A fool in love

Chapter 3 finds Lou Twomey, SJ, on the verge of vows

Lou Twomey, SJ’s novice master gave him this prayer card in honor of his making first vows on February 2, 1931. The original is now in the Twomey Papers at Loyola University New Orleans.

Greetings from Cincinnati, Ohio, where I’m grateful to be spending Thanksgiving weekend with family. Just before flying out, I completed chapter three of A Priest in Good Trouble, the biography I’m writing of Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ. So I can now share a new excerpt with you.

As you know if you’ve been following Matters Twomey, the writing is going more slowly than I’d like. I was originally hoping to complete A Priest in Good Trouble by the end of January; now it’s looking like it may take me until the end of March, though I still hope to finish sooner. But on the upside, I am very pleased with the quality of the writing, especially this latest chapter.

The excerpt that I’m sharing with you today begins in 1930; it takes place in Grand Coteau, LA, which was then the novice house of the Society of Jesus’s New Orleans Province. Lou Twomey, SJ, is in the midst of his second attempt to make his novitiate, which is the first stage of Jesuit formation and lasts for two years, ending with first vows. Lou had first entered in September 1926, only to depart in June 1927 to assist his father, who had suffered a nervous breakdown. Not until February 1929 was he able to return to Grand Coteau and the vocation that he desperately hoped God was calling to pursue.

If you’re a free subscriber, then the next thing you’ll find below will be a single paragraph from chapter three, followed by a paywall. If you’re a paid subscriber or if I’ve given you a complimentary subscription, you’ll see a good-sized chunk of the chapter, complete with footnotes. Either way, enjoy, and God bless you.

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During his remaining time in the novitiate, Lou seemed to go from strength to strength, well-liked by his fellow novices and looked upon favorably by the novice master. When the time came in 1930 for the novice master to assign the seasonal “offices”—in-house jobs—Lou was given the top position of beadle, which required him to act as liaison between the novices and the faculty, and to maintain the novitiate’s daily diary. Although the diary was normally a staid affair, listing the daily schedule, Lou added his personal spark at times, as when he noted that, during the seasonal novice-junior baseball match, “the novices again buried the juniors under the short end of a 9 to 3 score.”¹