Why We Walked Away

Between 1975 and 2008 the Catholic Church in the United States lost just over 18,000 priests. In ecclesiastical parlance these men were defectors, malcontents, and pariahs. But they weren’t. These men were the heroes of their generation in the church. They struggled for civil rights, they tried to implement the changes of Vatican II, and they refused to call ‘birth control’ a sin. Never before have they told their stories – conflict with their bishops, love of their ministry, and waking up to their ‘alone-ness’ in the world. Here are twelve such stories.