Catholic Transcript Online

Surely one of America’s noblest priests, the renowned historian and seminary professor, Father Robert F. McNamara of Rochester, died at age 98 on 22 May. Countless priests remember his lectures in Church History and Art at historic St. Bernard’s Seminary, where in six years’ time he surveyed, using his own fascinating notes, the story of Catholicism throughout the ages, including the Church in America. And countless laity as well have read his popular vignettes about the saints in his Saints Alive bulletin column.

Father McNamara’s opus magnum was a scholarly history of the Pontifical North American College in Rome, which he attended following studies at Georgetown and Harvard Universities. He later authored a definitive history of the Diocese of Rochester. His final book, in 2004, was a story of his physician father. Entitled, Good Old Doctor Mac, it was reviewed by the Transcript.

Although Fr. McNamara was widely know and appreciated for his historical scholarship, his laser-like precision in rhetoric, his moving homilies, and his encyclopedic knowledge, he stood tall in priestly reverence, priestly kindness, priestly patience and priestly humility. He was clearly a model for seminarians and clergy. That he chanced to die just as the "Year for Priests" was being inaugurated, should serve as a reminder to clergy and laity alike as to how a priest can minister effectively in the contemporary world.