USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 22
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He brought the issue of the free exercise of religion guaran- teed by the state constitution to the legislature, to the governor, to the public. In the 1890's with the revival of anti-Catholic groups this proved to be fine grist for their mills. A section of the press gave Healy a great deal of personal attention during the eve of his life; it is doubtful that he read much of it and it is certain it did not persuade him to abandon his objec- tive. And in the end he won the admiration of many as well as his objective. Late in the last decade of the nineteenth
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century, as Healy was declining in health and nearing the end of his episcopacy, the priest returned to the Reform School to minister to the Catholic inmates.
4. THE END OF A USEFUL LIFE
Bishop Healy died Sunday, August 5, 1900. His last years had been pleasant; in June of 1899 he was back at Holy Cross celebrating the golden jubilee of his graduation and reminiscing about Father George Fenwick and Father James Moore. At the time of his graduation he had written in his diary: "Today five years ago I entered this college. What a change! Then I was nothing; now I am a Catholic." Now it was fifty-five years, and what happened since his graduation was beyond his fond- est dreams. A year later, June 5, 1900, he celebrated the silver jubilee of his consecration; more warming than the expected tributes was the companionship on this occasion of his good friends: Archbishop Williams, Bishop Harkins, Bishop Brad- ley, Bishop Beaven, Bishop Michaud. To the end he remained a traveller in and out of his diocese: Europe, Rome, the Holy Land, the West coast, Canada. He knew many places well, - except the South. The past week he had visited Canada.
He was seventy years old, and though his health was fail- ing his death was unexpected. From the entry in Charles McCarthy's diary one can see how the end came after a busy week and how it caught the Catholics of Maine by surprise:
Sunday, Aug't 5, 1900 Bishop Healey [sic] died at 1 o'clock today. His death was sudden & unexpected. He spent most of the week in Montreal. Returned home Friday & went to Biddeford Sat- urday and returned home in the evening feeling tired and rather unwell but not enough so to cause any uneasiness to the priests or others in the house. Sunday morning he attempted to get up and say Mass but found he was not equal to it and was obliged to go back to bed. He died at 1 o'clock.
But death had not caught the bishop by surprise. Nearly ten years before he had provided for an administrator and the
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details of his funeral. It would be a simple funeral: a coffin of plain and durable wood covered with a plain black cloak, vestments of the plainest description, on his breast the little catechism from which he had, with God's help, learned the Catholic faith while at college, in his hands the small crucifix he had acquired at Mount St. James, by his side the Papal Brief; there was to be no eulogy.
His death dampened the holiday atmosphere of the city, for it was Old Home Week in Portland; the city was full of strangers; the better homes were decorated; the North Atlantic squadron was in the harbor. The bishop's body was moved from the residence to the cathedral on Wednesday. The funeral Mass was on Thursday. Hundreds were unable to gain ad- mittance to the cathedral. The front pews were reserved for the Sisters: Notre Dame, Ursulines, Grey Nuns, Daughters, and Sisters of Mercy. There were seats reserved for and occu- pied by the ministers of the city's churches.
He had asked that there be no eulogy. The newspapers did not consider themselves bound by this request and one will find the eulogies in their columns. The Boston Pilot expressed the feelings of New England Catholics. Three columns on the first page with a picture that was a good likeness reviewed the salient features of his life and his work as a bishop. He was a humble man, the readers were told, - "humble, considerate, generous, minutely hospitable and nobly courteous, beloved of God and man, [and] long will it be till his like is seen again." The Portland Press bespoke the mind of many in Maine who were not of his religious faith and on occasions differed with him: "he has been a power for good in this community, a citi- zen whom the people of Maine respected, admired and loved Maine has lost one of its noblest men .
His request to be buried in a lot facing the chapel in Calvary Cemetery was respected, and a beautiful monument, erected by the contributions of the children of the diocese, marks his grave.
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Statistics for the Diocese of Portland: 1900 RECAPITULATION 1
Bishop
1
Secular Priests
76
Priests of Religious Orders
16
Total
92
Churches with resident priest
54
Missions with Churches
32
Total Churches
86
Stations
79
Chapels
23
Brothers (incl. novices and postulants )
8
Religious Women (incl. novices and postulants)
353
Students for diocese
13
Colleges and Academies for boys
1
Students
98
Academies for young ladies
3
Females educated in higher branches
200
Parishes with Parochial Schools
20
Pupils
7819
Schools for Indians
3
Pupils
169
Orphanage Schools
2
Pupils
150
Orphan Asylums
3
Orphans (incl. 5 Infants)
275
Total of young people under Catholic care
8203
Hospitals
2
Houses for Aged Women Inmates
1
40
Catholic Population, about
96,400
1 The Catholic Directory, Almanac and Clergy List for . . . 1900 (Milwaukee, M. H. Wiltzius, 1900) p. 453.
7
SOME MAINE CONVERTS
IN THE annals of the Sisters of Mercy we are told that if one good work of the Manchester convent had to be singled out of the many it would be "the immense number of non-Catholics received into the Church within its walls." The Sisters had hardly settled in their new convent in this city when two women, one married and a Baptist, the other single and a Uni- versalist, sought instructions about the Catholic faith and were received into the Church. Soon instruction classes were in- troduced and prospered, and it was not unusual for the bishop to confer three sacraments on a group of converts during a visit to Manchester. Some of these converts were prominent locally, others could not be found in the city's social register. But the conversion of the better known and of the unknown to the Catholic faith was something strange and alarming to the Yankees of New Hampshire, and all the more disturbing because, as far as one could see, it was work of a few women whose goodness and good works could not be disputed. As the Sisters of Mercy established convents in the diocese of Portland, their influence and contact with the natives of Maine and New Hampshire increased, a better understanding of the Catholic faith grew, and more converts entered the Church. And the converts, in turn, gave the local Catholics added con- fidence and respect. It is well to recall some of these Maine converts.
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Maine can not equal Vermont's remarkable group of con- verts who greatly aided Bishop de Goesbriand, gave a tone of respectability to the pioneer Catholics of this state, and shielded them from organized opposition. The immigrant Catholics took considerable pride in knowing that Fanny Allen, the daughter of the state's revolutionary hero, was a convert and died a nun, that William Tyler, the first bishop of Hartford, was born in Derby, Vermont, and became a Catholic when he was sixteen; that the great Orestes Brownson, whose conver- sion in 1844 startled the New England literary world, was a native of Stockbridge, and that in the middle of the nine- teenth century Vermont had an Oxford movement of her own. William Henry Hoyt, one of Vermont's most respected Epis- copalian ministers, was the leader of the group. He was a remarkable man and the growth of Catholicism in Vermont owes much to him; not only did his wife and family follow him but more than fifty persons, many of them of superior education and social prominence, could thank him for their conversion. There was Colonel Archibald Hyde, the assistant United States Collector of Customs, DeWitt C. Clarke, prom- inent in Vermont politics and business and proprietor of the Burlington Free Press, Abby Maria Hemenway, editor of The Vermont Historical Gazetteer, indispensable source on the state's local histories, and Julia C. Smalley, described as "the most gifted lady writer in the State." And the memories of these converts were kept alive by Bishop de Goesbriand who wrote the Catholic Memoirs of Vermont and New Hampshire and by Julia Smalley who wrote, at the bishop's urging, Mem- oirs of Three Sisters, sketches of the three Barlow sisters, daughters of Bradley Barlow, one of St. Alban's wealthiest and most respected citizens.
There was no such comparable group in Maine. But there were converts, as the Annals of the Sisters of Mercy have re- minded us, who found new life in the nascent Catholic Church in Maine and who gave stability and respectability to the small groups of Catholics in the towns and villages of the state. Prior
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to the advent of the Sisters of Mercy, Father Bapst and his fellow Jesuits had received many into the Church, and before the Jesuits, Father Cheverus had done the same. The con- gregation of the first church built in Maine, St. Patrick's in Damariscotta, was, according to Bishop Cheverus, "mostly composed of converts" in 1808. Some of the converts born during the nineteenth century were highly interesting persons. In this chapter five of them are briefly described: a doctor who became a model Catholic lay leader; a printer who became the first native of Maine raised to the hierarchy; a young lady who became the outstanding Catholic novelist of the century; a young man who had a remarkable career as a journalist and short story writer, and another young man who became prom- inent as a Paulist.
1. DR. HENRY BOWEN CLARK GREENE
Our readers were introduced to Dr. Henry B. C. Greene in the chapter on Bishop Benedict Fenwick. When the bishop made his first episcopal visit to Maine in the summer of 1827 he selected the communities along the coast where a Catholic church was needed. The town of Saco was one of them. The decision for a church in this town was based more on prospects than on current demands. An industry was attracting Irish immigrants and the bishop was attracted by two young and recent converts to the Catholic faith: Greene and his friend Jonathan Tucker. The industry did not prosper and the church was not built, but Bishop Fenwick had found what he needed badly: an able and educated Catholic lay leader.
Greene was born on April 3, 1800 in South Berwick, a town in southern Maine. He could trace, we are told, his American ancestry to a companion of Roger Williams. After attending South Berwick Academy, Henry Greene went to Harvard, graduated when he was nineteen, remained to study medi- cine, and then opened his office in Saco where he soon acquired
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a reputation as a learned and skillful doctor. He also found his wife in Saco, Elizabeth Hartley, and they were married in 1823. A serious illness occasioned a serious reading of the Bible, and the reading led to a studious inquiry into the claims of the Christian churches. He was a Congregationalist, but tending, as many of them were at this time, towards the po- sition of the Unitarians. He chanced to hear a sermon by Bishop Cheverus and was impressed by the content of the sermon and the manner of the preacher. When Cheverus re- turned to France, Greene started to correspond with Father William Taylor, administrator of the Boston diocese during the vacancy. Taylor settled his doubts and late in 1824 he entered the Catholic Church.
His correspondence with Taylor, commencing May 9, 1824 and ending November 29, 1825, has fortunately survived and remains by far our best source of information on this remark- able person.1 Greene had never met Taylor when he first wrote him; he was, as he writes, "an utter stranger." But he was compelled by "a desire, which is unconquerable, to make some inquiries with regard to the Catholic faith." At this time there was but one resident priest in Maine, Father Dennis Ryan at Whitefield, but Greene did not have any personal acquaintance with him. His acquaintance with Catholic priests was scant. He had, however, as he says in his first letter, heard Bishop Cheverus preach while he was still a student at Har- vard and was so impressed that he had concluded that the religion this man professed could not be corrupt in principles. It is doubtful if his acqaintance with Catholic clergy extended beyond this, but he would know that Father Taylor was a friend of the departed bishop. He frankly stated to Taylor his religious position: "I revere my Maker and respect his word as given in the Scriptures, but am left in doubt to which of the denominations of those calling themselves Christians
1 This correspondence will be found in the United States Catholic Historical Magazine, III (1900), 369-391. The letters are prefaced by some biographical data and a note by the Rev. J. M. Finotti. He probably edited the letters. We have followed the generally accepted arrangement and spelling, and not Henry Clark Bowen Green, as in this article.
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I could conscientiously attach myself, were I worthy." He asked for instructions.
He was delighted when Taylor's letter arrived. He had feared that "you would not be inclined to notice a communi- cation from one of whom you knew nothing, and who if you did, would probably have no particular claim to your attention." Taylor sent him a few books. They were delivered, as were some of the letters exchanged between the two, by a Captain Hartley, and we may assume that he was a relative, probably the father, of Mrs. Greene. The letters give us the names of some of the books that helped to settle Greene's doubts and they should be respectfully recalled. The first was Milner's The End of Religious Controversy, a work that should have an honored place in Catholic libraries for its many years of service in buttressing the faith of American Catholics and set- tling doubts of inquiring Protestants. Other books and authors mentioned in these letters are Bossuet, the Douay Bible, and Pastorini; the latter was the pen name for Bishop Charles Walmesley, O.S.B. (who had consecrated John Carroll, first American bishop) and his book The General History of the Christian Church was another familiar pilot of this period.
When Taylor allowed a week to pass without answering a letter Greene was ready to conclude the correspondence had been ended, yet he wrote again and confessed that his sole remaining doubt centered on the mystery of the Eucharist. He was relieved to learn that only "professional drudgery" had prevented Taylor from writing. Late in 1824, at the end of November or early in December, Greene went to Boston, all his doubts removed, and made his profession of faith. We have his letter to Taylor written after his return to Saco and dated December 8. He had found his:
family and friends in good health, but found my professional and domestic concerns requiring so much of my attention, as to prevent, until now, the performance of my agreeable task of addressing you. . I have the happiness to find, that although the important step .
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yet that most of my dearest friends look upon it without any feelings of horror, and those whose opinions I value most, without scarcely those of disapprobation [sic].
That the townfolk of Saco accepted the conversion of Greene so well is a tribute to the man; they must have had deep respect for him. One of his friends was impressed by his de- cision and we soon find him consulting Father Taylor. Taylor received a young man with a letter from Greene introducing Jonathan Tucker, Jr., "a merchant of this town, who is a very much esteemed friend of mine" and is interested in Catholic- ism. Soon Tucker was a Catholic. It seems that Mrs. Greene and the children also were converted. Taylor sent a copy of the Douay Bible to "the dear Mrs. Greene and yourself" in the spring of 1825, and a week later he asked Father Ryan to pay the Greenes and Tucker a visit on his way to Whitefield. Quite probably Ryan offered Mass in the doctor's home during this visit. The last letter in this exchange between doctor and priest is from Taylor. Writing on November 29, 1825, he tells his friend that he is awaiting the arrival of Bishop Fenwick (Taylor's expectations of this appointment had been so high in the previous spring that he had told Greene he would very probably "reside permanently in Boston") and then would go to France, regretting exceedingly that he would not see the doctor and his wife and friends before departure.
When Bishop Fenwick's plans for a Catholic community in Saco failed to materialize, Dr. Greene moved to Boston with his family where they could enjoy a full Catholic life. His departure was a severe loss to Maine's struggling Catholics, but his talents were better employed in Boston. Greene was a young man, only forty-eight, when he died, but for nineteen years he was the fine example of the Catholic lay leader in Boston. Besides his influence as a Catholic physician, he was busy and popular as a lecturer, a social worker, a pioneer in Catholic journalism, and was the first Catholic elected to the Massachusetts General Court.
He was one of the first lecturers sponsored by the Young
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Catholic Friends' Society. This group had been organized by Fenwick in the spring of 1835 to provide relief for needy Catho- lic children of the city and to arrange for their attendance at Sunday school, but teaching Christian doctrine soon became one of its primary functions. The society became so successful it developed into the model parish organization of the diocese during the pre-Civil War years and was borrowed by other bishops for their dioceses. When monthly assessments on members and public appeals proved an insufficient source of income to carry on their work, the society sponsored a series of annual lectures, and for many years these lectures, by Catho- lics and non-Catholics, became the signal cultural event among Boston Catholics. A notice in George Pepper's The Emerald Isle for January 5, 1837 announced that Dr. Greene would deliver a course of lectures every Monday and Tuesday eve- nings on Physiology at Chauncey Hall to the Young Catholic Friends' Society. He was, the readers were told, a fluent, eloquent lecturer, "as his previous reputation has amply evi- denced."
In 1840 Greene pioneered in Catholic juvenile journalism by accepting the post of editor for The Young Catholics' Friend, a weekly that Philip A. Kirk planned to publish. The title is so similar to the name of the diocesan society that one suspects that the periodical was intended as another medium of ad- vancing its work. The first issue of the weekly appeared on Wednesday, May 6, 1840, a four page publication that prom- ised its readers instructive essays on the practice of the Catho- lic religion, selections from important works on the history and doctrine of the Church, and news about the Church at home and abroad. Its objective was obviously to instruct rather than entertain its readers; I suppose the section as- signed to poetry was a concession to the demands for light entertainment. The weekly did not long survive, but that is not surprising; few periodicals in these decades were that fortunate. It probably suspended with the issue of December
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26, 1840, the last issue in the most complete files of the weekly extant and in the possession of the Library of the Boston Athenaeum. Dr. Greene had retired from his editorial post before that date. Henry Hart took over with the issue of November 14 and remained for a month. The weekly appeared on December 19 and the following week without an acknowl- edged editor. That was a good sign that it was nearing its end. Despite its brief existence Greene and Kirk must be credited with a laudable pioneering effort in Catholic journalism.
It could well be that Greene was compelled to abandon his editorial charge because of the pressure of work. He had his medical practice to keep him busy, and in the fall of 1840 he was elected to the General Court. He was the first Catholic elected to the Massachusetts legislature and served four con- secutive terms. Each year the legislature was asked to com- pensate the Ursuline Nuns for the mob destruction of their Charlestown convent, a move supported by leading non- Catholics. All efforts were a failure.
In 1848 Dr. Greene died in the prime of life and Bishop Fitzpatrick was deprived of a stout champion of the faith. During the nineteen years he was a Catholic he was ever the "leader in every Catholic good work."
The growth of Catholicism in Saco was unaccountably re- tarded, as if the departure of Dr. Greene were a mortal blow to the once promising prospects. Saco never became a mis- sion with a church of its own. Up to the year 1915, when there were more than a thousand Catholics in the town, they had to cross the Saco River to attend Mass and receive the sacraments in Biddeford. The next year the Holy Trinity par- ish was established and a movie theatre was purchased for a parish church. On June 18, 1916, the first Mass was offered in this church. If the historian of the parish is correct, this was the first Mass offered in Saco since the one offered by Bishop Fenwick in the home of Dr. Greene on the Feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1827.
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2. JOSUE MARIA YOUNG
On July 29, 1853, the same day the diocese of Portland was established, the diocese of Pittsburg was divided and a new diocese with Erie as its see was erected. Bishop Michael O'Connor, the first bishop of Pittsburg, was transferred to Erie, and Father Josue M. Young, pastor of St. Mary's in Lan- caster, Ohio, was named as O'Connor's successor. The Catho- lics of Pittsburg, naturally inquisitive about the origins of their new bishop, discovered that he was a convert, a Yankee from a town in Maine that one had difficulty in locating even on a county map: Shapleigh. Did Rome consider him as the first bishop of Portland? It seems unlikely. But it would have added a unique page to the history of the diocese and the state if Josue M. Young of Shapleigh had returned after almost a quarter of a century as the first Catholic bishop of Portland, Maine.
Young's career was more spectacular than Dr. Greene's. He was born October 29, 1808, in the sprawling town of Shapleigh, located in southern Maine, near the New Hampshire border, about twenty miles west of Saco. The township has since been divided, and his birthplace is now in Acton. One of ten chil- dren, he was named Josue Moody, a reminder that he was a descendant on his mother's side of one of New England's oldest and respected families, prolific in distinguished divines and educators, that started with the arrival of William Moody in 1634. His father, Jonathan Young, was a graduate of Har- vard. Josue, however, was a self-educated man; it was well he was, for had he, too, gone to Harvard or to a Maine college it is quite unlikely that he would have met the person who decisively changed his life.
When eight years old Josue was sent to live with his ma- ternal uncle, Samuel Moody, in Saco. There he continued his schooling, helped his uncle in the bakery, and was baptized as a Congregationalist. When he was fifteen, about the time that Dr. Greene of Saco was investigating the Catholic reli-
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gion, Josue became an apprentice in the office of the Portland Eastern Argus and there he learned the printer's trade. There, too, he met John Crease, a printer and, as he soon learned, a Catholic. Much time was spent in arguing about religion and Crease had a busy time defending and explaining his religion. This he could do because he was the leader of the few Catho- lics in Portland who were still without a resident priest and a church; he presided at the Sunday meetings and read the prayers of the Mass as directed years ago by Bishop Cheverus. Young was impressed by Crease and arguments gave way to questions and discussions and in time to the reading of books supplied by Crease. When Bishop Fenwick made his first episcopal visit to Maine and came to Portland, Crease intro- duced Young to the bishop and the next year, when Father Ffrench made Portland his headquarters, Young became ac- quainted with this learned priest. By then Young had returned to Saco to publish the Maine Democrat which had started early in January of 1828. Saco was his second home and not far from Portland, and he had no doubt returned while at the Argus to visit his uncle. We do not know whether the two ever met, but Greene's conversion could not have escaped him. When he returned to publish the Saco paper, Greene had gone or was about to move to Boston, and Young himself was ready to become a Catholic. In the fall of 1828, probably in November, he was conditionally baptized by Father Ffrench. He immediately became, with his friend Crease, a lay leader among the Catholics. To mark the important change in his life he took the name of Maria and thereafter was known as Josue Maria Young.
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