The Life of Felix Donnelly

Press, 28 August 1982, Page 16

The Life of Felix Donnelly

One Priest’s Life. By Felix Donnelly. Australia and New Zealand Book Co., Auckland, 1982. 245 pp. $14.95. (Reviewed by Des Casey) In the preface to this autobiography. Father Felix Donnelly raises the question of ' possible pretentiousness in autobiographical writing — as if. having been in prominent positions and in the media headlines, there is a need to delve, justify and offer post mortems on paper. Some will judge the book as such: pretentious, futile, unjustifiably critical. But whatever the reader decides — and this book will demand a definite reaction — Felix Donnelly comes through as honest, laying wide open his own fears, needs, ideals, failings and successes. That is a risk in itself, and the author appears not to be intimidated by it. The book begins and ends with the watershed of his life — public censure and punishment in 1980 by the Catholic Church's hierarchy for views on sexuality which he would not. and could not. withdraw. In between, the reader is taken on a tour of the author’s family and its influence on the life he chose, a medieval system of education and conditioning dotted with warm friendships and personal struggles, the climax of ordination, entry into a raw world in which the ideas and moral judgments of seminary days were often clumsy and damaging, and the maturing years of life as an educationalist, youth advisor, counsellor, author and sexologist. Unfortunately, the author occasionally shows too great a need to justify and seems to move into a defensiveness, unnecessary for a man whose integrity has been widely admired. While sympathising with him in his pain

and struggle as a priest striving after ideals that are constantly blocked by authority and ignorance, readers may feel that sufficient room for the validity of others' choices is not always given - for example, the “young priest" who succeeded the author as chaplain to a large student movement in Auckland. Felix Donnelly does not allow for the honest, if insufficient, efforts and struggles of his successor. The struggles of priests' lives and the infighting and legalisms of Church institutions, plus the ideals, hopes and sincerity of many Christians will be relevant to some, irrelevant to others. This priest, Felix Donnelly, writes well of his experience of all three.