Being Catholic Now
In her new book, Being Catholic Now, Kerry Kennedy interviewed famous Catholics from far left to far right; including Susan Saradon, Martin Sheen, Bill O’Reilly, speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi, Gabriel Byrne, Dan Aykroyd and Bill Maher. “I was struck by their raw honesty,” Kennedy said. 
She cried when Byrne told her his story about being abused by a priest as a boy, and spotting the abuser at a football game decades later. “I called him and asked if he remembered me,” said the actor. “He said,”No’– He didn’t make the connection, but I, of course, did.” Byrne blames the vows of celibacy, “which I regard as a sin against human life.”
Susan Saradon strikes a lighter note with a story of praying with rosary beads at age seven and not knowing they were glow in the dark. “I looked down and they were glowing and I thought, “Oh, my God, I’m about to have a vision! The Blessed Virgin is about to come in the door!”
Church officials have not yet seen the book, but a spokeswoman for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said in response to a description of the book, “A lot of Catholics are having lovers’ quarrels with the church.”
The Deacon’s Bench has a good post on this story.
Kerry Kennedy will discuss the book during a program at the Museum of the City of New York on Wednesday, October 22nd at 6:30 pm. 
