Msgr William Smith is Dead,RIP

Heaven is getting crowded these days! [...]


When Father Venditti redesigned Priestly Pugilist for the new year, he created a new color entry for obituaries; but I had no idea I'd be using it so often right off the bat. First it was Father Neuhaus, then Patricarch Stephanos; now, Monsignor William B. Smith, STD, professor of moral theology at St. Joseph's Seminary (Dunwoodie), Yonkers, New York.


If you're not up on your theological journals, you probably wouldn't recognize his name—unless you caught him on the Charlie Rose show or the odd episode of "Good Morning America"—; but, for those involved in the defense of Catholic doctrine, particular the Gospel of Life, he was a guiding light.



In the classroom, Father Smith (he wasn't a monsignor then) never made you learn; from him, you always wanted more. You left his class with the same feeling you had leaving the table after a good meal: looking forward to the next one after due digestion. And while the information came fast and furious, it was presented so simply and straightforwardly that, by the end of the class, all the questions you had jotted down to be asked when the lecture was over were already answered. Nor was there any tickery or attempts to show how clever he was—that perennial curse that infects so many academicians—; he wanted you to understand, and, if you didn't, he counted it a personal failure on his part, not yours. "This will be on the exam," he would often say; and there it was on exam day, in exactly the same words as in the lecture. You couldn't help but learn.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2171121/posts