USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 18
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Before the Sisters of Mercy had established their second
1 The influence of the Sisters may also be seen in the increase of Catholic boys attending college and of vocations among them. The number of Maine and New Hampshire students at Holy Cross in 1876, the year Louis S. Walsh, fourth bishop of Portland enrolled, will illustrate the first point; there was only one Maine student (John J. Lynch of Portland), while there were eleven students from New Hampshire. Eight of the eleven were from Manchester; the other three were from Hinsdale, Great Falls, and Salmon Falls. From the latter town came David William Bingham, obviously named after Portland's first bishop. Natives of Manchester became prominent, too, such as Bishop Thomas J. Shahan, the well- known historian and Rector of Catholic University, who was born the year before the Sisters arrived in Manchester, and Dr. William H. Lyons, a graduate of Holy Cross and Harvard Medical School, who was born in 1866 and became one of New England's authorities on French literature.
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house in the diocese of Portland, in Bangor in 1865, Bishop Bacon had invited another group of Sisters to conduct the parochial schools of Portland: the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame. They opened an academy near the cathedral property in the fall of 1864, staffed the cathedral parish school, called St. Aloysius, and the next year took over the parish school of St. Dominic's. One naturally wonders why he invited a French-speaking group to conduct schools in parishes com- posed mainly of Irish Catholics, and why the Sisters of Mercy were not selected. The Sisters of Mercy were in a position to staff the schools; they had, in fact, with the consent of Bishop Bacon, established a house in Philadelphia in 1861 and another house in Omaha, Nebraska, two years later. Bacon may have been experimenting. The relations between the Irish and Canadian immigrants, despite the bonds of religion, were not friendly during the nineteenth century, and this may have been an attempt to bridge the differences among the first generation of these immigrants. If so, the experiment was over by 1873, when the Notre Dame Sisters were recalled to Canada and were replaced by the Sisters of Mercy.
Their academy, Notre Dame Academy, was a section of their convent on Cumberland Avenue and was fairly well attended. After two years they had sixty girls, and although classes were suspended by the fire in 1866, they had an enrollment of eighty late in 1867. These students paid for their education and hence were from families with some financial independence. The two parish schools were, of course, free. The cathedral school, located on Congress Street (now the corner of Congress and Sheridan) was a poor wooden building with four classrooms and a hall that was used as a chapel on Sundays to care for the overcrowded cathedral chapel. Opened in October 1864 this school, called St. Aloysius, was the first parochial school in Maine. There were two hundred and seventy pupils there in 1860 and by 1867 the number had increased to four hundred. The first classes at St. Dominic's were held in the church until a school was built the next year.
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The Notre Dame Sisters did not have time to develop a teaching tradition in Portland. Hardly had they overcome the obstacles of establishing a house and opening their schools in a strange city when the fire of 1866 destroyed their convent and schools on the cathedral property and they were forced to retire to Canada until the buildings were reconstructed. While they were away the bishop hired lay teachers to continue St. Dominic's school and, according to the 1868 Catholic Directory, this school was still in charge of "secular teachers" although the Sisters had returned to Portland in January of 1867. They now had to rebuild the foundation of a school system and it does seem as if they were quite successful. In 1868 they had eighty pupils at the Notre Dame Academy, an increase of twenty over the pre-fire number; at St. Aloysius they were teaching four hundred pupils, an increase of one hundred and thirty. Only at St. Dominic's was there a decrease of students; before the fire there were three hundred and eighty students, whereas in 1868, while the school was still in the hands of lay teachers, the number had declined to three hundred. Late in this year, or early in the next, the Notre Dame Sisters returned to St. Dominic's.
Rather suddenly, and to the chagrin of Bishop Bacon, the Notre Dame Sisters were recalled to Canada in the summer of 1873 and the bishop had to replace them within five or six weeks. As with decisions of this nature, the reasons behind the move are not fully known. In the bishop's letter of July 23, 1873 to Mother Warde asking her to send some Sisters of Mercy to conduct the Portland schools, we are given some indications. They fear, he wrote, that "their sun is setting." What they suspected was that the bishop intended eventually to replace them with the Sisters of Mercy. In 1869, shortly before he started for Rome to attend the Vatican Council, he had pur- chased from the city a piece of property adjoining the cathedral land. He planned to build a convent there, although his plans were changed by his successor and it became the site of the Kavanagh School. The Notre Dame Sisters must have won-
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dered who would occupy the new convent. Another reason for speculation came when Bishop Bacon invited the Sisters of Mercy to open an orphanage in Portland; the invitation was accepted and on May 31, 1873, three Sisters arrived from Man- chester to start the work. This was the first house of the Sisters of Mercy in Portland. We are told, however, that at this time "the bishop apparently did not intend making any change in the usual routine of his schools." This may not have been apparent to the Notre Dame Sisters.
The decision to recall the Notre Dame Sisters did not come as a complete surprise to Bacon. He had some inkling of it and, in a letter prior to that of July 23, had told Mother Warde he might be forced to call on her for help. He wanted English- speaking teachers in the Portland school and had asked the Superior of the Notre Dame Sisters to assign them to Portland. The desire for English-speaking teachers was supported by the parents of the students, and some had started to send their girls to St. Mary's Academy in Manchester. But this request could not easily be granted by a Canadian congregation, and both bishop and parents must have been aware of this.
The bishop was informed late in July that the Notre Dame Sisters would not be teaching in Portland in September. Bacon considered the decision the "uncourteous action of a woman too young to be superior of a large community." It could well be that the decision, made in Canada, was somewhat influenced by a decision of the bishop made a few years previously. When he was at Rome the Madawaskan problem had been solved and this section of Maine had finally been placed under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Portland. Bacon discovered that the Holy Cross Fathers had been given the parish of St. Bruno with the expectation that they would establish a college in that area. As soon as this parish came under Bacon's jurisdiction he informed the Holy Cross Fathers they would be replaced by diocesan priests as soon as possible. It must have been a decision that found little favor among Canadians and religious congregations and orders. It is regrettable the Notre Dame
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Sisters did not remain in the diocese working among the chil- dren of Irish immigrants, for they would have prevented the isolation that developed between the two Catholic national groups in Maine.
Mother Warde agreed to staff the Portland schools and sent twenty Sisters for the fall term. That she was able to do this on a short notice is clear testimony of the wonderful growth of the congregation in this country, and her decision saved the bishop from sending the children back to the public schools. He had told Mother Warde in his letter that if she were unable to help him he would be forced to "seek sisters elsewhere," but the prospects of obtaining them were slight. One gathers from the letter that they worked under the same agreement the bishop had made with the Notre Dame Sisters: each Sister in the parish schools received two hundred dollars annually, while the income from the academy, both from tuition and music lessons, went directly to the Sisters. The bishop figured they realized more than three thousand dollars from this source. They, in turn, had to furnish the convent and pay rent on it. He was "certain that they saved money every year." If so, they were frugal indeed.
The Portland house was the fourth founded by the Sisters of Mercy in the diocese and the third in Maine. Their pioneer house in Maine was in Bangor and their second was in North Whitefield, one of the oldest Catholic centers in the state. Bacon was slow to introduce the Sisters into Maine. And while he waited, other bishops begged Mother Warde to send them some Sisters. It was, it seems, pressure from the pastors in Bangor and Whitefield that moved him to invite Mother Warde to establish two houses in Maine and by then it was too late. In 1864, the year after the second group of Sisters had left to establish a branch outside the diocese, Father Gillen started to build a convent in Bangor; in Whitefield, Father Putnam's suc- cessor went ahead with plans for an academy. Evidently the two persuaded Bacon to invite the Sisters to their parishes, for in the 1865 Catholic Directory he announced that:
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A convent is being built in Bangor for religious ladies, who will have an academy, and who will take charge of the parochial schools in Bangor and in Whitefield.
This was followed up with a letter dated March 22, 1865 to Mother Warde. He now regretted that he consented to the two new foundations outside the diocese, but "I could not see it at that time," he explained, "that I would soon be prepared" to employ them. Now, he told her, two priests were pressing him "to let them know what can be done for them . . . Do you think you could divide your little community so as to take the Bangor Mission in May?" The parish schools, he added, num- ber about four hundred children and the prospects for a paying academy "were excellent." He wanted some Sisters for White- field, but not for a parish school as he had announced: "there I intend an asylum for orphan girls."
There were no Sisters available for North Whitefield and not until August did they go to Bangor. On August 4, Mother Warde accompanied the six Sisters assigned to open the first house for religious women in Maine. The route they took has not been described, but much has been made of the fact that the Sisters travelled disguised in lay dress to avoid any trouble. This is not quite correct. They travelled in their out-door dress which their Foundress had designed for travel in certain countries where the religious habit on the streets was not cus- tomary. It was the fashionable walking dress of elderly women of her day and was worn over the religious habit. It was their custom to wear it while travelling in New England, and this was the garb which attracted attention when the pioneer group made the trip from Providence to Manchester. It was no longer the fashionable attire of elderly women and actually attracted as much attention as the religious habit. There was no incident on the way to Bangor except that some travellers thought the Sisters were part of a funeral procession. In Bangor, where a warm welcome awaited them, they discovered they had arrived too early. The convent was not ready for them. They took temporary quarters in a poorly equipped house which they
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soon abandoned for the unfinished convent. Under the direc- tion of Mother Gonzaga O'Brien, their Superior and one of the Manchester pioneers, they were soon busy with the prob -. lems of opening schools.
In Bangor, as in Manchester, they conducted the parish schools, a day and boarding academy and a night school for the working girls. They discovered the parish school building was unfit for classes and moved to the basement of St. John's and there they remained for some years "in dark, dingy rooms under the church" until Father Edward McSweeney, one of Gillen's successors, acquired a fine piece of property with an adequate home on it for the parish school. Here we have a major reason for the tardy use of the Sisters in the parish schools. St. John's in Bangor, one of the best parishes in the state, was unable for years to provide a decent school building for the parish children. In view of the fact that in the late 1850's the Catholics were able, under the direction of Father Bapst, to build a magnificent church, this failure to provide a school building is difficult to explain. In the fall of 1865 the Sisters opened their paying academy in a section of their convent, and this from the start prospered. Bangor became a rich source of vocations to the religious life, - a fine tribute to the Sisters and the Catholics of the city. When the Sisters celebrated their golden jubilee in this city they could county twenty-five vocations among the girls they had taught.
Not until 1871 did the Sisters of Mercy open a convent and school in Whitefield, and here again we see the influence of a zealous pastor in bringing the Sisters to a parish and the difficulties that a Maine parish faced in realizing the project. Soon after the Sisters came to Manchester, Father Putnam wanted to bring them to St. Dennis' and he had the encourage- ment and aid of a generous benefactor, Winifred Kavanagh, in his plans. She donated land with a house and orchard and she gave financial aid for the convent. Father Putnam how- ever died September 8, 1863, some years before his dream
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was realized. His successor, Father Peterson, continued the work, and eventually the convent, a large brick house with a chapel, a large hall, school rooms and dormitories, was fin- ished. Whitefield had the best convent school building in the state. The Catholics of the parish were pleased to learn that one of the Sisters sent to open the academy was a descendant of the Kavanaghs: Josephine McConville, now Sister Mary Gertrude, a cousin of Winifred Kavanagh. This was a wise decision, and under the patronage of Winifred Kavanagh, who sent her two nieces there and persuaded her non-Catholic friends to send their daughters, the academy became a flour- ishing school, although its isolated location was not in its favor.
The work of the Sisters, however, found favor among the members of the local school board and the district school was entrusted to their care. This was and for years had been a strongly Catholic district and hence the attitude of many would be friendly to the Sisters, but the knowledge that Maine and New Hampshire school committees were willing to employ Catholic Sisters in the public schools in the 1860's and 1870's tells us how differently that generation understood the constitutional provision of the separation of church and state. Despite its happy start the academy was closed in 1875 and it became an orphanage. The Sisters were needed in Port- land. And they were moving to other dioceses as well. The Mother house in Manchester had sent one group to found a house in California during the year the Whitefield Academy was opened, and during the following year another house in New Jersey was established. This steady spread of the Sisters over the United States, and not lack of vocations, kept the ranks of the Sisters of Mercy in the Portland diocese thin.
When Bishop Bacon died, the Sisters of Mercy had only four houses (Manchester, Bangor, Whitefield and Portland) in the diocese. This was not, of course, the full extent of the parish school system. He encouraged the pastors to establish schools and by 1874, the year of his death, there were twenty free parish schools in Maine and New Hampshire. We cannot
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locate all of them, but some have already been mentioned in the sketch of Father Daniel W. Murphy, the school builder. In rapid succession in the 1860's, as he was transferred from parish to parish, he had started schools in Houlton, Bath, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
Bishop and pastors had to depend on lay teachers to conduct the vast majority of the parish schools and in most cases the schools were held somewhere in the parish church. It is a matter of regret that these pioneer Catholic lay teachers in the diocese have been forgotten. The name of only one has survived with any honors: Thomas Corcoran who taught the older boys of St. Ann's parish at the Park Street School in Man- chester for thirty-two years. One of his pupils, James A. Brod- erick, a grandson of a Benedicta pioneer, became a prominent lawyer of the city and the managing editor of the Guidon, New Hampshire's first Catholic magazine. As a tribute to their work a school dedicated to the dean of these lay teachers would be a fitting and deserved memorial. For the educational founda- tions they laid permitted Bishop Bacon's successor, James A. Healy, and Bishop Bradley of Manchester to develop the diocesan school system during the last quarter of the nine- teenth century.
The increase in schools under the direction of the Sisters of Mercy during these years was noteworthy. In New Hampshire there were nine: Laconia (1881), Dover (1883), Nashua (1885), Keene (1886), Portsmouth (1887), Concord (1888), Rochester (1890), Franklin (1894), Claremont (1896). In Maine there were seven: St. Dominic's in Portland (1877), three schools for the Indians at Oldtown (1878), Pleasant Point (1879) and Dana's Point (1879), St. Joseph's Academy in Deering (1881), Calais (1885), St. Mary's in Bangor (1898). In Portland, too, they had a fine new school on the cathedral property due to a generous gift of Winifred Kavanagh and called, to remind Maine Catholics of the contributions to the growth of the faith in Maine by this remarkable family, the Kavanagh School.
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5. THE LAST YEARS OF BISHOP BACON
Soon after the dedication of the cathedral, Bacon made . preparations for an important journey. Along with all the other bishops of the world, he had been called to Rome by Pius IX to attend the Vatican Council, scheduled to open December 8, 1869. He booked passage on the Cimbria for November 9, giving himself little time for any leisurely travel through Europe. This delay did give him a few more weeks in the diocese and he may have been aware that he did not have many years to live. Although only a few close friends were aware of it, he was not a healthy man. For years now, ever since his days as a pastor in Brooklyn, he had been suffer- ing from a disease that eventually sapped his strength and took his life. Many noticed at the time of the dedication ceremonies that his once robust physique had been shattered and were naturally inclined to blame the worries connected with the construction of the cathedral for his condition. We know from his intimate friend, Father William Keegan, that as a Brooklyn pastor Bacon had spent many sleepless nights from the disease, and that he carried on during all the years of his episcopacy with the handicap. There has been a reluctance to identify the cause of his illness among those who mention his death, but it was, according to the Portland paper, bladder trouble and it must have been a malignant condition long before he died. It was obvious to all who saw him that he was not a well man.
Bishop Bacon was one of the silent men at the Vatican Coun- cil. Only a few of the American bishops played an important part in the discussions of the Council and of these Archbishop Martin J. Spalding of Baltimore and Archbishop Peter R. Kenrick of St. Louis were outstanding. Spalding had failed to persuade the American bishops to present a more or less solid front by accepting a position he had drafted: an explicit con- demnation of teaching opposed to papal infallibility which would imply but would not define the doctrine. As in other countries, the American bishops were divided on the most im-
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portant item on the Council's agenda, but a majority of them were opposed to an explicit definition of papal infallibility on the score that the definition would be inopportune. Bishop Bacon was among this majority.
Actually there is little evidence of any influence by him in the discussions and decisions, and little evidence of his activity in the Council. In the best study on the work on the American bishops, his name seldom appears. His name is omitted from the list of prelates attending, but this is a mistake; his name does not appear among those present at some sessions, and he probably did absent himself. But the study does give his po- sition on papal infallibility. He was one of the nineteen Ameri- cans to sign the petition of January 15, 1870, requesting the Council not to propose infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff as a dogma of faith. His friends among the American hierarchy, McCloskey of New York, McFarland of Hartford, McQuaid of Rochester, Lynch of Charleston, were also signers of this peti- tion. He was in a position to appreciate the argument that it was an inopportune time to define the doctrine; there was sufficient alarm in Maine and New Hampshire over the Vatican and the Pope without offering the occasion for more misunder- standing. But once the doctrine was defined, Bishop Bacon and the other American bishops accepted the dogma. We are told in the annals of the Sisters of Mercy that of all the sermons he preached to them the most stirring was the one on papal infallibility after his return from Rome.
Bishop Bacon had returned to Portland with good news. A long-standing problem had been solved. Ever since his in- stallation American Madawaska, a part of Maine since the Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842, had been outside his spiritual jurisdiction. The Catholics of this area, and nearly all of the residents were Catholics, were in an anomalous situation; they were not, like the other Catholics of Maine, under the spiritual direction of the bishop of Portland. When the international boundary was finally determined, they were transferred to the newly created diocese of Fredericton, New
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Brunswick (later the see was changed to St. John) and re- mained part of this diocese although in 1860 the spiritual care of the Madawaskans was given to the newly established diocese of Chatham. It is difficult to discover why the bishop of Port- land was deprived of jurisdiction over this section of Maine, and Bishop Bacon requested a settlement of the problem while all the interested bishops were in Rome.
The American section of Madawaska had not developed as expected. After 1842 Canadian migration had dwindled; the Canadians who did migrate to Maine preferred the towns and cities where industries supplied them with work, and some of the American Madawaskans had migrated westward to Mon- tana and Minnesota. But the young men of the district had made their contribution to the struggle to save the Union; about one hundred and fifty of them served during the war. There was dissatisfaction manifested during the Civil War over their incongruous ecclesiastical position; in 1864 a petition to make Madawaska a vicariate apostolic received rather strong support in and around the parish of St. Bruno. This would have severed the district both from the diocese of St. John and of Portland, and such a possibility was remote. But the petition did indicate dissatisfaction and no doubt had its influence in settling the problem in favor of Bishop Bacon. He won his point, and on August 16, 1870, Rome transferred Mad- awaska to the jurisdiction of the bishop of Portland. It was not until the previous year that the first towns in this district were incorporated.
In the fall of 1870 Bacon made his first visit to Madawaska. From Van Buren to Fort Kent he found the entrances to the towns and villages gaily decked in welcome. At St. Bruno's he made a change that affected the future of the district. Since 1868 the Fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Cross were in charge of this parish and they had been introduced into the district by the Bishop of St. John with the intention that they would start a college for the young men of Madawaska. For the first time since the departure of the Jesuits, Bishop Bacon
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