What God Hath Joined/the Real-Life Love Story That Shook the Catholic Church Book

WHAT GOD HATH JOINED is a true story...a story of sacrifice, of courage, of the power of love. A Roman Catholic priest, Terry Sweeney had been a Jesuit for 23 years when he met Pamela Susan Shoop. A love story set against the backdrop of church discipline, their book takes the reader on a very personal spiritual and emotional journey. Written in alternating chapters, it is an honest, and often painful description of what takes place in the heart of a priest who falls in love, and in the heart of a woman living in the shadow of a "forbidden" love. Terry and Pam confront their personal crises of conscience and faith, as well as difficulties with family members and parishioners. The rule of mandatory celibacy for Roman Catholic priests has caused pain, suffering, and suicide for over sixteen hundred years. It is one of the most divisive and crippling problems threatening the survival of the priesthood today. After 8 years of research into the history of the law of celibacy, Terry was told to gather the research together and destroy it, or he would be dismissed from the Jesuit Order. After great deliberation, he refused to destroy the research. WHAT GOD HATH JOINED is the story of two people who know the pain of loving with a divided heart, of struggling to discern whether priestly intimacy and love are a sin or a blessing. It is the story of two people who know what it costs to move from fears that love is wrong to a consciousness that love, of all life's graces, is the most sacred.Read More