Description
IT HAPPENED IN A PARISH is the story of a pious and conscientious priest, Father Carl Whitman who, through a series of circumstances, is seduced into an affair with a beautiful auburn-haired visitor who attends Mass at his church in South Carolina one Sunday morning. After almost one year of juggling a double life
as pastor of Saint Anthony's Church and his indecisive clandestine alliance with Emily Richards, a questionable, complex woman, he must come to terms about his dual existence.
We journey through Father Carl's raw, unfamiliar emotions, agony of conscience, and how he copes with his inability to give up the passionate, obsessive love he has for Emily. Her past life is an enigma to him; her constant desire for "absolution" from him (without giving up the sin) is an ever-present problem and test of faith. This adds to the deep guilt he feels for his betrayal of God and the Church he loves. Another dilemma is his reluctance to reveal a secret letter from a former parishioner who has since died; the decision he must make about its contents haunts him constantly. When Carl disappears, the final outcomes of all his problems are resolved in a startling way.
After Father Carl turns up missing and fails to show up for his Tuesday morning service, a retired Franciscan Army Chaplain, looking like the original Friar Tuck in his long brown habit, is sent to replace him much to the unexpected shock and consternation of Saint Anthony's parishioners.
Father Remigius' unorthodox approach to parish life also confounds the people of their Church. With his sometime outbursts of army barrack language; with his praying dog, Brown, strolling down the aisle to "help" him serve Mass on the altar and with the idiosyncrasies of some of his parishioners, Father Remigius' handling of parish affairs makes for some unusual and humorous happenings during the turbulent years of racial integration in the late 1960s of St. Anthony's history.
Having spent most of his life in the armed forces, Remigius at times finds it almost unbelievable what the Lord and laity in a secular parish expect from him. When a pregnant parishioner calls him in the middle of the night to take her to the hospital to have her baby, he tells the Lord He expects too much, that some things are not in his job description. However, he has no choice, so just takes another Tylenol. Later, when he discovers "Mint Juleps," he thinks the South might be a great place to live, after all.
After Father learns there is another Catholic Church (a black one) in the same town with an alcoholic white priest in charge; and deep-held prejudices among the laity involving the interracial love affair of Lisa McNeil and James Culman, he springs into action and things begin to happen.
The cross-burnings and rage of a still very active finger of the Ku Klux Klan lurking in Andrew, S.C. (several years after the famous 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala, in 1965) cause fear, turmoil and testing of the couple's complicated relationship.
The book alternates between the events occurring in the lives of Fathers Carl and Remigius, Emily, James, Lisa, and other parishioners of the Church Father Carl has deserted. And things are never the same.