CARNEYVILLE is a controversial novel recounting the indelible memories of Patrick Kelly from 1959 to 1967 in a strict Catholic seminary. In reconstructing the past, he can’t help but comment on the current travails of the Church, specifically those deviant priests who had reputations for victimizing youth or engaging in sexual liaisons with men or women. Kelly speculates about the deep and multi-faceted psychodynamics of sexual abuse by priests and the enabling institutional factors that permitted this evil to become so pervasive and long-lasting. Specific cases are cited of former colleagues and senior clerical personnel in the religious order he had joined.
The thrust of the book is, however, on the young man’s memory of those times, his idealism and ambition to succeed, the beliefs and expectations he brought to the seminary experience, his bitter disillusionment and his eventual turning away after eight years. His entry into so-called civilian life was in the mid-sixties, a time rife with events that probably fueled his propulsion from that cloistered place.
Throughout the story Kelly remembers a priest who influenced him. He traces the evolution of this model priest, who gained some power and reputation, but eventually fell far because of his own weaknesses. But he resurrected himself within his faith and continues today, a kind of symbol of the survival of the priesthood, albeit heroically. The contrast of our protagonist to this priest over the years, how they both, for better or worse, faced the harshness of cultural, psychological and spiritual challenges, makes for an fascinating story.
The narrative is at times irreverent, an obvious channel of great anger toward the Church for the writer, but it takes our now-aging author to task as well. Although he is not saved in the traditional Christian sense, he is at peace with that chapter of his life. His recollections have forced him to look deeply within himself for the meaning of his own life, and he realizes an awakening of compassion, sensitivity and forgiveness. What he considered lost years of youth are now a source of self-discovery that liberate him from his long resentment.
