After a childhood of religious certitude and bliss within the Judeo-Christian tradition, Peter Patkutka wavers during his adult life between religious belief and unbelief. In times of religious belief, he is undercut by Spinoza, the seventeenth-century philosopher, whose philosophy gave a rational basis to atheism, and helped to bring to an end the theocracy of the Middle Ages; in times of unbelief, he is haunted by an inclination - seemingly congenital - to believe, and by a hunch - seemingly intuitive - that there may be something more than the material universe. His life takes on overtones...

Peter Patkutka, who has wavered between religious belief and unbelief for most of his adult life, thinks that he will achieve closure and resolution of this conflict by being formally excommunicated from the Catholic Church into which he had been baptized as an infant, and, thus, without his consent; he considers his baptism as a kind of kidnapping. He enrolls in a local parish, and becomes a familiar presence at a particular Sunday Mass, and then, one Sunday morning, he stands up during Mass and speaks to the congregation. Given that this is a strange enough occurrence within traditional...

This collection of related short stories, with Religious Life as its setting, delves into a private world that is normally hidden from view, exploring the lives of men-whether admirable or blameworthy-who inhabit this world. The stories chronicle the day-to-day sacred, secular, holy, sinful, heroic, and petty thoughts, words, and deeds of men as they journey through the stages of training and formation that culminate, for those who remain in the seminary, in ordination to the priesthood. Vinnie Lauter tries to account for his need to always be the center of attention, even in the seminary;...

Two friends of over thirty years meet for dinner: Jay Kenny had left religious life years before because, among other issues, he felt that Thomism, the official philosophy and theology of the Catholic Church, had strapped him in an emotional and intellectual straitjacket - subsequent to leaving religious life, he left religion itself; the saintly and scholarly Fr. Sean Saint-Jean, although he has reconciled Christianity and Evolution, struggles with the Church's ban on teaching and publishing on the topic. Two people, as far apart as possible in their world views, but one in their...