"God Rest His Dear and Gallant Soul"

Last night I was trying to decided what to make my next bedside reading. I looked on my kindle and thought I would reread The Scarlet Letter, but after eight or ten pages of the first chapter I set it aside. Maybe another time. Then I turned to a Chesterton book on my kindle, The Crimes of England. That was a bust too. Too much concentration needed. Then I remembered that I have a book written by Stalin's daughter that I've been wanting to read. So I went over and looked for it on the biography bookshelf, but a little volume caught my eye and I pulled it out. It was a small biography of Joyce Kilmer. I opened it and began reading and was a third of the way through it before setting it down and turning off the light.   

 

When I was at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., Joyce Kilmer's granddaughter was two years behind me. We never got to know each other, I didn't think about it at the time, but she never knew her grandfather. He was killed in World War I at the age of 31. Even his own children likely remembered little about him. I am only beginning to realize myself how true the title of this post is. It was the statement of Fr. Francis Duffy, military chaplain. Kilmer's military brothers found him on a little hill where they thought he was examining the area. He was dead with a bullet in the brain.  He was buried in France near the spot where he was killed. A memorial Mass was said for him at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on October 14, 1918. 

Guest Post: Book Review of “American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Hesburgh,” by Rev. Wilson Miscamble

FATHER HESBURGH OF NOTRE DAME:

ATTEMPTING TO MAKE A GREAT CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY

WHILE RIDING THE TIGER

by James M. Thunder*

*The author is a Washington, D.C., attorney. He double-majored in theology and government at Notre Dame. He has written articles online severely critical of the Catholic nature of Notre Dame’s current president.

We shall always hope to find them [newly-free countries] strongly supporting their own freedom--and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.

       President John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address, 1961

Fr. Hesburgh rode the back of the tiger. Did he end up inside? Father Wilson D. (“Bill”) Miscamble has authored the 400-page biography, American Priest: The Ambitious Life and Conflicted Legacy of Notre Dame’s Father Ted Fr. Hesburgh (Image) that answers this question in the affirmative.

Don't You Love a Lazy Sunday with Friends?

Young Chesterton 1898

What a delightful day. I've been browsing the internet looking for information on G.K. Chesterton and Myles Connolly for a little presentation I'm doing next month at the get-together of the Northern Virginia Chesterton Society. We're looking at Chesterton's Manalive and Connolly's Mr. Blue, two absolutely delightful, light-hearted books with bigger-than-life protagonists filled with the joy of life and living it to the full.

We've discussed both books individually, although, sad to say, I missed the meeting on Mr. Blue which occupies a prominent place on my "best of all times" books. Now we'll see them side by side. That statement, "side by side," makes me laugh. Chesterton and Connolly were both physically large men, about 6'3". Chesterton weighed about 300 pounds and Connolly wasn't far behind at 270. What fun it would have been to see them together in a discussion -- a meeting of the Titans. Connolly was twenty years younger than Chesterton, but, even in those early days when he was fresh out of college, I suspect he was well aware of the bigger-than-life journalist across the pond.