Julie Fenster is the co-author of Parish Priest: Father Michael McGivney and American Catholicism, a biography of the founder of the Knights of Columbus.

Fenster teamed with historian Douglas Brinkley to write this 2006 HarperCollins story of Servant of God Father McGivney, who might someday be the first American-born parish priest to be canonized.

An award-winning author of historical books (Race of the Century, Ether Day), Fenster is also the general editor of the Forbes Collection Presidential Book Series. She spoke to Register staff writer Joseph Pronechen about her insights into Father McGivney and his legacy as the fraternal organization celebrates its 125th anniversary.

How did you come to co-write this biography of Father McGivney with Brinkley?

We worked together on several books before — the American Heritage History of the United States. We enjoyed that. Working on that book we really felt Catholic history, considering its importance for U.S. history, was left out of most texts. With that in the background, we were looking for a story that would be very human but would also give some range of the transforming areas of American history. Father McGivney’s story would be our way to make that contribution.

Did you find Father McGivney’s legacy going beyond his founding the Knights?

One quiet point is he was first and always a parish priest. He showed how much he valued the work of a parish priest by going back to that after founding the Knights of Columbus. I found that important. Parish priests have felt he reinforced the value of their work.

On a wider scope, his legacy [was] helping to allow the American public to see Catholics and Catholic values. Before he founded the Knights of Columbus, the people who defined Catholics were often anti-Catholics. With the Knights of Columbus, Father McGivney was able to help Catholics project that their values are very much American values. The wider legacy was helping to educate the American public that Catholics are not a separate [faction] as people had painted them to be.

In what ways do you see his example continuing to inspire Knights today?

I think if I were a Knight I’d be very proud of the progress and the growth, but I’d be inspired because the organization hasn’t changed from his day in terms of the family. One thing I thought about the Knights is it’s a men’s organization — why don’t they let women in? But I was surprised and delighted that in Father McGivney’s eyes this was an organization of wives and children.

The men were breadwinners, and if anything happened to them it was the wives and children thrown into distress. And aside from the insurance benefit, Father McGivney also saw that without the father being involved in the Church, the family fabric was frayed. So for Father McGivney, I’m convinced the Knights of Columbus was an innovation devoted to wives and children. The instrument he used was the father and husband.

He was enlightened, ahead of his time about the needs of families and the dynamics that serve those needs. You cannot ignore the husband and father. There’s this erroneous idea how priests are not married and therefore don’t understand family life. Father McGivney not only understood married life, but he was so sympathetic to the mothers, and always saw things from the children’s point of view.

Anyone who thinks it’s just a men’s organization has another think coming.

And what lessons can today’s parish priests and seminarians learn from him as a role model?

There are quite a few. One thing that impressed me was his sense of life and liveliness. He didn’t see himself as a taskmaster of his parish. He really liked to involve himself in the positive, just-plain-fun aspects of his parishioners’ lives. And encourage them. He felt one should be a Catholic in all the various activities.

He showed by deed he wanted to help the teenagers grow up by giving them healthy activities. We accept that more today, but in his day that was radical for priests to be out of the sanctuary as he was. In Father McGivney’s day this was kind of a new attitude.

How did he reach out to teens and influence them?

Father McGivney learned to be a major Broadway musical director. He didn’t have a musical or theatrical background. He knew teenagers in his parish or any parish were going to be led down some tempting roads — alcohol, for instance. Instead, he led them down this road to put on musicals because that’s what they wanted. He learned to produce musicals on a large scale; he learned how to direct them; he went and got costumes in New York City. Thousands of people from New Haven came to see them.

He organized many other outings for the teenagers. On one occasion a group said they were going to go off without chaperones, and Father McGivney was furious and wouldn’t countenance that at all. He showed his temper. It frightened the people who always saw him as affable and amiable, but the group crossed the line.

So the teenagers learned as much from him about high standards and keeping to the right path as they did about music and taking their cues.

What do you see Father McGivney teaching young people today?

He loved the outdoors, and he was so adamantly against the use of alcohol and drugs. And he loved for the young people to have fun. That young people needed to have fun within all the rules of the Church: He didn’t see that as any kind of clash. That comes back to me a lot. Kids don’t need to break any of the rules of the Church to have a good time. But even in his day that was news to the kids.

I envision him sitting at one of these events in the glow of watching teenagers enjoy themselves. And I think he would be against the young people getting serious before marriage. Today we need you, Father McGivney!

Yet he looks so serious in the few photos we have of him. But he must have had a sense of humor.

We hear over and over again in the testimony about Father McGivney’s life he had the most wonderful sense of humor, the most beautiful laugh and smile. And he was witty. But whenever he had his picture taken he had a serious, moribund look on his face. We don’t see the other 99% of his personality. But he could laugh with a 5-year-old in Sunday school, and when he visited the shut-ins he could make them laugh.

Any other surprising things you learned while writing the book about Father McGivney?

The fact that he loved baseball. That endeared him to me forever. And he played baseball. He was a leftfielder. I know he coached. He organized baseball games between different parishes. He was a fountain of life.

What breaks my heart about him — his health surprised me. In those days priests were scarce, not because men were not going into the priesthood, but because so many immigrants were coming to this country there weren’t enough priests for all of them. This lively man really died because his body was worn out when he was 38.

People don’t realize how hard priests had to work. He worked for 15 years without a vacation. He was at work seven days a week. He officially died of respiratory infection, but the consensus was he really had the constitution of a man twice his age because he was exhausted, worn out. That’s what surprised me. We can’t see him working 120 hours a week, but that’s what he must have been doing.

I did some research, and the oldest priest in the diocese [which then covered the entire state of Connecticut] was 53 — the priests were in a special category of self-sacrifice.

What’s a reaction to his story that priests today have?

In terms of what priests have told me in conversations I’ve had, to celebrate Father McGivney’s life the way many do today is to celebrate the humility of the priest. How many times in American history do we celebrate people who were not self-aggrandizing? Here is one case we can honor someone who never pushed himself to the front.

Do you think he might have felt the organization was going to grow and spread?

I think he might have. While he was still alive they had councils in other states. I think he knew that it was permanent.

I wouldn’t give him all the credit for the Knights of Columbus. I think his bishop, [Francis] McFarland, deserves equal credit. There were many people in the Catholic Church at the time who didn’t think well of a lay organization attaching itself to the Church in any way. But Bishop McFarland gave the go-ahead. You have to give credit to the person in power for allowing new ideas to grow. A lesson for the Church is to recognize who the creative ideas are coming from.

Father McGivney was not a revolutionary. Everything about the Knights of Columbus was in accordance with the teachings, yet some people would have rejected any new idea even though it wasn’t [against any Church teachings]. So this is a good story to show that there is still room for new ideas. Not every new idea is a revolutionary idea.

What were some reader reactions?

What we found since the book came out is a lot of people in the Catholic Church like to think of Father McGivney’s story as starting a new discussion on the priesthood. Although he’s a 19th-century figure, he has come along at the right time. People want to take a fresh look at the priesthood. That’s not why we wrote the story; we wrote it as American history, but over and over that’s what I’m told.

If I were someone thinking of being a priest, I would look carefully at Father McGivney. His would be the kind of very accessible life and would show what the calling might entail.

And a personal reaction?

Getting to know Father McGivney and writing about him was such a privilege. I know Doug [Brinkley] feels Father McGivney should be put in the index of every American history book. I think so too. He’s a great American. I would like all kinds of American people to appreciate what he did for the country.

Staff writer Joseph Pronechen

writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.