Author Archives: Br. Thomas Mary Sennott, M.I.C.M.

About Br. Thomas Mary Sennott, M.I.C.M.

The following is excerpted from a tribute to Brother Thomas Mary written in From the Housetops No. 64, on the occasion of Brother's death on June 13, 2005.

Thomas Sennott was born in 1922 in Arlington, Massachusetts. While studying architecture in Chicago, he heard about the celebrated "Boston Heresy Case," involving Father Leonard Feeney. His introduction to this was by way of reading "Sentimental Theology" by Doctor Fakhri Maluf (Brother Francis) in one of the early issues of From the Housetops. He visited the Center and never left, becoming, in 1949, one of those heroic founding members of the Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

My personal knowledge of Brother Thomas Mary was in his old age. The man I knew was kindly, humble, and very gentle, but a man. That combination is rare these days, when barbarism and effeminacy seem to vie with one another as male prototypes. He was also a man who was deeply Catholic and well-tempered by suffering. His life was marked by a series of crucifying personal tragedies. In these trials, Brother Thomas Mary did what all real men should do, if they also be Christian men. He ran to his mother.

The devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows that Brother Thomas Mary cultivated was most tender. Near to where his body lay in state at St. Benedict's Abbey, was placed a statue of the sorrowful Mother, there for the occasion of his wake. His own blood brother (who was also his brother in religion), Brother Bartholomew, painted a lovely rendition of Our Lady of Sorrows that can still be seen on Brother Thomas Mary's web site, Mary Co-Redemptrix. (The original painting is in the Vatican.)

Brother Thomas Mary was a scholar who wrote much in defense of the Church, the inerrancy of Holy Scripture (from which he read a chapter a night in both Greek and Latin), and the Shroud of Turin.

And being a lover of Our Lady, as well as a scholar, he spent much of his intellectual effort to glorify her, making her better known and loved. Thus, when he defends, in this present issue, our Lady's title "Co-Redemptrix," the piety of a child of Mary and the literary production of a scholar meet in one.

Readers can find a book of Brother's on our store site: Not Made By Hands

Other works of his are available at Amazon.com.