Antonio Monda

"With storytelling finesse, Antonio Monda has written a compact and forceful book that might be a morbid erotic tale out of Boccaccio, exposing the tormented lust of the clergy." --Philip Roth A Catholic priest struggles with memories of an illicit romance in 1970s New York in this powerfully intimate novel of faith and doubt, guilt and love. New York in the late 70s: fiscal crisis, rising crime, the great blackout of '77--the city seemed to be on an irreversible decline that was battering its very soul. And, to put it mildly, sin was everywhere. Against this backdrop we meet Abram Singer, a Catholic priest with an unusual name and a very dark secret. Born to an absentee Jewish father and a devout Irish mother, Abram always felt like an outsider, someone standing between two worlds. Raised Catholic, he found himself drawn to the meaningful structure of the seminary and became a Manhattan parish priest. Guided by a genuine faith in God, Abram's sincerest wish is to do His work. But Abram is not without his human failings, primary of which is lust. Despite his vow of chastity, he is irresistibly attracted to women and has a long-standing relationship with a young woman named Lisa, whom he loves passionately. Their romance, Abram feels, bears the hallmarks of all of his gravest weaknesses--doubt, hypocrisy, and an inability to renounce his own sin. These misgivings threaten to overwhelm him when a stranger calls Abram at the parish threatening to expose his liaison, forcing him to decide whether the risks of continuing with Lisa have become simply too great. Told entirely in Abram's straightforward, self-aware voice, Unworthy is both a riveting, morally complex narrative about the nature of faith, loyalty, and identity, and a gritty period piece about a man trying to make his way in one of America's greatest cities.

A Novel

Unworthy

Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.)

Mary Lea Bandy

Gramercy Theatre

The Hidden God: Film and Faith, which accompanies a MoMA Film at the Gramercy Theatre program in the winter of 2003-2004, offers a range of approaches to cinema's explorations of a hidden God. Its thirty-five authors include filmmakers, magazine and newspaper critics, film scholars, curators of The Museum of Modern Art's Department of Film and Media, and others; together they discuss over fifty films, some more or less explicitly religious in theme, others from a gamut of genres not always connected with questions of faith: the western, the thriller, the policier, the costume drama, science fiction, horror, comedy. The films come from Africa, the Middle East, and Japan as well as Europe and the United States, but even so, the book and exhibition are intended not as an encyclopedic anthology but, more humbly, as starting points in the study of an eternal theme.

Film and Faith

The Hidden God

Abram Singer is a Catholic priest with an unusual name and a dark secret. Against the backdrop of gritty 1970s New York, in a simple, straightforward style, he tells us his story. The son of an absent Jewish father and a devout Italian mother, Abram was drawn to the meaningful structure of the seminary, eventually becoming a parish priest in Manhattan. His sincerest wish is to do God's work, but he is not without human failings: he is irresistibly attracted to women and has a secret lover named Lisa. But when an anonymous letter arrives threatening to expose his liaison, he is forced to decide whether the risks of his sin have become too great. Riveting and powerfully intimate, Unworthy unflinchingly explores the nature of faith, loyalty, and identity--and gives us a timeless portrait of a man trying to make his way in America's greatest city.

Abram Singer is a Catholic priest with an unusual name and a dark secret. Against the backdrop of gritty 1970s New York, in a simple, straightforward style, he tells us his story. The son of an absent Jewish father and a devout Italian mother, Abram was drawn to the meaningful structure of the seminary, eventually becoming a parish priest in Manhattan. His sincerest wish is to do God’s work, but he is not without human failings: he is irresistibly attracted to women and has a secret lover named Lisa. But when an anonymous letter arrives threatening to expose his liaison, he is forced to decide whether the risks of his sin have become too great. Riveting and powerfully intimate, Unworthy unflinchingly explores the nature of faith, loyalty, and identity—and gives us a timeless portrait of a man trying to make his way in America’s greatest city.

tu credi?

Some of the most well-known and well-respected cultural figures of our time enter into intimate and illuminating conversation about their personal beliefs, about belief itself, about religion, and about God. Antonio Monda is a disarming, rigorous interviewer, asking the most difficult questions (he often begins an interview point blank: “Do you believe in God?”) that lead to the most wide-ranging conversations. An ardent believer himself, Monda talks both with atheists (asked what she feels when she meets a believer, Grace Paley replies: “I respect his thinking and his beliefs, but at the same time I think he’s deluded”) and other believers, their discussion ranging from personal images of God (Michael Cunningham sees God as a black woman, Derek Walcott as a wise old white man with a beard) to religion’s place in American culture, from the afterlife to the concepts of good and evil, from fundamentalism to the Bible. And almost without fail, the conversations turn to questions of art and literature. Toni Morrison discusses Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, Richard Ford invokes Wallace Stevens, and David Lynch draws attention to the religious aspects of Bu–uel, Fellini...and Harold Ramis's Groundhog Day. Informal, revealing, unexpected, Do You Believe? is a captivating and thought-provoking meditation how faith, in all its facets, remains profoundly relevant for and in our culture.

Do You Believe?

A series of candid discussions on God, religion, and faith examines the role of religion in the modern world, in an anthology featuring the thoughts of Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, Derek Walcott, Jonathan Franzen, Grace Paley, and Elie Wiesel.

Antonio Monda

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