Instead of our usual thoughts, today we have a scan from an article about Fr Doyle written by Fr James Brodrick SJ.

Fr Brodrick was a well known Jesuit biographer and historian in the early part of the 20th century. He wrote the definitive English biographies of the two Jesuit Doctors of the Church, St Robert Bellarmine and St Peter Canisius, as well as biographies of St Francis Xavier and the early years of St Ignatius, in addition to histories of the early years of the Jesuits.

Fr Brodrick was originally from the West of Ireland but joined the English Province of the Jesuits.

This scanned chapter, which is reproduced with the kind permission of Continuum International Publishing Group, comes from the 1932 book The Irish Way, which was a collection of biographies and reflections on Irish saints and Catholic personalities. As such, it is a product of its age. The chapter is 11 pages long, and Fr Brodrick finally gets to discussing Fr Doyle five and a half pages in. The first half of the chapter is taken up with a reflection on the nature and history of Irish Catholicism. Suffice it to say that whatever Fr Brodrick says about the Irish Catholicism of 1932 was possibly accurate (though incomplete) back then but absolutely no longer holds true.

Here is the chapter, which will also be permanently stored on the RESOURCES page. Despite the digressions, it is still worth reading

Fr William Doyle by Fr James Brodrick