What did Father Gerald T. Brennan understand about children that we may have forgotten?
From the Common Room at the Little Station on Commercial Street, we rediscover the remarkable books of Father Gerald T. Brennan—the priest who filled children’s imaginations with ghosts and saints, football players and frogs, temptation and courage, heaven and Calvary.
In Angel Food for Jack and Jill, For Heaven’s Sake, Going His Way, and Just for Juniors, Brennan turned serious Catholic teaching into unforgettable stories. In The Ghost of Kingdom Come, he invited children into a world where the supernatural was taken seriously. In God Died at Three O’Clock, he refused to hide the terrible beauty of the Passion. And in The Man Who Dared a King, his young readers met St. John Fisher and learned that conscience sometimes demands courage at a very high price.
Brennan did not talk down to children. He assumed they could understand sin and sacrifice, mystery and death, loyalty and truth—provided you gave them a good story.
With G. K. Chesterton as an occasional companion in the Common Room, we ask whether modern adults have made the world too small for children. Have we confused innocence with ignorance? And when we removed danger, mystery, fairy tale, and adventure from religious education, did we also remove some of its power?
Pull up a chair. This is a conversation about forgotten books—but perhaps even more about a forgotten confidence in childhood.
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