American Catholics had seen the problems the church got into in Europe when hierarchy aligned itself with specific rulers or political parties. American Catholics, including most bishops, did not want to go down that road.
A reader familiar with New York-based Irish American writer Peter Quinn’s work can be forgiven for identifying the novelist with Fintan Dunne, the central character in three of his four period-piece novels.
This story of a Vietnamese immigrant growing up in the United States is constructed as a series of meditations on the lessons from great books that moved and instructed him.