Ave Maria prints book of essays
Special to The Observer
"Keeping the Faith, Making a Difference" by Father Wilson Miscamble, associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, has been published by Ave Maria Press.
The book is comprised of 26 essays which grew out of homilies and talks given by Miscamble to students at Notre Dame, where he lives, teaches history, ministers to students and regularly presides and preaches at Mass in several of the University's residence halls.
Father Miscamble describes the collection as "a simple book about some significant matters" which addresses not only the foundational doctrines of Christianity, but also "a number of more personal issues which my student friends have raised to me in various ways at one time or another: facing suffering, true friendship, love and sex, marriage, the challenges of Christian manhood and womanhood today and the responsibilities of parenting."
A plainspoken Australian native, Father Miscamble is a popular teacher whose homilies are as remarkable for their directness and simplicity as for their wide-ranging erudition. His sources for scriptural reflections include confessional autobiography; ancient and contemporary theology; aphorisms of Cicero, St. Thomas More and George Bernard Shaw; such films as "The Graduate," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," and "Saving Private Ryan"; papal encyclicals, current events and book reviews and articles in scholarly and popular journals. According to one reviewer, Jonathan Lang, "his enormous love for his faith, his students, his teaching, the church, and the priesthood is abundantly clear on each page."
Miscamble has been a member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1988. Educated in the University of Queensland, from which he was graduated in 1973 and obtained a master's degree three years later, he came to Notre Dame in 1976 to pursue graduate studies in history.
He received his doctoral degree in 1980, worked for two years as a North American analyst for the Australian government and returned to Notre Dame to study for the priesthood in the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1982. After completing his theological studies he served as deacon in Sacred Heart Parish at Notre Dame and was ordained to the priesthood in 1988.
Father Miscamble's scholarship concerns American foreign policy since World War II and the role of Catholics in 20th century American foreign policy.
He is the author of "George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947-1950" and coeditor of "American Political History: Essays on the State of the Discipline."
All News Stories for Friday, March 24, 2000
