This is the story of a Roman Catholic priest in the grip of a new fanaticism - the bigotry that gripped many priests in the wake of the Second Vatican Council - and of his consequential sudden descent into madness. It is also an exploration of deeper existential questions concerning the nature of personal freedom and its dangers, the inherent frustration of profoundly different beliefs within a single creed, and the search for a personal sense of living and the way frustration of desire can lead to madness. The author describes processes which find parallels in many contemporary institutions.