Description: For nearly 200 years--standing alongside our heroic military men and women--have been heroic Catholic priests risking their lives to carry wounded soldiers to safety and to console, anoint, and absolve the dying.
Heroic Catholic Chaplains spotlights the stories of these courageous, selfless, holy priests who volunteered to bring the Mass and the sacraments to American troops, while also offering them their friendship and spiritual counsel. In this book, you'll encounter...- Father William Corby, who left his post at Notre Dame to serve the Irish Brigade during all four years of the Civil War;
- Father Francis Duffy, a World War I chaplain whose story became the subject of a Hollywood movie;
- Father Aloysius Schmitt, who, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, saved the lives of a dozen men before losing his own;
- Monsignor James O'Neill, who composed the famous "Weather Prayer" for General Patton, an incident that would be immortalized in film, if not entirely accurately;
- Father Emil Kapaun, who, during months in a North Korean prison camp, worked tirelessly to save the lives and the souls of his fellow POWs (the process that could lead to Father Kapaun being declared a saint is underway);
- Father Vincent Capodanno, who was killed by the Viet Cong as he ran to help a wounded corpsman;
- And more!
Heroic Catholic Chaplains spotlights the stories of these courageous, selfless, holy priests who volunteered to bring the Mass and the sacraments to American troops, while also offering them their friendship and spiritual counsel.
Brief description: Thomas J. Craughwell is author of more than two dozen books. Among them are Saints Behaving Badly (Doubleday, 2006), Saints Preserved: An Encyclopedia of Relics (Image, 2011), and Stealing Lincoln's Body(Harvard University Press, 2007), which was adapted into a History Channel documentary. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Inside the Vatican, and Our Sunday Visitor. A popular speaker, Craughwell has lectured for Catholic Courses, and has appeared on EWTN, CNN, and Ave Maria radio to discuss saints, the canonization process, and Catholic history. He writes out of his home in Bethel, Connecticut.
Review Quotes: "Thomas J. Craughwell has proven himself time and again to be not only an excellent historian but a master storyteller--and he has done it again in Heroic Catholic Chaplains. . . . What I love about this book is that you don't have to be a Catholic--or even religious--to enjoy it or appreciate it. This is just great, fascinating, inspiring history."
--Jason Emerson, author of Giant in the Shadows: The Life of Robert T. Lincoln