A good book that I think did well to try to be fair and balanced look at who may be the first Parish Priest to become a Saint.

I see the struggle of American Catholics, that was somewhat different from what I pictured from articles in the Columbia magazine.

It interesting to see how fraternal organizations as a whole were so popular in the late 19th century, and its amazing that one so unloved then as the K of C has been one to survive.

I liked reading of the "Total Abstance" societies and the ideas that youngsters going somewhere unsupervised was a totally calcimining in a city as big as New Haven in the 1880s.

Yet what I took away most from this writing was that we aren't doing that bad. I learn the K of C almost collapsed during its first year to to infighting, I'm no so worried that Greg thinks we all need to be doing things his way. The Knights of Columbus provided a place for the Catholic man to be able to have some fun and make a difference, without having to give up Alcohol 100%. It left us a way to provide for our children that was needed then, and not overly difficult now. I find the hall council to be more in line than the Parish council, and Father McGivney a man after my own heart. I can't imagine passing away at the ripe old age of 38 not being uncommon for his line of work in that day, now if our priest is under 40 half the parishioners fail to listen to him.

Blessed Michael McGivney, pray for us. And thank you for a fraternal organization where I belong, and a book that wasn't as exciting as it could have been, but may have been as exciting as you'd let it be :-) ( )

slim biography of Fr. Michael J. McGivney, K of C founder

This was actually a pretty fast but very engrossing read. The bio focused more on McGivney than it did on the Knights of Columbus, even in the chapters that described the KoC's birth. That's the only quibble I have - otherwise, I do highly recommend it. ( )

Parish Priest, Father McGivney and American Catholicism
By Douglas Brinkley and Julie M. Fenster,
Harper Collins, 2006. 256 pp.

Reviewed by Fr. TERRY SPECHT
Special to the HERALD
(From the issue of March 16, 2006)

It doesn’t happen very often, possibly only once every few years, that I pick up a book and am surprised by what it contains. When a book surprises me, the world changes just a little bit and I see some things in an entirely new way. That is why it is such a pleasure to be surprised by a book.
I was surprised by Parish Priest, Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism, and a lot of things look a little different since I picked it up to read. I thought I knew the story of Father McGivney and the founding of the Knights of Columbus. After all, I am a knight and was familiar that Father McGivney’s story was the founding of the largest Catholic fraternal society in the history of the Church. And so I knew how the story would unfold.
Yet Father McGivney’s story is far more important than the founding of the knights. This may be difficult to grasp considering that the knights are one of the most powerful and influential lay organizations in the Church. Still the authors found something more important in the life of Father McGivney, something that causes them and us to reflect on some deeper truths about our Church, our country and ourselves.
In the unfolding of the short 38-year life of a 19th century Irish American priest, we discover the nature of the relationship between American Catholics and the priests who serve them. Along the way we discover the source of the expectations that so many American clergy struggle to live up to and the depth of the betrayal that so may of the faithful have experienced.
When I broached the subject of the book with a brother priest as an exploration of the American priesthood he responded, “Maybe the 19th century priesthood.â€? We tend to see ourselves divorced from our past and somehow a new and unique creation. This is always the modern conceit. Yet the American priest, if unique, is unique because of the history that formed his fraternity. No figure so epitomizes that history than Father McGivney.
He was a son of Irish immigrants, trained in a French Canadian seminary in an attempt to meet the expectations of non-Irish immigrants. He was a priest who saw himself not as Irish but as an American. He was ordained for a diocese expanding faster than priests could be found to man the parishes. He served in a parish under large debt and spent his life raising money to pay down the debt and negotiating with bankers and businessmen. He struggled to know the law and to understand insurance and used this knowledge to serve the poor who looked to him for guidance.
His concern for the young filled his ministry as he strived to find ways to make the faith relevant and alive to teenagers and young adults. He would serve as baseball coach and choir director, organizer of picnic outings and director of theatrical dramas, and be known to the young as someone respected by their parents and always accepting of their friendship. He would be condemned by some as too modern and a danger to the morals of the young. He faced a press that was alternatively praising and openly hostile. A visitor to death rows and a member of every family he shared intimacy with persons from every station. In the end he shared their death from disease at an early age.
He founded the Knights of Columbus, but more importantly he was an American parish priest.
The authors have served a great purpose in Parish Priest. They have provided an important opportunity for the American Church at a very difficult time in our history: the opportunity for members of the clergy to use the life of Father McGivney as an examination of conscience and a standard for their own ministries, and an opportunity for the laity to reflect on the unique and amazing character of the American parish priest.
In a time when the struggle to define priestly identity and collaborative ministry confuses both clergy and laity the light of Father McGivney’s life can go a long way in reminding us all what is possible and what is at stake in this American Catholic experience.
The child abuse scandal is an undercurrent throughout the book. The authors admit as much in the forward. One cannot read the description of the ideal priest presented here and not ponder how so many of our priests drifted so far. The authors set out to describe what a parish priest was in the American context choosing as a model the American parish priest most likely to be the first of his kind canonized by the Church. They could not have made a better choice. ( )