and the secular.

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9781846941122

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Reviews

This book defiantly asserts that the problem facing the Catholic Church today is not the presence of homosexual clergy in its ranks, it is the reality of a threatened, repressed and compromised ecclesiastical hierarchy. John Shelby Spong, Author, Jesus for the Non-ReligiousNo book sets out more clearly and urgently thetragedy and the prospects of the current crisis of Catholicism. Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion. Bard College

Author Information

Paul Edward Murray is a Catholic priest and cultural anthropologist. During the 1990s he became Washington's first openly gay priest and worked extensively there in ministry in the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer community. In 1998 he relocated to Bard College, where he teaches religion and ministers as Catholic Chaplain. He lives in Annondale-on-Hudson, NY.

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