Ordained to Be a Jew: A Catholic Priest's Conversion to Judaism

Rating:
Summary: Sharing faith only helps towards peace
Review: I am a former seminarian and am a student of Catholic Theology. The story is well written and easy to read. I can certainly relate to the seminary life and to the unanswerable & unasked questions. Judaism is an attractive religion and perhaps Catholicism can still learn something from the Jews (John 4:22), e.g. passing on our story to our children at home within a ritual. If all peoples shared their personal conversion stories rather then defending one's own to the exclusion of others, then perhaps we can have peace in our world. I am not convinced that he ever had a religious conversion of the heart with Christianity; only when he encountered Judaism.

Rating:
Summary: A good read.
Review: I could identify very well with not only Mr. Scalamonti's emotions and questions regarding the Catholic Church, but also many similar experiences. I too, converted to Judaism. I had also wanted to persue the priesthood but found myself questioning Catholocism more and more until I could no longer attend church in good conscience. Mr. Scalamonti effectively chronicles the difficulties he had with Catholic Doctrine. I found my same difficulties in many ways mirrored his. I would recommend this book to anyone questioning their faith and coming up short on answers. You may not find the answers here, but rather the courage to follow your heart and mind to search out how to make G_d a part of your life.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting But Outdated
Review: I found this book through a Jewish website on conversion. I ordered it from Amazon, and read it in a day! I was amazed at how similar our spiritual journeys were, even though I was not Catholic. His courage to follow his own spiritual path inspired me to step out in faith and to convert. His book details the conflict with his family which usually (and inevitably) follows conversion.

John David Scalamonte is truly an inspiration and a pioneer to those of us searching for meaning and truth in a world of man-made religions. His experiences will inspire anyone seeking to follow his own spiritual path.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and informative
Review: In this book, Scalamonti explains his gradual disillusionment with the church and his discovery and acceptance of Judaism. It is very important to recognize that in writing this book, he is in no way trying to convert Christians away from their faith. He is trying to explain why he, himself, converted.
This book is not only for people who may be contemplating conversion to Judaism, but also for Jews who may not see the beauty of Judaism for themselves and therefore cannot understand why someone would choose to become Jewish. After reading this book, I believe that he wrote it primarily for this latter group - to inspire assimilated and ambivalent Jews to appreciate their own heritage and religion more.
The writing style is smooth and easy to read. It is interstingly written and hard to put down.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting But Outdated
Review: The book is way outdated. Scalamonti was raised a Catholic in the 40's and became a priest before Vatican II. His Catholicism was *very* different from mainstream Catholicism. For example, in the seminary he was not allowed to study any theology other than Christian/Catholic types. He did not learn a thing about Judaism. Today this is just not the case. Priests get all kinds of religious training, and are not ignorant of other religions. Also, the priests in his parish were portrayed as lazy drunks who had disdain for the needy and poor in the community. Today, Catholic parishes are staffed by one or two priests who are usually heavily involved in civic and charitable work with the community's needy.

Also the title is a little misleading...it implies that he left the priesthood to become a Jew when he left the priesthood out of a crisis of faith. He knew nothing of Judaism until he began dating a Jewish woman...which is what eventually led to his conversion, so he could marry her. Sound familiar?

So, I found his story interesting but you have to look at it in a historical context. Scalamonti was a religious Catholic who left the priesthood and became a religious Jew. His beef with the Catholic church was valid at the time, but a modern day priest would probably not have the same kinds of experiences as Scalamonti. The Church really has come a long way since then.

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening and even-handed
Review: This book is NOT a scathing condemnation of Catholic Christianity. It is also NOT an exhortation to the Christian community to adopt Judaism instead.

Rather, it is a (at times even sad or nostalgic) memoir of a man who wanted to believe... but who at the same time couldn't blind himself to the flaws in the teachings with which he was raised.

It would be good reading for any Catholics or Christians who are thinking of conversion to Judaism, obviously, but also for those who are actively questioning the authenticity of their Catholic heritage and seek an articulate viewpoint which is well-grounded both within and from outside traditional Catholic thought.

Rating:
Summary: Heartfelt but somewhat dated
Review: This is a quick and easy read, and it's obvious that Mr. Scalamonti's spiritual journey and the doubts he had about his faith of origin were very sincere, genuine, and heartfelt. His love for first Catholicism and later Judaism were really evident. John's love of his first religion went way back; when he was a small boy he often played being a priest, leading Mass, and giving Communion. Basically as far as he could remember he wanted to be a priest, so much so he secretly wrote to a priest at a junior seminary about this wish and how his mother didn't approve. The priest visited the house and eventually swayed John's mother to let him go, at 14 years old. Even though many Catholic families in this time in history wanted at least one son to be a priest, Mrs. Scalamonti didn't want John, her firstborn, to be the one to do that. After leaving for the junior seminary, John spent the rest of his adolescence and his early adulthood in strict and highly-regimented training and living conditions, going from junior seminary to the adult-level seminary and then on to his novitiate and finally becoming ordained as a priest at long last. It's the happiest day of his life when he celebrates his first Mass, but before long his life's obsession begins to disappoint him and he runs into all sorts of trouble with the higher-ups.

This is the primary reason why the book is dated; John became a priest in the early days of Vatican II, and was really excited over the sweeping changes it brought, but the higher-ups didn't feel the same way. He was happily running a mission catering to the dregs of society, hippies, broken families, people marginalised by the Church, but the priests in charge were very uncomfortable with that kind of element. John also didn't like how he had taken a vow of poverty yet he and his brother priests were living like kings in a huge old mansion, and how they hadn't been allowed to read any non-Christian theology while in seminary, or even Catholic writings that disagreed with Church policy. Because of this unpriestlike behaviour, they sent him off to take college classes in Washington, DC, hoping this would whip him back into shape. The questions and doubts remained, though, and because they wouldn't grant him a sabbatical, he had no other choice but to leave the priesthood, after which he became adjusted to working in the real world, met a Jewish girl, and converted.

Nowadays all of John's questions would have been answered and dealt with; there are still some problems in the Church, but certainly not the same type there were back then. Nowadays he would be allowed to study different religions, run a mission catering to the type of people he had been working with without muttering and outrage from the other priests, and probably wouldn't have been living in a mansion and living like a king during his training and after his ordination. And junior seminaries no longer exist; nowadays young people who want to become nuns or priests are encouraged to go to college and experience the world first, not cut off all ties with things secular at age fourteen. It was a genuine and sincere account, but had he become a priest twenty or thirty years after he did, he probably would not have left the priesthood.

Rating:
Summary: A Book of The Highest Order
Review: This is an excellent book. Scalamonti goes through a complete transformation from a very religious Catholic who wants (and succeeds) in becoming a Catholic Priest to his questioning of everything in the priesthood, to his conversion and immersion into Judaism. I hear alot of people talking about how glad they are to be "Jewish" but they do not really fulfill what being Jewish entails. Scalamonti describes in beautiful detail REAL Judaism. Not about hearts and stomachs, he describes many of the wonderful rituals behind Judaism. I think that he describes his dissasistifaction with Christianity in a respectable way (and after all, he DID get the FULL experience). This book is a very excellent read&is widely recommended not only to people interested in converting to Judaism, but Jews who want to have more meaning out of their life as well.