A Quadruplet of Twins

Of the four Midwest Jesuits professing first vows in St. Paul, Minn., on Aug. 10, three are twins and one has twin siblings.

Thomas Hellenbrand, SJ, has twin siblings who live together. John “Jack” Rosenwinkel, SJ, has a fraternal twin brother; Charles Bulger, SJ, has a fraternal twin brother; and Jonathan Jue-Wong, SJ, has a twin sister.

“My twin and I have long been animated by the desire to serve others,” says Jonathan Jue-Wong, whose twin Heather is a program management officer at the World Health Organization. “We both live in the giftedness of all the Lord has given us and from that position are striving to build God’s kingdom of justice and mercy—she with her work against health inequities and responding to refugee crises, and me as a companion of Jesus.”

They consider themselves foodies who also love the arts and traveling, but their personalities could hardly be more different. Heather is the life of the party, Jonathan says, and he is more introverted.

“Psalm 139 reminds us that God knits each of us in our mothers’ wombs,” he says. “When it came to my mom, God decided to knit two at once! And what an incredible gift that has been. Being Heather’s twin brother has offered me decades of practice in asking for forgiveness and pursuing reconciliation, which are fundamental practices in the Christian life.”

Jack Rosenwinkel says he and his fraternal twin brother Brian are “terrifyingly similar” in some ways but definitely not all. While Jack studied English at a small Catholic college in Massachusetts, Brian studied dramatic writing in New York City and works for the TV show Only Murders in the Building.

“I wasn’t exactly tactful or gentle when I first started discerning, and my brother, like a lot of people, really struggles with the Church,” Jack says. “It’s hard, because when the person with whom you’ve shared everything—birthdays, bedrooms, even a face—does something that’s radically different from, or apparently at odds with, the most important thing in your life, it can be hurtful. Lately things have been a lot easier. We’ve both grown up a lot, and we’ve come to see that there are parallels between our lives. We also realize that we make each other better at what we do. At least, he makes me better—I hope I do the same for him!”

Being the writers in the family—their parents and sister are engineers—perhaps a collaboration will materialize. “My brother has written some awesome stuff as a way of working out his own sense of the Church, his faith and my vocation,” Jack says. “I would love for a chance to work with him creatively in a way that’s cathartic and evangelical.”

The Bulger brothers, Charles and Tommy, are fraternal twins who could pass for identical. They grew up playing in bagpipe bands and orchestras, and early in school they loved the humanities. Charles stayed on that path while Tommy veered toward Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) learning. He now works as an accountant/ auditor for EY (formerly Ernst & Young).

“I felt called to be a priest and called to something other than a nine-to-five job,” Charles says. “In high school, Tommy somehow found out about forensic accounting. He liked the idea of tracking down fraud in people’s financials, so he pursued it. I was a little more idealistic and never really put thought to what would make me money. I was more concerned about what I thought God wanted from me, and what I thought would make me happy.”

This is not the first time the Bulgers have been featured for being twins. “We were in a local newspaper in elementary school because our school had something like 10 sets of twins in it,” Charles says.