A Love Forbidden

Torn between his vocation as a priest and his love for a woman, Father Tony Quinn’s decision to leave the priesthood and marry Eileen - a divorced Catholic mother of four children - followed many months of heart-searching, clandestine meetings and immense pressures. At times, the echoed words, “I don’t think I could ever leave the priesthood!” extinguished all hope of a future together.

Although mainly narrated by Eileen, Tony tells of his own childhood in Ireland, his college days in Dublin, his ordination and his time as a priest in Bacup, Lancashire, where the couple were to meet.

Following the break-up of her marriage in 1975, Eileen and her children went to live at her parent’s home in Bacup. A mutual love of music brought her together with Father Quinn, she playing the guitar and he the mandolin. It was under the guise of a musical partnership that a relationship developed, beginning one evening in the wake of a violent thunderstorm, recorded as the ‘town’s worst in living memory’.

The book chronicles a growing relationship between two people in a love great enough to surmount the ‘system’ which is against them. The separations, Father Quinn’s popularity as a priest, Eileen’s family and her life in a council house living on social security, are all written about with great honesty.

Their eventual marriage inevitably caused much controversy and it was well publicised throughout the media. They now have two children of their own and today Tony runs his own accountancy business in Bacup, the town where he was once acclaimed one of the most popular priests to have served.