Abandoned Cassocks - book report

Fr. Piotr Dzedzej's book is a remarkable collection of conversations with Catholic clerics who decided to leave the chaplaincy.  Among the heros of this „list of abandoned cassocks” you will find: a priest who took on holy orders because he didn't want to disappoint his mother, a former vicar who used to travel with one of his parish priests to a neighboring parish in order to seduce girls, an ex-priest who is dying from AIDS and who was never able to deal with his homosexuality, or finally, a son of a priest whose mother raised him up to be a cleric.

Dzedzej shows that the departures weren't only caused by spectacular scandals such as romances, unwanted pregnancies, or even financial swindles.  He does not forget about the idealists who left the Church because they disagreed with the lies and hypocrisy reigning within it.  The book paints a worrying picture of the loneliness and helplessness of people in cassocks who cannot find support within the institution to which they devoted their lives.

Abandoned Cassocks is a set of stories that shakes us out of our comfort zone and it often shocks, not only because of the reasons behind the departures, but also because of the further travails of the „formers,” who are abandoned by both the Church as well as close ones—as a result many of these former chaplains become either homeless or alcoholics.  Dzedzej's conversations are also a worrying catalogue of the experience of faith which the former priests—despite their dramatic decisions—often do not lose.  These moving interviews are a collection of life-stories which reflect the biggest problems facing the modern Catholic Church.

Father Piotr Dzedzej (born 1969, ordained 1994) is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He holds a master’s degree in dogmatic theology from the Catholic University of Lublin. Now working as a curate in the Szczecin-Kamień Pomorski archdiocese, for three years he was also director of religious broadcasting at the diocese’s Catholic radio station in Lipiany.