October 15, 2021
Broken Vows:
How I Lost My Husband to the Church
Patricia Fitzmaurice
(2021)
ISBN: 978-0-578-99781-0
New Memoir Chronicles Husband’s Decision to Become a Priest
In her new memoir, Broken Vows: How I Lost My Husband to the Church, Patricia Fitzmaurice shares the story of a happy marriage that ultimately led to an annulment. While the book tells the story of one Catholic marriage, it also reflects a larger story of changing times in the United States in the late twentieth century.
Patricia met and married her husband John in the 1950s when America was a different place, when men and women were expected to get married and have families, and Patricia and John both wanted to do exactly that. However, John had first considered becoming a priest. He had even been in the seminary for many years. But when he got close to the time to take his final vows, he decided he wanted to have a family instead. After leaving the seminary, he met Patricia, herself a Catholic, and they set about fulfilling what they believed was God’s plan for them by having a family.
Much of Broken Vows is about the happy times in the marriage, including John creating a career for himself and Patricia in the role of homemaker. Patricia shares the various moves they made for John’s career and their ultimate decision to move from Connecticut to Florida. She describes the births of their children and their happiness in being parents.
But there were also dark days. The seeds to their marriage’s dissolution began when Patricia overcame a battle with breast cancer. She had vowed to God that if she survived, she would work to help others in the medical field in some small way. This led to volunteer work, and eventually a desire to return to school, become a social worker, and have a career of her own. By then, it was the 1970s. Women were liberating themselves and Patricia’s children were almost all grown. But her husband had other ideas besides simply supporting his wife in a career. The priesthood had continued to call to him silently through all the years of their marriage, leading him to become involved with their local church’s lay ministry and then make the decision again to become a priest.
While Broken Vows is Patricia’s personal story, it is also a remarkable chronicle of the changing times in America. Patricia describes the innocence of dating in the 1950s when couples would simply go out for ice cream. She and John dated only for nine months, never lived together beforehand, and spent many of their dates visiting family and friends. Not until after the marriage did they develop a deeper personal relationship in line with the sacrament of marriage.
Broken Vows is also a story about two people’s efforts to serve God in the ways they were called to do so, even though John had difficulty accepting Patricia’s desire to volunteer and have a career focused on helping others, and Patricia had difficulty understanding her husband’s ultimate choice to end the marriage so he could become a priest. Yet today, Patricia holds no bitterness in her heart, and she is grateful for the years she and John had together. She states, “what I have written is a true story about my husband’s love for me and his children. Our lives together were based on trust and commitment, which could only have survived in the hands of God.”
Furthermore, Patricia shares how her husband’s devotion to God helped her children increase their own faith, and for that, she is grateful. Toward the book’s end, she states:
“Today, although many years have passed since our last kiss, I believe our time together as husband and wife, and parents, gave a special gift to our children. They saw, day after day, that their dad was all about faith. And just as I was determined to spend part of my life professionally helping others, I also was determined to complete my promise to God. My husband did a great job of living daily. And he was determined to fulfill his youthful promise to practice his faith every day. He did that. And that was the best gift he could give his children. He gave them strength, direction, and a beautiful memory. In our own way, we fulfilled our roles through marriage and parenthood. And I will always remember that first sweet kiss.”
Patricia writes with a simplicity that gets to the heart of her relationship; her tone is free of anger, frustration, bitterness, drama, or intense emotion. She has had many years to attain distance from the events she writes about, and she shares them with the objectiveness of a good journalist. I think readers will be amazed by the degree of contentment she appears to feel today over the events of the past. She also provides a model of marriage for her readers, with lessons learned to help future generations make their own choices while perhaps understanding better what is needed to make a marriage work.
For more information about Patricia Fitzmaurice and Broken Vows, visit www.Amazon.com.
— Tyler R. Tichelaar, PhD and Award-Winning Author of Narrow Lives and The Best Place
