Rating: 
Summary: The dysfunctional priestly caste
Review: This is a riveting breathtakingly honest look behind the scenes of today's Catholic priesthood in America. It's not about the headline sexual abuse scandals. It's about abuse that seldom makes the headlines -- abuse inflicted by the systemically dysfunctional climate within which priests must conduct their lives. The picture is not a pretty one -- honest expression stifled, initiatives thwarted, and normal human friendships crippled or tabooed. It shows the disabling effect on priests of being subject to heavy-handed authority, unyielding dogma, unrealistic law, and a code of celibacy that is a prescription for aching loneliness. All too often alcohol and other addictions fill the vacuum. But this is not an angry book. Dinter doesn't whine or rant. And that is the book's power. It objectively states facts, events and names. Dinter clearly loved his ministry and pursued it with energy and commitment. But the tension between this pursuit of his calling, and the human toll exacted as the price of membership in the priestly caste, became intolerable. So he resigned, not from his ideals, but from the dysfunctional system within which he was forced to try and live out these ideals. Dinter's quiet eloquence gives us a rare glimpse into the abuse inflicted on good priests by the disabling role expectations of an outmoded caste system.
Rating: 
Summary: A sad tale-- as are the tales of many Priests
Review: This is a sad story that Dinter has written. Notwithstanding some of the hate I have just finished reading in reviews of Dinter here by apparently former Columbia U. students who were there when Dinter was, this book goes beyond those students (reviewers) to the issue of how the Catholic rulership treats its Priests and deceived them in the days immediately pre and post Vatican Two.
It matters not whether Dinter was at Columbia, Stonybrook, Laval, Loyola, Stanford, or Siena. What is essential to this work is the ambience that Dinter is able to forge in the reader's mind. It is that of disgust for how the Catholic hierarchy (O'Connor, Egan) in New York came to treat their own and how their own (among them Dinter) up and left the sludge that the Priesthood became upon the deceit of Rome through its Vatican Two Council. Dinter makes that point repeatedly through circumabient references. Those who were there with him know his references. Dare one say that many would never have become Priests pre-Vatican Two if they knew that there was going to be a Vatican Two and what it would reap.
Dinter's book is worth reading. It shows how the pre-Vatican Two priest (like Dinter) left and why. While we understand it clearly and lucidly, unfortuntely Dinter's Cardinal bosses couldn't have cared less what happened with Dinter or others who up and left. They have their soft easy chairs, their fine dinnerware, their ermine trappings, and wonderful meals at Saint Patrick's Cathedral Rectory. That's what maters to them. To Dinter's credit, there is far more to life than that-- namely truth and singleness of heart. Not the duplicity and mendacity of the Catholic Curch and its ruling gray hairs.
Rating:
Summary: Why did he stay in the priesthood so long?
Review: This revealing book sheds light on the seminary training and life in the priesthood which finally ended for the author after a 39-year journey. The writing in this book flows well as the author begins with his life as a child, his seminary years, pastoral work in several parishes, campus chaplaincy, doctoral work, and a sabbatical at the Vatican. He tells about bad priests he encountered along the way and the many good priests who remain devoted to the flocks that they serve.I wondered how he could continue as a seminarian in such a repressive and then permissive atmosphere. A sign should have been placed over the seminary door: "Beware all ye who enter here!" He was a glutton for punishment from his domineering, powerful prelates as a priest, and I wondered why he stayed in the priesthood. After a lengthy description about all the good work he and others had accomplished while he was a chaplain at Columbia University, I expected that he would at least receive high marks from the bishop. Instead, he was called on the carpet and told that he no longer had a job! He then went to study for a year in Rome after spending a summer in England. He describes the Vatican disparagingly as "a men's club on the Tiber." He was uncomfortable in the atmosphere of suspicion and distrust that prevailed there. When a group of priests had dinner with a visiting bishop from America, it was a command performance where the bishop embarrassed and humiliated the priests instead of being an enjoyable occasion of friendship and congeniality. Upon returning to the U.S., he was not given an assignment and was treated with disdain when he pleaded with the chancery office to place him somewhere. When he received no placement, he took matters into his own hands and asked a fellow priest if he could stay at his rectory. After he moved there, he substituted as a fill-in priest in that area and also taught at colleges. He soon made many friends among the laity who supported him when he fell in love with a widow in the parish, left the priesthood, and married there. They are still members of that parish. Dr. Dinter's experiences with his bishops left me with bad feelings toward them. The career men fawning on their superiors so that they will receive promotions are a despicable lot who have lost sight of the church as the Body of Christ. For them it has become a corporate ladder, and they care not for the lowly priests under their dominion after they reach the top. I believe the author's writing is an honest, brave portrayal of his priesthood. One prevailing theme is the unnecessary mandated celibacy for priests, which he compares with a disability. The book explains why so many priests become sexually abusive to children and adolescents. Dr. Dinter paints priests as extremely lonely men who cannot openly dissent about any Catholic teaching for fear of being ostracized by their superiors and/or being sent off to remote parishes in the hinterland. Banishment is the club held over the heads of priests and is an effective silencer for any dissenter. The priests cannot even openly discuss controversial issues in the church privately when they meet with each other which I found disturbing. Facing their future with fear and the silence it promotes smacks too much of "big brother" watching every move the priests make and everything they say. Priests should not have to function in this repressive atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. I was so glad that this book ended on a positive note for the author because his many years of dedicated work in the priesthood went unappreciated by the hierarchy under which he served.
Rating:
Summary: The Other Side of the Altar
Review: Without a doubt, Paul Dinter's story of his life in the Catholic Priesthood and his insights into the dysfunctional celebate life brought understanding, compassion and tears to my eyes. The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church is so out of step with reality. What is being done to our Catholic Priests when it comes to not acknowldgeing their sexual nature is a travesty which borders on sadistic behavior on the part of Rome. One does not have to think very hard after reading Paul Dinter's book why there are so few vocations today to the Celebate Priesthood. Mr. Dinter writes this book in a way that helped me as a 59 year old cradle catholic, with doubts and fears that come with being raised Catholic before Vatican II, to understand and accept my conscience when it comes to not buying into the rhetoric that comes out of the Vatican today. As a gay man who has been partnered for 35 years, I finished the book with a sense of renewed pride in my total self. God Bless you Paul Dinter for writing this book!
Rating:
Summary: The Other Side of the Altar
Review: Without a doubt, Paul Dinter's story of his life in the Catholic Priesthood and his insights into the dysfunctional celebate life brought understanding, compassion and tears to my eyes. The Hierarchy of the Catholic Church is so out of step with reality. What is being done to our Catholic Priests when it comes to not acknowldgeing their sexual nature is a travesty which borders on sadistic behavior on the part of Rome. One does not have to think very hard after reading Paul Dinter's book why there are so few vocations today to the Celebate Priesthood. Mr. Dinter writes this book in a way that helped me as a 59 year old cradle catholic, with doubts and fears that come with being raised Catholic before Vatican II, to understand and accept my conscience when it comes to not buying into the rhetoric that comes out of the Vatican today. As a gay man who has been partnered for 35 years, I finished the book with a sense of renewed pride in my total self. God Bless you Paul Dinter for writing this book!
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