…Father Rutler knew them. His collection of columns written for Crisis and InsideCatholic over the years on the famous (and not-so-famous) people he has known will be released next week by Scepter Publishers under the title, Cloud of Witnesses: Dead People I Knew When They Were Alive.
Father Rutler’s trademark thoughtfulness and bone-dry humor are on display in every piece as he introduces readers to characters both well-known and obscure. On his friend Father Neuhaus:
He found the language and music of the revised liturgy “a cause of sorrow,” but with filial piety he looked away from the cardinal’s own little ways at the altar. Although Father Neuhaus was unconscious in the hospital when he was anointed, he may have sensed from a higher plane that I used the Douai translation.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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On the Chinese Archbishop Tang, who had been imprisoned for 22 years before being exiled from his home country:
At lunch I was surprised by how he kept dropping his food. Later I learned that his hands had been crippled during his prison years. I still reproach myself for my superciliousness. When he offered Mass in the chapel, deacons assisted him as he shuffled up the long aisle. After his only pair of shoes had worn out in prison, he had spent the rest of those 22 winters barefoot. The Communists had promised to release him at any time, if only he would renounce allegiance to Rome. From the altar he cried out three times to the assembled faculty and seminarians in halting English: “No pope, no Catholic Church!”
Father Rutler has a singular way of bringing together the comical and the poignant, the historical and the personal, in all of his writings. Definitely pick up a copy of his book to enjoy more of his inimitable style.
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