Far from Rome, Near to God: Testimonies of Fifty Converted Roman Catholic Priests

Rating:
Summary: Unless One Is Born Again
Review: An excellent testimony and revelation of men (actually, ex-catholic priests) being regenerated by the Holy Spirit to see the Truth. And the Truth have set them free. Jesus said in John 3:3, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." And Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9 - "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." Only two things stands out from this book, believing in salvation by grace (only God converts) or believing in salvation by works (that man has the ability to convert themself). In the words of Jesus Christ, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear!"

Rating:
Summary: Okay as a reference book, Not worth the money
Review: As a recent convert to Catholicism from the Baptist faith, I found this book shallow at best. Written to catch they eye of those who don't study theology and differences between the faiths in depth, this text has priests sharing how they "found Jesus" in the Bible and became Christians and left the Church. What it doesn't tell you is the backround on so many of these priests. Such as Brewer (chapter 3) who decided he wanted to leave the Church when he no longer wanted to remain celibate and desired to get married. If you want a book from Protestants that makes a decent attempt to address the issues read "The Gospel According to Rome" by McCarthy. I suggest being balanced though and reading "The Gospel according to James McCarthy" (Grotto Press) as well.

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Summary: Common threads in troubled priests - fascinating
Review: I have always had a fascination for why people believe the way they do. I could not put this book down. It is interesting that all of the priests kept thinking that the next event (entering seminary, becoming a priest, saying the first Mass, becoming a missionary, etc.) would provide them with peace with God. Yet, at each turn, they found no answers to their questions, no peace. Each of them stumbled across the Bible under differing circumstances, but had trouble justifying Catholic dogmas with what they read in the Bible. Most of them had to sacrifice everything in order to leave the priesthood. Some testimonies were very insightful, others repetitious, but all provided me with an insight into the difficulties many priests must be faced with. Anyone opposed to Catholicism should first read this book to gain a greater sense of compassion for the person on the other side. The author should focus on organization of the testimonies (perhaps chronilogically), add dates where missing, and add transitions where it seems to jump.

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Summary: Balderdash!
Review: I'm a former Roman Catholic. I got this book as a recent Christmas gift from a friend. I must admit, the evidence in this book is very compelling. If you're a Catholic struggling with your faith, you need to read this book. Or if you're thinking about becoming a Catholic, you need to read this book. God is found in the Bible and in its teachings. I must warn you-you'll find a lot of differences between the Catholic Church and the Bible if you read this book. As you read it, I'd suggest keeping a Bible close by. You'll find that all of the information these former priests give is 100% accurate. Excellent book!!!

Rating:
Summary: The Truth Will Set You Free
Review: This book puts a human face on the number of those who eventually had to leave the Roman Church priesthood because they could no longer reconcile their changing beliefs with those that they were required to practice...and it does this via fifty testimonies of the over 100,000 men who have left the Roman Catholic priesthood since 1970

As these priest tell their stories, we are educated in a number of ways.

One, we learn a great deal about Roman Catholic Church theology, including the Mass, confession, justification, etc.

Two, we are provided fascinating insights into the various trainings, practices, duties and obligations of priestly and monastic orders. Some of these practices seem barbaric by our contemporary sense of spiritual awareness. It is appalling, for instance, to think we have Roman Catholic orders of monks who still practice medieval, physical forms of cruelty upon themselves (like flagellation) and their fellows (blows to the face) in an attempt to be right with and pleasing to God.

Since the spiritual journeys of these priests are internationally and ethnically diversified, we are also educated in terms of the Roman Catholic Church's role in various countries and cultures. In some countries, it is apparent that the RCC has a power that is every bit as dominant politically as it is religiously. Many of these priests feared for their personal safety as well as their future careers when they entertained notions of leaving the priesthood, because of the Roman Church's vindictive representatives in government, in the police forces and in the business community. Some of these priests, after having left the priesthood, were forced to leave their countries to find hospitable refuge elsewhere. Evidently, in some parts of the world, leaving the priesthood is not like quitting a job.

For these reasons, and the fact that many faced the potential of a cultural stigma as well as intense disappointment of friends and family, we learn that leaving the priesthood required a good amount of courage. The fact that all the ex-priests in this book left because of a crisis of conscience or belief, as opposed to yearnings for worldly or physical desires, make their stories even more compelling and credible.

We also learn the extent to which the Roman Catholic Church, despite calling Protestants "brothers," in actual practice in various locales considers Protestantism its number one enemy. Many of these testimonial conversions are remarkable considering the fact that the priests relating them were raised and educated to hate Protestants. Many actually were led to believe that Protestant Bibles were radically different than Catholic Bibles. Protestant literature, in one man's story, was kept in a forbidden, locked closet in a church library.

When reading this book, anyone who considers himself a serious Christian will be shocked by how little the theological training of Roman Catholic priests involves the study of scripture. One man testifies in this book that in thirteen years of training to be a priest, he had twelve hours of studying the Bible. Another stated that he was not allowed to even read a Bible until after he had turned 21, despite the fact that he had been trained to be a priest since he was a ten. One is left with the impression that since so many Roman Catholic Church dogmas (like the sacrifice of the Mass, the Marian dogmas, confession, transubstantiation, purgatory, the priesthood itself) have questionable or no scriptural basis, the Roman Catholic Church prefers to train its future priests with literature on what they say about the Bible, rather than risk having seminarians question Church teaching by reading the Bible itself.

Despite this effort, the constant thread throughout many of the narratives is how God brought the truth to anguished, confused, and troubled souls in spite of Roman Catholic "brainwashing" as one ex-priest phrases it. Many times the seed of God's truth was sown as priests were required to perform actions that in their hearts they knew only God was capable of, such as absolution. Many more times conversion occurred as a result of studying the Word of God and learning that the Gospel message of God's love and forgiveness, and Christ's one time perfect sacrifice blatantly contradicts the Roman Catholic view.

We cannot simply dismiss the conversions of these brave and intelligent men as being a result of ignorance. In some cases, these men experienced decades of training and learning in Roman Catholic teaching. An objective reader, regardless of denominational affilliation, must conclude that there is something wrong with a Christian church that shields not only its laity, but its clergy from the Bible...but when one sees how a thorough grounding in the Word of God can lead to exodus from that church, we can at least understand why.

A quick read: informative and surprisingly entertaining as well.

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: This is kindergarten reasoning and theology. Just wish I'd have heeded the other reviewer's warnings that Google provided me.

Rating:
Summary: A Bit Unblanced
Review: While the testimonies in this book are no doubt sincere, they are often incomplete. They generally find some problems with Catholicism, find some verses such as Eph. 2:8-9 and after a period of struggle reject the Catholic Church. While I agree that there are many errors in Rome, this approach isn't very safe. For example I don't recall reading any kind of in depth analysis by these writers on the teachings of the church Fathers or any kind of serious interaction with Catholic apologetics, you would expect persons who are struggling with their faith to do more than consult some of the Bible's teachings without consulting how the earliest Christians understood these passages. Finally they all failed to consider the Orthodox Church which while free from Rome's errors is a much more historical and patristic alternative to Protestantism.