Fr Doyle’s writings
Fr Doyle wrote many letters, many of which can be found in O’Rahilly’s biography. O’Rahilly also produced a book with excerpts from Fr Doyle’s letters and diaries for each day of the year. This book is entitled A Year’s Thoughts. As far as I am aware, it is out of print, but it may be possible to find it in second hand bookstores, especially those that specialise in books of Catholic interest. However, the full test of the book can be found here:
http://www.archive.org/details/ayearsthoughts00doyluoft
By and large the thoughts for the day for this blog are taken from this book, although they are sometimes shortened and occasionally different writings are chosen to reflect special feast days or anniversaries.
Fr Doyle wrote a number of best-selling pamphlets during his lifetime. The most popular of these was “Vocations” which was published in August 1913 and by 1945 290,000 copies had been distributed in eight different languages. We will never know in this life howm many religious and priestly vocations Fr Doyle may have been responsible for!
The full text of this pamphlet can be found here:
Fr Doyle followed this pamphlet with another entitled Shall I be Priest? First published in March 1915, 160,000 copies were distributed in ten different languages by 1943.
The full text of this pamphlet can be found here:
Fr Doyle also published a guide to the rubrics of the Extraordinary form of Mass. I am no liturgist and I don’t know if there were any slight adaptations in these rubrics between their publication in 1914 and the publication of the 1962 missal. At the very least, the pamphlet will be of historical interest to some. Special thanks to Dave from New York, a reader of this blog, for sending this to me.
The full text can be found here:
Fr Doyle didn’t just write about priests and religious, the concerns of lay people were also of importance for him. It is not very well known that he had sketched out notes for a booklet on the treatment of scruples before his death. This booklet was an adaptation of a previous French work by a Fr R.P. Dupois SJ. The manuscript for this booklet was found amongst his papers and was published after his death. Perhaps the pendulum has swung in the other direction today; instead of being scrupulous perhaps this generation has lost something of the sense of sin. Nonetheless this booklet will still be of interest to many.
The full text can be found here:
Fr Doyle wrote about the importance of retreats for laymen in a pamphlet entitled “Retreats for Workingmen: Why not in Ireland?” This was originally published in 1909. I have been unable to locate a copy, but will keep looking. If anybody happens to have one, please let me know and I will happily post a copy of it here.
Finally, it is worth noting that Fr Doyle translated a biography of a French Jesuit called Fr Paul Ginhac. While Fr Doyle didn’t write the biography, he thought it important enough to make the effort io get it published in English.The example of Fr Ginhac had an important impact on the development of Fr Doyle’s own spirituality. I have not read this book, so I cannot comment on it. It may be possible to pick up a copy in a specialist second hand bookstore. The full text is also available here: