USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 26
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Rev. Louis S. Walsh was consecrated Bishop of Portland today. There were present more than 300 priests, 10 Bishops and 2 Arch
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bishops. The ceremony was grand and imposing, and the arrange- ments for seating the people were perfect.
The planning was a good example of Walsh's concern for and mastery of details.
The two archbishops were O'Connell, Walsh's predecessor, and Williams, metropolitan of the New England province. The demands of consecrating were beyond the strength of the aged archbishop; even his presence as the presiding prelate was a sacrifice. But it was a sacrifice the Catholics of Maine appreciated and they watched him closely from the moment he entered the cathedral. Bishop Harkins of Providence, his adviser since his high school days in Salem, had the honor of consecrating him, assisted by two other friends, Bishop Thomas Beaven of Springfield and Bishop John Brady, auxiliary to Williams. Father Philip R. McDevitt, the superintendent of parochial schools in the archdiocese of Philadelphia, preached.
The dinner after the ceremony was a pleasant ending to the day. The toastmaster, Monsignor Wallace, with a touch of humor remarked how Maine during its eighty-five years as a state had given leaders in national affairs, but had "not yet given a man of prominence to matters ecclesiastical." Some- how Bishop Young was always forgotten. Both archbishops spoke. Williams was in a reminiscent mood and recalled his first visit to Maine seventy-three years before when he was a lad of eleven. By stage and steamboat he had reached Gar- diner on his way to college in Montreal and in Gardiner was joined by another lad two years older than he, the son of the only Catholic family in this Maine town. The lad was John Esmond whose untimely death at the college had deprived Bishop Fenwick of a promising candidate for the priesthood. No more telling way could be devised to relate the marvellous growth of the Church in Maine than this incident in the life of the archbishop.
Walsh plunged into diocesan work. Visitors called on him daily in his residence or on his travels. At times his visitors were Protestants. In Island Falls (the first visit of a Catholic
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bishop to the town) two members of the school committee called to discuss a problem child. Both were Protestant minis- ters. He liked to walk alone or with a companion through the Maine towns. Island Falls was an old town, "but only recently has shown activity;" Kennebunk had "all the marks of a com- fortable, wealthy town of New England." At the beginning of the new year, two months after his consecration, Father M. C. McDonough of Bath replaced Monsignor E. F. Hurley as his Vicar-General, and when Monsignor Wallace of St. Pat- rick's, Lewiston died McDonough was appointed to that parish. He remained the Vicar-General during Walsh's episcopacy. By the end of 1907 Walsh had seen most of the diocese. "It has been a pleasant, happy, busy year for me, in fact too busy perhaps, as I was away from the Diocese for rest only one Sunday in fourteen months."
In his travels Walsh shrewdly observed the prospects of the towns and cities. The prospects in the Aroostook and Ma- dawaska were good "for lumber and paper business," and he thought Van Buren had great promises of becoming "a great centre of industry and education." But the Marists were not happy about the college. The enrollment was low and there was "no real interest in education in the whole section, where work and money are the life." To encourage vocations (he had accepted ten priests into the diocese and had ordained two for the diocese during 1907), he had ordained a young man at Van Buren for the Marists and another for the diocese in Lewiston. These were the first ordinations in these com- munities.
Despite his busy schedule he discovered at the end of 1907 that he had wasted "time & energies in useless and endless disputes." One was in Waterville, over the division of the parish of St. Francis de Sales made by his predecessor. Another was with the Lewiston Messager, a French journal, whose editorial policy had become obnoxious, and he had discovered that the editor was less responsible for this policy than a cer- tain group behind the paper. Yet as he reviewed the past year
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he found "manifold reasons to thank God." And he had de- cided on many policies and plans for the future.
3. RECALLING MAINE'S CATHOLIC HISTORY
Louis S. Walsh was Bishop of Portland for nearly eighteen years, from 1906 to 1924, and during these years the Catholic Church in Maine developed "beyond the fondest aspirations of her devoted children." The number of Catholics, churches, clergy, religious congregations, parishes, schools, hospitals, and houses of charity increased and multiplied. A glance at the statistics for 1906 and for 1924 will reveal the growth. Walsh was a man of activity, a promoter, a builder. But he had a deep respect for past, for the origins of the Catholic faith in Maine, for the pioneers and their descendants who had made the expansion possible. This respect he manifested in designing his coat of arms where one sees a missionary with a rosary at the belt of his black cassock and a book in hand preaching to a group of Indians, one of them a child, on the banks of a river, and across the river a stag, a pine tree, a hill, and over the hill a cross. It told the story of the early Church in rugged Maine and the work before him: to continue to preach and educate both young and old and to keep aloft the Cross of Christ. He wanted the future expansion to be a development of the past, and he wanted the Catholics of Maine to know that past.
He came to Maine at the right time. Anniversaries of all kinds, tercentenaries, bicentenaries, centenaries, golden ju- bilees, were approaching. He decided to make full use of them to remind the Catholics of Maine of their heritage. He began the year after his consecration with a salute to Rasle; he died while planning an elaborate program for the bicentenary of Rasle's death. A checklist of these celebrations will suffice to let us know how much time and energy he spent in planning
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them and how he succeeded in impressing on both Catholics and non-Catholics the heritage that was theirs. And coupled with celebrations of great events and their makers would be a historical magazine recording these happenings for future generations. This was a program that appealed to his temper- ament and scholarly interests. A few words about the cele- bration of these anniversaries and about the historical maga- zine can not be omitted.
Madison was the site of the first celebration. This was not occasioned by an anniversary, but Bishop Walsh discovered that one of the four new parishes to be established in 1907 was in Madison, a town near Norridgewock where Sebastian Rasle died, and that a new church was ready to be blessed. He decided to honor the missionary on August 22 by dedicat- ing the church to St. Sebastian and re-dedicating, after con- siderable restoration, the monument erected by Bishop Fenwick nearly seventy-years before. Father Thomas Campbell, S.J., author of books on the North American martyrs and mission- aries, was invited to give the formal address. The response to this first venture was enthusiastic, - "thousands of devoted pilgrims" attended. By special invitations and publicity he aroused interest in his project. James P. Baxter, president of the Maine Historical Society, attended and arranged that the Society's valuable Rasle relics be exhibited at the monument during the ceremony. The affair was well publicized. Walsh noted in his journal that the Pilot, the Boston Herald, the Port- land and Bangor papers carried full accounts; The Eastern Argus had four columns and a photo of the Rasle monument. Walsh knew the value of publicity and he obviously had the right approach to the press. Good publicity was a feature of succeeding celebrations.
St. Patrick's in Damariscotta was the locale for the next celebration. This was the first church built in Maine outside the chapels in the Indian villages and had been blessed in 1808 (the same year the diocese of Boston was established) by Bishop Cheverus. The beautiful brick church had carried its
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hundred years remarkably well and was now the oldest Catho- lic church in New England. The parishioners, led by the de- scendants of the Catholic pioneers, vied with one another to make the day a great one. The Kavanagh mansion was put at the disposal of Bishop Walsh and he occupied the "Bishop's Room," where Cheverus, Fenwick, Fitzpatrick, Bacon and Healy had stayed as guests before him. It was, he wrote in his journal, "a happy party, a beautiful religious festival and an inspiring scene all day long." The newspapers gave it good coverage. The Republic, the Boston weekly published by John F. Fitzgerald, carried a picture of St. Patrick's on the front page of its July 18 issue and ran a feature article on the cen- tenary celebration. Walsh decided that this was the opportune time to launch the magazine he had in mind. The centenary of St. Patrick's became the birthday of the Maine Catholic Historical Society and of the Maine Catholic Historical Maga- zine.
Other major celebrations followed: in 1913 the tercenten- ary of the beginnings of the Catholic Church in Maine at Bar Harbor; in 1915 the golden jubilee of the arrival of the Sisters of Mercy in Bangor; in 1917 the centenary of the death of Father Matignon, the first pastor of St. Patrick's, in Damaris- cotta; in 1919 the golden jubilee of the cathedral, and since this coincided with the centenary of Maine's statehood the petition of the Damariscotta Catholics to the consititutional convention for religious freedom was recalled; in 1921 the dedication of the restored chapel of Our Lady of Hope in Castine, a memorial to the missionary labors of the Capuchins paid for by Catholics and Protestants; in 1922 the centenary of St. Denis' in Whitefield, the second church built in Maine, and a tribute to the work of Father Dennis Ryan, the first resident parish priest in Maine. Later in this same year the centenary of Bishop Cheverus' visit to Portland to organize the Catholics was noted, and Walsh himself prepared a lengthy article for the Sunday Telegram that told the story of the cen- tury's growth of Catholicism in the city. In 1923 it was the
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jubilee of the advent of the Sisters of Mercy in Portland. At this time the bishop was planning, as we have mentioned, a large scale commemoration of Rasle's death when death came suddenly to the bishop himself.
The tercentenary of the arrival of Father Biard and his companions at Mount Desert and the origin of Saint Sauveur mission in 1613 was by far the most elaborate celebration. The date for the event and the plans were announced the previous December 1912; there would be a religious celebra- tion on August 6 and a civic one on October 12. Actually the planning had started shortly after the bishop's arrival in Port- land. He had suggested to the pastor that a suitable church, near the original site of the mission at Fernald's Point, should replace the Chapel of St. Sylvia that had been built in 1882 by generous benefactors from outside the state. The sugges- tion had been followed and in 1908-1909 a stately granite church had been built and two beautiful chapels, St. Ignatius at North East Harbor and the Holy Family at Seal Harbor, had been added. The next year Bar Harbor was made a parish. The church in honor of the Holy Redeemer was awaiting the blessing by the bishop on the day of the celebration.
The Apostolic Delegate was there to offer the Solemn Pon- tifical Mass, all seven New England bishops attended, and as many priests, Sisters and lay persons as could crowd into the church watched the ceremony and listened to Bishop Walsh's sermon. It was the type of sermon, commemorative of an historical event, in which he excelled. May we not today, he said:
look up with a certain subdued, let me say, righteous pride and see the vision of Champlain, the noble purpose of Madame de Guerch- ville, the enduring ambition of Loyola's sons at last fulfilled in this crowning dedication and festive commemoration . . . All was de- stroyed, and all is now restored, better one hundred fold in grandeur and power . .. Am I not right, therefore, in feeling and saying that the vision of 1613 in France and on this Island has been more than fulfilled in 1913, on this day?
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Charles McCarthy, Jr. agreed: "The affair was a complete success in every respect, and Bishop Walsh may well be proud of it. He preached a historical sermon which was very inter- esting."
The civic celebration was equally successful and more sig- nificant. This was held in the Portland municipal auditorium on October 12, and we call this affair more significant because the Catholic laity played the leading roles and they were joined by state and city officials. Mayor Oakley C. Curtis welcomed the occasion and the audience, and Governor W. T. Haines expressed his pleasure "at being able to encourage by his pres- ence the great good done by the Church, and to rejoice with her children over the good results already obtained." His talk had been preceded by a number of papers by prominent Catho- lic lay leaders of Maine on pertinent problems of the day; Dr. James A. Donavan spoke on the Church and medicine, William H. Looney on Catholic citizenship, and Hon. Charles L. Dona- hue (two years later, in 1915, he was elected probate judge of Cumberland County, the first Catholic to be elected to a judicial post in Maine) on the Church and education. James G. Chabot of Lewiston spoke for "the 100,000 Franco-Ameri- can Roman Catholics of Maine." One can gather how isolated the two major nationalities among the Maine Catholics were by his remark that this was the first opportunity ever offered them to join with the other Catholics in a diocesan affair. He gladly accepted the opportunity and used it to bespeak the loyalty of the Franco-Americans as Catholics and Americans. It was the beginning of a new era, with nationality accepting its proper position in the religious life of the people and with the State recognizing publicly the role of the Church in the good society. Bishop Walsh in his talk underscored one aspect of that role: "the great conservative force around which the friends of law and order may always rally and count upon her constant assistance whenever in danger from social and moral upheavals."
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The Maine Catholic Historical Magazine
Bishop Walsh was not content to note significant events and heroic pioneers by imposing ceremonies and learned addresses. The past must be recorded for future references. A historical society publishing a magazine was needed. This was a more difficult task, he knew, than planning a series of celebrations, but he was determined to make the venture.
The Kavanagh mansion in Damariscotta was selected for the first meeting to discuss the project, and on Thursday, July 16, 1908, after the centennial Mass in St. Patrick's, forty-five persons gathered in the historic house to listen to the bishop's proposal. There were eighteen lay persons present, charter members of the Maine Catholic Historical Society, and among them will be found the familiar names of Kavanagh, Madigan, Rafter, and Hanly. By the spring of 1911 the society had been legally incorporated and properly organized, and on April 25, 1911, the first annual meeting was held. A drive for member- ship was launched and plans for a monthly magazine made. It would be a historical magazine "to collect available matter on the history of the Catholic Church in Maine during Her pioneer days, as well as to record present day happenings." To collect all sources extant and to feed material to the editor, parish historical committees comprising the pastor and two parishioners, one a man and the other a woman, were established; if they functioned as intended the diocese of Port- land would have had a historical society with an unexcelled archives. This was not the first venture in Catholic journalism in the diocese, and what had preceded did not give the bishop, the editor and the charter members of the society any reason to enthuse.
The Catholics of Maine had been only slightly influenced by the remarkable surge of Catholic journalism in New England during the years 1885-1900. Thirteen weekly journals and sixteen magazines (not counting the French language
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periodicals ) originated during these fifteen years. Only a few, of course, survived, but many of them had a respectable jour- nalistic career, and all of them bore testimony to the apprecia- tion among Catholics of the power of the Catholic press. Only two English periodicals originated in Maine during these years and little can be discovered about either. In Augusta Thomas F. Murphy edited and published the Celtic Mirror, a monthly that cost subscribers fifty cents annually. In selecting the title Murphy obviously was not bidding for Franco-American sup- port. It was published in 1895 and had suspended by 1898. No copies of any issue can be located, but this monthly appears to have been the first venture in Catholic journalism in Maine. For that Murphy deserves a plaque. Less is known about the weekly Columbian published in Portland; it is listed as current in 1897, but when it originated and when it ceased publication are unknown. The French language journals appeared earlier and were more successful, although they are usually listed in the directories of this period as national rather than religious periodicals, and this, we may assume, at the direction of the publishers. The first journal was published in Biddeford in 1870: l'Emigré Canadien. It had ceased publication within six weeks, but the editor and publisher, Léon Bossue dit Lyon- nais, was only nineteen years old and fresh from his studies at Laval and l'Academie militaire, and the failure did not prevent him from making his mark in a long and fruitful life as a jour- nalist. Within ten years another journal appeared, this time in Lewiston on March 23, 1880, and Le Messager soon prospered and developed into a semi-weekly, a tri-weekly, and finally a daily. Before the century ended Biddeford had its own French language weekly: La Justice. It started in 1897, and this sec- ond venture in this city succeeded. It, too, like the Le Messager, is being published today.1
One other journal preceded the Maine Catholic Historical Magazine, The Catholic Opinion, a weekly that started in 1912,
1 For the French language journals in Maine, see Soeur Mary-Carmel Therriault, La Lit- térature Française de Nouvelle-Angleterre (Montreal, 1945) pp. 106-109.
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was published in Lewiston and edited by Arthur Cushman.1 It would seem that the weekly started without any approval of the bishop and it appears unlikely that the publisher was unaware that the bishop was planning a diocesan magazine. In any case the monthly acquired the subscription list and good will of the weekly and any danger from competition was eliminated at the start.
Father John E. Kealy of Lewiston was appointed editor of the monthly, aided by a Publication and Printing Committee of three: Monsignor Charles W. Collins, Father (later Monsignor ) P. E. Desjardins, and H. W. Haswell. Both committee priests were deeply interested in Maine history. Collins was the author of studies of the Acadians in Madawaska and of Edward Kavanagh, but the diocese and the magazine lost his services when in 1915 he transferred to the Boston archdiocese and spent the remaining years of his life (he died in 1921) on the editorial staff of the Pilot. Monsignor Desjardins continued to collect historical data on Maine long after the magazine sus- pended publication.
The magazine made an important contribution to the history of the Catholic Church in Maine and all must be grateful to Father Kealy for gathering together and publishing material difficult, if not impossible, to obtain elsewhere. If other dioceses had similar magazines the writing of diocesan histories would not be the forbidding task it frequently is. For three years the MCHM appeared regularly, - from July 1913 to June 1916, concentrating on the colonial period. The parish historical committees did not function as planned, and this was unfortunate for the few histories of churches and parishes in the magazine, based on the recollections of pioneers or their de- scendants, are valuable. But the immigrant and his children were slow to appreciate and imitate the Yankees' respect for the past and concern in gathering and preserving the records of their fathers. In the spring of 1916 the editor of the MCHM
1 I have not discovered anything about two other Catholic journals credited to Maine: The Catholic Sentinel and the Catholic Visitor.
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was complaining about the decline of enthusiasm among the members of the society. Many who were capable of "render- ing sufficient assistance" had so far submitted only promises, and one could not edit promises. In July 1916 the magazine became a quarterly, and as such continued for a year. Then the war forced suspension. The attempt to return to normalcy did not succeed.
The last issue of the Maine Catholic Historical Magazine appeared in May 1928. But long before that date there were clear symptoms of impending demise. The first issue of the eighth and last volume is dated October 1919, and this issue was the first published since April 1917. Not until August 1923 did the second issue of the volume appear; the next four issues were published simultaneously in May 1928. It had taken nearly a decade to publish one year's issue. Obviously the magazine was unwilling to die, but the completion of this volume was the end. Bishop Walsh, the heart of the project, had been dead four years. Yet he had succeeded, at least partially, in coupling a historical magazine with the celebration of anniversaries to impress on Maine Catholics the wealth of their heritage.
4. WALSH BECOMES A PUBLIC FIGURE
Bishop Walsh was a man of remarkable energy. Commenting on his years and work in Maine when death ended his activity, the editor of the Portland Press Herald observed: "He plunged into the work he saw before him with a zeal and energy which will not fail to command respect." He became well known in Maine and long before his death he was "one of the outstand- ing citizens of the State." The series of anniversaries prepared with care and observed with all possible splendor attracted the attention of the public. By his annual visitation to parishes, by his program of more and better parishes, by his policy of new and better schools, by his articulate interest in the affairs of
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the state, he became a familiar figure in Maine and made an impact on Maine's way of life. Maine, in turn, was quick to recognize his leadership. One recognition came less than two years after his consecration when the University of Maine conferred an honorary degree on him at the June 1908 com- mencement. He accepted after consultation and with the understanding that it was in honor of the Catholic Church in Maine. It is too much to expect that the state university was honoring the office of bishop or the Catholic Church; the in- stitution was honoring Louis Sebastian Walsh. The tribute, he tells us, was a surprise to many but well received. Walsh surprised the public on many other occasions.
a. New Parishes
Parishes were from the start of his episcopacy a primary concern, better functioning parishes where already established and new parishes wherever the population and the roster of priests permitted. Parishes had a priority over the school pro- gram, for there could be no schools where there were no parishes. During his eighteen years in Maine thirty-six new parishes were founded, - an average of two annually - from Kittery, one of Maine's oldest communities in the southern tip of the state, to Keegan on the St. John. And this was done despite a heavy loss of forty-four priests by deaths during the same span of years. Some years the loss was severe; in 1919 eight died. Yet in 1920 three new parishes were established. The location of these new parishes is an index to the areas in Maine where Catholics were increasing.
The urban Catholic population increased sharply. Four new parishes were added in Portland: St. Joseph's (1909), the first new parish since the Cathedral, St. Peter's (1914), St. Patrick's (1922), St. Louis' (1923). Three were added in Lewiston: St. Mary's (1907), Holy Cross (1923), a division of St. Mary's and St. Peter and Paul's, and the Holy Family (1923), another division of the latter parish. Both these cities now had six parishes. One new parish was added in three other cities: Notre Dame (1910) in Waterville where there were now three,
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