Parish Priest

Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism by Douglas Brinkley and Julie M Fenster, 207 pages

In 1882, Fr Michael McGivney, an associate pastor at St Mary's parish in New Haven, Connecticut, founded the Knights of Columbus with a handful of men from his congregation.  Over thirteen decades later, there are nearly two million Knights scattered across a half-dozen countries, continuing to provide fraternal support and a financial safety net to new generations.  Yet, as Douglas Brinkley and Julie Fenster emphasize, the Knights were not a distraction from, but a vital part of, McGivney's work as a parish priest.  Although considerable attention is paid to the work for which McGivney is best remembered, it is placed in the context of the ordinary work of his vocation - comforting widows and orphans, visiting the sick and imprisoned, baptizing and catechizing, marrying and burying.

This may have only been a serendipitous accident - the records covering the early years of the Knights are sparse, as is often the case with seemingly insignificant beginnings whose importance is only clear in retrospect.  The authors fill the space with human interest stories whose only connection is the involvement of Fr McGivney - a family that faces poverty and separation after losing its breadwinner, a cop-killer facing execution, a Protestant clergyman's daughter contemplating conversion.  The result, designed or not, illustrates beautifully that McGivney's heroic virtue was expressed not in some great singular work, but in doing ordinary things with extraordinary love.