In "Towns and Little Towns" is a collection of sixty-one of the finest poems written by Father Leonard Feeney, the greatest American short story writer and poet of his day. These compositions were not the work of a man interested in impressing his contemporary American literati; rather they were the fruit of a priestly soul, incredibly gifted in words, with a divine message to convey to every man through the medium of his art.
Leonard Feeney was born in 1897 in Lynn, Massachusetts. In 1917, he entered the Jesuit order. During his 14-year formation as a Jesuit, he studied in England, Wales, Belgium, France, and the U.S.A. At the end of a brilliant scholasticate and theologate, he was ordained a priest on June 20, 1928. Just one year before then, while at the Jesuit House of Studies in Weston, Massachusetts, his first collection of verse, In Towns and Little Towns, was published. He completed three years of post-graduate work at Oxford. Returning to America in 1931, he was assigned to teach at Boston College.
Fr. Feeney then embarked on what would become one of the most celebrated careers any priest could enjoy as a writer, lecturer and editor. He was named literary editor of the Jesuit Magazine, America in 1936, given an office in Manhattan, and commenced a rewarding apostolate as a preacher and retreat master. At the same time, his books, published by some of the major publishers of that time, were becoming standards in Catholic schools and homes all across the country. They include Riddle and Reverie (MacMillan, 1936), Song for a Listener (MacMillan, 1936), You'd Better Come Quietly (Sheed and Ward, 1939), The Leonard Feeney Omnibus (Sheed and Ward, 1943), Your Second Childhood (Bruce Publishing Company, 1945) Mother Seton, an American Woman (Dodd, Mead & Company, 1948), Survival Till Seventeen (Sheed and Ward, 1948).
Father's genius as a writer, speaker and theologian, was attested to by some of the most prominent Catholic figures of his day. Bishop Fulton Sheen once said that the only substitute he would allow on his radio show was Father Feeney. Frank Sheed, of Sheed and Ward said, "For Father Feeney, dogma is not only true; it is breathlessly exciting. That is his special vocation. . . to make his readers feel the thrill." During Father's days at Oxford, Lord Cecil, the famous Oxford don admitted, "I am getting more out of my association with Leonard Feeney than he could possibly get from me." Of the Jesuit's writing, Cecil said, "it shines with a pure, clear light." John Cardinal Wright once referred to Fr. Feeney as "The greatest theologian in the Catholic Church today." The Rev. John J. McEleny, S.J., Fr. Feeney's Jesuit Provincial, called him "The greatest theologian we have in the United States, by far."
In 1942, during the height of his literary fame, Fr. Feeney was transferred by his Jesuit superiors to Saint Benedict Center, a Catholic student center in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. With Fr. Feeney's transfer to Saint Benedict Center, a whole new era in his life -- and in the lives of countless others -- was to commence. Fr. Feeney's eloquent and forceful defense of Catholic dogma, especially the Catholic Church's teaching "outside the Church, there is no salvation" (extra ecclesiam nulla salus) enlighted, inspired, converted, shocked and enraged. After Father Feeney's death in 1978, the great Scottish apostle of Christ the King, Hamish Fraser, eulogized him as "one of the most outstanding prophets of our time."
