What They Did To The Kid: Confessions of an Altar Boy by Jack Fritscher (2000)
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Overview: Author Jack Fritscher is a schoolmate of Bernard Cardinal Law of Boston–famous in the priest sex-abuse scandals rocking the Catholic Church. This memoir-novel tells a tale of boys "touched by angels." That the narrator, Ryan O’Hara, is ironically flawed subverts the tale told to the reader in this ‘Catholic Catcher in the Rye’.
Catholic or not: What you should know about What They Did to the Kid. Vivid as a screenplay. Villains will make you throw the book across the room. Heroes will make you pick it up. Fun. Accessible. And as true as fiction gets. If you, or someone in your family, grew up in a seminary, or you just want to know exactly how priests are trained as boys, this novel tells all you need to know, without being offensive or stereotypical, about adolescent boys, recruited by the Church, and trapped in claustrophobic seminaries.
In the 1950s, the Catholic Church in fact actively recruited 200,000 boys into seminaries. This is the story of those boys and their families, and the women who would have married them. Strong characters and snappy dialog propel the fast-moving plot.
In the secret 1950s’ world of "Misericordia Seminary," Ryan O’Hara, from age 14 to 24, narrates the adventures of 500 boys trapped by the imperial Rector Karg; the militaristic disciplinarian, Father Gunn USMC; the tart, and suicidal, Father Polistina; and the rebel-priest, handsome Chris Dryden "who knows Fellini and JFK" and also teaches seminarians how to love their bodies "the way Jesus loves their bodies."
The author, with twelve previous books published, gives each diverse character–hero or villain, student or priest, man or woman–a rich back story. Black civil rights of the 1960s and three interesting women characters open this boys-coming-of-age story out of the seminary and on to the hot streets of Chicago.
In this fictional memoir, Jack Fritscher–who won "Story Teller of the Year" Book Award for this novel–inhales experience and exhales fiction. Against the dramatic tension of Vatican II, he oxygenates his panic-stricken novel with mouth-to-mouth comic dialog that breathes irony into this coming-of-age novel in a seminary where no boy can grow up.
In times of Catholic scandal, this is what readers need to know about the secret education of boys-who-would-be-priests–without offending reader sensibilities.
"Survivors of Catholic education" will identify with the 1950s’ roots of 21st-century "recovering Catholic" panic and angst.
Readers outside the Catholic Church will gain an insight to the hidden psychology of the education of priests.
Genre: Fiction
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