Comments on: Recommendation and Review: Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul by Tony Hendra

By: Joel

Joel — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 23:37:27 +0000

I liked this book, too. I found it really refreshing to see something positive written about a priest, one who’s neither molesting altar boys nor fighting for causes diametrically opposed to Church teaching.

I also really liked that even when Hendra was a lousy Christian, Father Joe still treated him as though he were a great one. Father Joe loved Tony like any real father loves his kids: hoped for the best from him, and worried about him (rather than castigating him) when he was screwing himself up.

By: JP Manzi

JP Manzi — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:49:53 +0000

Thanks for the plug on this book, I have read enough reviews on it now that its worth the buy.

By: Jimmy_C

Jimmy_C — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:59:20 +0000

Dittos on the recommendation. I read this book several years ago and enjoyed each page. In the midst of struggle TH always would return to his friendship with Father Joe. I hope and pray each of us has someone like Father Joe in our lives.

By: St. Charles

St. Charles — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 12:58:16 +0000

I read a lot of Catholic fiction. Baptists and other Christians havenâ€™t done very well with the genre. To be honest, the same could be said of almost any kind of literature, with a few notable exceptions.

That’s the truth. Studying literature on the university level kicked me of the Christian-bookstore variety of fiction forever and ever, amen.

I’ll have to hunt this book up.

By: SusanF

SusanF — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 11:51:50 +0000

Durrn it, iMonk, I’m going to send you my Amazon.com Visa bill.
After you recommended Shane Claiborne’s “Irresistible Revolution,” an amazing book, I’ve had to buy every book positively reviewed on this site.

By: Mike Taylor

Mike Taylor — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 10:27:19 +0000

“Roman Catholics on the other hand, have a collection of great writers of fiction, autobiography, poetry, humor and just about any other kind of literature. You wonâ€™t be disappointed, whether you are reading Flannery Oâ€™Connor or J.F. Powers; T.S. Eliot or W.H. Auden.”

*cough* *cough* Chesterton! Surely the daddy of them all.

By: MP

MP — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:30:16 +0000

Thanks for the recommendation. I’m always on the lookout for Christian novels (even if they happen to be of the Papist kind). Michael O’Brien’s Children of the Last Days series is apocalyptic fiction at its best, and–because of its subject matter–they might be books you could get your Left Behind friends to read.

One small correction: TS Eliot was an Anglican, not a Roman Catholic.

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:29:00 +0000

I do not think it really matters if the allegations against him are true. Suppose they are and even now he is so ashamed of what he did he could not put it in such a work. That does not invalidate any work that God may have done in him. It is easy to despise pedophiles and child molesters and very difficult to love them. If what the daughter claims is true, then Father Joe is to be admired even more for loving what I could only condemn as monstrous.

By: Brian W.

Brian W. — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 05:01:47 +0000

Another notable Catholic author is Walker Percy, who you’ll be interested to know met and corresponded regularly with Thomas Merton.

By: fr'nklin

fr'nklin — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 04:54:35 +0000

Read this book a while back and was deeply moved. It’s one of those books that you never forget. Reading your review caused me to look back at my journal (July, ’04) to see what I had written about “Father Joe”. Here is an excerpt: “Rarely do you read a book that, when you are finished, leaves you almost…lonely. Father Joe was that sort of book.”

The qualities I so admired in Father Joe were: his ability to listen, his unshockability when it came to hearing of Hendra’s sin, his absolute delight in Hendra’s smallest achievments, his utter unfamiliarity with the emotion of disappointment, and his clear focus on why he was put here: “his gentle power sprang from a straightforward assesment of the world and his job in it. That job was love.”

Living with Father Joe in the pages of a book leave me, like Tony Hendra, saying: “this is what I ahve to become, this clear, this simple, this present and alive.”