Peter Patkutka, who has wavered between religious belief and unbelief for most of his adult life, thinks that he will achieve closure and resolution of this conflict by being formally excommunicated from the Catholic Church into which he had been baptized as an infant, and, thus, without his consent; he considers his baptism as a kind of kidnapping. He enrolls in a local parish, and becomes a familiar presence at a particular Sunday Mass, and then, one Sunday morning, he stands up during Mass and speaks to the congregation. Given that this is a strange enough occurrence within traditional Catholicism, because the Mass is a fixed ritual in which the individual only participates, what is stranger still, is that the celebrant of the Mass, Fr. Thomas Speyer, S.J., allows him to speak, making the priest suspect in the eyes of the Catholic Church. The Death of Peter Patkutka explores the consequences of both men's actions, not only in their own lives, but in the lives of those who know them.