Bad Church Good Church: A Memoir of a Former Catholic Priest

BAD CHURCH GOOD CHURCH:A MEMOIR OF A FORMER CATHOLIC PRIEST is not a theological treatise. It is the story of a man who grew up at the beginning of the Great Depression in a poor Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Philadelphia, became a priest and left the priesthood and the church. The memoir begins with a realization that there are two Catholic churches, one the imperial, authoritarian, male-dominated and intolerant church. The other is the church of the people. The first is dominated by tiaras, thrones, rings to be kissed, royal robes, infallible pronouncements and secret inquisitions. The other is characterized by soup kitchens, mercy hospitals, nuns and priests living in poverty, pantries for the poor, Catholic charities collections, and the faithful gathering in church halls to distribute alms. After this introduction, the story takes the reader through Kane's long life of obedience, regular church attendance to entrance into the seminary and eventual ordination to the priesthood. Through 10 years as a priest, the author struggled with the authoritarian, man-made laws and pronouncements of an impersonal church leadership remote from the plight of the people. Kane began to realizes that those power-hungry leaders had only one aim in mind - the preservation of the church above all else. The current sexual scandals of the clergy, the pope and bishop's intolerance of the most heinous acts are but the latest indication of this attitude.