In My Gut, I Don’t Believe: A Memoir by Joe Armstrong has just been published in paperback and Kindle editions. https://www.amazon.com/My-Gut-Dont-Believe-Memoir-ebook/dp/B08MCS5VWX This book has been 25 years in the making. An intimate coming of age memoir, set in a Catholic seminary in 1980s Dublin. Using his private journals, Joe Armstrong shows his personal, psychological, emotional, sexual and intellectual growth, from boy to young man, escaping a dysfunctional mother and a Church calling for the submission of his mind, body and will. A journey from belief to critical doubt.

‘A fascinating, courageous and moving account of an individual leaving the trammels of religion for the good light of humanism – an educative story on many levels, well told.’ – Professor A. C. Grayling

Torn between faith and doubt, safety and risk, love and fear, this memoir is a portrait of a young man struggling to live the vow of celibacy while awakening to his need for affection, intimacy and love. It shows him wrestling with the vow of obedience while discovering his need to obey himself.

This is a life-changing story of trusting and becoming yourself and making the hardest decision of your life. This personal journey from belief to convinced doubt articulates the experience of millions.

In this episode of Losing My Religion, Joe Armstrong reads an episode from his newly published memoir. By coincidence, the book has been published the same month that it was announced that Mount St Mary’s, the Marist Fathers’ seminary in Dublin, has been sold and is to be demolished. This book is a surprising, invaluable and peerless account of a vanished world and a changing Ireland.