A  priest is a contradictory thing. Set apart but radically available, the servant of his parishioners and the subordinate of his bishop, he upholds the teachings of the Church while caring for ­people whose lives are often at variance with the proclaimed ideal. He is at once familiar and alien, a pillar of the local community and a part of the global Church, the respectable bearer of a subversive message. A public man by definition, he carries within himself a world of private feeling and experience to which those outside the priesthood are rarely party.Thirty-Three Good Men: celibacy, obedience and identity is based on 33 interviews with Irish priests and ex-priests across several generations, which aims to provide insight into the inner lives of these men while simultan­eo