One of my great mentors and benefactors died yesterday at age 89. The newspapers identified him this way: Philip Klass, Major science fiction writer in 1940s, 1950s. When I was nineteen years old and quite undeserving, Phil awarded me the internship that turned into my first job in the publishing industry. He was a man of great wit, great accomplishments, and tremendous integrity. Please remember him and his family. I can never repay the debt I owe him. Whenever there are meals on my family’s table, he helped to put them there. The day he offered me that internship, I had no idea where I was going in life. He picked me up and placed me on the road I’ve walked ever since. Read his books. His satirical fiction deserves the praise it has received, and it deserves still more. I’m pleased to have published one of his nonfiction works — a powerful essay that moves from his experience liberating the death camps at the end of WW2 to his arrival in the strange world of liberal academia in the 1960s. That piece appears in this book.

He ranks prominently among my “Fathers.” Thus I’m categorizing this under “patristics.” May he rest in peace.

Happy Catholic posted a nice roundup of some of my writing that’s on the Web.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us.
To see oursels as ithers see us!
– Robert Burns

At Christmas, my beloved niece Melissa notified me that I had achieved my little bit of fame and could now retire. She explained that I’d been featured — with photo and a resume of sorts — on the website Am I Annoying or Not?

I just got around to checking it out, and she’s right!

If you’ve read my blog for more than a week (Hi Mom!), you already know that I’m annoying — though you probably could come up with better reasons than you’ll find in my brief for nomination. Tom Jefford, the guy who posted it, never mentioned my punning, snoring, stammering, or foot odor, to cite just a few examples.

Mercifully, Tom the Nominator noted just a few obvious deficiencies. He also said some very kind things about me and my work.

I would, however, like to take issue with a few details in his brief for my canonical status in the Hall of Annoyance.

First: my degree is in English, not Journalism (as he stated). We English majors like to make that annoying distinction. The degree is from Penn State, and that in itself is annoying to many people. I received the university’s Oswald Award “for achievement in journalism and mass media” — probably the source of Tom’s confusion — but that recognizes work in the field, not in the classroom.

Second: Tom is needlessly annoyed by what he perceives as my authoritative status. Rest easy, good man. No one outside the state asylums considers me an authority on anything. I don’t claim to be a scholar. I don’t try to hide my lack of advanced degrees. I’m a reporter covering a certain beat. Yes, it helps if a journalist covering the field of oncology happens to hold a degree in medicine — but very few do. Then again, few oncologists can write about their field in a way that ordinary people can understand. I believe that the Fathers belong to everyone, not just scholars. I also believe that Christians outside the academy should be made aware of what the good scholars are doing. Unless someone volunteers for the job of patristic journalist and publicist, it ain’t gonna happen.

I’d like to plead “not guilty” to Tom’s charge that my works are “cut-and-paste.” I do begin with Lightfoot and the old ANF and NPNF translations, which I acknowledge everywhere, but I perform major surgery on them before I include them in my books, and I do consult the originals when I can and when I need to. I can’t say I “know” the original languages the way native speakers did, or the way a doctoral candidate should, but I did well enough way back when to get A’s from Sister M. Herberta Burns, IHM, who was no easy grader. Like most journalists who have a beat, I know my limitations, and I rely on good interpreters, including a luminous one named Jefford.

In making his case, Tom observed that “Many, if not most Christians, don’t know or care who the Church Fathers were,” and I’m afraid he’s right. Alas.

But enough. As I said, Tom found some extremely kind things to say about me. And he placed me on his lists with some remarkable people, like Justin Martyr. And, so far at least, less than half the people who voted found me annoying. That could change, now that my kids know the voting is still open. In any event, the results show me to be twice as annoying as Justin Martyr.

So I’ll be grateful for the gift the Giftie gave me for Christmas: to see myself as others see me!

I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but … I am deeply — deeply — disappointed that Tom never mentioned my punning.

LayWitness, the magazine that used to run my regular column on the Fathers, recently published my memoir (of sorts) about my father and grandfather. (They also have my old patristic columns archived on their site.)

Rich and Noble:

Wisdom from a Sicilian-American Ghetto

Calogero Aquilina, my grandfather, arrived on America’s shores on April 24, 1909. He had made the long voyage by sea from Caltanisetta, Sicily, on the S.S. Finland.

He crossed the Atlantic in overcrowded steerage. And why? For the great privilege of working in the coal mines. Such jobs were plentiful. They were also dangerous and dirty — long hours for poverty wages. They were jobs that American citizens were not eager to fill. So Calogero landed at Ellis Island, like hundreds of thousands of others, and found immediate employment.

Those were the years before the unions made their impact. The air in the mines was damp, dusty, and barely breathable. The corridors were infested with rats.

At the end of the day, the miners joined their families in one-room houses. They cooked and they ate in the place where they slept.

Calogero worked in the mines for a solid decade before the dust took over his lungs and turned them black …

The story gets happier. Read on.

Taylor Marshall posted a review of my book Signs and Mysteries: Revealing Ancient Christian Symbols.

And Carmela reviewed Take Five: Meditations With Pope Benedict XVI.

Dr. Douglas Lowry is a friend of mine. A retired Franciscan University business prof, he now develops internet search tools. Doug wants us all to become better informed about the contents of the health-care plan that’s now before the U.S. Senate. So he’s developed a free tool to search the entire bill.

To search the U.S. Senate Health Care Bill, go to: www.marpx.com.

Alicia Van Hecke at Love2Learn Blog posted a very kind profile of Yours Truly, for Catholic Speakers Month.

Primeros Cristianos (EarlyChristians.org) are promoting their “exclusive interview” with the host of this blog.

The brilliant and charming Karen Edmisten displayed her brilliance and charm by posting an appreciative review of my book Fire of God’s Love: 120 Reflections on the Eucharist.

A blog called One Billion Stories posted an extremely appreciative review of my book The Mass of the Early Christians.

A discussion group at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Sherman, Texas, is reading my book Sharing Christ’s Priesthood: A Bible Study for Catholics.

I have to admit: I do love it when a reviewer appreciates my prose.

I had the great pleasure of talking up two of my books with Commander Craig on Catholic Radio 2.0.

We discussed Angels of God: The Bible, the Church and the Heavenly Hosts and Fire of God’s Love: 120 Reflections on the Eucharist.

New reviews of Fire of God’s Love appeared in several high places:

Happy Catholic

Blessed Is the Kingdom

Salvation Is an Adventure

The National Catholic Register quotes me at length in Faithful Is the New Countercultural, an article by Joseph Pronechen.

I wrote about my late friend Father Ronald Lawler for Franciscan Way magazine. The text is up at the St. Paul Center’s blog. The child and the bunny in the photo are of my household.

It’s in honor of this great man that the St. Paul Center established the annual Lawler Lecture, which has showcased some of my favorite patrologists (and Father Ronald’s as well): e.g., Robert Louis Wilken and Father Thomas Weinandy.

Sorry I’ve been so quiet. I was back in the studio with Scott Hahn to tape another 13-week series for EWTN. This one, our eighth, is based on Scott’s upcoming book Signs of Life: 40 Catholic Customs and Their Biblical Roots. I’ve now hosted more than a hundred shows for EWTN.

And, of course, by night I continue laboring at my painstaking reconstruction of the bylaws of the Q Community’s volunteer fire department. It takes its toll.

Almost daily I receive requests for photos of myself in the armor of a Roman centurion.

OK, maybe not that often … maybe I’ve never received such a request. But since I have the photo, I’m posting it, along with a shot of me with Barbara Bell (author of Minimus) and the illustrious Zee Poerio of Excellence Through Classics. I don’t know the name of the other armored man.

Barbara Bell, author of the children’s book Minimus (Cambridge University Press) is visiting Pittsburgh and offering a FREE Latin lesson to kids and adults on Thursday, July 23, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at St. Louise de Marillac Parish Center, 312 McMurray Road Pittsburgh, PA 15241. Bell is director of the Primary Latin Project and a member of the Order of the British Empire. Since Minimus the Mouse is ten years old this year, there will be cake and cookies to celebrate. The event is free, but registration is required. To register, please call 412-833-1010.

For Catholics, the calendar is the hermeneutical key to the Scriptures. At every Mass we hear an Old Testament reading, a Psalm, and a New Testament reading, often following a pattern of promise and fulfillment, and usually relevant in some way to the time of the season.

My beloved wife and I went to noon Mass today, as is our custom, but today we went to celebrate our twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. If I could remember the periodic table, I’d know what element is almost silver. But I don’t. In any event, I found the readings of the day thought-provoking (and funny) in light of the occasion — children of Israel becoming alarmingly numerous, enemies in one’s own household. Good thing our help is in the name of the Lord.