Introduction
The literature of the nineteenth century, especially in England, France and Germany, and to a lesser extent in the United States and Canada, was highly spiced with accounts of sexual travesties allegedly carried out within the official structure of the Roman Catholic church. Other religions came in for a lesser share of condemnation, but the Church of Rome bore the brunt of it.
To what extent such works (Maria Monk is one which comes to mind at once) were accurate reports of existing conditions, cannot now be known. A few incidents have been documented, but for the most part they were published privately, distributed more or less widely and usually in secret, and the reader was left to his own devices in attempting to ascertain whether the story was truth, exaggeration, or complete fiction.
In that era of intense dislike and mistrust of other religions, Christians of the protestant persuasion tended, generally, to believe anything and everything of a condemnatory or scandalous nature they read about Roman Catholics.
When a book told what it purported to be a true story of protestant sexuality, then the shoe was on the other foot.
Due to the nature of such works, both the author and the publisher (the Marquis de Sade was an exception to the rule), took great pains to conceal their identity. From time to time, there would be a slip, a careless confidence rashly made, and the identity of an author would become known.
In the case of The Passionate Priest, the identity of the author was well and truly hidden. Because it was privately published during the period when Albert Miller was taking over from Roger Charlton as England's reporter in novel form of the morals and mores of English society, gossip was quick to link both names to the book.
One school of thought held Charlton to be the author, while another was as confident that Miller was the culprit. Both authors denied knowing anything at all about the book, and both, as strongly anti-clerical men, at the same time praised the author and expressed a desire to meet him. Typical of the confusion this story caused at the time of its publication is the fact that when Miller ventured the opinion that the author of the book was female rather than male, there were those who immediately countered that such a statement was a deliberate attempt to lead suspicion away from himself as being the actual author.
It is doubtful that such a book could have been published in England during his lifetime without Miller's being aware of the identity of the author. It could well be that he did know the author-it could be that he, in fact, was the author-but Miller, as we have seen so often, was a man of ironic humor.
One can only smile at the thought of how he relished the secret of his knowledge all the way to the grave, and that if it is true, as has been reported, that Miller died with a smile on his lips, then perhaps this could have contributed something to that smile.
But to turn from the author to the book, we face the obvious question as to the authenticity of the contents. If we knew the author, we would be better prepared to offer some evaluation in this respect.
Because this information is not known to us however, it is left for the reader to make his own judgment. This, we feel, is one of the rights of the reader.
We are prepared, however, to assure the reader that unless he is a student in search of authenticated facts, he will find between these covers, a bawdy, rollicking story of life in Merrie England, containing not only the incisive insight provided by Charlton and Miller, but the humor as well and the keen understanding of the nature of man and woman, and especially the sexual nature.
To the person who may be sensitive of anti-clerical writings, and to the easily shocked or offended, we would not recommend this book.
To others, we say read The Passionate Priest and let yourself be the judge as to whether it is truth, fiction, or a combination of the two. Judge, that is, if you feel inclined to judge.
Dr. Guenter Klow