Saints and Biographies

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Christ was the center of everything that Father Gerald wrote or said on the priesthood. Whether exhorting priests to be faithful to their calling, or recalling them to the responsibility they have to the Church of God, the main focus was always on their relationship […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Given his exalted understanding of the priesthood, whose central purpose is to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass, it was inevitable that Father Gerald would urge priests to live the Mass which they celebrated. The priest, he insisted, “has to be the image of Jesus […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. There is one fundamental reason why a priest should be specially devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He is ordained to bring the living Christ on earth in the Holy Sacrifice, to make the living Christ available to the faithful in Holy Communion, and to […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Father Gerald had a keen awareness, bordering on mystical experience, of Christ’s abiding presence in the Holy Eucharist. When he drafted the Rule of Life for the Paracletes, he directed that they spend, “A personal Holy Hour daily, spent whenever this is possible in a […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. The combined published and recorded words of Father Gerald amount to several hundred thousand words, perhaps a million or more. And yet one of the remarkable features of all this public discourse, there is relatively little on the subject of priestly chastity or celibacy. It […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. Father Gerald was too familiar with the Scriptures not to know how important is prayer in the apostolate to priests. What he read in the New Testament convinced him that priests must personally be men of prayer, but others must — imperatively must — pray […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. There are two sides to Father Gerald’s apostolate to priests. One side is universal and reaches out to all bishops and priests in the Church; in fact not only the living but also the deceased. Its object is to solicit the divine mercy and obtain […]

(Biography: Father Gerald Fitzgerald) By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. October 29, 1894 Second child born to Michael Edward and Mary Elizabeth Brassil in South Framingham, Massachusetts. November 4, 1894 Baptized in St. George Church in Saxonville, Massachusetts 1912 Graduated from Weymouth High School, president of his class, editor of the school paper “The 1912”. […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. We Catholics in the Western world are the most educated people in two millenia of Christianity. Our minds have become filled with knowledge about everything from atomic energy to zoology. Our intellects have been sharpened to a razor’s edge, in analyzing this knowledge with a subtlety that only years […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. With two of his religious brethren being raised to the honors of the altar recently, if Robert Bellarmine were alive today he would very likely have re-edited his classic treatise on the canonization of the saints. [1] The errors against which it was originally directed are just as alive […]

By Father John A. Hardon, S.J. St. Augustine (354-430) is the greatest Doctor of the Church. He has left us a library of writings that should be familiar to every self-respecting Catholic. They are also filled with passages that have become part of every Christian anthology. Almost everything he wrote is worth knowing, and many […]