Born in Philadelphia, Kevin Madigan was one of seven children born in a traditionally Catholic family to James F. and Margaret Madigan. A twin, Madigan was the sixth of seven children. Madigan’s father and mother met in New York City. After his father earned his B.S. and M.S. in Engineering from Columbia, and his mother her bachelor’s in accounting from Hunter College, they moved to Pennsylvania to begin a family and their careers. Even by the standards of the day, Madigan’s family life revolved to an extraordinary degree around the seasons, feast days, holy days and of course ordinary days of Sunday worship at Mass. Madigan’s father was deeply devout. In addition to the normal Catholic regimen of observance, his father would have the family say nightly a decade of the rosary with him; he then would finish the four remaining decades in private, intense prayer. House blessings were common, as were observances on “first Fridays” and “first Saturdays.” Meals began with long blessings and extremely lengthy invocations of saints. Truly, Kevin and all his siblings grew up under a sacred canopy. From a young age, Kevin absorbed much of the Catholic piety his father intended, with great seriousness, to communicate to him. The future historian of Catholicism was as serious about his religious commitments as was his father. Even as a very young boy, he would come home from Sunday mass, pondering with profound fear the possibility that he might be destined for perdition. It was a fear that was reinforced in parochial school, which he began at aged six.