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.

Acknowledgments

Introduction by J. Robert Baker

1. Late Have I Loved Thee, O Ancient of Days
2. Somewhere, a Summer of '42
3. The Pocket-Size God
4. Empty Spaces, Lonely Places
5. A Letter to the Class of '73: Darby and I Never Said We Didn't Love You
6. An Everlasting Morning
7. Christmas on 42nd Street
8. About Friendship
9. I Remember the Fire
10. On Ancient Rituals and Modern Youth
11. Premarital Sex: Thou Shalt Not?
12. The Holy Fool
13. A Mass for the Littlest Christians
14. You Cannot Sing a Night Song
15. Simeon's Christmas
16. Before the Daylight Fails
17. A True Confession
18. A Storybook Marriage
19. A Brother's Requiem
20. The Bag Lady's Windfall
21. Part of the Myth
22. Life in the Boot Camp Seminary
23. Bill and Pat
24. A Parting Gift
25. "You Shall Be My Special Possession"
26. You Get What You Need
27. A Broken-Down Holy Man
28. How He Plays the Game
29. Facing Life without Father
30. "I Have Chosen You"
31. Under the Dome, Most of It Seems True
32. "We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us"
33. "I Prayed Like Hell Every Damn Night"
34. In Defense of Those Who Care
35. A Rabbi Hears Confession
36. As American as God, Sin, and Jimmy Swaggart
37. Confessions of a Bibliomaniac
38. Apologia pro Vita Mea
39. One Pope at a Time
40. Love on Trial
41. Mortal Friends
42. The Flame Keepers
43. The American Dream as a Religious Experience
44. A Bridge Too Far
45. And One of Them Was My Brother
46. The Lost Youth of Mickey Ashford
47. The Flower-Child Priest Comes Home to the Cross
48. Stop the Fighting
49. Alter Christus

List of Sources