Authored by Zach Housel
The Lessons of Death
The Lessons of Death is a section of the Walter Elliott Spiritual Journal. Walter Elliott; a priest and missionary for The Paulist Fathers organization, wrote the journal. The Paulist Fathers is a Catholic Organization that dedicates itself to finding a mutual understanding across religious lines, cross-cultural understanding, peace, justice and human liberation. They advocate for justice and healing and reconciliation; seek out the lost, alienated, hurt and broken. They also endorse welcoming followers back to the church.
Walter Elliot was ordained in 1872 and became a missionary for the Paulist Fathers. In the late 1800s he compiled a spiritual journal. Within its pages he would compose writings on the topics of Salvation, Mortal Sins, Lessons of Death, Death- Sinners, General Judgment, Hell, Intemperance, Blasphemy, Occasions, Laws of the Church, The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Prodigal Son, the Duties of the Parish and Passion.
The Journal is a handwritten manuscript, done in cursive and is written in black ink. The journal is currently located in Washington D.C. within the archives of St. Paul’s College. This particular section is titled “The Lessons of Death”. For this AS-L project the hand written pages were transcribed from scanned images of the journal. The scanned images were formatted as tiff images and converted to jpegs when posted online. The documents will later be scanned by an Optical Recognition Software (OCR) and pdf files will allow the documents to become word searchable. By undertaking this project, a service is provided to the Paulist Fathers; an organization that seeks to make the world a better place. Once greater access to the journal becomes available to the public its pages will reflect the mission of the Paulist Fathers, their history and the advocacy they seek for those they serve.
Works Cited:
Paulist Fathers. (n.d.). Who we are: Mission statement. Retrieved from: <http://www.paulist.org/about/mission-statement>
Paulist Fathers. (n.d.) Who we are: Paulist history. Retrieved from: <http://www.paulist.org/history/paulist-history>