A Book for All Catholics

A few nights ago I finished reading The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor. I thoroughly enjoyed it and sincerely feel this is a should-read book for all Catholics. I'm not going to retell the story, and you can read a great review here, but I will tell you that you will love Fr. Hugh Kennedy, in all his humanness. What this book really said to me is that our clergy are people. We may put them up on a holy pedestal, and they certainly deserve our utmost respect and infinite prayers, but they are human, with human experiences and emotions. I learned from this book that to remove them from their humanness, is to remove from them the characteristics that make them unique, to us, by God.

I most certainly agree with the review linked to above, especially in that this book could have been written today as easily as in the 1960s. So many aspects of our church have changed, some drastically, but our clergy are still very much the same people.

I will say that I feel very fortunate to have found this book at my library. It was a copy published in the 60s, with flannel-soft pages, well read over the years. If you can find a copy at your library, congratulations. If not, buy a copy and pass it around.