In the Life of St. Dominic, Father Bede Jarrett, one of the truly eminent Dominicans of our century, presents a portrait of St. Dominic and his times with a brilliance and clarity that result from a perfect understanding of the beloved saint and his ideals.
St. Dominic was plunged accidentally — and, as it turned out, providentially — from a quiet choir stall and scholarly life to the active and contentious life of a street-corner preacher. Called upon to dispute with heretics who threatened the very existence of the thirteenth-century Church, he found the vital inspiration of his life to lie in personal austerity, holiness, and ardent dedication of the intellect to Christ. He not only defended the truth of the faith, but through the Order he founded (the Dominicans) he spread the faith throughout existing Christendom.
Austere and joyous, physically hardy, affectionate, compassionate, and full of a lively gaiety of heart, St. Dominic was ideally suited to be a brilliant preacher. He was well-educated, trained expertly to argument, and had that flaming Spanish enthusiasm and radiant character that immediately attracted eager followers to his Order. Father Jarrett’s Life of St. Dominic is by far the best English biography of St. Dominic and brings him and his Order — one of the richest ornaments of the Church and of the entire intellectual world — to vibrant life for the modern reader.
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Commissioned by Our Lord Himself to preach His Gospel, St. Vincent began at age 50 an apostolate of preaching that would extend to France, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Germany and a few other countries as well. Travelling with him were as many as 10,000 people, including at least 50 priests. The throngs that gathered to hear him came from many miles around, such that he was forced to preach in the open–no church being large enough to hold all the people
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Among Fulton J. Sheen’s thousands of converts were celebrities such as Clare Booth Luce and Henry Ford II, and former communists Louis Budenz and Elizabeth Bentley. Reeves discusses these conversions and Sheen’s close friendship with J. Edgar Hoover, and details for the first time the struggle between Sheen and his chief rival, Francis Cardinal Spellman, a battle of ecclesiastical titans that led all the way to the Pope and to Sheen’s final humiliation and exile.
(Archbishop Sheen’s case is being studied by the Congregation for the causes of Saints)
