Well, one characteristic was that, in the evening after supper, we would have the family rosary. Very often people who would drop into the house after supper would be caught and, therefore, had to stay around for the rosary. One of the times that I can remember especially was when one of these families whose father was a very close associate of my father, John Daily. They had sons, two of whom were priests in the Boston Archdiocese. One of them, Tom Daily, was named auxiliary bishop in Boston. So John Daily was one of my father's best friends. I can remember one time when the Dailys were caught in the after-dinner rosary and couldn't escape. So that I never forgot. I never stopped teasing Tom Daily about having been caught by the rosary at the Skehan's. They came in the middle of the rosary and were held for downs until the end of the rosary and the trimmings on the end of the rosary.

Well, when I came to Weston, I came face to face with the question of doing satisfactory academic work. I was interviewed by Fr. Hinc MacDonnell, Dean of Philosophy and uncle of the MacDonnell brothers, e.g., the late Frs. Joe and Jack MacDonnell and Marty MacDonnell. He said, "Well, we have to settle on a DS, disciplina specialis. What would you like to take for that?" And I thought to myself, "Maybe if I take Latin, I'm going to have a lot of Latin that would probably help me to get along fairly well in my studies." But he said, "Oh, we need people in mathematics and in physics more than in Latin." I said, "Well, how about math?" He said, "Well, at Shadowbrook, Fr. Peter McKone gave you a course in math and you didn't do very well in that." I guess I had gotten a D in that and in just about everything else. So he said, "I don't think you did very well there in math." Eventually we settled on a plan: if I were to take the course in math over again, I might be able to teach math during regency. So I came to a great realization in that time that put the fear of God into me as far as academics were concerned: that I'd better really buckle down and distinguish myself in this area. That was a moment of great realization. As a result, at the end of my first year of philosophy, I got a 9. And that startled everybody, I guess.

Others are conscious that you are a religious and a priest, so you don't have to say too many words. Getting back to the Surtsey expedition, we had people of a lot of different faiths. There was a young geologist from the University of Washington, who said,"I have had a plan to be baptized at some place that was of special meaning to me. Of all places that I've ever done geology, this is certainly the place that I would choose, if I may, to be baptized here. My mother had wanted me to be baptized and I have taken instructions." And so I agreed that this would be an excellent place for him to be baptized. So in the course of the Mass we had his Baptism.

I would say it was both an opportunity for deepening my insights into Teilhard's spirituality and mysticism, but also developing some of my own concepts along those lines as well. And so I published five papers on that topic, including one that I had developed during a seminar in the Jesuit Institute at Boston College. For about eight years, there was a group of philosophers, theologians, and scientists from all of the various branches of science that participated in discussions during that time. And out of that seminar came The Dialogue between Science and Religion: What we Have Learned From One Other, published, thankfully, by the University of Scranton Press in 2005.