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Looking to the past |
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By Julie Carroll
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Thursday, 04 June 2009 |
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Page 1 of 2 This year, 12 archdiocesan parishes are celebrating 150-, 125- and 100-year anniversaries. The Catholic Spirit commemorates their legacy, and that of the whole archdiocese, through highlighting intriguing historical facts from these parishes and featuring an interview with archdiocesan historian Father Marvin O’Connell.
Father Marvin O’Connell, a priest of the archdiocese and a historian, holds his newest book, “Pilgrims to the Northland: The Archdiocese of St. Paul, 1840-1962.” - Photo by Dave Hrbacek / The Catholic Spirit
Father Marvin O’Connell, professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame and a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, recently sat down with a Catholic Spirit reporter to discuss his new book, “Pilgrims to the Northland: The Archdiocese of St. Paul, 1840-1962.”
In the book, Father O’Connell tells the history of the Archdiocese of
St. Paul, emphasizing the social, economic and political context in
which the Catholic Church in Minnesota evolved. It begins with the
labors and accomplishments of the French priests who arrived during the
first half of the 19th century and continues through the death of
Archbishop William Brady in 1961.
Father O’Connell is a Minneapolis native who taught at the University
of St. Thomas in St. Paul from 1958 to 1972. He resides in Mishawaka,
Ind.
The following are excerpts from the interview.
Q Is there something about our archdiocesan history that makes it unique?
A One thing that probably makes this diocese unique is the towering
figure of [Archbishop] John Ireland, who was no doubt, along with
Cardinal [James] Gibbons [from the Archdiocese of Baltimore], in the
19th century the overwhelmingly important figure as the American church
started trying to get out of its adolescence into maturity.
But there are others, too: [Father] John A. Ryan and [Father] Paul Bussard, the founder of Catholic Digest.
The whole liturgical movement was very powerful here. Paul Bussard,
before he became famous as the editor of the Catholic Digest, . . . had
been one of the early liturgical reformers, emphasizing the doctrine of
the Mystical Body, and, therefore, following from that that worship has
to involve everybody, not just the priest, and that kind of social
approach to the sacramental life.
Q Why do you think it’s important for Catholics to know their history?
A I’d answer that in a more general sort of way that it’s important for
any civilized group or civilized individual to know their history. You
can’t really understand yourself or your culture or a political
situation if you don’t understand how it developed.
If I had a criticism of the students that I’ve taught in recent years,
it would be that, and this sounds very harsh, but it seems as though
they think it all started with their generation. They could avoid a lot
of mistakes if they recognized that there were other people who
experienced not the same thing — because every human act is unique,
nobody is ever going to be the same as you or me — but there are
similarities and you can learn from them.
Q What’s something that we can learn from our history that we could apply today?
A Parochial structure. I’m thinking of Highland Park, where I used to
do my weekend work when I was here at St. Therese parish, now St.
Andrew Kim, a Korean parish. There were three parishes there in
Highland — St. Gregory’s, St. Leo’s and St. Therese. Now there’s one,
Lumen Christi.
Part of that, clearly, is because there’s a priest shortage. But, it’s
also true that people don’t have to walk [to church] anymore. The
mobility that has become so much a part of our lives is bound to affect
the way in which we approach the parochial structure.
Just to look back and say: “Gee whiz, there used to be three parishes
here in Highland Park. Now there’s only one. We should go into
mourning.” Well, no, not at all. The world is a different place than it
was 100 years ago.
Q Why did you end the book at 1962?
A This is the moment that the Second Vatican Council begins.
And, secondly, it also coincides with the death of Archbishop Brady, whom I call in there the last Counter-Reformation bishop.
By Counter-Reformation, I mean the kind of Catholic culture that
prevailed — basically, a heavily clerical culture, the sort of “priest
knows best” philosophy.
Q How did you conduct your research for the book?
A I was up at [The Catholic Spirit offices] a lot. But by far I spent
the most time in the archives in the basement of the chancery.
This is my 10th book, so I’ve been doing this for a long time. One gets
into a pattern, and one has to have a certain structural understanding.
Historians always start with chronology. I had done the [Archbishop]
Ireland book [“John Ireland and the American Catholic Church”] already.
I had also written my master’s [thesis] on Archbishop [Austin] Dowling.
So I knew the lay of the land.
There’s a little section in [“Pilgrims to the Northland”] in which I’m
trying to describe how Catholics, say right around or toward the end of
the first World War, related to their community in an economic fashion.
What I mean is, how did they spend their money?
So I went through a whole bunch of the Catholic Bulletins [The Catholic
Spirit’s predecessor] of those dates and looked at who was advertising
. . . and how much things cost. I don’t think you can write any kind of
history if you don’t take into account the economy because it makes
all the difference in the world.
I don’t mean to say that one’s religion or one’s faith as a Catholic is
in any way dependent upon that, but it does shape the way in which they
approach everything.
So I tried to get in there some economic and some political stuff in
order to make the point that Catholics didn’t live in a vacuum; they
were part of a community, and some of it was Catholic, some of it
wasn’t.
Q What was the most difficult part for you in writing “Pilgrims to the Northland”?
A I had never written an institutional history before, and an
institutional history requires dealing with different phenomena within
the larger community. For example, the founding of parishes. I found
that very difficult.
I worked on the book for four years. I have to confess that I found the
institutional side difficult enough that I would flee to reading novels
and then come back again.
I’m a great fan, for example, of Patrick O’Brian, his Stephen
Maturin/Jack Aubrey stories about the British navy around the time of
Napoleon. There are 18. I read all of those in the course of writing
this, sort of an escape. Nothing could be further removed from me than
British ships fighting the French in the English Channel in 1802.
Q What did you discover during your research that surprised you?
A There was one thing — although I was not surprised by it, I was
immensely edified by it — and that is the way in which the
congregations of religious women were really what held this diocese
together.
In 1925, Archbishop Dowling submitted his ad limina report to Rome, as
a bishop has to do every five years and in which he’s supposed to
describe for the Holy See the material and spiritual state of his
diocese. And in that document, he deals with the clergy and the laity.
But when he gets to the religious women, he says: Humanly speaking,
this diocese would not exist without the religious women because they
do so much and they do it so freely and so unselfishly.
So I spent a good deal of time with the Carondelet Josephites — not
because they were the only [order], but they were the most prominent
group and they were the largest because the local provincial here for
30 years was Archbishop Ireland’s sister, Ellen (or Mother Seraphine).
In religion, their influence was immense.
I also reached the conviction that, for a Catholic girl in the 19th
century, this was a way of expressing herself which was closed to other
women.
Women’s place was in the home, taking care of children, supporting the
husband. But if you were a Catholic girl, you could join the Josephites
or the Dominicans or any of these orders and you were free of male
direction.
Now, there are a lot of qualifications. Ultimately, the religious women
are doing the work of the church, which is directed by bishops and
pastors. And also, when they went to a religious order, they agreed to
other restrictions on themselves. But they could expect to get a better
education than even married women. They could expect to be doing some
very interesting things in education and in nursing and medicine.
Think of those Franciscan nuns down in Rochester who, right from the
beginning, were with the Mayo brothers in putting together the clinic
at St. Mary’s Hospital. What an exciting thing that must have been.
Catholic women could do that.
Q Based on what you know about the history of the archdiocese, what would you predict for the future?
A I don’t think I can do it in any specific way, but I must say I have
confidence that, as Julian of Norwich would say: “All will be well.
This too will pass.”
I think we are certainly now in a time of immense adjustment. I’m going
to celebrate my 53rd anniversary of ordination in a couple of days, and
in my class were 20 people. Then — that was back in 1956 — we thought,
“Well, gosh, we’re not able to service the parishes here.” And now, in
a day or two, they’re going to ordain three.
There are some desperate difficulties — difficulties which touch the
heart of everything, and that’s the sacramental ministry. There are
going to be a lot of parishes that are going to close and a lot of
people are going to have to accept some unfamiliar ways of approaching
their spirituality, and that’s very hard.
But we’re going to win. We always win in the end.
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