CASTLE OF GRACE is a family concern. We publish work that we have produced ourselves as well as selected works by others. David and Rosemary Hugo Fielding, who are Roman Catholics, originally founded CASTLE OF GRACE out of concern for Christian children, who are the most vulnerable targets of those who wish ill to the Christian faith. The website’s selection has now also expanded to serve the older Christian body during this time when the mainstream culture is becoming increasingly hostile to Christianity.
Sadly, David Fielding passed away unexpectedly in August 2024, leaving CASTLE OF GRACE without its founder and primary creative force.
David’s family continue to maintain CASTLE OF GRACE, though in a more limited capacity, but still providing a selection of resources for helping all Christian families, Catholic and Protestant, resist the bad influences of modern culture and strengthen their faith. In particular we are publishing fiction suitable for all Christian children — see Get Toni and Viper Island. We also have religious material available for children.
Our inventory has expanded to include spiritual works for adults also. One example is Gospel Truth, an analysis by David, the founder of this website, of how the credibility of the Gospels has been attacked over a couple of centuries. Gospel Truth exposes the poor scholarship and even dishonesty of the attacks on the Gospels and sets out the reasons for believing in their complete veracity. It is based on the work of Dom Bernard Orchard, OSB, a Benedictine of Ealing Abbey in London, England. Dom Bernard was the founder of Saint Benedict’s School at Ealing Abbey. He also conceived the idea of, and became the overall editor of, the renowned A Catholic Commentary on Holy Scripture, first published in 1953 by Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd. David was privileged to know this great scholar for a number of years. Gospel Truth will be of interest to both Protestants and Catholics.
Most recently, CASTLE OF GRACE added the works of Father John J. Hugo of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
For a short biography of David Fielding and his family who run CASTLE OF GRACE, watch the video below from the “Restoring Christ” section of the website.
About Father John Hugo
Father John Jacob Hugo in his 49 years as a priest served many communities in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh. Born in 1911, in McKeesport, Pa., Fr. Hugo studied at the parochial schools there, and then went on to St. Vincent Preparatory School, College, and Seminary, where he was ordained a priest in 1936.
His first years as a priest were spent in teaching at Catholic colleges in the Pittsburgh area. He went on to serve as assistant pastor and pastor in parishes; spent five years as chaplain at the Allegheny County Workhouse and at the Allegheny County Prison; organized street preaching in the city, and established the house that eventually grew into Ozanam Center, the first interracial project of the Pittsburgh Diocese.
He collaborated in preparing the post-Vatican II catechism for adults, The Teaching of Christ (1976), and was appointed by his bishop as chairman for both theological and liturgical committees. In his free time and over the course of decades, he wrote a number of books on a six-day Ignatian retreat. These books Castle of Grace is now republishing.
The retreat, developed by French-Canadian Jesuit Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, brought Fr. Lacouture and Fr. Hugo a measure of both fame and notoriety in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Dorothy Day, founder with Peter Maurin of the Catholic Worker, was the most famous proponent of the retreat, writing favorably about it in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness. She made the retreat several times, under both Fr. Hugo and other priests. Hundreds of ordinary Catholics also made the retreat and spoke highly of it.
But the retreat had its detractors as well, who decried, in general, its insistence on detachment from the world. Fr. Hugo’s books deal with all aspects of the retreat and the controversy surrounding it.
He was the resident chaplain at Mt. Nazareth convent in Pittsburgh, with the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, at the time of his death in 1985, when he was killed in an automobile accident.