Dec

31

America’s Jesuit Apostle: Father Arnold Damen

December 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Having an aversion to serialized articles on the Internet, I have opted not to call this “Father Arnold Damen, Chicago’s Jesuit Apostle: Part II.” A clunky name, that. This is, nonetheless, a second article on Father Damen, but a “free-standing” one. Whereas Chicago’s Jesuit Apostle focused on our subject’s Windy-City work, here, we will consider [...]

Dec

24

Two Perfect Women

December 24, 2008 | Leave a Comment

On this vigil of the Our Lord’s Nativity, my thoughts are on two perfect women. The promise of another installment on Father Arnold Damen is not forgotten. It is being kept, but the piece I began to write grew to feature article length, so I would rather not dump it in your in-box as an [...]

Dec

10

Father Arnold Damen, Chicago’s Jesuit Apostle

December 10, 2008 | 1 Comment

Enjoying a varied reputation as pioneering parish priest, educational trail-blazer, inspiring mission preacher, formidable religious controversialist, and, oh yes, a ghost that haunts historical buildings on Chicago’s Near West Side, Father Arnold Damen, S.J., is an important figure in American Catholic history. The Society of Jesus, to which the Dutch-born priest belonged, can boast an [...]

Dec

5

My Brother the Tuba Player

December 5, 2008 | 4 Comments

I rarely get very personal here or in anything I write. A small digression into the personal is, I believe, allowed from time to very long time.
As a little brother all my life, I’ve looked up (quite literally) to my older brother, Charlie. He’s a tuba player. As a child, I thought that was the [...]

Dec

4

Saint Joseph: The Hero of Christmas

December 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The following meditation on Saint Joseph was recently sent out as our Christmas Letter. I hope you find it of some value.
Contemplating a Nativity scene, we behold a divine Infant, an immaculately conceived Mother, and a foster father who somehow remains the most obscure of the three figures. Father Feeney, who loved Saint Joseph very [...]

Dec

2

Cardinal Biffi versus ‘A Mysterious Cabal of Maniacs’

December 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Not afraid to call a spade a spade, and deeply grounded in the Scriptures and the fathers of the Church, the scrappy and erudite Cardinal Giacomo Biffi has done it again. When his last book was published, we wrote Cardinal Biffi’s Bombshell. With his recent publication of Pecore e Pastori (Sheep and Shepherds), the good [...]