Overview. Stephen Augustine1 is an American raised in Indiana and Michigan, and who has lived mostly in the Eastern USA since then.
He first became involved in G.K. Chesterton groups about 1997: attending lectures, discussions, performances, and conferences. He, and his wife, started a local group in 2013 which successfully ran for 4 years until health problems (now much improved) required turning it over to others (although they remain active in a local Chesterton group).
In the meantime, after finding connections between Chesterton and Dudley, he started reading Fr. Dudley in 2012. Unable to find any biography, organization, or experts on Fr. Dudley, he started researching, and first gave presentations to local Chesterton groups comparing and contrasting the two authors. (See the Research page for a summary of the ongoing research.)
A Facebook page for Owen Francis Dudley had been established by a wonderful, but busy, Catholic in 2011. In 2015, Stephen offered to help with it, and later in the year that Facebook editor assisted in initially setting up this page–and additional help has been provided by Stephen’s family and others. However, Stephen is solely responsible for the editorial content of this website.
Religious background. Like Fr. Dudley, Stephen is a convert. He was raised Methodist, but did not see the theology that he had been taught in Scripture. After a period of being an agnostic/atheist, he found his way to the Catholic Church where he has been studying the faith for some 30 years. His conversion story will be included later.
Professional background. After 4 years in the U.S. Army, Stephen obtained an AS in Law Enforcement and a BA in Legal Studies. (He has also done some graduate work in theology and adult education.) He worked 5 years in law enforcement before transitioning to Human Resources (Personnel).
Although some of this Human Resources work was done in Federal Law Enforcement agencies, he primarily worked at an independent Federal agency that was a military retirement home–retiring as the Director of Human Resources.
Most of his Human Resources work was in the area of Employee Relations, Labor Relations, and Training. The implications of this will be discussed later when discussing current topics (Fr. Dudley Today).