Greetings, Parish Orphans and Retrogrades.

Did you know that there is a novel that has been written?

It's a Catholic novel that predicted the most important elements of the milieu of the 266th pontificate.

There are actually a couple of them.

Right now, Parish Orphans and Retrogrades, I am currently doing a read-through, group

reading week by week, of one of these novels, I'd call it the second prophetic Catholic

novel in the latter 20th century, latter half of the 20th century, and that is Windswept House.

In many ways, this is the better

known one. It's a good novel, very good even. And it proceeds a little bit more slowly than the

one I'm going to talk to you today about. But it, written in 1996, definitely predicts, in

very specific terms, the milieu of the Francis Pontificate.

Many of you know this one.

The novel that is even faster-paced, more exciting, and predicts in some thematic ways,

more of the Francis Pontificate from the very next year in 1997 is none other than Michael O'Brien's

Father Elijah.

Father Elijah might well be excluding the Lord of the Rings and Dostovsky, my favorite novel

of all time, contemporary novel.

Let's just say that.

Today I'm going to be talking to you about

correspondence that made a great difference to me in my life with the author Michael O'Brien.

Our circumstances, he's a Canadian, I'm an American, he's a generation above me, as fathers,

impoverished fathers with with many kids, were very similar,

...