Léon Bloy, the French Catholic writer and convert from Judaism, once said, "Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have existence." It's one of my favorite quotations. Just about all of Christian scholarship on the nature of suffering can be reduced to these few simple words. Suffering can bend and break us. But it can also break us open to become the persons God intended us to be. It depends on what we do with the pain. If we offer it back to God, He will use it to do great things in us and through us, because suffering is fertile. It can grow new life.

So it is with the personal witness you're about to read. David Morrison - as his writing vividly shows - is no stranger to the pain, doubt, self-destructive behavior, and alienation that mark so many of the men and women who struggle with homosexuality in their daily lives. This is the story of his journey from an active gay subculture to new life in Jesus Christ. This is his diary of discovering the Catholic faith. It's a real, flesh-and-blood conversion story, the kind with restless echoes of Augustine; the kind that will stay in the memory a long time. But a word of caution: Anyone looking for a casual spiritual boost, or a quick read for his or her spare time, would do well to close this book now. Compelling, it is. Moving, it is. Comfortable, it is not.

The importance of this work, though, is larger than David Morrison's personal conversion. That's just Act One. What Morrison accomplishes in the final two-thirds of his book is something extraordinary. He takes the raw material of his experience, and building on it, he offers one of the best explanations and defenses of Catholic sexual ethics in years. He not only accepts what the Church teaches. He understands it with his heart . . . as perhaps only someone who's paid dearly to find the truth, can. Equally important, he has the gift of sharing it persuasively with the reader, not as a burden or a duty, but as a joy and a freedom.

Not everyone will welcome this book. While the author clearly respects members of groups like Dignity and its Episcopal Church cousin, Integrity, he disagrees strongly with these organizations' goals. He does not believe the truth is served by revising the Christian faith to approve or accommodate homosexual activity. On the contrary, he argues that homosexual activity is not just morally wrong but destructive, because it leads the person away from God and the authentic human good. Yet at the same time, he writes with great compassion for those trying to make sense of their homosexuality.

He also questions the pastoral approach of some Christian groups: for example, those which argue that with enough faith and proper therapy, most homosexuals can assume fulfilling heterosexual lives. Morrison believes that while some homosexually inclined men and women have the ability to reorient themselves to heterosexual lives, others probably do not. But God's love for all His children, no matter what their particular burdens, never fails. And the meaning of human sexuality and the Christian call to chastity apply to everyone with equal force and equal love: married and unmarried, "gay" and "straight."

Scripture tells us to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). David Morrison has done so. This is a book marked by balance, intelligence, and respect for everyone touched by the issue of homosexuality. In the process, he and Our Sunday Visitor have made an invaluable contribution to the discussion of one of the central moral controversies of our time.

CHARLES J. CHAPUT, O.F.M. CAP.
ARCHBISHOP OF DENVER