I love the fact that many Catholic men and women have the gift of assembling words of the English language and constructing them into paragraphs that convey a story or essay reflecting the Catholic faith in some way shape or form. I sent out a blog post asking different catholic authors to answer some questions about Catholic writing and their particular writing in general. The first one to submit to me an written interview was
James K. Hanna
Here’s what he had to say.
1. Tell something interesting about yourself.
I returned to graduate school at age 58, earning a MA-Theology at age 61 from Duquesne University in 2014.
2. What makes a good Catholic writer?
Writing with subtle threads of a Catholic sensibility woven throughout the fabric of the story.
3. What do you like about being a Catholic/Christian Writer?
The open field of topics or interesting characters; there is no shortage.
4. What is the Main focus of your particular writing or what do you like to write about?
Biography. Book-length and essays. As for books, biographies about obscure, forgotten, or discovered Catholic personalities. I’ve published three:
The Remarkable Life of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick: Exile, Redemption, and a Gas Station (Serif Press, 2022). Yes, he ran a gas station as a bishop!
The Wit and Wisdom of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick : His Millbrook Round Table Columns
If All Dreams Came True. Much has been written, and is being sung, about how happy we would be if all our dreams came true. As for myself, I am very grateful that my dreams do not come true and am hopeful that they never will. One night I dream that I am in Heaven; the next, perhaps, that I am in “the other place.” Numerically my dreams seem to be evenly divided between vivid imaginings of myself in conditions of great happiness or of extreme misery. Probably mine is a fair sample of the experience of most mortals. If so, it is indeed fortunate that Dreams Do Not Come True.
For God and Our Country: The Remarkable Life of Edward Vattmann, Priest and Patriot. Vattmann was the first Catholic chaplain appointed after the Civil War and was at President McKinley’s bedside after the assassination and offered the benediction at his burial. Also, a good friend to Teddy Roosevelt.
Peace and Mercy: The Life and Works of Sister M. Fides Shepperson. She was the first woman admitted to any Catholic college in America (1909), was a prolific writer, poet, philosopher, pacifist, war historian, and professor.
For essays, I’ve written in Crisis, New Oxford Review, DappledThings.org, Pittsburgh-Post Gazette, and elsewhere essays on better known Catholic writers like Jack Kerouac, Thomas Merton, and John O’Hara.
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac was 47 when he died in 1969; his death certificate listing the cause as gastrointestinal hemorrhage due to bleeding gastric varix from cirrhosis of liver, the result of “many years of excessive ethanol intake.”
To the world he was Jack Kerouac, the famed novelist of the beat generation and author of On the Road. To his mother, Gabriella, he was her “Ti-Jean,” and to his only child, Jan Kerouac – well, she knew him not, having met him twice – the second visit when she was fifteen and two years before his death when, as she told biographer Gerald Nicosia, “He was drunk, sitting in front of the TV, in a rocking chair, watching The Beverly Hillbillies and drinking from a quart of whiskey.”
Jack Kerouac drank himself to an early death; he couldn’t get off the sauce though he knew he had a problem. –Kerouac and What Might Have Been — Dappled Things
5. How does your Catholic Faith influence your writing?
It operates in the background, a foundation of thought, a creed that at times serves as a source of inspiration, or encouragement, or in an editorial manner by suggesting revisions. A portrait of St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers, rests by my keyboard.
6. What’s your favorite article/Post/book/story you have written?
My 2022 book The Remarkable Life of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick: Exile, Redemption, and a Gas Station. It’s my favorite because of the amount of research, time, and travel I put into writing it with the happy result of absolving the late bishop’s name; as Catholic novelist Ron Hansen has noted “Riveting, wonderfully informative, and simultaneously inspiring and depressing. Shows very clearly how Bishop Broderick was done wrong … and it’s a mark of his integrity and resilience that he survived it.”
7. What is your favorite topic/subject to write about?
Obscure, forgotten, or undiscovered people, events, stories.
8. Favorite scripture verse.
9. What Are you currently working on?
A collection of essays on the Catholicism of writers Jack Kerouac, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John O’Hara.
10. Name a favorite saint or Catholic or some other figure who inspires you in your life.
St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers, and journalists.
11. Who is your favorite Living Writer?
Another tough question. But if we’re talking fiction, novelist and short story writer, Ron Hansen.
12. If you could have lunch with any deceased writer, who would it be, what would you eat and what would you talk about?
Great yet tough question! John O’Hara. Nothing to eat, coffee only, food gets in the way of conversation! I would like to discuss his take on Catholicism, about his lapse from the Church, and yet, given that, when he became successful and bought a Rolls Royce, he wanted it blessed by Archbishop Spellman! In other words, his Catholic sensibilities survived his neglect of his Easter obligation and were evident in much of his fiction.
13. Name a favorite movie/tv show or music you find worth sharing with others.
“Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) A somewhat dark drama with a few comedic moments, star-studded cast, great acting, with coarse dialog, that demonstrates clearly how the vices of deceit and ambition destroy lives. The lesson? Choose virtue.
14. Favorite Historical event.
Favorite, but sad; the assassination of JFK. I was in sixth grade and vividly remember the classroom announcement and immediate dismissal from school. Kennedy was a hero in our household. It was a very sad time.
Speaking of History
This article was published on February 19, 2026
The day these events took place.
February 19, 1846 – In Austin, Texas, the newly formed Texas state government is officially installed. The Republic of Texas government officially transfers power to the State of Texas government following the annexation of Texas by the United States.
February 19, 1985 – William J. Schroeder becomes the first recipient of an artificial heart to leave the hospital.
15. Can you see one of your books being made into a movie or tv series?
The book I could see being made into a movie is The Remarkable Life of Bishop Bonaventure Broderick: Exile, Redemption, and a Gas Station (Serif Press, 2022). He ran a gas station as a bishop! But the gas station is hardly the most interesting thing about this fascinating character. His is a story of catacombs in Rome, a failed bomb-building business in Connecticut and a sewer system in Cuba.
It is a story of allegations, from the serious to the sensational to the silly: that he shared in a million-dollar commission to sell Church property in Havana; that he was living with “a nun he stole from a convent in St. Louis;” that he was “running a hot dog stand” in upstate New York.
It is a story of a millionaire Congregationalist and his Catholic wife, an impeached governor of New York, quarreling siblings and quibbling Church hierarchy.
It is a tale of popes and politicians, business partners who throw inkwells at each other, and a lawyer who probes into a private papal conversation on behalf of a cardinal of the Church.
Strange, moving, funny, mysterious, exciting – this is a story that has fascinated Catholics for years. This is the first book that sifts through the evidence, digs into the mysteries, sorts the true from the false, and tells the whole story of the gas-station bishop from Millbrook, New York.
16. What else do you want people to know about anything.
My website: James K. Hanna – rem litteris mandare (to put a thing in writing)
My Substack: The Obscure, Forgotten, and Undiscovered | James K. Hanna | Substack
A snowstorm can be devastating, or beautiful—much depends on where you find yourself. Finding oneself snowbound at home, with all the modern comforts intact, tends to the beautiful. What to do with the time?
I spent a large part of it with Gary Saul Morson’s nearly 500-page tome, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions & Why Their Answers Matter (Belknap, 2023).
With perfect timing, in the calm before the storm, I was introduced to Morson by Heather King via one of her Substack posts.
I was intrigued, and wanted more, hence the book. I was able to get to the bookstore and home before the snow began to fall.-snowbound scholarship – by James K. Hanna
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