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Sex, Priests And Power Researcher And Author Richard Sipe Reveals Personal Life Experiences In New Book "I Confess"

By A.w. Richard Sipe
PRNewswire
September 14, 2016

https://goo.gl/zh9Akp

"Catholics Finally Have a Philip Roth"

LA JOLLA, Calif., Sept. 14, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- You expect confession from a Catholic priest. What is unexpected about the new tell-all book I Confess, is the raw vulnerability from psychotherapist and author A.W. Richard Sipe. The 83-year-old former Benedictine monk and Catholic priest captures his life experiences in poetry.

"I have spent decades encouraging the hurt and the hurting to face the truth about themselves," Sipe writes, "and share it fearlessly to aid their own healing and in the service of helping others. My moral obligation – duty – is to practice what I have counseled others: Embrace the truth. It will free you."

Tom Roberts, editor at large for the National Catholic Reporter, said "I Confess is courageous, funny, provocative, raw, delightful. Catholics finally have a Philip Roth!" Roberts added "Some of it, too, is downright searing, the Catholic reality that I am glad is, in this elegantly subjective way, preserved."

Sipe's lifelong work counseling priests led to his research and observations about celibacy, sexual practice and abuse of minors within the Church. His 1995 book Sex, Priests and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis was highlighted in the award-winning film Spotlight and Sipe's data was pivotal to the expanded scope of the investigation by the Boston Globe's investigative reporting unit.

His new book I Confess is written in verse. Sipe said the poetic inspiration hit at the age of 80.

"I want to encourage older people not to give up on their spiritual search, no matter how old they are," Sipe explained.




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