Author: Stories, Plays, Reviews & Memoir

In the spring of 1955, motivated by idealism and buoyed by youthful naiveté, Thomas Brennan joined the Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious order.  After seven years in a cloistered environment of prayer, work and study he earned a degree in physics and taught for six years in high schools.  After seven years in a cloistered environment of prayer, work and study he earned a degree in physics and taught for six years in high schools.  Against the 1960s backdrop of assassinations, riots and civil rights marches added to the upheavals in the Catholic Church he reevaluated his commitment to a celibate life.  Despite having pronounced final vows I petitioned and was granted a Vatican dispensation and joined the thousands of religious who withdrew from the religious life thus changing their own lives and the face of American Catholicism.

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Synopsis       In the spring of 1955 I was an idealistic but

naive 14 year old who entered a monastic order in the Roman Catholic Church and fifteen years later found disillusionment as American culture explodes and Roman Catholicism implodes in the turbulent 1960s.

 

Outline        I tell the story chronologically from growing up Catholic in a Bronx Irish neighborhood, joining a religious order after grammar school, living in a monastic environment through high school, college and then teaching.

 

Essentially I lived a cloistered life in my teens and twenties. How cloistered? I was a ardent New York Yankees fan but in October 1956 I didn't find out Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in the world series until a week later when my father sent me a newspaper clipping.

 

I begin to change as the 60s unfold and American society disintegrates (JFK assinnation, civil rights movement). In the late 60s my evolution accelerates as the Catholic Church itself has a psychological breakdown. The Second Vatican Council rents the church. The expression was the church was opening the windows. The unexpected happened; almost 200,000 religious jumped out those windows and withdrew from their religious orders thus changing their own lives and the face of American Catholicism. I was one of them.

 

Biography       My publications include Writings on Writing, a reference book published by McFarland and Company and reprinted by Barnes and Noble. Several literary magazines and newspapers have published short stories and humorous essays. My scholarly reviews appeared in the Mathematics and Computer Science Journal, and I presently write book reviews for the Foreword Reviews magazine.