Celibate: A Memoir

by Maria Giura

When twenty-eight-year-old Maria Giura fell in love with Catholic priest Father James Infanzi, she had no idea how needy and angry they both were nor how complicated their attraction would become.

His attention seemed to fill the void left by her fractured family, but he also seemed to be a sign for her to finally face the celibate vocation she'd been running from ever since she first felt God's call. Celibate focuses on her ten-year struggle to let go of this priest, to heal from her childhood, and to finally embrace her true calling. Fiercely honest and tender, this memoir is ultimately a story about surrender, forgiveness, and facing one's deepest needs.

Genres: Memoir

312 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Gilion Dumas · Rating 5 out of 5]

When she was a young woman, Maria Giura fell in love with a Catholic priest. In her new memoir, Celibate, Giura writes about their complicated, angry relationship and how it led her to finally find her true calling.

In working through her history with Father Infanzi, Giura writes about how she began to appreciate that neither partner in their relationship was all right or all wrong; everyone brings emotional wounds from youth into adult relationships. Unlike what she felt at the time, Giura came to understand that she was not a victim of circumstance or even God’s will, but that she had choices.

Writing her book – and figuring out the real truth about her relationship with the priest, her mother, others close to her, and her relationship with God – helped Giura grow up. Giura tells her story with guts and grace.

[Marisa Labozzetta · Rating 5 out of 5]

To be celibate is a choice made by a young woman who has exited a journey in search of love and belonging. Maria Giura takes the reader on that journey, sparing no details. We suffer her need to find place in a disrupted family and in her tenuous and unsatisfactory love affair with a selfish priest. We feel her pull away and acquiesce; her pleasure and her anguish; her anger and her compassion. This is an extraordinary memoir that attempts to explain choices made along that journey and then a final choice that few may be able to comprehend but applaud nevertheless— maybe even envy—because it stems from the author’s discovery of having come to truly know herself.

[Maria Pia]

In her second book, Celibate: A Memoir, Maria Giura recounts the deep crisis and sense of misplacement that she experienced for many years and her hard won journey to inner peace. She gradually discovers this crisis had roots in her childhood and that it destabilizes her in adulthood. Between sexual drives on the one hand, and attraction to a religious vocation and to a Catholic priest on the other, Giura struggles against her instincts that push her in a direction that is increasingly wrong but that she cannot do without. Celibate fully captures the crisis that overwhelms many women born into a strongly Catholic family where the relationship with God may be one of communion but that can also be experienced as one of fear and judgment. Becoming a nun appears to be the only possible vocation for Giura, the only place where she thinks she’ll feel at home. She finally succeeds in finding peace through writing as she reflects "writing became my companion, a faithful friend, an integral part of my vocation." This memoir leads us to reflect on the conflicts between the divine and the human but also on the power of writing to heal us and to help us better understand ourselves and others. Celibate is a memoir that I devoured and that leaves readers with such a great deal to think about.

[Heidi Lynn’s BookReviews · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, I want to thank Maria Giura for providing me with this book so I may bring you this review.

Maria Giura is extremely courageous and strong to share her personal story with her readers in Celibate. This is a must read book that is eye opening on many different levels.

Celibate is a very fascinating book and unlike any memoir I have ever read before. It deals with issues that are forefront in the news today in that Priests go outside their vows. This was an incredibly powerful read and takes you behind the scenes of why individuals actually go into the priesthood.

This book focuses a lot on faith, beliefs, a taboo relationship, callings to be a nun at an early age, questioning if the priesthood is the correct calling, etc. It also had some uncomfortable moments in the book.

I related to Maria as I was in a relationship like hers at one point. It was not with an authority figure like that. However, the mental and emotional abuse he put on her I can relate to as well as not staying faithful. He is one of the reasons I am still single. While reading this book there were multiple times I wanted to reach out to her and give her a hug.

[Jill Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maria Giura felt her calling as young as eight. She believed God was calling her to be a nun and that she was supposed to marry Him.

Eighteen years later, she meets thirty-year-old Catholic priest Father Infanzi. Her life for the next ten years is ironically entwined in his as she takes the necessary steps to leave her comfortable working life and pursue her calling. She wants to believe that she and Father Infanzi can be each other’s celibate significant other, but as time goes on, they fail miserably at this.

Celibate is a reflection on the emotional turmoil this relationship caused the author and how it contradicted and collided with, her deep faith and her resolve to become a more spiritual person.

Like me, I think readers will be relieved by the story’s ending, by the satisfaction Giura gains by becoming a writer, making her life whole, and living her life with more of God's influence. Even though I'm not as deeply religious as Giura, I enjoyed this memoir and could identify with her emotional struggles. I think many other readers will too.

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a memoir with deep emotional depth. I read it in a few days, traveling with this young woman as she struggles to find her true path in life and heal from her childhood. We need books like this about flawed people trying to be happy. Unfortunately for Giura, a Catholic priest lured her into a long affair with false promises. I can only imagine the heartache she went through as a devout Catholic who admired and found so much in common with this man. Sadly, besides their love for God and the practices of their church, they also both had emotional wounds. Giuria unsparingly describes her struggle to heal. She must leave her family's and society's expectations for her behind, and make her own path. I cheered at the end when she found it.

[Eloise Carbone · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was hooked! Celibate is a page turner. The reader follows Maria Giura’s painful journey of self-discovery as she courageously moves through her doubts, her confusion and her suffering in order to find her true path.
I was deeply touched by Maria’s faith in the Divine. A must read!

[Nancy Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent and emotionally charged memoir of entanglement, love and truth. Highly recommended.

[Lilyanne Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting memoir. I think it's very technically well written, there's obviously a lot of craft work done behind the scenes of this memoir. But only read if you are already religious/Catholic, as otherwise it may come off as preachy. On the flip side, if you are already religious, this is a really great read about finding our personal space within religion.