Basement Priest

Basement Priest is a collection of reflections by Fr John Boos, a Missionary of Africa who lives in semi-retirement in a basement flat. He leaves it to help in parishes in Scarborough in Toronto and in Durham, in Ontario. The quiet years there have given him time to think about Faith: how today's secular culture accepts or rejects it, and how its common misrepresentations might be corrected and clarified.

He begins with himself. He was born in Trinidad, West Indies, in 1937 to a working-class family. He has lived through decades marked by the two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War, the Cold War, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Second Vatican Council, the moon landings, the encyclical Humanae Vitae and the Sexual Revolution. In that time he saw the rise and fall of dictators such as Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, Castro, Idi Amin and Mugabe, and the papacies of Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. He argues that the 21st century did not arise on its own but was shaped by the histories, philosophies, wars and cultural changes of earlier centuries, and he wonders how it will shape those to come.

His own path included legal studies and admission to the Bar in 1975, upgraded in 1987. He left law, joined the Society of Missionaries of Africa in 1963 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1970. He then spent about fifty years as a missionary in Africa and other countries, and his superiors now allow him to help the Archdiocese of Toronto.

The reflections deal mainly with Faith and religion as his Church understands them, so the book is both catechetic and apologetic, and it speaks plainly. It draws on the Bible throughout. Because some themes are close to each other, a little repetition is unavoidable, and the author presents it as part of his effort to see the big picture.