The Nun And The Priest Love Celibacy Passion

Now, when celibacy for Roman Catholic priests is being questioned as never before, Evelyn McLean Brady shares a memoir of her own lived experience. Based on her journals and Father Hugh Brady's love letters written from 1965-1970, Evelyn intimately chronicles the interior conflict between her desire to become a Catholic nun to "live only for God to serve others" and the unexpected attraction she feels for the handsome, charismatic Father Brady. When this novice and priest finally confess their feelings for each other, the mystery of human love unfolds, as do tests and trials they could not have imagined. The tension between Evelyn and her mother also adds unexpected turns and detours to the tale. In the tradition of Abelard and Heloise and St. Francis and St. Clare, this is a love story of two celibates who desire to follow the ways of God yet are lured by the pull of the human heart.

Just five weeks after its publication in January 1836, Awful Disclosures of the Hotel Dieu Nunnery, billed as an escaped nun's shocking exposé of convent life, had already sold more than 20,000 copies. The book detailed gothic-style horror stories of licentious priests and abusive mothers superior, tortured nuns and novices, and infanticide. By the time the book was revealed to be a fiction and the author, Maria Monk, an imposter, it had already become one of the nineteenth century's best-selling books. In antebellum America only one book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, outsold it. The success of Monk's book was no fluke, but rather a part of a larger phenomenon of anti-Catholic propaganda, riots, and nativist politics. The secrecy of convents stood as an oblique justification for suspicion of Catholics and the campaigns against them, which were intimately connected with cultural concerns regarding reform, religion, immigration, and, in particular, the role of women in the Republic. At a time when the term "female virtue" pervaded popular rhetoric, the image of the veiled nun represented a threat to the established American ideal of womanhood. Unable to marry, she was instead a captive of a foreign foe, a fallen woman, a white slave, and a foolish virgin. In the first half of the nineteenth century, ministers, vigilantes, politicians, and writers--male and female--forged this image of the nun, locking arms against convents. The result was a far-reaching antebellum movement that would shape perceptions of nuns, and women more broadly, in America.

Publisher Fact Sheet An intimate look, drawn from hundreds of interviews and statements from Jesuits and former Jesuits, at the turmoil among Catholicism's legendary best-and-brightest.

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR “Vivid, compelling... An embrace of moral and spiritual contemplation.” –The New York Times “A remarkable piece of writing. If read with humility and attention, Kathleen Norris's book becomes lectio divina, or holy reading.” –The Boston Globe From the iconic author of Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, a spiritual journey that brings joy to the meanings of love, grace and faith. Why would a married woman with a thoroughly Protestant background and often more doubt than faith be drawn to the ancient practice of monasticism, to a community of celibate men whose days are centered on a rigid schedule of prayer, work, and scripture? This is the question that poet Kathleen Norris asks us as, somewhat to her own surprise, she found herself on two extended residencies at St. John's Abbey in Minnesota. Part record of her time among the Benedictines, part meditation on various aspects of monastic life, The Cloister Walk demonstrates, from the rare perspective of someone who is both an insider and outsider, how immersion in the cloistered world-- its liturgy, its ritual, its sense of community-- can impart meaning to everyday events and deepen our secular lives. In this stirring and lyrical work, the monastery, often considered archaic or otherworldly, becomes immediate, accessible, and relevant to us, no matter what our faith may be.

Forbidden to Love is a true story of a woman who, after barely escaping from a violent relationship with the father of her twins, is newly married with a man that helped her make that escape but—he is dying of AIDS. She ends up with her little family in this huge metropolis with no English-language skills. One day, on her way to her new church, she meets a Catholic priest. They fall in love. After her husband's death, they become closer as she begins to grasp the reality of her dream to be with him. But once his superiors catch wind of it, they put him under very harsh restrictions—and brush her aside, with no care of how she is coping, while single-mindedly determined to keep them apart. The "scandal," had to be kept quiet. She would go through many years of hardships and persecution from some of the priests and parishioners of that church. Will she end up with the love of her life?

In all three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, marriage is part of God's plan for humanity, as illustrated in the Hebrew Scriptures, the New Testament, and the Koran as well as the religious literature of these three traditions

Under the protection of nun's habits and priests' robes, lecherous and lascivious rituals are performed by laymen and clergy alike. The unpublished and unvarnished facts of bizarre flagellation in a convent. This is the most shocking report ever to be printed. Illustrated.