I’m pleased to share The Wit & Wisdom of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick: His Millbrook Round Table Columns is now available from Serif Press and can be ordered from Amazon here.

The first review is in: “I really loved getting to know the mind of Bishop Broderick, in his cranky moods as well as his pleasant ones.” – Christopher Bailey

In 2022, Serif Press published my biography of Bonaventure Broderick arguably the most obscure, forgotten, and undiscovered twentieth-century bishop in the Catholic Church – often referred to as “the gas station bishop.” If you’ve read the book, you will recall that for three years, 1937-1939, the bishop wrote a newspaper column titled “Things, Events and Men” for the Millbrook Round Table, the weekly paper in his adopted hometown in the Hudson Valley.

In the summer of 2023 Fr. Edward Looney of the Diocese of Green Bay, Wisconsin interviewed me on his podcast about the biography. He mentioned how interesting it would be if those columns were published. I agreed and spent many hours locating, reading, organizing the corpus by topic, and selecting appropriate pieces for publication.

His columns appeared in 148 consecutive issues of the Round Table. Each column covered more than one topic, often four or five, at times totaling 2,000 words or more with the total number of topics exceeding 540. It was never my intention to print the entire corpus but rather to present a selection giving readers an insight into the discerning intellect and personality of the bishop. 

The columns selected reflect much of his life experience, including:

  • life in Connecticut as a young man
  • his near decade in Rome
  • his time as auxiliary bishop of Havana, Cuba
  • his pastoral pieces on virtue, vice, and morality, as well as his love of education and nature, birds and flowers
  • his love of poetry, language and its usage
  • events of the day, the Great Depression, 1938 World’s Fair, lead-up to WWII, strides in aviation, etc.
  • columns reflecting his keen sense of humor
  • tidbits of his life in his adopted hometown
  • his personal profiles of several men, some famous such as Elihu Root and General Leonard Wood, that he knew well and respected, and obscure characters such as “The Learned Blacksmith” and “The Paper Collared Gentleman”

His compositions varied from the narrative to staccato style, but always his wit and wisdom front and center. It is my sincere hope that readers enjoy meeting Bonaventure F. Broderick, the bishop-columnist. Cheers!