No Turning Back: Confessions Of A Catholic Priest

Reviewed by Michail Rassool

The road to priesthood for every young man who takes it has its own experience, its own integrity, unique challenges and processes of discernment. But few of these experiences, I’m sure, are quite as dramatic as that of Fr Donald Calloway.

No Turning Back is a film narrative of Fr Calloway’s rather turbulent rites of passage to priesthood, a most unlikely destination in light of the nature of his experiences.

Armed with nothing save his extraordinarily expressive powers and evocative way of telling his story — arguably a by-product of the extraordinary graces he has received — the American Marians of the Immaculate Conception priest paints a vivid picture of juvenile delinquency of epicurean proportions, a misspent youth waged in two countries, a dark descent into an underworld of crime, drugs, sex and aimless drifting.

Coming from the back-woods of the coal-mining state of West Virginia in the south of the US, the male rolemodels he encountered were not of the most savoury kind: an abusive, womanising father who abandoned the family when Donald was still quite young and then a succession of step-fathers.

Along with adopting his second step-father’s surname (he had also taken the previous one’s), came baptism in the Episcopal Church, literally his first encounter with Christianity, albeit a fleeting one.

But by the time this adoptive parent, a more stable father-figure, came along, the damage had already been done. At 11 years old Donald was already showing clear signs of the rebellion, waywardness and hedonistic “MTV lifestyle” that would characterise the rest of his youth and adolescence.

The documentary goes on to tell of family relocations, including to California — the mecca of sex, drugs and Rock ‘n Roll — and Japan. Here the young rebel simply spiralled further and further out of control, even becoming involved with the Japanese mafia.

By the time of the crucial re-awakening that ultimately led to his ordination, Donald had reached a sort of nadir, where even the palate for sex and drugs had become somewhat jaded. By this time his family — now living on a military base in Pennsylvania — had been received into the Catholic Church, which was a tremendous source of renewal for Donald’s mother, step-father and half-brother.

One hears many stories suggesting that a true Damascus moment can be experienced only after one has reached rock-bottom, a sort of “deadness” that really serves as fertile ground for a new perspective to take root and change one’s life forever, a spiritual resurrection. Fr Calloway’s experience, I think, can be described in such terms; a transformation of the truly significant kind, of the most unlikely kind.

It is a truly dramatic story of someone with literally scant knowledge of Christianity, let alone Catholicism, who underwent a sweeping catharsis that is nothing short of miraculous, going on to become a fervent apostle of Christ and a priest.

It is a process that can be experienced personally best by listening to Fr Calloway himself, who speaks in a nuanced and highly compelling narrative style.

No Turning Back invites comparison with such well-known, documented personal transformations as that of evangelist Nicky Cruz, as told in his book The Cross and the Switchblade, which was made into a film.

What really struck me about this documentary film’s content is that there is enough dramatic material in it for a movie, perhaps a vehicle for such outfits as Gregory Productions, the US Catholic film company that co-produced films such as 1996’s The Spitfire Grill (with Ellen Burstyn in a supporting role), a film about suffering and redemption, and the triumph of truth and love.

Or perhaps it could be one of the first major vehicles of FoxFaith, a new division of 20th Century Fox that will focus on films with religious or values-based themes.

Fr Calloway is presently assistant rector of the US’s National Shrine of the Divine Mercy in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

No Turning Back is available locally on DVD from Metanoia Ministries at R85,00 (excl. postage). Visit www.CatholicShop.co.za.