The Sacred and Profane
A Memoir of Faith and Reckoning
Available for Purchase in September.
Available for Purchase in September.
“I first met Bill Hambleton in the early 90’s when he entered the Pontifical College Josephinum, where I served as Rector. While I cannot attest to the information he provides in his recounting of events, which on its face I find heartbreaking, I can say with surety that I have always admired him as an honest person and a faithful disciple of Jesus who loves the Church. There is no better testimonial that I can give for anyone.”
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago
A SEMINARIAN'S CALLING. A FAITH TESTED.
Born into a devout Catholic family and raised in Utah, Bill Hambleton found his calling early — drawn as a teenager to the silence of a Trappist monastery in the mountains above his childhood home. That hunger for silence and mystery carried him through adolescence and young adulthood as he discerned a call to the priesthood, from parish life in Utah to seminary in the Midwest, and finally to Rome itself.
But his formation was shadowed by a darker thread: a charismatic young priest who entered his life as a mentor, and whose guidance slowly curdled into manipulation and abuse — a betrayal that would reverberate across his entire vocational path.
The Sacred and Profane is not a story of deconstruction, but of reckoning. It is a testament to the complexity of faith when innocence meets institutional failure, and a powerful witness to how a soul can survive and even thrive when it names what was once unspeakable. In the end, Hambleton does not seek to indict or absolve, but simply to tell the truth. The result is a memoir of integrity and power, filled with tension, grace, and hard-won clarity.
Ideal for readers of literary and spiritual memoirs, The Sacred and Profane speaks to anyone who has loved a tradition that did not always love them back, and who continues to seek meaning in the gap between the ideal and the real.
