Parting Reflections on Norbert Krapf's Catholic Boy Blues: Letting It Rip (for the Good of the Whole Church)

Now that I've finished reading Norbert Krapf's Catholic Boy Blues: A Poet's Journal of Healing (Nashville: Greystone, 2014), I thought I'd share some parting thoughts about the book with you. I've blogged about it previously here and here.

Matthew Fox on Benedict XVI (in Introduction to Norbert Krapf's Catholic Boy Blues): Suggestions for a Retreat for the Pope Emeritus

I'm doing a lot of reading lately, and it occurs to me to share the fruits of that labor with you by way of snippets from things I'm reading, with occasional commentary on those snippets: the following is from theologian Matthew Fox's introduction to Norbert Krapf's Catholic Boy Blues (Nashville: Greystone, 2014):

Catholic Boy Blues: Indiana Poet Laureate Norbert Krapf Deals with Legacy of Childhood Sexual Abuse by a Catholic Priest

I was a victim-survivor of childhood sexual abuse by a priest, in a German-Catholic community in southern Indiana. That for twenty years after the abuse took place, I could rarely enter a church because of painful associations does not mean that I did not have an active spiritual life during that period. In many ways, the poems I wrote the past 43 years have been a search to find an alternative spiritual life and a new language in which to express my longing for spiritual sustenance (see links below to samples).  . . . 

No religion can ignore and violate the moral and spiritual values it claims to uphold and survive as a living force. Any religion that functions this way runs the risk of losing vitality and relevance.