Published:
Monday, July 20, 2015
For those who don’t know him, William J. O’Malley is an 82-year-old Jesuit. He played Father Joe Dyer in the 1973 movie The Exorcist, taught for almost 50 years at Fordham Prep, and published almost 40 books, including The Pursuit of Happiness (Thomas More) and Daily Prayers for Busy People (Liguori). You’ll Never Be Younger contains 26 short chapters with titles like “Staying Hungry,” “Choosing the Inescapable,” and “Resilience.” The book is a bracing, if sometimes dizzying, ride. It does not have the aura of an 82-year-old. At times, O’Malley’s irreverent New York Irish humor resembles Oscar Wilde’s wit with its aphoristic apercus.
O’Malley’s purpose is to “stir up gratitude in those who’ve taken the gift of life for granted.” He acknowledges what he learned at AA meetings and never asks himself what kind of day he’s having. To him, “Wow!” is a great prayer. (“It praises the tireless giver,” he writes.) O’Malley urges readers to relearn that sense of awe, wonder, and vulnerability. The dead faces he sees on the subway prompt him to grumble, “No wonder zombie movies have become so popular.”
He has a few favorite critical targets: the Baltimore Catechism, the Syllabus of Errors, and 1950s Catholics—although he is one himself. O’Malley is against narcissism and self-absorption and is big on perspective and has a sense of humor (his favorite comics are the Marx Brothers, Victor Borge, and Carol Burnett). Although he derides atheistic “naysayers” like Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan, he accepts evolution’s universal mandate for change and development.
In the final chapter, “Letting Go Without Quitting,” O’Malley urges readers to see all human development as change, a series of heroic “lettings go.” The only question is: “Can you do it with grace and serenity and dignity?”
This review appeared in the July 2015 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 80, No. 7, page 43).
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