This is a book about Life, Love, Sexuality, Death and God. Lynch challenges the Vatican’s ban on same-sex love and hits back with his own shocking revelations of abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland.
This is a book about Life, Love, Sexuality, Death and God. Lynch challenges the Vatican’s ban on same-sex love and hits back with his own shocking revelations of abuse by Catholic priests in Ireland.
Religion (general), Sexuality & gender studies
This is a book about Life, Love, Sexuality, Death and God. It is a story of many peoples stories, but most of all it is the personal story of Father Bernard Lynch. Here for the first time is a truth birthed from fear and oppression and redeemed by love.
The moving personal odyssey of a brave, idealistic gay Catholic priest, from hope to despair and back to hope again. An inspiring testament of how truth, love and compassion triumphed over lies, hate and indifference. Bravo! Peter Tatchell, human rights activist
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A bold,challenging and revolutionary way of exploring LGBT faith and sexuality, with a real personal touch. I hope others find it as affirming, inspiring and encouraging if /when you read it. ~ Tony Di Mambro, Quest Bulletin
I interviewed Bernard in 2001 for a TV documentary called "Queer and Catholic." I am delighted to have read this original and honest book and shall be assisting Bernard in promoting it.......it should perhaps have been called "The Wounded Healer".....for that is who he is. ~ Mark Dowd, Former BBC and Channel Four
Bernárd Lynch has been at the forefront of theological debate and political activism since the 1980s. His candid and provocative account of his life as a gay priest will fascinate readers gay and straight, of all faiths and of none.
~ Michael Arditti, Author of seven highly acclaimed novels, most recently JubilateA companion book to Bernárd Lynch; A Priest on Trial, If it Wasn’t Love shines a necessary if often uncomfortable bright light on the personal, political and spiritual dimensions of our half -understood and half-lived sexuality.
~ Jim Cotter, (Cairns Publications), ordained Anglican,author of Good Fruits, Pleasure, Pain and Passion, and Quiverful.A personal and powerfully engaging account of a priests struggle as a gay man in the Catholic church, to remain true to himself and his faith in the face of the authority of the church and extreme persecution. He brings to his experience a depth of understanding and analysis.
~ Sylvia Hutchinson, Group AnalystBernárd Lynch was a pioneer in NYC in his work with the GLBT Catholic community and he was one of the first to institute a ministry to AIDS victims. We sorely miss him!
~ John McNeill, Priest and Author of classic work The Church and the HomosexualThis is a personal story inscribed in pain and passion, discovery and breakthrough, with a transparency to truth that feels as shocking as it is liberating. Would that we had more people who could be so incarnationally honest and real.
~ Diarmuid O'Murchu, Missionary, Author, and PsychologistThe moving personal odyssey of a brave, idealistic gay Catholic priest, from hope to despair and back to hope again. An inspiring testament of how truth, love and compassion triumphed over lies, hate and indifference. Bravo!
~ Peter Tatchell, renowned Human Rights ActivistIt is reported that angels, forlornly searching the earth for signs of life in the wake of the human and ecclesiastical devastation caused by AIDS and the responses of Church officialdom, spotted Bernárd Lynch half submerged in the rubble. Stunned at the rarity of what they were seeing, they beamed back to HQ: “By God, a human! A living human being!”. May these pages give you, as they gave me, a sense of wonderment at the holy possibilities of the stretched human heart, and the broad, broad priestly shoulders, which Bernárd is bearing up from under the weight of intolerable loss.
~ James Alison, Priest, Theologian and Author
