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    Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son
    Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son
    Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son
    Audiobook13 hours

    Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son

    Written by Peter Manseau

    Narrated by Patrick Lawlor

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The 1950s was a boom time for the Catholic Church in America, with large families of devout members providing at least one son or daughter for a life of religious service. Boston was at the epicenter of this explosion, and Bill Manseau and Mary Doherty - two eager young parishioners from different towns - became part of a new breed of clergy, eschewing the comforts of homey parishes and choosing instead to minister to the inner-city poor. Peter Manseau's riveting evocation of his parents' parallel childhoods, their similar callings, their experiences in the seminary and convent, and how they met while tending to the homeless of Roxbury during the riot-prone 1960s is a page-turning meditation on the effect that love can have on profound faith.

    Once married, the Manseaus continued to fight for Father Bill's right to serve the church as a priest, and it was into this situation that Peter and his siblings were born and raised to be good Catholics while they witnessed their father's personal conflict with the church's hierarchy. A multigenerational tale of spirituality, Vows also charts Peter's own calling, one which he tried to deny even as he felt compelled to consider the monastic life, toying with the idea of continuing a family tradition that stretches back over 300 years of Irish and French Catholic priests and nuns.

    It is also in Peter's deft hands that we learn about a culture and a religion that has shaped so much of American life, affected generations of true believers, and withstood great turmoil. Vows is a compelling tale of one family's unshakable faith that to be called is to serve, however high the cost may be.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 21, 2005
    ISBN9781400171972
    Author

    Peter Manseau

    Peter Manseau is the author of Vows and coauthor of Killing the Buddha. His writing has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. A founding editor of the award-winning webzine KillingTheBuddha.com, he is now the editor of Search, The Magazine of Science, Religion, and Culture. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington, D.C., where he studies religion and teaches writing at Georgetown University.

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    Reviews for Vows

    3.5/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son by Peter Manseau was very interesting. I know people who grew up in the Roman Catholic Church following Vatican II and I've heard their stories of the shock and delight of guitar masses, priests and nuns who seemed human and caring about real life, and priests and nuns who thought they would soon marry. Peter Manseau's parents were right in the middle of this time living as people who had dedicated their lives to the church. They re-evaluated the meaning of their vows in light of the new ways of studying the Bible and theology and were married. We now know that at the same time the Roman Catholic church in the US was also hiding sexual abuse by priests and shaming their victims into silence. From the present Peter Manseau re-evaluates how both the sexual abuse scandal and Vatican II affected his parents and made his life possible and complicated.Very interesting!
    • 4/5
      When folks get wounded by the church the response is usually bitter resentment or chucking it all; however, for the deeply spiritually connected there's a third choice that one must go on. This is the choice of pilgrimage. On the one hand there's the wound itself, but then there's the passionate tug into the this gracefully wicked beast called the Body of Christ. This is the journey Peter Manseau takes in Vows. His father is a priest (still ordained) and his mother was a former nun both of whom still love the church in all its complexities. Peter is an excellent writer and reminds me of a less wordy Pat Conroy. The book explores the faith journey of his mother, father, and his own role as questioner to this mystical journey. This is a book that treats the church with the respect it deserves while also slinging just enough sacred cow poop to remind the church and those that preside in leadership to be very cautious with the charge they've been given.
    • 4/5
      Vows is a very touching story about love triumphing over religious tradition and religious faith triumphing over cynicism. The first half of Manseau's memoir is about his priest father and ex-nun mother who fall in love and rebel against Catholic tradition by marrying. The second half is about the author himself, who goes from being a surly agnostic to a cautious believer and finally embraces religion without becoming something he isn't. Honestly, this book did more to buoy my often tenuous relationship with my own religious beliefs than any other religious book (even the Bible) ever has.