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Father JP Lacey throws himself into the priesthood after twelve years in the seminary. The year is 1964. He's going to free the captives and give sight to the blind as the prophet Isaiah has directed. He hears confessions, chaplains parish groups and struggles to bring God into the lives of the people. But nothing works as he anticipated. The world is in tumult with the death of JFK, civil rights demonstrations, the war in Vietnam and the sexual revolution. Even the rock-strong Catholic Church has been shaken by the second Vatican Council. JP searches for answers. The fierce God of his childhood gives way to a God of love. Helping others replaces a life of rules. But a deep void eats at his heart. He is alone. When a young woman in the parish, Caitlin O'Neil, contacts him for help, JP must decide what kind of priest he will be. Caitlin has been ordered to fire the only black man in the company she works for. Will JP offer pious advice or will he stand with her, even when he discovers that the owner of the company is a good friend of the bishop's? JP finds himself falling in love with Caitlin despite his vows. Caitlin struggles with her feelings. She's been raised Catholic and falling in love with a priest is taboo. In addition, a dynamic union organizer has proposed to her. A wild ex-nun shows JP one way to leave the priesthood, while a self-educated church janitor counsels a different way. What is love? Where is God? Why celibacy? When do you follow your
conscience and not the church? Ed Griffin began his professional life in 1962 as a Roman Catholic priest in Cleveland, Ohio. There he became active in the civil rights movement and marched in Selma with Doctor Martin Luther King. Removed from a suburban parish for his activities, he served for three years in Cleveland's central city. His years in the Roman Catholic Priesthood are the subject of Beyond the Vows. After leaving the priesthood in 1968 he earned a masters degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was elected to Milwaukee's city council in 1972. He met his wife, Kathy, in Milwaukee. Raised an Irish Catholic, she was active in the civil rights and peace movements. Griffin and his wife opened a commercial greenhouse in suburban Milwaukee in 1976. They lived where they worked and shared the joys of raising children and growing flowers. In 1988 the family, Ed and Kathy, Kevin and Kerry, moved to British Columbia, Canada, where Griffin helped establish a dynamic writing community in the city of Surrey. He is the founder of Western Canada's largest writer's conference, the Surrey Writers' Conference. Ed teaches creative writing at Matsqui Prison, a medium security prison in Western Canada. He taught the same subject at Waupun prison, a maximum security prison in Wisconsin. His first novel, Prisoners of the Williwaw, has been optioned by HBO for a movie. The book is available through Trafford Publishing He has published poetry, plays, short stories and a newspaper column. His writing has won several awards and the American Humanist Society has honored him as the teacher of a prize-winning inmate writer. Griffin believes that all the arts, including writing, should be encouraged in prison. "As Aristotle said, 'art releases unconscious tensions and purges the soul.'" Read the opening of Beyond the Vows To order the book directly from the publisher Or Order the book from:
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© Copyright Ed Griffin 2003. All rights reserved. |
BEYOND
THE VOWS