Satafi in Mauretania Caesariensi was a town in the western part of modern Algeria, and its chief claim to fame was that it was the birthplace of Marcus Opellius Macrinus who succeeded Caracalla as emperor, albeit for just 14 months. Because the Berbers there eventually were Islamicized, it was ripe as a defunct diocese to … 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
Gstaad in Swizerland was where William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) spent winters skiing and writing the novels that he regularly sent me in the vain expectation that I would read them; they were not his best writing, and I do not read novels anyway, as every day in real life is more thrilling than any … 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
There were two political Henry Hydes, and until the second lived his life’s span (1924 – 2007), no historian would have imagined the Clarendon Papers of the mercurial Jacobite (1638 – 1709) being eclipsed in social importance by a Hyde from Chicago. In his Irish Catholic family, Henry Hyde had virtually no political option: To … 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
Journalists trying to assess the life of Jean-Marie Lustiger (1926-2007) are like the crowd at the foot of Mount Sinai trying to figure out why Moses was complicating their lives. An eloquent sadness in him was too ancient for any one race to claim; and when, in 1999, he read his own mother’s name, Gisele, … 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
At the age of eight, the prodigy William Liguori Nolan (1916-2000) played the piano for Paderewski. He continued his studies at the Boston Latin School and outshone another musical classmate, his friend Leonard Bernstein. The class of 1935 elected their wunderkind its president and captain of the debate team. Paderewski’s heart has a gilded home … Read more
As baseball fans religiously record statistics, Bowie Kuhn (1926-2007) was, at 42, the youngest commissioner of baseball ever; the tallest, at six-foot-five; and the heaviest, at 250 pounds, though his height made him seem slim. As I measured up to none of that, I was not an impressive guide when I led him and his … Read more
After nearly 40 years as a lawyer, Richard Conway Casey (1933-2006) was sworn in as a judge of the U.S. district court in Manhattan in 1977. Following Holy Cross and Georgetown, he had been a soldier and a legal investigator for the New York County district attorney’s office and an assistant U.S. attorney, specializing in … Read more
“We are facing a generation of young singers who are much more diminutive in their approach to singing.” There was nothing diminutive about the man who said that. Jerome Hines (1921–2003) stood six-feet-six-inches tall, and on stage at La Scala in 1968 as Handel’s Hercules, the hero seemed an eponym for himself. His pinnacle was … Read more
“We are facing a generation of young singers who are much more diminutive in their approach to singing.” There was nothing diminutive about the man who said that. Jerome Hines (1921-2003) stood six-feet-six-inches tall, and on stage at La Scala in 1968 as Handel’s Hercules, the hero seemed an eponym for himself. His pinnacle was … Read more
Preparing for my priestly ordination, Bishop Austin Vaughan (1927–2000) conferred the ministries of lector and acolyte with such unassuming dispatch that one forgot the man was possibly the smartest bishop in the nation. Nothing seemed quite to fit him; he appeared not so much to be dressed as to be in the process of dressing, … Read more
Preparing for my priestly ordination, Bishop Austin Vaughan (1927-2000) conferred the ministries of lector and acolyte with such unassuming dispatch that one forgot the man was possibly the smartest bishop in the nation. Nothing seemed quite to fit him; he appeared not so much to be dressed as to be in the process of dressing, … Read more
