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My Father, the Father: a memoir of love and double lives
When Mary discovered she was pregnant, she and her lover, Father Ralph, chose to give birth and raise their baby instead of opting for abortion or adoption. Secretly, they acted as full-time parents without disclosing that the father was a Catholic priest. Their lives became a tangled and precarious web of lies to their own families, friends, and their son.
In My Father, the Father, author Tony Beadle, that baby born in 1952, shares the story of his high-profile Catholic priest father and his mother, Mary, and how they raised him in an environment of love, lies, and secrets. The intent was to avoid disgracing an unwed pregnant mother and to prevent damaging the father’s career as a well-known parish priest and fundraiser for the cardinal in Boston, and thus the image of the Catholic Church.
This memoir tells how the priest/father led a dual life, spending half of every week with the mother and their son in a home they purchased in a small rural town south of Boston, and the rest as pastor of an affluent church nearby. Mary, who had lived near family members and many relatives, maintained a complex repertoire of lies and actions that kept the boy’s and his father’s existence a secret from them. Twenty-five years after his birth, Beadle met his relatives, garnering decidedly different reactions from both sides.
In My Father, the Father, author Tony Beadle, that baby born in 1952, shares the story of his high-profile Catholic priest father and his mother, Mary, and how they raised him in an environment of love, lies, and secrets. The intent was to avoid disgracing an unwed pregnant mother and to prevent damaging the father’s career as a well-known parish priest and fundraiser for the cardinal in Boston, and thus the image of the Catholic Church.
This memoir tells how the priest/father led a dual life, spending half of every week with the mother and their son in a home they purchased in a small rural town south of Boston, and the rest as pastor of an affluent church nearby. Mary, who had lived near family members and many relatives, maintained a complex repertoire of lies and actions that kept the boy’s and his father’s existence a secret from them. Twenty-five years after his birth, Beadle met his relatives, garnering decidedly different reactions from both sides.
290 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 29, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 1, 2025
So. my friend texted me to say, read this book. I grew up in St. Agatha Parish and Church. I attended St. Agatha School and our pastor was Monsignor Gallagher. Oh, my... I very much related to growing up Catholic in the 60's. I remember the day the nun's came to school and they had hair, and legs! I remember the cast of characters in the story, I even remember my parents drinking Cold Duck and Liebfraumilch wine. My father would probably deny this story and always felt you shouldn't air your dirty laundry, he was a big reader and hated Angela's Ashes. I wish my Mom were still alive, I bet after a couple drinks she could tell me stories. I laughed out loud when you turned in the girl on the altar at the Newman Center. I was saddened by the story of Monsignor Gallagher, but not surprised, I realized as an adult that religious and priests are human. I would recommend this book especially to those who grew up Catholic in the 50's and 60's.
October 6, 2025
An amazing story
As someone who starts to read more books than I finish, I found this book positively captivating. It's an amazing story, and Tony Beadle tells it exquisitely. It is most definitely worthy of being made into a movie.
As someone who starts to read more books than I finish, I found this book positively captivating. It's an amazing story, and Tony Beadle tells it exquisitely. It is most definitely worthy of being made into a movie.
August 27, 2026
My family knew Monsignor Ralph Gallagher, and I have no doubt that my parents, sisters, and brother were at St. Agatha's Church in 1969 to hear Cardinal Cushing heap praise upon his friend on the occasion of Fr. Gallagher's 40th anniversary of ordination. But Ralph's son and his lover, the mother of his child, were not there. That's one of many poignant moments narrated by the son, Tony Beadle, about the life he was forced to live with a father who supported him, lived with him the majority of each week, but could not acknowledge that Tony was, in fact, his own child. The family's domestic life was built and sustained for more than two decades on an intricate web of lies.
Monsignor Gallagher was a fixture of my growing-up years, as the highly competent and respected pastor of the parish that was the center of my family's life. His domain was a prosperous complex—the rectory on the left, where the priests lived and were cared for by cooks and housekeepers; in the middle, the school I attended for eight years, set back from the street to accommodate a huge parking lot; then the church, with its towering spire and its beautifully adorned upper sanctuary for Sunday masses and the spacious but more humble lower sanctuaries for the other six days. St. Agatha's School included a large Parish Hall, named (until recently) for Father Gallagher. How astonishing it is for me now to learn that every Sunday afternoon Gallagher took off his Roman collar and left that world to take up his secret life in a town forty minutes away. If this book were a novel, I'd find it compelling though I would most likely judge it to be unrealistic.
How did he pull this off for so many years? How did the priest's lover, Mary, manage her double life? Who knew and colluded in keeping the secret? And most importantly, how did this life of lies affect Ralph's child? I recommend reading this memoir to accompany Tony on his journey of discovery in a life intentionally shrouded in secrecy.
Three sidelights:
1. I told a friend who was not brought up Catholic about this book, and I learned that she didn't know that priests are still forbidden to marry. She'd assumed that the horrific scale of clergy sexual abuse first revealed 25 years ago would have caused the church to change its celibacy rule. There have been exceptions: some married clergy from another faith have been accepted as Catholic priests. But for the rest, the celibacy edict remains.
2. I was not at Msgr. Gallagher's anniversary celebration with the rest of my family because by then I had turned away from Catholicism, with its contradictions, conservative politics, and misogyny. I did not know yet about the massive scale of hypocrisy in the church, and I certainly didn't suspect that Monsignor Gallagher had a woman on the side!
3. Goodreads won't let me uncheck "Kindle edition." I don't have a Kindle and I read this in a physical book edition, ordered from my local independent bookseller.
Monsignor Gallagher was a fixture of my growing-up years, as the highly competent and respected pastor of the parish that was the center of my family's life. His domain was a prosperous complex—the rectory on the left, where the priests lived and were cared for by cooks and housekeepers; in the middle, the school I attended for eight years, set back from the street to accommodate a huge parking lot; then the church, with its towering spire and its beautifully adorned upper sanctuary for Sunday masses and the spacious but more humble lower sanctuaries for the other six days. St. Agatha's School included a large Parish Hall, named (until recently) for Father Gallagher. How astonishing it is for me now to learn that every Sunday afternoon Gallagher took off his Roman collar and left that world to take up his secret life in a town forty minutes away. If this book were a novel, I'd find it compelling though I would most likely judge it to be unrealistic.
How did he pull this off for so many years? How did the priest's lover, Mary, manage her double life? Who knew and colluded in keeping the secret? And most importantly, how did this life of lies affect Ralph's child? I recommend reading this memoir to accompany Tony on his journey of discovery in a life intentionally shrouded in secrecy.
Three sidelights:
1. I told a friend who was not brought up Catholic about this book, and I learned that she didn't know that priests are still forbidden to marry. She'd assumed that the horrific scale of clergy sexual abuse first revealed 25 years ago would have caused the church to change its celibacy rule. There have been exceptions: some married clergy from another faith have been accepted as Catholic priests. But for the rest, the celibacy edict remains.
2. I was not at Msgr. Gallagher's anniversary celebration with the rest of my family because by then I had turned away from Catholicism, with its contradictions, conservative politics, and misogyny. I did not know yet about the massive scale of hypocrisy in the church, and I certainly didn't suspect that Monsignor Gallagher had a woman on the side!
3. Goodreads won't let me uncheck "Kindle edition." I don't have a Kindle and I read this in a physical book edition, ordered from my local independent bookseller.
March 5, 2026
The author's biological father, a Catholic monsignor, raised his son part time and lived with the author's mother for part of each week. The author's mother kept her only child's existence a secret from her family for decades. Plenty of people figured things out and either didn't care or felt sympathy for the mom and kid. I admire Tony Beadle for being open about where he came from and how it affected him. I'm sure there are many others who are in similar situations. It must be hard to form friendships and relationships when all you know are lies and hypocrisy.
January 19, 2026
Very sad. Not shocking but very sad. The Catholic Church needs to come to terms with the fact that if they allowed priests to marry this sadness would not continue. Unfortunately in my lifetime this will never be the case
November 28, 2025
This was such a good book and was hard to put down! I decided to read this because I was a parishioner and student at the parish that Monsignor Gallagher was at. He was a lovely man and this story came as a complete shock to me. It was so well written and a real page turner. It was sad, heartwarming, and shocking all at the same time. Tony Beadle has lived an amazing life and is a great storyteller. Truth really is stranger than fiction.
May 16, 2026
Quick read, rambling story of guilt and pride.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews