A Jesuit's Journey through the Turbulent 1960s

by Paul Swift

Overview

In Paul Swift's rollicking and rambunctious memoir, the rigid, time-tested discipline of the Society of Jesus collides head-on with the spirit of the 1960s. It's a time of fervid change. JFK, MLK, and RFK are assassinated. There are riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, antiwar and antinuclear protests, drugs, and casual sex. Paul Swift is there through all of it, preparing to become a Jesuit priest, coping in his own way with the three vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Along the way we find him attending protests, hitchhiking with his mother, discussing James Joyce with a cop in Boston, and fleeced by a bathrobe-clad judge in Murdo, South Dakota. Paul Swift is a superb storyteller, and he has a riveting story to tell.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781517089573
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	09/21/2015
Pages:	170
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.39(d)

About the Author

After an eight-year sojourn in the Jesuits, Paul Swift worked with John D. Rockefeller 3rd on corporate responsibility projects; produced conferences and programs at Bard College for educators; edited The Newsletter on Newsletters; and wrote The Beekman Arms: A History of the Oldest Inn in America. He and his wife, Mary Nettles, raised their son and daughter in New York's Hudson River Valley and now live on Tybee Island, Georgia.

*****

"The refreshing election, in 2013, of the humble Archbishop of Buenos Aires as Pope brought an air of openness to the Vatican not seen since the days of Pope John XXIII fifty years earlier. The new pope took the name of Francis, after the mendicant of Assisi. He was also the first Jesuit ever elected to the papacy.
All of this put me to reflecting, and writing, about my own career as a Jesuit. I entered the Society of Jesus in the halcyon days of the early 1960s, when President Kennedy exhorted us to set out on a New Frontier, and Pope John XXIII 'opened a window' to let fresh air in the Church. He convened the Second Vatican Council. My time as a Jesuit ended during the nadir of the Vietnam War and during the reign of Pope Paul VI, who was the first of a string of conservative popes intent on aborting the Second Vatican Council.
This book chronicles one man's journey through that national and ecclesiastical decade of turmoil."
-Paul Swift