Duty

Most young men have been told what not to do. Fewer have been told, plainly and by someone who respects them, what they owe. That is the subject of these twelve conferences, which Fr. William Graham gave to Catholic young men over the course of a year. Duty, he says, is a debt. An honest man pays it, to God first, then to his parents, his Church, his country, and his own soul, and he pays it whether anyone is watching or not. The poor man who finds a Rockefeller’s purse in the street hands it back without taking a cent.

The first six talks settle what duty is and where its claim on us comes from. The second six get down to cases. Graham explains what honoring a parent looks like once you are grown, and what a Catholic owes the state and the narrow conditions under which he may refuse it. He is clear that a man is never off duty just because he is off work. He is blunt, and funnier than the title suggests. People who will face a blizzard to get to a theater, he notices, will skip Mass over a little weather. The last conference, on habit, is the practical one. The first effort back toward a neglected duty is the hardest, and every effort after it is easier.

It is a good book to hand a son or a godson, and a good one to read yourself if you have ever suspected that doing no harm was never the whole of the job.