cover image Both Feet Firmly Planted in Midair

Both Feet Firmly Planted in Midair

John McNeill, McNeill. Westminster John Knox Press, $29.95 (208pp) ISBN 978-0-664-25808-5

With the publication of his groundbreaking The Church and the Homosexual in 1976, McNeill, then a Jesuit priest, challenged long-held assumptions about the Bible and homosexuality. In this deeply personal and moving autobiography, McNeill speaks candidly about his spiritual journey. He chronicles his childhood in Buffalo, N.Y., and the devastation his mother's death caused when he was four. He discusses the pains and the joys he experienced as he awakened to his own homosexuality, and he reports on the lessons learned and horrors witnessed as a POW in WWII. McNeill says that his early relationship with God was based on fear, but, as he narrates the saga of his expulsion from the Society of Jesus, he tells how his experience of love in his lifelong partnership and his growth in personal devotion have helped him understand that serving God out of fear blasphemes the God of love revealed in Jesus. Although a defrocked priest, McNeill continues to minister to Catholic gays and lesbians through Dignity New York, an organization he helped found. Dignity New York maintains its respect toward and faith in the Catholic church even while confronting the church's teachings and pastoral practices. McNeill offers a poignant, astonishing and hopeful testimony to an extraordinary life. (Oct.)