Suggested Reading Books and Articles

Since we started to offer peer support in 1983 Good Tidings has been featured in various news articles, talk shows, documentaries, and has been covered by journalists around the world. The issue of priests being involved in personal relationships with women is a topic that is always current. This list contains various old and new articles, as well as books which are primarily issue related, although some are personal memoirs.

BOOKS AND ARTICLES

ARTICLES

AN ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BOOKS AND ARTICLES

BOOKS:

For an excellent history of mandatory celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church:
MARRIED PRIESTS AND THE REFORMING PAPACY/THE ELEVENTH CENTURY DEBATES by Ann Llewelyn Barstow. This book is pricey but, for those who want to know the history, it is frank.

CELIBACY A LOVE STORY

Mimi Bull grew up secure in the love of family, friends, and neighbors, never questioning the unusual circumstances that caused her to be adopted by two women in the late 1930s. It was years before she learned the secret truth: that one of the women was her grandmother, the other her biological mother, and that the story of her adoption had been concocted not only to shield her mother’s reputation, but to hide the fact that her father was the gregarious young parish priest everyone adored. It has only been very recently that the Catholic Church has begun to acknowledge the existence of other children of priests, and Bull writes candidly of the emotional toll that this policy of secrecy and denial took on her—“I should like to have lived a life with my loving parents, knowing who we all were, knowing my father’s family from the beginning, and without the forty years of depression that compromised me and those I loved.”

WIVES OF CATHOLIC CLERGY by Joseph H. Fichter

IS NOTHING SACRED? WHEN SEX INVADES THE PASTORAL RELATIONSHIP by Marie Fortune

WHAT GOD HATH JOINED, Pamela & Terence Sweeney, Ballentine Books, 1993.

The true story of Hollywood actress Pamela Shoop and Roman Catholic Jesuit Father Terence Sweeney.

A CHURCH DIVIDED, Terence Sweeney, Prometheus Books, 1992.
LOVE IS ALWAYS, Michael Miles, William Morrow Press
S HATTERED VOWS, David Rice, Triumph Books ISBN -89243-507-8 (Ligouri Press, 1 Ligouri Dr., Ligouri, MO 63057 Tel 1-800-464-2555).
A SECRET WORLD AND THE SEARCH FOR CELIBACY, A. W. Richard Sipe (to order call 800-825-3089).
PRIESTS, POWER AND SEX, A. W. Richard Sipe, Brunner/Mazel (to order call 800-825-3089)
CELIBACY GIFT OR LAW?, Heinz-J. Vogels, Sheed and Ward, 1993. (to order call 800-333-7373)
FREE PRIESTS, William F. Powers, Loyola University Press, 1992.
A CATHOLIC BILL OF RIGHTS, Edited by Leonard Swidler and Herbert O’Brien, Sheed and Ward, 1988. (to order call 800-333-7373)
A PASSION FOR PRIESTS by Claire Jenkins This is about the women in the support group in England who are or have been in relationships with RC priests.
FORBIDDEN FRUIT by Annie Murphy This is Annie’s version of the relationship she had with Irish Bishop Eamonn Casey.
WIVES OF CATHOLIC CLERGY by Rev. Joseph Fichter, S.J. (Sheed and Ward, 1992).
MARRIED TO A CATHOLIC PRIEST (A JOURNEY IN FAITH) by Mary Vincent Dally. (Loyola University Press 1988). The forward is by Eusebius Beltran the former RC Bishop of Tulsa. Mary’s book is about her and her husband’s (Father Peter Dally) experience leaving the Episcopalian priesthood and becoming an RC priest.

Book by Pat Bond, IMBALANCE OF POWER. Those who know Pat and her son Nate will want to read this book, and those who care about what happens to the children of priests will want to read it as well.

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“PERFECT” A Love Story J.C. Soucier Written as her memoirs for her family, this story is well worth reading.

Cait’s Comments: On the website the author has an article from the Morning Sentinal where a representative from the Portland diocese takes issue with part of the story. Here is a quote from the Morning Sentinel’s article:

Bernard takes issue with Soucier’s claim, made in the book and to the Morning Sentinel, that plans were made for Soucier to have an abortion and that Dumoulin drove her to New York to a clinic with the expectation that she would go through with it. She said that is the worst claim Soucier makes in the book.“The Catholic Church is very much against abortion, so I have a hard time believing a discussion encouraging abortion would take place with anyone,” Bernard said. “And again, there is nothing in our files that shows anything like that. This is a story from the mother’s point of view and there is no one who can refute it.”

Well, it is totally understandable for a devout Catholic not to want to believe that a priest would encourage an abortion of his own or any child. The facts of life are very different. It broke my heart to learn what goes on, and it is NOT new! We in Good Tidings have talked with priests who have encouraged this, and with women who have had the abortions. One priest sat with me and discussed this…a few years after he paid for the abortion. YES! Such priests of the lie are a blight on the Church, but rather than kill the messengers, the Church needs to purge the priesthood of career men who stoop to all time lows to protect their one security (and whatever reputation they have) rather than let the truth of their behavior be public. This is harsh, and true. Only ONE MAN ON EARTH CAN CHANGE THIS.

These fathers need to be booted into the real world to support their children and if they remain priests, then let them be worker priests, and function sacramentally on weekends! That is how real men behave–they care for their children!

I encourage you to buy and read this book, and tell your friends about it!

To order PERFECT directly from the author, e-mail her at [email protected]

Include your mailing address, then

Send a check made payable to “Perfect” for the total of $19.50 (includes S&H) to:

Perfect

PO Box 104

Fairfield, ME 04937

THE SCENT OF GOD A Memoir, Beryl Singleton Bissell New York: Counterpoint, 2006

Read the book review here.

Most recent book on the journey of a child of a Catholic priest. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
TELL NO ONE! by Brendan Watkins!

THE UNWANTED by Esther Lyons

The autobiography of a woman born of an American Jesuit Priest and an Indian Catholic nun, “The Unwanted”; tells the story of a woman born in India in 1941 to the time she leaves to start a new life in Australia with her mother and her two children in 1981.

En Français

Angélyne Vallée, Rose sous les canons: témoignages et réflexions sur
les amours cachés et interdits entre des femmes et des prêtres, 2e
édition, Loretteville, QC: Editions Le Dauphin Blanc, 2004.        —
     Sensitive account of a woman’s love for a priest–reciprocated, or
so it seemed–and its painful consequences.

Andréa Richard, Femme après le cloître: identité perdue et retrouvée,
Montréal, QC: Les Editions de l’As, 2004.    —    Clear-eyed and
honest account of a woman’s life in the cloister, and of her life in
the world after leaving it, including a deep and mutual love between
her and a bishop who died of cancer before they could be married.

Español

CAMINOS DE LIBERTAD, SACERDOCIO Y MATRIMONIO: VIBRANTE TESTIMONIO DE UNA CRISIS DE NUESTRO TIEMPO. by Mons. Jeronimo Podesta, Clelia Y Otros. (Published by Planeta Argentina, 1985)

EL SACERDOTE CASADO by Vincent Jimenez, Ph.D., (Published by: Editorial Cosmos, Medellin, Columbia, 1987)

In German

WENN FRAUEN PRIESTER LIEBEN by Anne Dordelmann-Lueg. Anne has run a support group in Germany for about as long as we have here in the USA.

FOR A MORE COMPLETE LIST OF READING VISIT
Mothers of the Children of Priests

If anyone has others to add to this list, please let us know at:
[email protected]
Thanks!

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We will update this list periodically.