Mies van der Rohe’s dictum that "God is in the details" fit the moral architecture of Avery Dulles. While his physical architecture was likened to Lincoln, the man was discerned in the details: from his conversion to the Faith when noticing the first spring blossom on a tree, to his intimate regard for all … Read more
After his Vigil Mass, the body of Msgr. William B. Smith was carried out the main doors of St. Joseph’s Seminary, Dunwoodie, for the last time, and I wondered how many thousands of entrances and exits he had made through those same doors since he had first arrived as a seminarian. It was not … Read more
About 25 years ago, I had the first of many dinners with the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, when he was still a Lutheran. He objected to the term "converting" for a baptized Christian who became Catholic: Rather, such a one "embraced" Catholicism. I demurred, as I thought I had converted, albeit not from … Read more
It was astonishing to see thousands thronging the Jai Alai arena in West Palm Beach a few years before the death of Rev. Patrick Peyton (1909-1992) when I helped him with a Rosary Crusade, but I should have known that by his standard it was an unexceptional number, even smallish. No priest, unless he … Read more
In dire days of the last dark world war, one man said after a papal audience: "Pius XII judges everything from a perspective that surpasses human beings, their undertakings and their quarrels. . . . Pious, compassionate, political — such does this pontiff and sovereign appear to me because of the respect that he inspires … Read more
“In the earthly liturgy we take part in a foretaste of that heavenly liturgy which is celebrated in the holy city of Jerusalem toward which we journey as pilgrims. . . . We sing a hymn to the Lord’s glory with all the warriors of the heavenly army.” The Second Vatican Council’s account of empyreal … Read more
In the Danish town of Odense, the tomb of Saint Canute IV, who had tried to conquer William the Conqueror, has a bullet mark from a clash with Nazi occupiers. Bent Juel-Jansen (1922-2006) fought in the Danish resistance, helping Allied airmen escape, and later served two years in the navy, having been born in that … Read more
Nature conspired in Eric Lionel Mascall (1905-1993) to flaunt St. Peter’s image of the body as a collapsible tent (2 Pt 2:13-14) — at least I have not known such an agile mind in such a clumsy frame. He once stumbled over himself in the dark, and only his groan prevented me from stepping on … Read more
His Quaker parents had gone to Baoding, then Paotingfu, some 80 miles from Beijing, to teach English for the Chinese government, following the Boxer Rebellion. Richmond Lattimore was born there in 1906 and was taught by his parents. A sister, Eleanor, later wrote children’s novels about China, and brother Owen became one of the century’s … Read more
It seemed that wherever he went, he would have been more at ease somewhere else. Even the tranquility of his childhood, passed in an idyllic part of Surrey, was a channel away from the grave of his mother who died during his infancy in Saint-Germain-en-Leye. His father had brought the seven-year-old Maurice Noël Léon Couve … Read more
Every All Souls Day at the Sanctus I leave it to the Just Judge to choreograph those assembling around the altar from the Church Expectant and Triumphant. On the list now is Dennis Clinton Graham Heiner (1927-2008), who crossed 38th Street daily for Mass. Outwardly, Dennis had a coddled childhood in New York City, and … Read more
Shanghai today is almost unrecognizable from what it looked like in the 1940s, when the young Jesuit priest Dominic Tang Yee-Ming (1908-1995) bicycled with his friend Rev. Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei from parish to parish to hear confessions. He taught English in the Jesuit high school in Shanghai where Kung was the principal and Latin teacher. … Read more
It is by way of solid compliment to call Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909-1999) a baroque incarnation, like an enfleshment of Salzburg’s Kollegienkirche, for the baroque is an art of overstatement done so elegantly that truth is not distorted. The one glaring understatement I heard from him was, "I dislike specialization" — words baroquely unbaroque in … Read more
"Je suis l’Armée Britannique!" declared Sir Hugh Dacre Barrett-Lennard (1917-2007) to a startled French mayor at the Normandy invasion when he arrived with driver and jeep far behind enemy lines, in the 2nd Batallion, Essex Regiment. His title only came with accession to the baronetcy when he was 60 years old, as the result … Read more