Bio
I have always been fascinated by books and their power. My father, an avid reader, used to tell me that I could carry on a conversation with anyone in history if I developed good reading habits.
As a budding young journalist I had the privilege of interviewing William E. Barrett, the famed author of Lilies of the Field, The Left Hand of God, and Pieces of Dreams. His wife Bunny was sitting in on the interview and was eager for me to bring it to an end. Before she hurried me out the door, I was able to ask one last question - "What advice can you give a young aspiring writer?" Barrett told me to write what I read. I read a lot of history and Holy Scripture. So, that is what I write.
I am a cradle Catholic, educated in an diocesan grade school and a Jesuit Prep School. As is customary for most young Catholics I stayed away from the Church for a good ten years before I came back.
Like the majority of Catholics I was of the Sunday genre. Attend, do the weekly Catholic calisthenics of ritual, try to listen attentively to the readings and homily... then leave for the work week... and then return the following Sunday with little more.
All of that came to a close in 2006 when I became aware that our Pastor was caught taking liberties with a young boy in our congregation. The parents of the boy confided in me what happened but refused to pursue any actions against the priest other than leaving the parish.
What seemed like a curse of them dropping the responsibility on me turned out to be a reevaluation of my faith and commitment to the Church.
My ensuing battles with the Archdiocese to remove the Pastor from ministry forced me to study the machinations of the Church and its prosperity to protect and encourage evil within its ranks.
After dismissing my efforts, my Archdiocese - after two years - finally retired the Pastor when a young, courageous priest assigned as an assistant confirmed the parents' and my estimations of the Pastor.
To understand how an institution established by Jesus could act in such an opposite manner from his teachings, I dedicated myself to researching how the Church could devolve into such a state.
One of the books I read caused the scales to drop from my eyes and forced me into the ministry of Catholic criticism. In 2008, Cardinal Timothy Dolan wrote a book on the sexual scandals ravaging the Church. It was entitled, To Whom Shall We Go? Lessons from the Apostle Peter. In his book Dolan cites Matthew 14 and the story of Jesus walking on water. Peter, in his typical exuberance, asks the Lord if he can meet him and actually defy the laws of physics by treading on the waters of the Sea of Galilee.
Dolan rightly maintains that as long as Peter was focused on Jesus he was able to traverse the water. But when he became afraid of the storm winds surrounding him and took his focus off the Lord he began to sink. Dolan's lesson was this: there are many things in our world that draw our attention away from Jesus and his teachings.
The Cardinal's writing touched me deeply. Of course, his estimation is accurate - a life with little or no focus on the teachings of Jesus leads to fear, cowardice, and chaos. But as I read his book more I realized that Dolan himself stopped short on revelation concerning the sexual scandal within the Catholic Church.
I reasoned to myself, could not the Church itself be one of the many different distractions that could take one's focus off Jesus and his teachings? So I researched Cardinal Dolan and decisions he had made throughout his long career as a Vatican-approved and appointed Bishop.
In 2002 Dolan was named Archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His predecessor, Rembert Weakland, was a master fraudster who mastered the priestly shell game of pedophile protection. He also used $450,000 of Archdiocesan funds as hush money to one of his male lovers. When Dolan took over he was faced with the actions of 45 pedophile priests who produced 575 known and confirmed victims.
Instead of focusing on Jesus and his teachings as he extolled us to do in his book, Dolan proceeded to shift $57 million of Archdiocesan funds into a cemetery trust before filing for bankruptcy protection. The result was that the 575 victims would receive much less in compensation for their abuse.
My experience within my Archdiocese of Dolan's hypocrisy convinced me that organic change is needed within Catholicism. My research of Catholic history reinforces why the Magisterium claims an authority that the Catholic Church is an earthly manifestation of Jesus and all the prestige and obedience that would be afforded our Lord while he was with us. In short, for Dolan and the like- minded, the Catholic Church and its teachings are the same as if Jesus were still here in our midst. So when Dolan writes about taking one's eye and focus off Jesus, he is also maintaining that taking one's eye off the Church is equal in relevance. To this I say - BS! To me protecting the powerless - the widow and the orphan - trumps any financial manipulation meant to protect an earthly institution - any institution.
It was this glaring inconsistency that set me out on this ministry. My first book, Caught Between the Gospel and the Magisterium - When Sheep Have to Shepherd, was non-fiction and it outlined the excruciatingly painful experience of trying to convince my Archdiocese that a wolf was roaming freely within my tiny parish flock. (The Pastor later would admit to public law enforcement that he had raped a young boy sixty times within a three year period after plying him with alcohol and marijuana. As of this writing at least three other victims have come forward with similar accusations. One of the boys in our parish who had the unfortunate fate of being an altar boy in our parish and who was befriended by the Pastor has committed suicide.)
As I set out to write a second book a friend of mine gave me some valuable advice. The man, a former priest in our Archdiocese, was an avid reader and owned a used book store in our community. While he appreciated the effort in my first book he opined that non-fiction was not the way forward for my ministry. He insisted that no one really likes reading accounts of cold-hard reality. In his opinion it is too stark and, while it may influence some, it's not memorable. He suggested that fiction would better make notable the concepts which I wished to impart. His reasoning, which hit home to me, was people that may be motivated to action will respond more to well-researched and reasoned fiction than to accurately written non-fiction.
As such, I have embraced this advice and have written historical fiction in my next three books taking on the Vatican inclination to play shell games.
I appreciate your visiting my website and want you to know that I am available to address any group who may wish to engage on these topics. I stand ready to defend my suppositions and share in making our Church more fully and consciously focused on Jesus and his teachings.
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