The Southern Jesuit who preached racial equality while jackbooted thugs protested outside

On my Substack, I've just published a transcript of Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ's historic May 1961 address at a New Orleans NAACP rally, which he delivered while members of the American Nazi Party protested outside. Please pray that the Lord opens up a way for me to complete my Father Twomey biography, which has been sidelined due to circumstances that I have described elsewhere.

"From Rock Music to Theology": a new podcast interview

At Cafe Atlantique, Milford, CT, 11/2/25

I'm grateful to Father Jack Bentz, SJ, for giving me the opportunity to speak about my faith and life on his podcast Catholics in Ordinary Time. Click here to hear or download the episode.

Vatican newspaper reviews my book on the Sacred Heart

The review of my book as it appears on L'Osservatore Romano's website

What a joy to discover that today's L'Osservatore Romano features a review of my book The Sacred Heart: A Love for All Times! Many thanks to Osservatore culture editor Giulia Galeotti and reviewer Silvia Gusmano for this beautiful essay. It makes me very happy to know that Pope Leo XIV is reading about my book today!

Here is an image of the page of L'Osservatore with the review (click to enlarge). If the review makes it into the English-language edition or Vatican News, I'll update this post with a link to the translated version.

New podcast interview for Australian national radio: "Can celibacy actually make us purer and closer to God?"

 

Hoboken, NJ, September 27, 2025. Photo by Chuck Connelly.

Recently the Australian Broadcasting Company invited me to appear on its Sunday radio show "God Forbid!" as part of a panel of scholars discussing religious understandings of celibacy. I greatly enjoyed the conversation and I hope you do too. Listen on Apple Podcasts or on the ABC website (but ignore the truly dire clip-art image there). 

I write for Jesuit Media Lab on Brian Wilson’s spiritual outlook

Many thanks to Jesuit Media Lab for giving me the opportunity to remember Brian Wilson (pictured with me in 1988) with an essay: "Only God Can Make a Tree: The Cosmic Dreams of Brian Wilson."

Remembering Lou Christie

Lou Christie and I reconnected in the Facebook era on March 14, 2022.

This has been a rough week for me with deaths of great musicians I cared about and interviewed, first Brian Wilson and now Lou Christie. Lou's death hit me harder because I knew him better, and, unlike Brian, whose mind suffered considerable damage from substance abuse, trauma, and psychological illness, Lou was one-hundred-percent present when I interviewed him.

I interviewed Lou a couple of times in early 1993 for what he and his manager envisioned would become an "as told to" memoir. Sadly those plans fizzled—I'm not sure why (though my youth and inexperience as an author probably had something to do with it)—but I did write a brief press bio that his manager used as liner notes to a privately pressed CD of his hits. 

Lou was a supremely talented, terrifically gracious man who loved his fans. He was also a gifted lyricist who wrote songs that told stories—remarkable stories, sometimes with unreliable narrators. Listen to "If My Car Could Only Talk" and you'll feel for the poor soldier coming home from leave to his beloved girlfriend, only to suffer "a flash of suspicion: 'you learned a new way of kissin.'" Or "Rhapsody in the Rain," where he sings about the windshield wipers that once seemed to say "forever/forever" and now only say, "never, never."

Like so many fans, I was in love with "Lugee," and meeting him (chastely) did nothing whatsoever to remove his mystique. There are not a lot of artists of whom I can say that. Lou Christie was a star in the old Hollywood way, though his fame had come with the help of Philadelphia's "Idolmaker," Bob Marcucci. He was big; it's the screens and speakers that got small. I am grateful to have basked in the brief and brilliant glow of his lightning.

Hear me remember my times with Brian Wilson on the Waves and Words video podcast

With Brian at the Hotel Pierre in Manhattan, August 1988. Black-and-white photo taken with my camera (probably by Eugene Landy's assistant, Kevin Leslie) and hand-tinted by Nancy Leigh. A color photo from the same meeting can be seen on my LinkedIn page.

I will always be grateful to have interviewed Brian Wilson twice during my career as a rock-and-roll historian. Katie Webb recently interviewed me about Brian for her Beach Boys podcast, Waves and Words. Click here to watch it on YouTube.

I speak about Pope Leo XIV on The Lead with Jake Tapper

I had the great joy this evening of appearing on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper to discuss Pope Leo XIV's election. Later on, I hope to write about the Holy Father's namesake on my Substack, Matters Twomey, which chronicles my work on a biography of the great labor priest (and friend of Martin Luther King) Father Louis J. Twomey, SJ.