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A review by laurenkd89
Confessions of a Gay Priest: A Memoir of Sex, Love, Abuse, and Scandal in the Catholic Seminary by Tom Rastrelli
4.0
Oof. This was a particularly tough one to read, and even more difficult to review. Tom Rastrelli, a former Catholic priest, discusses exactly what is promised in the title: sex, love, abuse, and scandal in the church.
Tom was repeatedly sexually abused as an adolescent by his pediatrician, an odious man named Dr. Lauz. In his teenage years, Tom realizes that he is gay through experimentation with one of his friends, who engages sexually with Tom but is still deeply homophobic. When Tom goes to college, a sexually and vocationally confused musical theatre aficionado, his family guilts him into going back to church, expecting him to be the good Catholic boy they raised. He meets Father Scott Bell, a cheerful and youth-friendly priest who welcomes Tom back into the church.
During one of Father Scott's sermons on a gospel reading about Jesus healing a deaf man, Tom is awakened. He suddenly and powerfully feels the calling - Ephphatha! - to become a priest.
Thus begins Tom's arduous journey to priesthood. Father Scott takes him under his wing and has him do chores around the church, but the relationship is a mixed one, often emotionally manipulative. Tom continues to struggle with his sexuality, understanding the vow of celibacy to mean that he must curb his homosexual desires. He seeks therapy to do this, and needs many years of counseling to work through his abuse as a child. However, he still "acts out" many, many times - including with other priests.
It's difficult to know what is consensual or what is coerced in this book, as there is a massive gray area for the kinds of power dynamics between a priest and a seminarian. But more than anything, the lesson you take away from this book is that the institution of the Catholic Church - the hierarchy, the lack of transparency, the righteousness of priests, the constant sinning - is deplorable. Many of the priests in this book are clearly functioning alcoholics, and many have homosexual desires (while not calling themselves gay) that they act on despite the vow of celibacy. The abuse that Tom suffered was not really prosecutable in civil law, but certainly should have been in clerical law, but when Tom tried to report it, he was silenced, shut down, and summarily dismissed. Tom even found hard, cold proof that an associate pastor he replaced was viewing child porn and potentially participating in it himself, and his efforts to report it to the diocese were not only brushed off, but the diocese sent a representative to erase the proof on the hard drive.
It's frankly sad that the institution of the Church is so corrupt, because Tom genuinely seemed like a good person and a good priest, someone who cared about his parishioners and felt the vocation to help others find solace in Catholic teachings in the way he did. Yet the institution of the church and its patriarchic, hierarchic, iron-fist rule is what ultimately destroyed Tom's relationship with the priesthood and frankly led to Tom's general downfall.
This is a fascinating book and a great insider look into the Church from someone who saw it intimately. Thank you to University of Iowa Press for the ARC.
Tom was repeatedly sexually abused as an adolescent by his pediatrician, an odious man named Dr. Lauz. In his teenage years, Tom realizes that he is gay through experimentation with one of his friends, who engages sexually with Tom but is still deeply homophobic. When Tom goes to college, a sexually and vocationally confused musical theatre aficionado, his family guilts him into going back to church, expecting him to be the good Catholic boy they raised. He meets Father Scott Bell, a cheerful and youth-friendly priest who welcomes Tom back into the church.
During one of Father Scott's sermons on a gospel reading about Jesus healing a deaf man, Tom is awakened. He suddenly and powerfully feels the calling - Ephphatha! - to become a priest.
Thus begins Tom's arduous journey to priesthood. Father Scott takes him under his wing and has him do chores around the church, but the relationship is a mixed one, often emotionally manipulative. Tom continues to struggle with his sexuality, understanding the vow of celibacy to mean that he must curb his homosexual desires. He seeks therapy to do this, and needs many years of counseling to work through his abuse as a child. However, he still "acts out" many, many times - including with other priests.
It's difficult to know what is consensual or what is coerced in this book, as there is a massive gray area for the kinds of power dynamics between a priest and a seminarian. But more than anything, the lesson you take away from this book is that the institution of the Catholic Church - the hierarchy, the lack of transparency, the righteousness of priests, the constant sinning - is deplorable. Many of the priests in this book are clearly functioning alcoholics, and many have homosexual desires (while not calling themselves gay) that they act on despite the vow of celibacy. The abuse that Tom suffered was not really prosecutable in civil law, but certainly should have been in clerical law, but when Tom tried to report it, he was silenced, shut down, and summarily dismissed. Tom even found hard, cold proof that an associate pastor he replaced was viewing child porn and potentially participating in it himself, and his efforts to report it to the diocese were not only brushed off, but the diocese sent a representative to erase the proof on the hard drive.
It's frankly sad that the institution of the Church is so corrupt, because Tom genuinely seemed like a good person and a good priest, someone who cared about his parishioners and felt the vocation to help others find solace in Catholic teachings in the way he did. Yet the institution of the church and its patriarchic, hierarchic, iron-fist rule is what ultimately destroyed Tom's relationship with the priesthood and frankly led to Tom's general downfall.
This is a fascinating book and a great insider look into the Church from someone who saw it intimately. Thank you to University of Iowa Press for the ARC.