Affectionately . . . in Jesus and Mary: Second Edition, with New Stories: Short Stories

This collection of related short stories, with Religious Life as its setting, delves into a private world that is normally hidden from view, exploring the lives of men-whether admirable or blameworthy-who inhabit this world. The stories chronicle the day-to-day sacred, secular, holy, sinful, heroic, and petty thoughts, words, and deeds of men as they journey through the stages of training and formation that culminate, for those who remain in the seminary, in ordination to the priesthood. Vinnie Lauter tries to account for his need to always be the center of attention, even in the seminary; Eddie Moszka wonders if being a virgin is a blessing or a curse; JV Delancey constantly struggles with religious obedience and with the demands of community living; Jay Kenny increasingly feels that Thomism, the official philosophy and theology of the Catholic Church, has strapped him in an emotional and intellectual straitjacket; the saintly and scholarly Fr. Sean St. Jean, although he has reconciled Christianity and Evolution, struggles with the Church's ban on teaching and publishing on the topic. This Second Edition includes three new stories previously unpublished: "A Finger to Montreal," "The Exorcist," and "Selecti Quidem."