Celibate: A Memoir
When twenty-eight-year-old Maria Giura fell in love with Catholic priest Father James Infanzi, she had no idea how needy and angry they both were nor how complicated their attraction would become.
His attention seemed to fill the void left by her fractured family, but he also seemed to be a sign for her to finally face the celibate vocation she'd been running from ever since she first felt God's call. Celibate focuses on her ten-year struggle to let go of this priest, to heal from her childhood, and to finally embrace her true calling. Fiercely honest and tender, this memoir is ultimately a story about surrender, forgiveness, and facing one's deepest needs.
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
Maria Giura's Celibate is an impassioned portrait of a self in utter struggle over, and ambivalence about God, family, sex, and love. Giura exquisitely recounts her own soul-searing conflict, drawing the reader into the turbulence that was her life but also compelling the reader to believe that now, finally, she is on the right path, that now she has reached her truth and peace. An incredibly exhilarating read. -- Kathleen McCormick, author of Dodging Satan
Deeply human and finely wrought, Celibate is Giura's strikingly honest examination of her battle to hang onto her faith in the midst of trying to understand--and free herself from--her complex relationship with a Catholic priest. -- Michael Steinberg, author of Still Pitching:
A Memoir
A beautifully rendered and heartfelt look at the place that contemporary women have in the Roman Catholic Church
and one brave woman's struggle to reconcile her faith and sexuality in this context. -- Leslie Heywood, author of Pretty Good for a Girl
Celibate tells a different kind of vocation story. Vivid and passionate, it speaks to both the afflictions and the victory that can come from discerning and following God's voice. A gripping memoir from first to last page. -- Jana M. Bennett, author of Singleness and the Church: A New Theology of the Single Life
Celibate gives a poignant picture of the Church that most do not see. Priest, woman, and Church are tangled together in a romantic, forbidden web, and the boundaries between Church and society-at-large blur to the point of clear transparency. A must read for all, surely, and perhaps especially for Catholics and Italian Americans. -- Anthony Julian Tamburri, Dean, John D. Calandra Italian American Institute
