Skip to content
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL DOMESTIC ORDERS $35+
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL US ORDERS $35+
The Pocket-Size God: Essays from Notre Dame Magazine - Paperback | Diverse Reads

The Pocket-Size God: Essays from Notre Dame Magazine

Availability:
in stock, ready to be shipped
Save 8% Save 8%
$25.00
$25.00 - $25.00
$25.00
$22.99
$22.99 - $22.99
$22.99
Fr. Robert Griffin, C.S.C. (1925–1999), was a beloved member of the Notre Dame community. With his cocker spaniel, Darby O’Gill, he was instantly recognizable on campus. He was well known for his priestly work counseling students as university chaplain for thirty years, his summer ministry to the homeless and parishioners in New York City, and his weekly columns in the student newspaper, The Observer, in which he invited the campus community to reflect with him on the challenges and joys of being Catholic in a time of enormous social and religious change. This collection draws together essays that Griffin wrote for Notre Dame Magazine between 1972 and 1994. In them, he considers many of the challenges that beset church and campus, such as the laicization of priests, premarital sex, the erosion of institutional authority, intolerance toward gay people, and failure of fidelity to the teachings of the church. Griffin also ruminates on the distress that human beings experience in the ordinariness of their lives—the difficulty of communication in families, grief over the loss of family and friends, the agonies of isolation, and the need for forgiveness. Griffin’s shrewd insights still ring true for people today. His efforts to temper the winds of institutional rules, cultural change, and personal suffering reveal a mind keenly attuned to the need for understanding human limitations and to the presence of grace in times of change. Griffin quotes from the works of literary modernists, such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway, whose novels and short stories he loved; in these allusions and in his own reflections and experiences, Griffin bridges the spiritual and the secular and offers hope for reconciliation and comfort.

ISBN-13: 9780268029906

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press

Publication Date: 03-15-2016

Pages: 304

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

J. Robert Baker is professor of English at Fairmont State University. Dennis Wm. Moran is managing editor of the Review of Politics.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction J. Robert Baker 1

Late Have I Loved Thee, O Ancient of Days 11

Somewhere, a Summer of '42 14

The Pocket-Size God 18

Empty Spaces, Lonely Places 21

A Letter to the Class of '73: Darby and I Never Said We Didn't Love You 29

An Everlasting Morning 37

Christmas on 42nd Street 42

About Friendship 51

I Remember the Fire 58

On Ancient Rituals and Modern Youth 62

Premarital Sex: Thou Shalt Not? 69

The Holy Fool 73

A Mass for the Littlest Christians 78

You Cannot Sing a Night Song 81

Simeon's Christmas 86

Before the Daylight Fails 93

A True Confession 99

A Storybook Marriage 104

A Brother's Requiem 109

The Bag Lady's Windfall 113

Part of the Myth 117

Life in the Boot Camp Seminary 121

Bill and Pat 125

A Parting Gift 128

"You Shall Be My Special Possession" 131

You Get What You Need 135

A Broken-Down Holy Man 141

How He Plays the Game 144

Facing Life without Father 147

"I Have Chosen You" 150

Under the Dome, Most of It Seems True 153

"We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us" 157

"I Prayed Like Hell Every Damn Night" 162

In Defense of Those Who Care 169

A Rabbi Hears Confession 175

As American as God, Sin, and Jimmy Swaggart 181

Confessions of a Bibliomaniac 188

Apologia pro Vita Mea 192

One Pope at a Time 204

Love on Trial 212

Mortal Friends 220

The Flame Keepers 228

The American Dream as a Religious Experience 237

A Bridge Too Far 241

And One of Them Was My Brother 255

The Lost Youth of Mickey Ashford 266

The Flower-Child Priest Comes Home to the Cross 272

Stop the Fighting 278

Alter Christus 285

List of Sources 293