Flames and Ether, written by a good-hearted but turbulent New Zealand priest, Felix Donnelly, can only be read with understanding when this background of sexual oppressiveness, (even in mainstream international Catholicism) is taken into account. Purely as a writer and a counsellor, Donnelly has much of tolerance, wisdom and pertinence to say to our permissive yet, still sexually anxious epoch. His succinct treatment of the varieties of sexual behaviour, ranging from the conventional issues of marriage, child-bearing and contraception to such clinical exotica as bestiality, is both lucid and informative. Yet such slender , paper-backed canterings through far too many complex issues in a mere 120 pages offer little that is not covered with similar concision in a dozen other brief manuals on the physiology and psychology of sexual behaviour.

This work holds its horrid fascination because it is written for Christian and, more. specifically Catholic, readership. From that standpoint, the writer’s comments border at times upon the sensational. Its contents go far to explain why this pastor, writer and broadcaster has been a sharp thorn in the side of his ecclesiastical superiors for many years. As recently as thirty years ago, the writer’s condoning of abortion in specific circumstances, his refusal to condemn homosexual acts, and his withering attacks upon the sexual doctrine of the Roman magisterium would have resulted in his being defrocked and possibly excommunicated. Like so many Christian rebels against a repressive sexual outlook, Donnelly frequently succumbs to the temptation to go overboard. The liberal hurrah is apt to die upon one’s lips when he boldly declares that the early Christians were not monogamous and liberally distributed their sexual favours, hinting that the agape of the Christian catacombs was not far removed from the eros of Hugh Hefner! There is no convincing historical evidence for this curiously perverse assertion. Such excesses as these obviously tend to offset such timely reminders as that Pope Paul VI wilfully disregarded the favourable recommendation of his own commission on chemical contraception, and that the most up-to-date view of the Vatican on sexual ethics in 1976 was lifted straight from the conservative Cardinal’s textbook, used at the Angelicum University for Clergy in Rome.

There is no doubt that in the last pages of Flames and Ether Donnelly details enough of the curiously aberrant, twisted attitudes of both ancient and modem Christian Fathers towards sexuality to gain some sympathy for the bald assertion; ‘one cannot place trust in the Church’s teaching today based upon such grossly evil and destructive understandings of sexuality.· Yet even as a fellow counsellor coming from the same tradition and formation as Father Donnelly, I feel sceptical toward so many passages of self-conscious, radical posturing. While the Church has been (and still seems to be) grudging in its toleration of any sort of sexual freedom, Donnelly’s blandly uncritical treatment of sources ranging , from the soundness of Kinsey and Masters and Johnson on one hand to the effete middle class gourmet gurglings of Sher Hite and Alex Comfort on the other suggets that he is still to a large extent bogged down at the post-primary stage in his own comprehension of difficult psychological issues.

In so many pages of this book, Donnelly’s relatively uncritical treatment of his secular ‘authorities’ poses a startling contrast to his none too charitable attacks upon his ecclesiastical chiefs. Like so many contemporary ‘hyphenated’ clergy, the author attempts to be both psychological counsellor and moral reformer at the same time. While Donnelly’s compassion is no in doubt it is inevitable that priests who try to have their vocational cake and eat it in this fashion end up ultimately by being effective in neither role. If the clerical cassock seems to swaddle the writer so tightly one wonders why he has not taken it off and enjoyed the greater professional freedom offered to the layman.