AUSTRALIA
The Canberra Times
July 14, 2012
Opinion
Graham Downie
It was hard to imagine a wandering preacher in Palestine, with a few mates and no home, planning to establish an international enterprise with offices in every town and city in the known and the unknown world, and with its headquarters in Rome.
So says former Catholic priest, theology lecturer, lawyer and NSW district court judge Chris Geraghty in his new book, Dancing with the Devil, which traces his life from a child of 12 entering the seminary, through his great enthusiasm and hope from Vatican II, personal stress while a theology lecturer and to his finally leaving the priesthood for marriage and family, and a career in the law.
Now retired, Geraghty remains a Catholic but sharply critical of that Church. In the book he writes, ”I had been unhappy teaching in the seminary at Springwood, before leaving to study overseas. An alien in the ranks of the clergy; attacked by silly, pompous bishops; trapped and broken in a top-heavy, sluggish institution. The old brigade was clinging onto their power and privileges like falling angels grabbing on to thin clouds as they tumbled into oblivion.”
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