USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 11
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Accordingly, I will make no arrangements for the establishment of a
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college in Maine, and will think no longer of introducing the Society into the northeastern British provinces.
Then, Bapst was told that one priest would probably be recalled from Maine. This brought a strong letter from Bapst in which he listed reason after reason why this should not be done. Two priests could not do the work; if three priests can not be spared, better to close the mission; but that was incon- ceivable, for we cannot abandon nine thousand souls until the diocese was sufficiently able to take care of them. Bapst was now drafting arguments to save the mission instead of plans for a college. He succeeded in establishing his position only to learn that his Superior planned to replace the band with three new men. This called for more letters and reasons against such a move. An entirely new personnel would do harm to the work already accomplished and would in all probability put an end to the building program. Do not imagine, he told Father Aschwanden, "that our Irish congregations are ready to give their confidence to the first priest that comes along." The new men, too, would probably be "foreigners," unable to speak English, and this would dim the prospects of conversions among the Protestants and undermine the good will already won. He was convinced that a complete change of personnel: would bring about the ruin of the mission and the foundation of the high hopes which four years of untold fatigue and incredible sacri- fices had inspired.
He would, however, abide by the decision made.
The reasons were sound ones and were partially effective. Bapst remained, his two companions were changed. Father Levy Vigilante replaced DeNeckere1 in August, and Father Basil Pacciarini, whose family name has been roughly mis- handled in parish histories, succeeded Force. This second change was made by the new Provincial, Father Stonestreet, some time in September and was unavoidable. Bapst felt much better when he heard of the appointment of the new Provincial: "I feel a comfort that I have not felt since the death of Rev.
1 DeNeckere became a prominent educator and preacher. After his recall from Maine he was first appointed Vice-President of Gonzaga College, Washington, D. C. and then the President (1854-1857) of this college. His appointment as President of St. John's (Ford- ham) College followed his years at Gonzaga.
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Fr. Brocard." He was glad that he was not going to be re- moved. But, as he feared, his two new companions were "foreigners" and spoke broken English. Since he was "the worst of all," they were at a great disadvantage. Bapst was aware of the rising tide of nativism and the stress on Americanism. He wanted an American Jesuit on the band.
In the letters provoked by the threat to the future success of the mission Bapst described in detail the work of the mission- aries. He had urged Father Aschwanden to visit Maine and see for himself, and when this could not be arranged he did his best to post him on their work. A glance at their schedule will quiet anyone who questions his right to refer to untold fatigue and incredible sacrifices. There were thirty-three stations on the circuit and each was visited six times each year. Only a few days, a week at most, was spent at each town, and these days were spent in hearing confessions, offering Mass, and distribut- ing Communion, baptizing, blessing and rectifying marriages, instructing both children and adults, (there was a "most lamentable ignorance" among the latter) and examining the condition and progress of the Sunday schools, the temperance societies and sodalities that had been established.
The journey from one town to another was tiresome. He listed the major towns visited in a letter to Father Stonestreet, suggesting that a map of Maine would help. In the Eastport area there were Louis Island, Calais, Robinston, Pembroke, Pleasant Point, Lubec, Trescott, and Machias; along or near the Penobscot there were Cherryfield, Benedicta, Old Town, Frankfort, Bucksport, Belfast, Rockland, Thomaston, and Ells- worth; on the Kennebec, Waterville and Skowhegan. To cover all these towns and the stations near them from Eastport was more than three men could do; six visits a year was the most that could be managed, and one could not expect parish life to advance as long as the Catholics saw a priest every other month. Bishop Fitzpatrick suggested another center or head- quarters, one nearer the Penobscot, and he thought Ellsworth would be the best location. Ellsworth was not the best location.
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Both the bishop and Bapst knew Bangor was, and so did Father O'Sullivan, pastor of St. Michael's in Bangor. Two centers, of course, would mean another man on the mission, for one could not expect one of them to live alone either in Eastport or Ells- worth. So on September 12, 1852, a few months after Bapst feared the worst, even the end, of the Maine mission, he was asking Father Stonestreet for a fourth Jesuit, one who was a master of English and a good preacher, an American Jesuit.
He was not denied. Father Kenneth A. Kennedy, professor of mathematics and the natural sciences at Holy Cross, joined Bapst in Eastport in the fall of 1852. He was a New Yorker, had taught at Holy Cross as a scholastic in 1844, and after ordination returned to the college. He had a natural bent for physical sciences and was appointed, as a contemporary phrased it, "to the chair of mathematics and the natural sci- ences." The fire on the Fourth of July that nearly destroyed the college building and forced suspension of classes for a year, had released him from class work. "He, then, by direction of his Superior, cheerfully hastened to the laborious missions of Maine, where he was employed until his death." This is not quite correct, as we shall see, for his missionary work was briefly interrupted. And he may not have hastened as cheer- fully as claimed, but Bapst was cheered when he saw this young (he was only thirty-four) and healthy American arrive at Eastport. Early in December he expressed his gratitude in a letter to Father Stonestreet: "with God's help," he wrote, "we shall be able to do something for God's glory in the State of Maine."
4. BAPST AT ELLSWORTH
Early in January 1853 the new Ellsworth center for the stations on the Penobscot and Kennebec was opened by Bapst. He remained there until June 1854, when the growing excite- ment in this town prompted his transfer to Bangor. Affairs
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had proceeded smoothly in Ellsworth during the winter and spring of 1853. Bapst had started a series of lectures that had attracted a number of Protestants and had resulted in some conversions. By August of this year there had been one more change in the personnel; Father Vigilante had been recalled and Father Moore had returned. Yet a cloud of uncertainty about the future of the Maine mission had gathered by the summer of this year.1
The diocese of Portland had been established by Pius IX on July 29, 1853. Would the new bishop agree to include Bangor in the Jesuit missions? Father Stonestreet, the Provincial, was now convinced that a city parish was needed to stabilize the work in the many small and poor missions. Bapst concurred in this view. The answer was delayed when the bishop-elect, the Very Reverend Henry B. Coskery, Vicar-General of Baltimore, declined the office. Bishop Fitzpatrick was reluctant to commit the first bishop of the diocese to a situation that might not be to his liking. The future of the missions remained uncertain even after Fitzpatrick appointed Bapst pastor of the Bangor parish in June, 1854. The situation in Ellsworth dictated the appointment.
A tense situation had developed in Ellsworth and in an effort to ease the tension Bapst was transferred to Bangor and ap- pointed pastor of St. Michael's. The tension, unfortunately, was not broken until Bapst, on the night of Saturday, October 14, was physically assaulted, verbally abused, and tarred and feathered. Maine, New England, the United States were shocked by the ghastly news. Thereafter, wherever Bapst went his fame had preceded him; indeed, the unfortunate episode has overshadowed the great work done by the Jesuits in Maine, for it is the one episode in the eleven years that has been clearly remembered. A confluence of factors produced the disgraceful
1 There were frequent changes in the personnel during 1853 and 1854. Both Moore and Kennedy were appointed to collect money for the rebuilding of Holy Cross and were fre- quently absent from the missions. Father John McGuigan and Father James Cotting replaced them during September and October, 1853. In the summer of 1854 Father Joseph Bixio was recalled on the score of poor health, and he was replaced by Father Eugene Vetromile. Bapst protested that these frequent changes did much harm, but he knew that they were not arbitrary changes.
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event and some of them have not been granted the recognition they deserve.
Ellsworth on the Union River was a bustling ship-building town of three thousand when Father Bapst made it his resi- dence in 1853. Five ships, brigs, or schooners had been built there in 1852 and on one day, May 28, there were over sixty vessels tied up at its wharves. We have been told that Ells- worth had been particularly fortunate in the class of men who had founded and developed the town, a fine blend of British blood and Puritan mind. The strain had been somewhat weak- ened by the mid-nineteenth century judging by the deport- ment of not a few during the years 1853 and 1854, and the deterioration was not entirely due to the recent influx of Irish into the town. The Catholics had acquired a small building and used it for a church, but Bapst and his companions had started the construction of a new church. It was still under construction when Bapst arrived and was completed near the end of 1853.
We have not given the reader any description of Father Bapst and this might be the proper place to recall some im- pressions of his contemporaries. He was small of stature and physically frail. During the winter and spring of 1854 he was not well at all; Father Moore wrote in February that his health was "rather delicate," and Bapst himself tells us why, - a three months cold that settled in his lungs. He had a singularly handsome and attractive face, we are told by one who knew him well. The surviving pictures of him support this descrip- tion; one sees the face of an intelligent and sensitive mind with a touch of sternness.1 He had a winning personality, and we know enough about his success with both Catholics and Prot- estants to realize that this must have been so. Yet he was blunt and outspoken in his letters and probably so in his speech. His poor English no doubt accentuated this mannerism for one of Bapst's converts has noted that his smile took the harsh edge
1 John Gilmary Shea acquainted Americans with Bapst by using a good likeness of the missionary as the frontispiece of his volume Catholic Missions Among the Indian Tribes of the United States (New York, 1857). Shea, however, varied the frontispiece.
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off his odd, broken English. His manner was grave, almost too grave some thought, but one soon discovered that he could be genial "beyond most men." He was not short of courage; that was known by his friends and the Catholics of the Maine mission before the Ellsworth affair and was recognized by most Americans afterwards. He would not be frightened.
He had been in Maine over four years before moving to Ellsworth, and it is well to remember that he had not had any serious difficulties with Protestants. Indeed, he got along well with them, despite his handicaps. He was well aware of those handicaps: he was a foreigner at a time when the prejudice against them was acute; he spoke an "odd, broken English;" he was a Jesuit, a word that probably had more connotations in the American mind than any other word. Yet his contacts with Protestants were cordial. A year and a half after his arrival in Maine he told a friend:
I can honestly assert that since my arrival in these regions, I have been treated with the greatest respect by the Protestants, although every one knows that I am a Catholic Priest and even a Jesuit.
His friendly relations with the citizens of Waterville and Skow- hegan, already mentioned, are examples of this respect. They respected the good work the man was doing, and wherever he went this was acknowledged. The Bangor Mercury, comment- ing on the Ellsworth affair, observed: "Since he has been here he has done much good among the Catholic population, and has brought about many useful reforms, winning commenda- tions on all hands."
He was impressed by the freedom of America, and this, coupled with the good will of the Yankees, convinced him that there was a great field for conversions in Maine.
The United States is the freest country in the world. You believe yourselves free in France and in Belgium; but be assured that you possess but the shadow of liberty which we enjoy in America.
And he translated this freedom into specific actions: one can establish schools without prior approval and can preach Cath- olic doctrine to a Protestant audience in most of the towns without interruptions. To underscore the prevailing freedom
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in Maine he mentioned a Protestant lecturer who praised the Jesuits before a Bangor audience and was applauded. But to take full advantage of this good disposition of the Protestants and the freedom of the nation, missionaries with a talent for preaching and a mastery of English must be assigned to Maine. For, he told his Superior, Maine:
is a state almost exclusively Protestant; but the Protestants, taken as a whole, are well disposed towards the Catholic religion; yet, to effect any good among them, it is important that the missionaries should be possessed of solid learning and no small degree of elo- quence.
He realized, too, that one had to be cautious and prudent. "A Catholic priest in this country is apt to have some differences with the civil authorities who are all Protestants." Bapst obvi- ously did not expect trouble in Ellsworth when he made the town his headquarters early in 1853. What happened, then, during the following months that aroused a maddened mob to attack him?
Bapst was a familiar person in Ellsworth before residing there. Father Moore and he had cared for the Catholics of this town since the start of the Maine mission, and since Bapst concentrated on the Indians during the early weeks at Indian Island Moore would be the first to attend Ellsworth. If the Catholics of any Maine town should have their first resident priest grimly fixed in their memories, it should be the Catholics and succeeding pastors of Ellsworth. Hence, one is confounded to read in a parish history, written within the memory of wit- nesses of Bapst's arrival in Ellsworth, that Father Moore "was the first pastor who fixed his residence there," remaining about six years. Moore would smile on reading that he remained six years in any Maine town. Besides, he was not in Maine when Ellsworth became the new center of the missions.
The growth of the Catholic population of the town, requiring a new church, followed by a resident priest no doubt displeased and disturbed some native Americans. Shortly after his arrival Bapst started a series of Sunday afternoon talks on Catholic doctrine. This was a common practice of their missionary work
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and they were open to all interested parties. Since lectures were the substance of entertainment at this time, especially in the winter seasons, they attracted Protestants. But the ex- planation of the Catholic doctrine was offered to the Catholic primarily; Bapst had discovered a "most lamentable ignorance" of the faith among many Catholics of the missions. The Ells- worth talks led to the conversion of some Protestants, among them twelve young ladies. Mary Agnes Tincker was one of them. She became a popular novelist and her first book, a his- torical romance called The House of Yorke was, like many first novels, partially autobiographical and centered around the Ellsworth affair. The book is one of the best sources on Bapst's experiences in Ellsworth, and the most neglected.
According to Mary Hennessy, Bapst's housekeeper and an- other important witness of these events, these conversions, especially the conversion of the young ladies, were a major cause of the excitement in Ellsworth. Bapst became a perverter of youth. One can easily understand the feelings of the devout and sincere Protestants on learning that some of their friends, young and old, had embraced "idolatry" and were "worshiping in Babylon." But the young ladies were not, as far as we know, teen-agers captivated by a pulpit Cicero. We know only one of the young ladies converted, but if all were like Mary Agnes Tincker they knew what they were doing when they professed the Catholic religion. She was twenty years old, and since she was sufficiently educated and mature enough to be a public school teacher, we can assume she was sufficiently qualified to make an important decision affecting her conscience and re- ligious life. The converts soon discovered, if they had not in advance realized it, that being a Catholic in Ellsworth was not a lark. Writing February 10, 1854, Bapst reported that he, the Church, and the Catholics had become the object of slanders and abuses and that the converts bore the brunt of them. The campaign was aimed "chiefly against the Converts," he wrote. No doubt the success of Bapst from the pulpit or lectern con- tributed to the strained relations between the priest and some
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of the native Americans, but Bapst had made converts previ- ously in his missionary work without any violence resulting. The conversions alone will not account for the outrage.
The Ellsworth affair was, as all are aware, an act of violence sired by the Know-Nothing movement of the 1850's. Elsewhere in New England these acts of violence ended with the destruc- tion of property, including the Catholic church if there was one, as happened in Manchester, New Hampshire, on July 4, 1854, and in nearby Bath two days later. In Ellsworth the violence proceeded beyond destruction of property (both the old and the new church were destroyed) to an attack on a priest that narrowly escaped murder. Three local factors made the difference: the school question whereby the Catholics chal- lenged the policy of the school committee; an abusive anti- Catholic newspaper, the Ellsworth Herald; Father Bapst, a priest and a foreigner.
The school question, a perennial problem in this country, was the explosive issue. It probably would have been peace- ably settled in Ellsworth, as it was in fact peaceably settled in Bangor, had not the editor of the Herald aroused the fears and prejudices of the native Americans against Catholics and Bapst to such a pitch that the leadership of the saner element was neutralized until the mob mentality controlled the course of events. Father Bapst must be included among the decisive factors. He is charged by some with provoking the explosion. This is correct in the sense that had he not become the spokes- man for the inarticulate Catholic minority the school question would not have been raised. Without a leader, the inarticulate Catholics of Ellsworth would never have challenged the policy of the powerful school committee of a Maine town. They would have confined their complaints to the privacy of the kitchen table, as Catholics were doing in many other New Eng- land towns. In the sense that Bapst challenged and urged the Catholics committed to his care to challenge an unfair school policy, in as much as he was a foreigner who spoke broken
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English, and in as much as his preaching attracted some Pro- testants to the Catholic religion, Bapst provoked the affair.
Father Bapst was tarred and feathered Saturday night, Oc- tober 14, 1854. That was about a year after the school issue had first been raised in Ellsworth. As was common in other public schools in New England, all children were required to read the Bible as part of their instruction. The Protestant version naturally was used without objection since the townfolk were Protestant. But immigration was changing that situation; the children of the Catholic immigrants were attending the public schools. Naturally, the Catholic parents did not care for the policy; nor did Father Bapst.
The Catholic school children of Ellsworth asked to be allowed to read the Catholic version of the Bible or to be excused from reading. Their request was not granted. Father Bapst presented the case of the Catholic parents and children to the school committee but without success. The Catholic parents, about a hundred of them, presented a petition to the committee with the same result. The school committee insisted that all school children read the same version of the Bible or withdraw from school. Then Father Bapst converted the old chapel into a school for the Catholic children, and Lawrence Donahoe, one of the Catholic parents, challenged the policy of the school committee in the courts. In April 1854 Donahoe sought financial compensation from the committee for the private instruction of his child. The case was heard before Maine's Supreme Court in Bangor on July 22, with James S. Rowe representing Donahoe, and Richard H. Dana, one of Boston's best legal minds, defending the Ellsworth school com- mittee. One can see how this series of actions kept Ellsworth in a state of tension; one can easily understand why violence was brewing by reading a few issues of the Ellsworth Herald.
The school committee and Bapst debated the issue in the newspapers before the Supreme Court heard the case.1 The
1 The reader will find a print of the stately court house as it appeared when the case was argued in Old New England (New York, 1946), p. 31, by Barrows Mussey.
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position of the committee will be found in the December 24, 1853 issue of the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier. The mem- bers wanted to correct some of the statements made by Bapst in other journals. The committee had not introduced an innovation; the reading of the Bible was a common practice in Ellsworth's schools and elsewhere and had been accepted without protests prior to Bapst's arrival; the Catholic pupils had been disorderly in class and destructive of school prop- erty; the committee had refused both Bapst's plea and the parents' petition ("a large majority of whom, it is understood, can neither read nor write") on the score of their reluctance to introduce "differences among pupils." Bapst was charged with full responsibility for the situation. His word was final; the Catholic parents had no voice in the affair and what they thought "was of no consequences - his opinion was theirs ... "
All was undisturbed harmony on this subject, until the Rev. Mr. Bapst, a Catholic priest, of the order of Jesuits, came among us. He is a foreigner by birth, by education, and allegiance.
In all fairness the Whig and Courier printed Bapst's reply on January 5. The Ellsworth Herald did, too, on January 20 so that the editor could comment on his statement. Bapst found the committee's letter correct on some points, faulty on others. The committee had admitted that the Catholic pupils had been forced to read the Protestant version of the Bible but had neglected to add that those who refused were expelled. No Catholic child had been expelled for misbehavior; teachers and at least one member of the committee had freely admitted "the Catholic children were among the best scholars; their be- havior as good as the others." Neither Bapst nor the Catholic parents wanted the Bible excluded from the schools; he had never asked for public funds for the Catholic school. Then Bapst briefly posed the problem.
Has the School Committee the constitutional power to force on the Catholic children the reading of a version of the Bible, which is for- bidden by their Church and their conscience, and in case of refusal, to dismiss them, for that reason alone? If the Committee has such a power under the constitution, then the Committee is right, and the Catholics are wrong. But if the Committee has no such power, then
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the Catholics are right, and the Committee is answerable for the whole agitation. But the question has not yet been decided by a competent tribunal. Therefore, let us wait.
One suspects that James S. Rowe had a hand in preparing this letter. If not Rowe, then someone carefully edited it for Bapst. He had a good mind and may have mastered the American constitutional law at this stage, but his letters show that he was unable to phrase the issue so deftly.
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