Welcome to johnmallon.LIFE!

This website is archive of the writings of John Mallon during his career as a Catholic writer and editor in the Catholic Press.

To enter the site, click on the Alphabetical Index of Articles link below to browse the titles, and click on those that interest you.

John Mallon bio:

John Mallon grew up in the harbor town of Hingham, Massachusetts, on the South Shore of Boston. He dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to be a rock ‘n’ roll musician. At the age of 18 he had the first of three vivid experiences which, in time, led to to his passionate return to the Catholic Church in 1979. In 1982 he discovered the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, experienced great deliverance and healing and a call to study theology.

The experiences leading up to his conversion convinced him of the Truth of the Catholic Faith and it became his life’s mission to explain and defend the true orthodox teachings of the Catholic Church. The story of his conversion, I Myself will Shepherd Them, appears in the book Spiritual Journeys, published by the Daughters of St. Paul. it is also available on this website.

He received his bachelor's degree, Cum Laude, in theology from Boston College in 1989, where he was nominated to the Jesuit Honor Society, Alpha Sigma Nu. While at Boston College he often wrote articles in the student papers in defense of the Catholic Faith. During the 1989-90 school year he and a friend took over the conservative campus newspaper, The Observer of Boston College, and transformed it into an orthodox Roman Catholic student newspaper that received national acclaim. This brought him to the attention of officials at Franciscan University of Steubenville who offered him The University's Disciples of Christ Scholarship for a master’s degree in theology, which he earned in 1993. In 1996 John received the Alumni Citizenship Award from Franciscan University in recognition of his contributions to civic life.

From 1994 to 1997 he served as Director of Communications for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and editor of the archdiocesan newspaper the Sooner Catholic. Under John’s watch the paper won 11 journalism awards during his three-year tenure (1994-97) despite his never having run a diocesan paper before. This included 1st Place in the Archbishop Edward T. O'Meara Award, of 1994 from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith; in the category: Interviews With Missionaries, for his Sooner Catholic piece, An Interview with Fr. Tom McSherry. Fr. McSherry took the place of Blessed Stanley Rother as missionary in the mountains of Guatemala to the Oklahoma mission of Santiago Atitlan. Fr. Rother was deemed a true martyr by the Church after his murder, and was beatified in 2018.

In 1997 John received a Certificate of Commendation from the American Psychiatric Association’s Robert T. Morse Writer's Award for his Sooner Catholic Editorial of July 13, 1997, “Father Edward Moras, 1953-1997, R.I.P." on the suicide of a visiting priest suffering from depression.

After that he served as an editorial consultant and a columnist for The Daily Oklahoman and later as a speech writer and communications director for then-Lieutenant Governor (now former Governor) Mary Fallin of Oklahoma and attended the 2002 U.S. Bishops' meeting in Dallas at the invitation of, and as a consultant on Catholic issues to then-Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating.

From 1997 to 2007 he was Contributing Editor for Inside the Vatican magazine, where he had a monthly column, Status Ecclesiae. His work has also appeared in The Washington Times, OpinionJournal.com, The National Review Online, Worldnet Daily, The Boston Globe, Catholic World Report, AD 2000 (Australia), The National Catholic Register, Crisis, The Boston Pilot, Catholic Online, The Fact Is.org, Messenger of St. Anthony, (Padua, Italy), Columbia magazine, This Rock, Hearth (now Canticle), and The New Oxford Review. His articles have been translated into German, French and Spanish.

His book contributions include Spiritual Journeys: Towards the Fullness of Faith; The Madison Center Common Sense Guide to American Colleges 1991-1992; Operation Rescue: A Challenge to the Nation's Conscience, by Philip Lawler; Their Faith has Touched Us: The Legacies of Three Young Oklahoma City Bombing Victims, by Maria Ruiz Scaperlanda.

He has also been a free-lance writer, and did public relations for Human Life International from March 2006 to December 2008.

Now retired, he enjoys organizing his 38 years of writing and building a website to archive his work. He lives in Oklahoma where he continues to write.

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