Jesuit at Large: Essays and Reviews

Father Paul Mankowski, S.J. (1953-2020), was one of the most brilliant Catholic thinkers and scintillating writers of our time. His essays and reviews, collected here for the first time, display a singular breadth of learning, a penetrating insight into the challenges of Catholic life in the post-modern world, and a unique wit.

Whether explicating Catholic doctrines like the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary or dissecting the inanities of contemporary academic life, digging deeply into the cultural degradations of the post-modern world or celebrating the accomplishments of true scholars, deploring clerical malfeasance, explaining the character and accomplishment of novelist Evelyn Waugh, or lamenting some of the choices made by Father Theodore Hesburgh in his long reign at Notre Dame, Father Mankowski's keen intelligence is always on display, even as his energetic prose keeps the pages turning. 

Whatever his topic, however, Paul Mankowski's intense Catholic faith shines through his writing, as it did through his life. Jesuit at Large invites its readers to meet a man of great gifts, who suffered for his convictions but never lost hope in the authentic renewal of Catholicism, and whose confidence in the truth of what the Church proposed to the world was never shaken by the failures of the people of the Church.