Tales Out of Church

Tales Out of Church is a collection of short stories told by an overimaginative Catholic priest. He is Father Cornelius Daugherty, called "Father Connie" by his friends. It's the Christmas season. When most people are scurrying from stores and banks and picking up relatives at airports and train stations, Father Connie is daydreaming about talking sandwiches, gourmet meals, and fighting dragons on a train. However, as a priest, Father Connie is often dazed by the true–to–life stories of people just trying to live their lives. He encounters the comedy of courting today and a father's frustration in raising a teenage daughter. Finally, Tales Out of Church is a love story that begins in the El Salvador insurgency and persists in a forbidden courtship that lasts for decades. In the last chapter of the book, Father Cornelius Daugherty tells a story at the Christmas morning mass about a man who builds a machine to get to heaven, only to be reminded that Jesus Christ is the only way.

-- Jeffery Young