Author Description

There is nothing more tragic than a priest in love with a woman. Today's Catholic clergy stagger under momentous burdens: Emotional isolation, depression, alcoholism, pedophilia -- the list goes on. Writhing in a crisis of intimacy, priests struggle with love. They stumble, collared by how to relate to those closest to them -- their colleagues, their women, their God and themselves. Father Christopher Joyce, a middle-aged pastor, looks for the Divine in a hall of distorted mirrors, making God into his own image and likeness. While growing up Catholic, Chris purges peccadilloes in the Confessional, vomits up his First Communion on the steps of St. Anthony's Church, mindlessly memorizes the Baltimore Catechism, and learns about passion in a steamed-over Ford, the locker room and sanitized classrooms where sex is a four-letter word. Tapped to be bishop, Father Christopher wrestles with blending the minister with the man, loving two women at the same time -- Angela and Holy Mother the Church.