I initially found this book very boring, and was tempted to put it down, but around the second or third chapter I became gripped and remained so until close to the end. Carroll (apparently not one of our Maryland Carrolls) recounts both the history of his life in relation to the church and a history of the church, especially in relation to the United States. Except for a few exceptions, one of which I will deal with at the end of the review, he was extremely fair-minded, much more than Philip Jenkins in his The New Anti-Catholicism. Carroll at one point became a Paulist priest, finding that order more compatible with his own personality. He felt compelled to join with movements for social justice, including, most painfully, the anti-war movement during the Viet Nam era, which estranged him from his father. He eventually left the priesthood, and later married and had children. He remembers the excitement of Vatican II, and the disappointments (for him) of later movement towards conservatism. He was also a great admirer of Cardinal Richard Cushing and tells us a great deal about him. He was also an admirer of Hans Küng, and regrets his silencing. Despite disappointments, he remains a Catholic; even though married to an Episcopalian, he is not tempted to move to that church.

One might argue for some of the parts that I didn't like, I was an inappropriate audience, being raised as a Protestant and later becoming an atheist. There are two sections in which he discusses his god, and I think that one needed to have faith, or at least feel an emotional response to find those sections meaningful. Toward the end, Carroll is called upon to comfort a friend whose infant son died suddenly, and to me the sections was a collection of tangents, sometimes mutually contradictory. But his friend was comforted, so Carroll did very well in offering him the solace of faith.

It always seems to take longer to criticize than to praise, so please don't let the relative length of my comments detract from positive comments. There is one thing in the book that bothers me so much that I feel the need to argue. Carroll seems to be attempting to link the separation of church and state in the United States with slavery. While slavery may be our original sin, slavery was not original with us. Slavery was (and in some forms remains) a very widespread custom in time and space. There were Christians like St. Melania who bought and freed hundreds of slaves, but there were still slaves in Christian Europe before the Protestant Reformation, extensive slave-holding in the Catholic Americas, and slave holding in other countries, such as England, that did not separate church and state. Pope Nicholas V (1398-1455) officially declared that "Saracens, pagans and any other unbelievers" could be enslaved by Christians. How does Carroll square this with his remarks about the separation of church and state in the United States? I am unaware of any religion that opposed slavery absolutely before the Anabaptists; I am not a scholar, and I will be happy to be corrected.

On page 48 (Houghton Mifflin, 2009), he says: “The much-touted American ideal of the separation of church and state cut off the realm of personal morality from the common good – which suited the American slaveholder just fine.” (He makes a similar statement on page 86.) Wrong in all cases. As far as public and private morality being separated, I offer a quote from Alexander de Tocqueville:

“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small; […] Finally, if it is a question of bringing to light a truth or developing a sentiment with the support of a great example, they associate.” (ellipses added)

In 1775, for example, Quakers were mainly responsible for the founding of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, and they later began bringing lawsuits to free slaves who visited Philadelphia with their owners. I am sure the reader can easily think of groups supporting some moral cause today: anti-war movements; Occupy; the Religious Right; the various Marches on Washington; the Civil Rights movement which inspired so many other minority rights movements.

As for this non-existent separation being convenient for slave holders, they had only to turn to the New Testament's injunction for slaves to obey their masters for assurance that they were morally correct. Many churches split into northern and southern branches over the issue of slavery. James McPherson says in Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, two-thirds of white people before the Civil War disapproved of attempting to abolish slavery in the southern states, so where is the conflict between public and private morals? Even so, slave holders came to feel quite persecuted by the disapproval of other people, whom they blame for the Civil War.

Carroll boasts that Pope Gregory XVI (in 1839) opposed slavery before it was abolished in the U.S, (p.48) but slavery continued among Catholics for decades. Other sources say that his In Supremo Apostolatus opposed the Atlantic slave trade, which became illegal in Great Britain in 1807, and in the United States in 1808, rather than slavery in general. The British not only abolished the trade for themselves, they also policed the Atlantic to prevent other parties transporting slaves from Africa. In 1683, it was the Mennonites, who were Anabaptists, who were the first religious group in the future United States to oppose slavery. In the late 17th century, the Quakers began pressuring their members not to hold slaves or engage in the slave trade. In 1775 Quakers were mainly responsible for the founding of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery. This was the first antislavery society in the U.S. In 1786 they began filing lawsuits to free slaves brought to Philadelphia. The Methodist Francis Asbury also opposed slavery. In 1777, Vermont became the first colony/state to abolish slavery. They would be followed by most states above the Mason-Dixon line by the end of the 18th century, although some did this so gradually that it was twenty years before it took full effect. Disappointed by the failure of Virginia to provide for the gradual abolition of slavery, on September 5, 1791, Robert Carter filed his Deed of Gift that began the process of freeing his almost 500 slaves, the largest manumission before the Civil War.

However, again I ask that my criticism not overwhelm my positive remarks: I found this a very interesting look at the life and thoughts of a liberal Catholic as he negotiates the struggles within his church. I feel enriched by having read this book, even if I am not the most appreciative audience, and I did give it four stars. ( )

This is a wonderful memoir of a former Catholic priest. He discusses the history of the Catholic Church and its effect on him. He is a strong practicing Catholic despite the Church's checkered past. This was very intense and fact filled. I read a chapter a day so I did not burn out and not finish it. I also did a lot of highlighting so I could refer back to that which struck me. Excellent. I would love to be part of a discussion group about this book. ( )

Carroll's half-memoir, half-history of the Catholic Church of the last seventy years has as its thesis that the laity need to relcaim their faith from the hierarchy - specifically, that the laity need to reclaim and insist upon maintaining the legacy of Vatican II against the assualts of a reactionary papacy.

Carroll describes his own spiritual journey in the context of pre- and post-Vatican II notions of what it means to be Catholic and to be "saved," and does a good job of explaining how his own experience fits in to both the larger Catholic and larger American cultural experience during that time. He beleives that leaving the church in protest is not the answer, and for him it may not be. He does, however, lay bare a number of twentieth and twenty-first century failings of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that force one to consider where one stands in relation to it.

The book is a dense, intense read, and presumes a fair amount of historical and religious knowlede on the part of the reader. But it's well-footnoted and indexed, and contains a lot of interesting suggestions for further reading as well. Carroll is an engaging writer, and while his own experience definitely forms the core of the story he is telling, he remains fairly humble about that experience, and open about his own failings and changes of heart. I highly recommend it. ( )

Practicing Catholic is a memoir of the author's experiences as a liberal Catholic (and for a certain period of time a liberal Catholic priest) through some interesting times, including Vatican II, the Vietnam War, and the priest sex abuse scandal. I felt that Carroll's writing was a little inaccessible, especially in the beginning, since he had a tendency to use a lot of theological jargon. However, once I got past the difficult beginning, there were many sections that interested me, such as his analysis of potential anti-Semitism in the Gospels, the role of women in the Church, and the counsel he gave young men who might be drafted in the Vietnam War. Other parts, like a lengthy discussion of What Original Sin Means To Him didn't quite hold my interest. Still, overall it was a fairly interesting book. ( )