The Domestic Heortologist: An Introduction to Francis X. Weiser, S.J.

ABSTRACT: Francis X. Weiser was an Austrian Jesuit who had made a name for himself as a juvenile fiction author and a contributor to the Catholic Youth Movement of the 1920s and 1930s before fleeing the Anschluss and, along with his friends, the Von Trapp family, settling in New England. Weiser became a pastor and a professor at several local colleges, but he is best known in the United States as a key player in the American Liturgical Movement; his books on liturgical customs still serve as a model for balancing scholarly rigor and pastoral sensitivity. This essay offers a brief biography and an analysis of Weiser’s work on juvenile fiction and in heortology, the study of feasts.