New Editions of Father Hugo's Books
FATHER HUGO'S BOOKS AVAILABLE IN MODERN VERSIONS
A few years ago Rosemary Hugo Fielding, the niece of the late Father John Hugo, acquired the copyrights of those of his works that were not in the public domain. With her husband, David Fielding, she began the process of scanning original copies of all of her her uncle's books in order to produce clearer versions in a better typeface. Rosemary has also written an introduction to each new edition. Rosemary and David published the new versions through their already-existing publishing company, Castle of Grace LLC. To read more about the modern versions, and to order them, please follow the links given below to the Castle of Grace website.
A SIGN OF CONTRADICTION
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Published in 1947, A Sign of Contradiction tells us what the Christian life should be and what it should not be. It does so by recounting the history of a seven-day silent retreat that Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, S.J., had been preaching during the 1930’s to priests in Canada and the United States. Though developed from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the retreats had aroused such fierce opposition that the Jesuit superior in 1939 forbade Fr. Lacouture to give them. In this book, Fr. Hugo, a priest of the Pittsburgh Diocese, was defending these silent retreats, which he also had preached, but in the 1940’s and to the laity.
APPLIED CHRISTIANITY
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Applied Christianity contains the conferences of a seven-day silent Ignatian retreat first given in the 1930’s by Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, S.J. The author of this book, Father John J. Hugo, of Pittsburgh, made the retreat under Father Lacouture in 1938 and then went on to teach it regularly, mostly to the laity. The most famous promoter of the retreats was Dorothy Day, co-founder with Peter Maurin of The Catholic Worker. Father Hugo said that the retreat offers the “complete panorama of the Christian life, in which the relation of the several parts to one another and to the whole is clearly visible.”
YOU ARE GODS!
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You Are Gods! (from Psalm 81:6)contains the first sixteen conferences of a seven-day, silent Ignatian retreat first given in the 1930’s by Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, S.J. Applied Christianity contains an outline of all thirty of the retreat conferences. You Are Gods! contains the full conferences of Part One of Applied Christianity. Fr. Hugo thought that this part needed to be presented in greater detail.
NATURE AND THE SUPERNATURAL
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In 1950, Fr. John J. Hugo compiled four separate articles into the book Nature and the Supernatural: A Defense of the Evangelic Ideal. He had written these articles to defend the doctrine contained in his book Applied Christianity, which in turn contained the doctrine that undergirded a retreat developed by Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, a French-Canadian Jesuit. This retreat has garnered increasing interest in recent years because of its connection to Dorothy Day, who co-founded, with Peter Maurin, the Catholic Worker.
IN THE VINEYARD
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Father Hugo wrote the chapters of this book in the early 1940s as a series of essays for the Catholic Worker newspaper in New York when Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin led the apolstolate of the Catholic Worker. The book's purpose is "to point out some basic principles that must be known and observed by those who wish to make their apostolate spiritually fruitful." The book teaches the means of obtaining spiritual perfection for those in the lay apostolate; particularly, perfection in love of God and neighbor.