Review by Eamon Murphy of In My Gut, I Don’t Believe

To see many more reviews of In My Gut, I Don’t Believe see here. The review below is by Eamon Murphy, which was first published in The Irish Freethinker and Humanist magazine in its March-April 2021 edition. Eamon interviewed Joe Armstrong at the launch of In My Gut, I Don’t Believe on 10 March 2021, at an event hosted by the Humanist Association of Ireland. You can watch the full launch on the Losing My Religion Joe Armstrong YouTube channel. There are also shorter readings from the book read by the author at the launch on that channel. To watch and hear the clip entitled Innocent Ireland click here. For the clip entitled Sex and the priesthood, click here. At the launch, Eamon Murphy described the book as ‘an answer to a secular prayer’.

Eamon Murphy’s comprehensive review follows below:

Honesty, self-examination & craving to read more

The story and author of this book will be familiar to any regular reader of this publication. Joe Armstrong – journalist, podcaster, humanist celebrant – has been serialising his memoir in the pages of the Irish Freethinker for three years now. For those readers who, like myself, finish his 800-odd words every two months craving more, relief is here; In My Gut I Don’t Believe is now available in paperback and Kindle through Amazon.

A compelling read

For the uninitiated, the book details Joe’s time as a seminarian in the 1980s. He spent almost a decade there before leaving when on the verge of ordination. Just as in his bi-monthly column, it is the author’s honesty and ability for self-examination about this period that immediately strike the reader. Most of us like to think ourselves capable of in-depth self-exploration, openness and candour, but I’ve read few autobiographical works that examine family relationships, internal thought processes or human urges with the honesty displayed here. It makes for compelling reading.

Loving and hating his mother

One of the most fascinating themes explored is the author’s relationship with his overbearing mother, whom he admits to simultaneously loving and loathing. It is never easy to admit that internal family dynamics are far from ideal. From Pauline Armstrong’s dealings with her children and step-children, to a scathing assessment of her by her own brother, to the allusions to her treatment of her husband, she does not emerge well.

Sexual desire, longing for intimacy

Joe brings the same frankness and in-depth analysis to exploring the aspects of his youth which drove him to enter Mount St Marys, a Marist seminary in Milltown, Dublin, in 1980. These sections are a fascinating read for anyone wishing to understand the journey from faith to ‘freedom’. Joe’s honesty in tackling the causes of doubt – sometimes in his vocation, sometimes in his faith entirely – is remarkable. No one will necessarily be surprised to read that the barriers to committing his life to the priesthood included his sexual urges, a desire for freedom from obedience, or a longing for an intimate and exclusive relationship, but the sincerity with which each are explored is what makes this a page-turner.

Affection still for the the Marists

Decades on from his time in the seminary, it is clear that Joe still holds a certain amount of affection for many of the religious he met during his time, while simultaneously eschewing their belief system. This makes for a balanced read. While full of criticism, there is no church-bashing from this escapee of the faith, and the love, friendship and acceptance he experienced in Mount St Marys make it easy to understand why he would spend nine years in such an environment while simultaneously almost constantly doubting his ‘calling’.

Caught between belonging and disillusionment

That juxtaposition between the camaraderie of the novitiate and his feelings of disillusionment on various issues – from chastity to lack of control over the work he would do upon ordination – is laid bare. So too is the long journey from early intolerance of those who did not share his religious outlook – Joe once preferring that those who did not share his Catholic beliefs would leave Ireland altogether – to a more balanced worldview, augmented well by re-produced letters to/from family members during the period (including a beloved uncle, a priest in South Africa).

A microcosm of the decline of Catholicism

While it is obviously not the focus of the story, many of the reasons for the decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland provide important backdrops, and the book gives a deeper understanding of many of these; in dealing with the sexual abuse experienced by the author at the hands of two Christian Brothers; in describing an encounter in the seminary with a priest subsequently to be revealed as a serial child abuser; and examining the struggles of young seminarians with chastity and obedience. Of the twenty young men who entered the novitiate with Joe in 1980, all but three eventually left, either before or after ordination. I’ve no doubt that, to some extent, Joe’s story is their story too.

Joe’s journal a key to the book’s success

The book would likely not have been possible had Joe not been a prolific journal keeper for most of his life, including his time in the seminary. This makes possible a detailing of his emotional, spiritual and philosophical journey that would otherwise have been at best misrepresentative, at worst impossible.

The unexamined life is not worth living

More than thirty years on, we can see that even at a young age, few important aspects of life – faith, love, sex, desire, friendship, vocation, place in the world – were left unexamined or unquestioned by the young seminarian. If the seminary gave him nothing else, it allowed him to truly examine and know himself. The proof is in this book, and it makes for worthy reading.