Hoodlum's Priest

Hoodlum's Priest by Elizabeth Mulligan, 169 pages

 The subject of this biography is Father Charles "Dismas" Clark, SJ, a Jesuit priest who spent much of his life working with those inside and recently released from prison.  His work led to the founding of Dismas House in St Louis in 1959, one of this country's first halfway houses.  Neither a romantic nor a cynic, Father Clark understood the evil of crime, but felt obliged to criticize a system he believed contributed to the hardening of criminals by denying them opportunities to change.  A tireless activist featured in many print, radio, and television reports on prison reform and recidivism, he achieved the height of his fame with the 1961 release of "Hoodlum Priest", a fictionalized movie account of his ministry, but a film which he personally loathed.

This is not a conventional, objective biography, but rather a memoir by a close friend, more a collection of anecdotes than a detailed record.  In many of the passages one can almost hear the voices of other friends of Father Clark sharing their own stories with the author.  Mulligan does not attempt to hide Clark's rough edges, whether relating his impatience with others less passionate about his cause, or the occasional rhetorical excess which sometimes alienated some of his own supporters.  By the end, the reader does not know all the details of Father Clark's remarkable life, but knows what it was like to know him.