At Cheverus the desire to go on to study for the priesthood grew.
While the Diocese of Portland and the Congregation of the Holy
Cross were interested in me, I chose the Jesuits. Perhaps this
was due to a number of reasons, not least of which was the example
of the Jesuits who taught there, like Joe Brennan, John Conklin,
David Cummiskey, George Duffy, Joseph Holland, Henry Jurewich,
Joseph Larkin, George McCarron, Jimmy Powers, and others. Not
only did the Jesuits help out at my home parish on Sundays, but
occasionally Jesuits like Joe Valenti would give the parish mis-sion
there.
The summer of 1965 I began graduate studies in history at Boston
University, and received my doctorate in May of 1968. I was perhaps
the first Jesuit to obtain a doctorate from Boston University,
certainly the first to earn one in historical studies. Ed Crowley,
who had been minister at BC High, suggested that I look into the
possibility of a doctorate in history at Boston University, and
James Leo Burke supported it once I was accepted at that university.
During theology I had done well in the Harvard Summer School seminars,
and I was treated well by the history department at Boston University.
Professor Warren S. Tryon (1901 1989), my mentor, directed my
dissertation on Maurice J. Tobin. It was a biographical study
with an edition of his public papers as United States Secretary
of Labor.
I taught the course in United States History before the department
decided that a course on American Themes was more suited for students
in first year. Since I was hired mainly to fill the gap in the
diplomatic history of the United States, I taught the nineteenth
and twentieth century sections in that subject. In addition, I
took on American Religious History, while David J. O'Brien, who
was hired the next semester, concentrated on American Catholicism.
My publications collectively must number about 450 items. They
include at least a dozen books, a dozen scholarly articles in
English and another dozen in foreign languages, about a hundred
en-cyclopedia articles, fifty book reviews, some forty columns
on "Priests and Public Affairs," ninety letters to editors
(about twenty to The Boston Globe and a half dozen to The New
York Times), twenty articles on Jesuits, about sixty on the various
councils of the Knights of Columbus, about ten addresses, and
some thirty-five other articles on different subjects. A lot of
those items include writings on Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust,
but they do not include a number of websites that I have constructed
on the "Knights of Columbus," "Catholics and the
Holocaust," "Jesuit Cardi-nals," and the "Major
Persecutions of the Catholic Church in the 20th Century."
Anyone can access these web sites by inserting the title of the
site with my last name.
