USA > Maine > The Catholic church in Maine > Part 29
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The Klan, in the meanwhile, was active. Governor Baxter, late in 1922, announced that he would do his best "to see to it that no invisible government such as the Ku Klux Klan ob-
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tains a foothold in our state," but he could not prevent the members from stirring up trouble. On Sunday, March 18, 1923, Walsh visited all the parish churches in Portland and praised the Catholics "for their admirable patience, silence, control and nobility during the past few weeks when the K.K.K. was insulting the Church and the K. C." The situation was tense in Bangor this week-end, too, and rumors of trouble were rife, according to a newspaper report, because of a talk of one of the Klan's spokesmen in Brewer. There was not much parading by the Irish on St. Patrick's day in Maine in 1923.
There is no doubt that these problems contributed to the break in Walsh's health. The year 1923 was, he confided to his journal, "perhaps the hardest, most trying year of my life." Yet it had been, despite the failing health and annoyances of many kinds, "a good year in many ways." His last act of this year was the appointment of Father Clarence Coughlan as chancellor of the diocese.
Bishop Walsh died Monday, May 12, 1924, in his Portland residence four days after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage and less than two weeks after his return from Rome. He had de- cided, now that he had been ordered to curtail his schedule, to make his ad limina visit during the severe winter months. Without a companion he had sailed on the Majestic February 2 and he would have returned earlier had not the news that Archbishop Patrick Hayes and Archbishop George Mundelein of Chicago had been made Cardinals been announced while he was in Rome. Hayes was his personal friend and so he re- mained to attend the consistory and witness the presentation of the red hats to the new American Cardinals. Hayes asked him to make the return trip with him, but Walsh decided he would get more rest by travelling alone and at his leisure. Besides, he wanted to gather some material on Father Rasle in France; he was still working on the plans for the bicentenary of the missionary's death. He landed in New York on April 30 and went to Washington to attend a NCWC meeting. He was home Monday evening, May 5, in apparent fair health. The
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following Thursday, at breakfast, he suffered an attack. He rallied, however, and continued to improve during the next few days, but death came suddenly Monday, May 12.
The funeral was Friday, May 16. All the bishops of New England, with Cardinal O'Connell presiding, attended. Car- dinal Hayes was also present. Bishop McDevitt, who had preached at Walsh's consecration and at the tenth anniversary, delivered the eulogy. All agreed that his death was untimely. It came, said Bishop McDevitt, when "he was best able to render splendid service to the cause of Christ, not only in this State of Maine, but throughout the length and breadth of the United States." Bishop Walsh's contribution to the Catholic Church in Maine during his less than eighteen years had been remarkable, indeed.
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THE LAST QUARTER OF THE FIRST CENTURY 1925-1955
MONSIGN
LONSIGNOR Michael C. McDonough was appointed to administer the diocese until a successor to Walsh was named. More than a year passed before the vacancy was filled, and then John Gregory Murray, auxiliary bishop of the Hartford diocese, was transferred to Portland. He remained there six years and was then transferred to the archdiocese of St. Paul's after the death of his friend, Archbishop Austin Dowling. Joseph Edward McCarthy succeeded Murray in Portland. Their years in Maine cover the last quarter of the diocese's first century and their lives followed a remarkably similar pat- tern.
1. TWO BOYHOOD FRIENDS BECOME BISHOPS OF PORTLAND
Both were Irish-Americans and natives of Waterbury, Con- necticut. McCarthy, the older of the two by a few months, was born on November 14, 1876, and Murray the following February 26. They were boyhood friends and both attended and were graduated from Crosby High, a school with a fine academic tradition. They selected the same college for ad- vanced studies: Holy Cross. The expenses of a college edu- cation in the 1890's was a strain on the budgets of families considered in comfortable circumstances. Neither family could make that claim. Years later, when he was Archbishop of St.
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Paul's, Murray told a group of newspaper boys, how the pen- nies from his paper route helped him to start his college edu- cation. He borrowed a dime from his mother to start his route and by the time he had completed his high school senior year, he had parlayed the dime into a fund of two hundred dollars.
Although the younger of the two, Murray started his college career first, entering Holy Cross in the fall of 1894. Evidently he had managed one or more double promotions during his school years, and his college entrance examinations were so impressive he was allowed to enter the rhetoric class, the sec- ond year at college. He won laurels as a speaker when the debater, not the athlete, was the campus hero; his scholastic grades set a new high in the college's history. Murray, all conceded, was brilliant. McCarthy was at college with him but not a classmate; he, too, had a high scholastic rating when he graduated in 1899. Both had decided on their future work before graduation day: the priesthood.
Murray was in Louvain when his friend graduated from college. He first attended the American College at Louvain (1897-1898) and then the University of Louvain. Again he won high academic honors. Louvain was proud of this young American and gave proof of it in 1927 on the occasion of the grand celebration of the quincentenary anniversary of the granting of the university charter. Murray, then Bishop of Portland, was among the select group honored by the universi- ty with a doctorate of theology, thus lending international recognition to his reputation for learning. It was no small honor.
Murray was ordained at Louvain April 14, 1900. Three years later, on July 4, 1903, McCarthy became a priest. He, too, had studied in Europe. After graduating from Holy Cross, he was sent to Catholic University for graduate studies in philosophy and then went to St. Sulpice in Paris for theology. Both re- turned after ordination to Hartford for work in their diocese. After a brief assignment to parish work and the classroom, first as a curate in New Haven and then professor of the classics
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at St. Thomas' Minor Seminary (1901-1903), Murray was as- signed to administrative work and this became his daily fare thereafter. He was appointed chancellor of the Hartford dio- cese in 1903 and he retained that office until 1919. He was then selected to be auxiliary bishop to John Joseph Nilan, Bishop of Hartford.
McCarthy's years as a priest were devoted more to the class- room and pastoral care. He followed Murray to St. Thomas', joining the faculty the year Murray left for the chancery. He remained there for five years; from the classroom he went to the parish and he spent twenty years at Norwick, Wauregan, and Moosup, parishes that were in areas where the French- Canadians had settled. These were parishes that called for pastors with facility in the French language, and his long ex- perience in these parishes naturally recommended him for a diocese that was bilingual. He then returned to the seminary as its vice-president and he was there when appointed suc- cessor to his friend in Portland. He must have felt that he had long walked in the shadow of Murray, but he would be the first to admit that was no small feat.
Bishop Murray was transferred to Portland May 29, 1925. He was not unknown to the diocesan clergy, for in 1924, when Bishop Walsh was in Rome, he had presided at the cathedral ceremonies during Holy Week and again during the inter- regnum he had returned to Portland to perform the same ceremonies. A few weeks later the Catholics of Maine were posted on their bishop by a letter from the Administrator that gave a sketch of his life; he was, they were told, as keenly interested in the welfare and education of them and their children as was their late bishop. The date for the installation was October 12.
After bidding farewell to his parishioners and friends in Hartford on Sunday, October 11, Bishop Murray took the train for Portland, arriving that evening. His winning ways were soon recognized. When the newsmen heard he had arrived in Portland, they went to his residence for interviews and
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photographs. He readily assented. He was, they reported in the next day's paper, "as affable and friendly as if he had been here all his life; not shy, but reserved in manner, a ready smile and laugh, a merry twinkle in the eyes . . . In their first meeting the newsmen caught what impressed most people: his friendliness and informality. He looked younger than his forty-eight years, was energetic, and intelligence and kindness were written large on his round, full face with its high brow. From the start he was on friendly terms with all; he had a way of making friends and easing tensions; he needed no formal introduction to start a conversation, required no appointment to hear a request. New and unfinished business would be handled on the sidewalk or on the street car (he seldom trav- elled by automobile) as well as in his office.
He was greeted and welcomed formally and editorially. After the installation, an impressive ceremony with Cardinal O'Connell presiding and many bishops attending, he dined with his clergy and pleased them by announcing that Mon- signor McDonough, Walsh's Vicar-General, would continue as his. The next day the Press Herald commented on his friend- ly manners and distinguished appearance and then added that Murray would soon discover that Maine was not Connecticut.
Compared with other dioceses in this part of the country Maine offers · a large field for work but lacks the wealth and the Catholic popula- tion which distinguishes many other States. It requires a man of exceptional tact and administrative ability to conduct the affairs of the Catholic Church in this diocese, but Bishop Murray is said to be possessed of the necessary qualifications to measure up to the re- quirements of the new duties.
Maine was not Connecticut, it is true; indeed, Maine of 1925 was not the Maine of 1900. Although still a state of villages and small cities in the late 1920's and somewhat aloof from the mighty current of industrial and urban life that was radically changing the American way of life, Maine, likewise, was undergoing important changes. On the surface she ap- peared to be largely homogeneous, yet nearly twenty percent of her adult population in 1930 was foreign born and 175,337
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of the total population, 797,488, were Catholics. The annual increase in population was slight; from 768,014 in 1920 to 797,488 in 1930, to 847,266 in 1940, to 930,000 in 1950. The native-born population had remained virtually stationary since 1900 due to heavy migration to other states. The Catholics, of course, joined the trend, but even so the increase in the number of Catholics was steady: from 175,377 in 1930 to 198,828 in 1940, to 201,979 in 1945, to 236,672 in 1955 when the centenary of the diocese was celebrated.
Maine was still rural in 1930, six out of every ten still living in towns and villages, but the decline was sharp and the trend was to the city or out of state. There was one exception. Dur- ing the first three decades of the twentieth century, Aroostook County reported a 44.7 percent increase in population; this was the only county that could claim a healthy population increase and the Aroostook was a rural area. This was in dras- tic contrast to the trend in the other rural counties for during the decade of the 1920's alone there had been a 14.6 percent decline in population.
But more disturbing than the declining rural population was the decline of the churches in the rural areas. Authors noticed the decline. To Wallace Nutting in his attractive Maine Beautiful (1924) the deterioration of religion was "something not so beautiful." He referred to "one little Maine town" which had "four church edifices but no church organi- zation;" country churches in Maine, he observed, "are largely going backward, and many are not going at all." This change was revealed by a number of surveys made at this time. In 1928 the National Church Comity Conference initiated one year surveys of the status of religion in the states. The survey of Maine, confined to the rural areas and to towns of 5,000 or less, revealed a situation close to religious destitution. It was discovered that during the years of 1916 to 1926, 160 church organizations had vanished, 105 churches had been sold for barns or school houses or torn down, over 100 towns were without a church, 325 churches had "less than 25 mem-
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bers," about 200 small churches could not support a minister. No more than one-tenth of Maine's rural population were members of a Protestant church, a finding that explained why there was no increase in Protestant church membership dur- ing this decade. The survey reported only one rural area where conditions were healthy, the communities of northern Aroos- took County where all were Catholics and were "well looked after by that Church." Although the survey was concerned with the conditions of the Protestant churches in Maine, a comparison with the Catholic churches was natural. The find- ings disclosed that:1
While the Protestant churches have shown decreases all along the line, the Roman Catholic churches have shown in ten years an in- crease of 23% in number of churches and 17% in membership.
Both the federal decennial religious censuses from 1906 to 1936 and the religious survey by the Maine Planning Board in 1935 support the findings of this study.
Although Bishop Murray was grateful to his predecessor for this increase in the number of Catholics and churches in the diocese, the decline of Protestant Christianity must have disturbed him. Catholics could not escape the growing in- differentism to organized religion. How much the Catholics were influenced by the changing climate only another survey would reveal, but one can see his concern over the situation in the campaign against birth control in the diocesan weekly, the Church World, and in his charges to the pastors of the diocese on mixed marriages.
One force that strengthened the Catholics of Maine must be mentioned, if only in passing. This was the good influence of Catholics vacationing in Maine. Many of our rural parishes and missions, said one editorial in the Church World, “are enabled to carry on during the long winter of some ten months" because of their generous financial help. For this help the
1 Rev. Charles W. Squires, "Religious Destitution in Maine," The Missionary Review of the World, LIX ( March 1936) 137-138. See also Rev. Robert Watson, "New England a Home Mission Field," ibid., LIX (February 1936), 87-89, for a report indicating similar trends.
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diocese was grateful, but their contribution was not limited to finances. "They encourage our small Catholic population by their presence in our midst in such impressive numbers and edify us all by their sturdy faith and manifest devotion."
What the editor had in mind can be illustrated by one case history. At the turn of the century there may have been a few Catholics residing in the community of York Beach; three or four would be a generous estimate. But there was a spacious Catholic church there in 1901. This was the work of a small group of Catholics who spent their summers there and wanted a church where they could attend Mass on Sunday and share to some extent parish life during the summer months. The pioneers of the group had started to vacation at York Beach in the 1890's and found it difficut, at times impossible, to get to Portsmouth for Sunday Mass. They requested that Mass be offered at York Beach and one or the other offered to make one of the rooms in their homes a chapel. The request was granted and the first Mass celebrated there (in modern times, at least) was in 1896. For a while, a room in the larger resi- dence of a Protestant physician served as a chapel. The op- portunity to attend Mass brought more Catholics to York Beach each summer. They now wanted a church of their own. This, too, was granted, and a few of the well-to-do vacationists offered to advance the needed money to start construction, an offer was taken by the Catholics on condition that the money was a loan. By August 1901, the church, a much larger building than required, was completed and blessed by Bishop O'Connell. The Star of the Sea church became the summer parish of these Catholic vacationists and their choir, directed by a well-known musician, became one of the attractions of the resort. By 1949 there were sufficient Catholic residents in York Beach to warrant Sunday Mass during the year. In 1951, when the jubilee of the church was celebrated in a grand manner, the average Sunday attendance at the five Masses was about 2500. Thus did Catholic vacationists from many
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states complete the construction of churches from Eastport to Kittery started by the immigrant Irishmen travelling down the coast of Maine.
Maine Catholics had something to give to the vacationists, too. Some paid for their vacations by publishing their im- pressions of Maine Catholics. One visitor was deeply impressed by what she found. The town is not identified, but it was a small one of less than a hundred families and no more than twelve of these were Catholic. Yet there was a Catholic church in the town and on Sundays during the summer there would be two hundred at the Mass. This particular summer the visitor remained after the vacation period and became one of the regular parishioners. On the first Sunday of October the pastor announced that the church would be closed for the winter and that Mass hereafter would be in the rectory. The day for the closing of the church - a parish affair with all cooperating - was announced. The faith of these few resi- dent Catholics deeply impressed the visitor. "I discovered," she wrote, "that Catholics in Maine live the life of the Church with an old-fashioned simplicity that does not exist, I think, in many parts of our country."1 Maine Catholics had, then, something to give to the visitors, but one wonders how long the strong faith of these twelve families would have survived without the impact of the two hundred summer vacationists who made the little Catholic church of the village the im- portant church during the summer months.
2. OMNIA MEA TUA
Bishop Murray remained in Portland only six years but they were busy and pleasant ones. He was soon acquainted with all his parishes. He began to visit and confirm shortly after installation and within two months he had visited more than forty of them. The number of children and adults in
1 Mary Kiely, "Yankee Church Down East," Catholic World, 168 (March 1949), 442-447.
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the Confirmation classes pleased him, and in his first pastoral letter, dated December 24, 1925, he expressed the hope that he would find the same impressive numbers in the remaining parishes which would be visited, he promised, next spring and summer. He liked to travel and his journeys were not restricted to Maine. Like Walsh, he was a member of the Administrative Committee of the NCWC, lending prominence to the diocese as the chairman of the legal department. This work called for trips to Washington and other cities. His con- tacts within and outside the diocese were wide and he was called upon to use them in 1931 when Catholic University began a drive for funds to expand its faculties and depart- ments and he was appointed vice-chairman of the special gifts committee that was expected to raise a million dollars. He had a way of collecting and disposing of money.
There was considerable expansion in the diocese during the six years. More than thirty parishes were established; the number of churches with resident priests increased from 95 in 1924 to 126 in 1931, the total number of churches from 168 to 183, and the number of priests working in the diocese, including the religious, from 172 to 216. All this called for considerable construction. When Murray arrived in Portland money was plenty and credit was easy. Indeed, since the Church was an attractive investment, bankers were anxious to make loans to pastors for construction, and the pastors were given a free hand to borrow. The beautiful St. Joseph's in the Deering section of Portland and the large and modern high school in Bangor were among the major construction of these six years. The Bangor school had been planned by the two pastors of the city, Father Thomas J. Nelligan of St. John's and Father Martin A. Clary of St. Mary's; When Clary died January, 1927, the Reverend Timothy H. Houlihan, his successor, continued the cooperation of the two parishes to complete the project. The school was dedicated as a mem- orial to Father John Bapst by Murray and was opened for the boys and girls of Bangor and neighboring parishes in the
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fall of 1928. It was the equal of any high school in the state and was staffed by the Sisters of Mercy and diocesan priests; later, in 1933, the Xaverian Brothers replaced the priests.
The John Bapst High School compensated to a degree for the loss of Maine's only Catholic college for men. St. Mary's in Van Buren closed as a college the year construction started on the Bangor school. The college had not expanded as ex- pected and its future had been discussed frequently during Walsh's last years. There was some talk during 1923 about transferring the college to southern Maine, but this suggestion was strenuously opposed by leading Catholic laymen who thought the future of Van Buren was closely linked with the college. Bishop Walsh promised the Van Buren delegation that no definite decision would be made for a year, but before the year expired he himself had died and Bishop Murray accepted the inevitable. It was decided to close the college and retain the high school. Maine now had only one Catholic college, St. Joseph's in Portland, a girls' college that had opened in 1915; during the centenary year the college officials an- nounced plans for expansion on a new site in Standish, on the shores of Sebago Lake. The steady increase in the parochial school system also helped to counterbalance the loss of the college. The number of pupils in parish schools increased from 19,137 to 23,290 during the six years of Murray's resi- dence in Maine.
The diocese also acquired its own weekly journal during these same years. Bishop Murray came from a diocese that long had had one of the best Catholic weeklies, the Catholic Transcript, and he wanted one that would keep the Catholics of Maine in touch with Catholic events in the state and nation and in the world at large. The first issue of the Church World appeared on Friday, July 18, 1930, an eight-page, folio size (in 1933 a tabloid format was adopted ), journal that was edited by Father John F. Conoley, pastor of the Christ the King par- ish in Hebron. Murray found time to contribute to its pages, probably some of the editorials, for they were well written,
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and the journal on its first anniversary elicited from the Catho- lic Transcript the comment that it had "taken its place among the strong Catholic newspapers of the United States."
Murray was devoted to the needy and the unfortunate. His own flock was, of course, his primary concern. In one of his first letters to the pastors of the diocese he told them that the sick should be visited at least once a day. This was the duty of the priest who administered the sacrament and it endured until the person recovered health or succumbed to the illness. One of his last projects in the diocese was the founding of the Cheverus Dental Clinic in Portland for the Catholic children; the clinic, conveniently located on Free Street, was well ap- pointed and under the direction of a competent doctor.
He was always ready to cooperate in good causes. Although his own diocese needed whatever money that could be spared, he strongly urged the Catholics of Maine to support the Red Cross drive in early 1931 for $10,000,000 for relief of the mid- West drought stricken area. He found that others cooperated in return. When the Catholics of Brunswick were building St. Charles', a neat, English style church, President Kenneth C. M. Sills of Bowdoin College offered them the use of the col- lege chapel and the offer was accepted. The church was de- dicated late in January 1931, and Sills attended the Mass and heard Murray express his thanks and those of the pastor and parishioners to Bowdoin for its kind cooperation.
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