USA > New Jersey > The Catholic Church in New Jersey > Part 19
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(Copyright 1902, by Smith-Curry.)
RIGHT REV. BERNARD M' QUAID, BISHOP OF ROCHESTER.
among the priests of the new diocese to take his place, Father Senez without hesitation named Father McQuaid, then in Madison. Bishop-elect Bayley wrote at once to Father McQuaid to report at the cathedral the following Sunday. But the pastor of Madi- son found this impossible, as he had made arrangements with con- tractors to begin the church in Mendham, and, furthermore, he
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claimed at least a week's delay to arrange matters in Madison. This request was granted, and on Sunday, September 25th, the new pastor made his first appearance before his new charge.
It was not easy to supplant Father Senez in the affection of his flock, since this good priest exercised a strong-some would call it a hypnotic-influence over all those with whom he came in touch, and to this day the remnants of the old pioneers still speak of him with love and veneration. When he first visited his new mission, Father McQuaid was dissatisfied with the conditions he found in the orphanage in the rear of the church.
Father Senez had installed some good women of the parish as matrons of the little ones, and while they did the best they could, still there was abundant room for improvement. On a visit to Bishop Bayley, Father McQuaid made known to him the actual state of affairs and the shortcomings in the asylum, and suggested that he ask the Sisters of Charity to take charge. . The request having been put to Mother Angela, Sister Philippine and her little band were assigned to the mission and took charge of the orphans, October 18th, 1853, and were thus the first religious women to inaugurate in the diocese of Newark the work of charity which, during the last fifty years, has so flourished and extended. Before his departure Father Senez had built St. Mary's Hall on High Street, the site of the present Women's Hospital connected with St. Michael's, for school purposes, and where Mass was offered for the children on Sundays. This was old St. Patrick's school for boys, as the girls were taught in the old asylum on Central Avenue, then Nesbitt Street. Father McQuaid built the chapel and sacristy, and purchased the present priest's home on Bleecker Street, which he enlarged for the accommodation of the bishop and the clergy. Monsignor Doane further added to it in later years.
Of Father McQuaid the registrar of the clergy records "that he was born in New York City, made his preparatory studies in Chambly, Canada, his theological studies in St. Joseph's Seminary, Fordham, and was ordained, January 16th, 1848, the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, by Bishop Hughes; consecrated first bishop of Rochester by Archbishop McCloskey, in St. Patrick's Cathe- dral, New York, July 12th, 1868; nominated previously for Cin- cinnati, etc. Appointed pastor of Madison, Dover, Morristown, Mendham, etc., etc. His mission extended all through Morris County, and he used to make his ministrations extend also to Warren County, then in the diocese of Philadelphia. He opened
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the first continuous Catholic school in New Jersey, that is, the first which has never since been closed; taught in it himself, to start it, for six months. He built the church of the Assumption, Morristown, St. Rose's Church, Springfield, now removed to Short Hills. Pastor of the cathedral, vicar-general after Father Moran's death, and the right arm of the bishop for many years. He built and rebuilt Seton Hall College; introduced the Sisters of Charity, and was foremost in promoting all diocesan works."
What he did for St. Patrick's is not yet forgotten. His Ros- ary Society was so numerous that meetings had to be held on two successive Sundays. He built the Young Men's Institute on New Street, and was the father of the Young Men's Catholic Association, which to-day numbers thousands in its ranks. In parochial work, in the confessional, in the pulpit he never spared himself. When in the seminary his fellow-seminarists-big, burly, healthy sons of Erin-would look down with contempt on his thin, emaciated frame, and say, loud enough for him to hear, "They'll never make priests of such scrawny Yanks." But, as he to-day says, bowed under the weight of years, but laboring still with the same tireless activity, "I have downed them all." It is true. Of all those who assisted at the consecration and installation of Bishop Bayley, he is the only one left-the last of the Old Guard. Zealous as a churchman, Father McQuaid was no less ardent as a patriot. Learning on a Saturday evening of the attack on Fort Sumter-the clarion which sounded the open- ing of the internecine struggle between the North and the South -on Sunday morning in eloquent and pathetic words he told his flock what was their duty, and pleaded with them to be loyal to the old flag.
Of all the ministers of the Gospel, Father McQuaid was first and alone that memorable Sunday morning to rally his flock to the defence of the Union.
In the following week he was the only clergyman invited to address the public meeting assembled at the Court House to voice the patriotic sentiments of the citizens of Newark-a com- plimentary recognition of his patriotic action. And to the front he went as chaplain of the New Jersey Brigade, and mingled with the wounded and dying on the battle-field, amid the storm of shot and shell, until captured by the Confederates.
From the dawn of his priestly life to the golden autumn of his fruitful episcopal career Bishop McQuaid has ever been the con- sistent, unswerving champion of Christian education. With him
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this has never been an academic question. To emphasize its im- portance, in addition to his other manifold and pressing duties he assumes the rôle of teacher, and for six months he performs the drudgery, but cheerfully, uncomplainingly, because he is convinced of its necessity. His motto has ever been, Upward and onward ; and it is safe to say that, in the thoroughness of the training of its priests and teaching sisters, in the rounded, solid education of its children, the diocese of Rochester is peerless among all. Bishop McQuaid's monument is St. Bernard's Seminary. In mediaval days the great churchmen were William of Wykeham, Wolsey, and Richelieu, to whom Cambridge, Oxford, and the Sorbonne look as their patrons and founders, and is it not pardon- able to link to these names that of the Bishop of Rochester ? Without the almost boundless resources these prelates and states- men enjoyed, Bishop McQuaid, full of trust in God, secure by his devotion to the Holy Souls, has gone on with his work from the humblest beginnings, while those nearest to him in confidence and closest to him in sympathy were breathless as to the end of it all; regardless of cruel cynicism, which great souls with noble projects never fail to call forth, this venerable bishop may point to-day with pardonable pride to a work accomplished, to criti- cism silenced, to folly imitated-the safest criterion of merit and admiration.
The so-called Maria Monk revelations, and the animosities ex- cited by some Italian fugitives from justice, who accused the papal nuncio, Mgr. Cajetan Bedini, of cruelties when acting as gov- ernor of one of the papal states, and the old racial hatred of the men of the north of Ireland toward those of the south, culminated in an outburst of fanatical fury, as cruel as it was unjust. Some lodges of Orangemen visited Newark September 5th, 1854, where they were joined by kindred organizations, including some German Turners. They marched through the street, with an open Bible at the head of the procession, to the picnic grounds. In the afternoon, heated by drink, which aroused all the savage instincts in their breasts, they marched to the little German church on High and William streets, and immediately began to attack it. So unsuspicious of danger was the pastor, that at the very mo- ment of the onslaught he was dining with a reverend visitor, who, hearing the tumult and rushing to the window and beholding the angry mob, jumped out of a window and escaped. Father Balleis hid himself under a bed, but his housekeeper, brave of heart and indignant at the sacrilege, seized a broomstick and, brandishing
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it at the rioters, defied them. They sacked the church, broke the windows, and bent the pipes of the organ, but, fortunately, the Blessed Sacrament was removed by the fleeing priest on his way to a safer shelter.
Bishop Bayley, together with Father McQuaid, had gone early that morning to accompany Father Harkins of Boston on a visit to Seton Hall, then at Madison. Sister Philippine, at that time in charge of the orphan asylum, fearing that the mob would attack the orphanage, led her little ones into the church. There they remained during the rest of the day and far into the night in prayer, until, reassured by the return of their pastor, they retired to repose, if not to rest. Father McQuaid, obeying a secret in- stinct, returned to Newark earlier than he had intended, and on his arrival learned the news of the outrage.
One of the bystanders, an inoffensive Catholic, had been killed and many others wounded, which wrought the Catholics working in the neighborhood into a great state of excitement. Fathers Moran and McQuaid went among them and calmed their anger by counselling them to allow the authorities to pursue the mis- creants in the proper legal way. An investigation was, indeed, made, in which it was clearly demonstrated that there was no provocation on the part of the Catholics, and the blame was laid, where it belonged, to the Orange lodges. More than one of these misguided bigots became a parable-to use a good old Irish and significant expression-to his own and a later generation. The acrimony spread to the more pacific non-Catholics of the commu- nity, whose hatred, if not so active, was still as deeply rooted and bitter. The children on the way from the first Catholic school in Plane Street, and their elders on their way to the store or going home from work, were mocked and sneered at. The newspapers caricatured them; they were attacked and vilified in the pulpit. A Rev. Mr. Prince accused Father Moran with advising the Catholics of St. Mary's against taking the tracts and Bibles which were offered them by the Bible Society. Father Moran replied that the Germans were unable to read English, and that the Bibles offered them differed essentially from the Rheims Version. While always deprecating controversy, Father Moran never shrank from defending his faith and his Church. Anonymous articles appeared in the press, to which the good priest replied with the irresistible force of one having truth and justice on his side; and, eventually, one of the writers, no less a personage than Chief Justice Hornblower, had the manliness publicly to apologize to
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Father Moran for his charges against the Catholic Church, and ever after remained the firm and ardent friend of the priest.
Under all this provocation the Catholics, obeying fully but reluctantly the advice of their pastors, remained quiet, curbing that hot Celtic nature under the sting that hurt most-the insult
MOST REV. MICHAEL A. CORRIGAN, D.D. Second Bishop of Newark.
to their religion. The tempest passed, and, while its trail was long visible, still it bore fruit by knitting Catholics more closely together, and, blotting out national prejudices, made both the Germans and the Irish realize to the full that their common glory and shame was not by loyalty to fatherland, but fealty to the one Church of whose body they were privileged to be members. The
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edelweiss blossoms and thrives in the snows of the icy summits of the Alps, and so this vine of Christian faith seems never to thrive so well as in the storm and fury of persecution. Within it is a divine germ which no human power can destroy. At times it seems to wither, it gives every sign of decay, and when men prepare to sing its death-knell, lo! it bursts forth again in all the bounty of springtide blossoming, and ready again to bestow its benisons on humanity. One evil alone it has to fear-the evil of prosperity, when her children begin to gather into barns, to enjoy without stint and without gratitude, God's bounteous blessings. When her children have forced their way to the little band of moneyed barons, political and professional leaders, then they for- get their God and his Church, and too often take the step which leads almost inevitably to the shipwreck of that faith, which all the cruelty of persecution, poverty, and plague was powerless to wrest from their fathers-a matrimonial alliance with one of alien faith.
Here is the fruitful cause of the frightful leakage of the past.
The shock which had almost crushed the Catholics was to ricochet in some measure against the less hostile of their oppo- nents. One Saturday evening after confessions in St. Patrick's, Mr. Matthew O'Brien, the sexton, called on Father McQuaid to tell him that a young man had walked into the church and insisted on seeing Bishop Bayley. The sexton directed him to go to the bishop's house. While Fathers McQuaid and Venuta were dis- cussing the character of the visitor and the nature of the errand the night-bell rang. It was then after eleven. At the suggestion of Father McQuaid, Father Venuta answered it. He found a tall, handsome young man, who excitedly asked for the bishop. He was told that as it was already late it would be difficult, if not out of the question, to see him. He so persisted that finally Father Venuta went to Bishop Bayley's room and delivered the young man's message. The bishop replied, "Tell him I can't see him. It is too late, and let him call again."
But undaunted by this rebuff, the young man replied that he would not leave the house until he saw the bishop.
On hearing this Bishop Bayley came out of his room and in- vited the stranger to enter. They talked far into the night, and George Hobart Doane returned to Grace Church rectory and in- formed the rector that he could take no part in the services that day. He paid a short visit to his father, who was the Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey, and promised him to wait two months-in
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Newport -- before taking any decisive step. In that fashionable watering-place he met Mrs. Peters of Cincinnati and other devout Catholics, who instructed and confirmed him in the doctrines of that Church of whose priesthood he has been these many decades of years its glory and its boast. But an abler pen, of one long since dead, but whose heart always throbbed with admiration and veneration for the pastor of his childhood and the guide of his riper years-the Rev. Michael J. Holland, late pastor of St. Co- lumba's, Newark-will continue this theme.
RT. REV. MGR. G. H. DOANE, P.A.
"To-day," wrote Archbishop Bayley, on September 22d, 1855, "I baptized George Hobart Doane, son of the Protestant Episco- pal Bishop of New Jersey." Educated, refined, and with every natural inducement in life beckoning him forward, this young deacon of the Episcopal Church abandoned all for Christ's follow- ing. Newark could then boast of but a few simply constructed Catholic churches, having no conveniences apart from those neces- sarily required. The Orphan Asylum and Young Men's Insti- tute excepted, it possessed no Catholic institutions, and its Cath- olic population, with but a few exceptions, were working men toiling hard for their daily bread. This would make the young man's sacrifice far more great. However, we see him later en- tering the Seminary of St. Sulpice, in Paris, and finally, after a visit to the Seven Hilled City, returning to Newark, where he was ordained priest on the 13th of September, 1857. The cer- emony was performed in the presence of a crowded congregation by Archbishop Bayley, in the Newark Cathedral. Doctor Ly- man, of Baltimore, a former convert to the faith, the Rev. Mr. Neligan, a former Episcopalian minister ; Dr. Ives, once Episco- pal Bishop of North Carolina; Father Hewitt, and others were present. Archbishop Bayley's memoranda thus summarize the event : " A Protestant minister was to-day ordained by a bishop who was formerly a Protestant minister, assisted by several priests who were formerly Protestant ministers, in the presence of a lay- man who was fromerly an Episcopal bishop." The Rev. gentle- man became the private secretary of Bishop Bayley, succeeded Father McQuaid as pastor of the Cathedral, became Chancellor of the Diocese, and Vicar-General under Bishop Corrigan, and he was honored with the purple by Leo XIII., and after the departure of Archbishop Corrigan to New York, was appointed the administra-
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tor of the Diocese of Newark. Monsignor Doane's singularly marked career, apart from his ministerial ability, has been of vast utility to our gradual growth and development. He obtained a hearing with certain classes where others could not, and if he could not wholly convince them, he at least taught many how to respect the Church. At the very outbreak of the war he was ap- pointed chaplain to the New Jersey brigade by Governor Olden, but unable to withstand the hardships of the field, he was obliged to resign the commission. He has, perhaps, been the principal motor and the most gratified witness of the origin and progress of the majority of Newark's Catholic institutions. Churches, hospi- tals, schools, orphanages, and academies have successively sprung up under his watchful care. Apart from all else St. Michael's Hospital is a practical illustration of his activity. A singular in- cident in connection with its beginning is this remarkable fact : The first time that white and colored men paraded together the public streets of the United States was at the laying of its corner- stone. This was a most fitting prelude, since the hospital recog- nizes neither creed nor color. It lavishes its attentive care upon every unfortunate, irrespective of color, creed, or condition. Its good sisters, servants of the afflicted, are bound by vows of pov- erty and obedience to assist, wait upon, and serve even the most repulsive cases. The present capacity of the hospital is 280 beds, the average number treated during the year, 2,500, and of out-door patients, from 8,000 to 10,000.
How sacred were the ties ruptured by the conversion of Mon- signor Doane, how painful the wound inflicted by the step his con- science prompted him to take, may be judged by what follows :
DIOCESE OF NEWARK.
Sentence of Deposition from the Ministry in the Case of Rev. George Hobart Doane, M.D., Deacon.
To all, everywhere, who are in communion with the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church :
Be it known that George Hobart Doane, M.D., deacon of this diocese, having declared to me in handwriting his renunciation of the ministry, which he received at my hands, from the Lord Jesus Christ, and his design not to officiate in future in any of the offices thereof, intending to submit himself to the schismatical Roman intrusion, is deposed from the ministry, and I hereby pronounce and declare him to be deposed, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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Given at Riverside, this fifteenth day of September, in the year of Our Lord 1855, and in the twenty-third year of my con- secration.
G. W. DOANE, D.D., LL.D., Bishop of New Jersey.
In presence of Milo Mahan, D.D., Presbyter, {
Marcus F. Hyde, A.M., Presbyter.
This sentence was not executed until the provision of the canon "where the party has acted unadvisedly and hastily," which is preëminently the present case, had been offered, urged, and re- fused. It only remains for me humbly to ask the prayers of the faithful in Christ Jesus, that my erring child may be brought back to the way of truth and peace; and for myself, that I may have grace to bear and do the holy will of God.
G. W. DOANE.
After some years in the priesthood Father Doane was invited by the pastor to preach in the Catholic church of Burlington, his home, and the Episcopal See of his father. Bishop Doane re- marked to his man-of-all-work, a Catholic, "Well, I see the prodigal is coming home. Then we must kill the fatted calf." He sent ornaments from his home and flowers from his garden for the adornment of the altar, and in the evening father and son were reconciled.
The Metropolitan of March, 1854, announces the results of a fair held by the ladies in aid of the Orphan Asylum, which netted $2,000. The same paper has a notice of Lockwood's picture of the Last Judgment. Mr. Lockwood was a convert to the faith, and during nine years had been occupied almost exclusively upon this picture, which contained 1, 500 figures. "The great blemish to it is a figure typifying Liberty, or man in a state of freedom, re- ceived by an angel, which is neither more nor less than a half-nude portrait of Washington." What has become of it?
This leads up to the old school, which was located next to the cottage of the Lockwoods', in the rear of whose lot was a spacious building on Orleans Street, said to contain this wonderful painting. As one looks back to old St. Patrick's school, with its crowded rooms and heterogeneous mass of boys of every condition, from the barefooted, tow-headed urchin to the well-dressed, well- groomed son of a comfortable home, under the tutorship of the memorable and worthy Bernard Kearney, Michael R. Kenny, "Tom " McGovern, and Miss Esther O'Grady, when the fads and appliances of modern education were totally absent and unknown,
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and scans the leaders in business, political, and ecclesiastical life to-day, there are few schools can compare with it in results. The old fire bell would occasionally deplete the room of the big boys, and the "Cedars " were an irresistible allurement in the balmy days of spring, and people would keep on dying, and necessitate Mr. Kearney engraving coffin-plates, for of this he held the mo- nopoly among the Catholics of the city, and Mr. Schmidt would have the boys meet in the first room of the girls' school for rehear- sal; but, despite all these drawbacks, many of the old boys have attained success in the mercantile world, many have gone into the priesthood, and none has ever been heard to utter any unkind word or bitter protest against "Kearney's School." The old boys had the faith, and it was not a slumbering, quiescent article, but active and, at times, belligerent, as some of the old Eighth Ward boys will recall. They were loyal, too, and at the outbreak of the Civil War more eloquent, but not more patriotic addresses were made in the halls of Congress, than in front of the old school doors, and on the strip of fence between the angles, at the entrance to the school, was written in large letters, "No Compromise." It did not much matter that the boys did not understand what this meant, but the loyal newspapers bore this motto on their head- lines, and this satisfied the boys that it was the proper principle to uphold, and uphold it they did. Before the war ended, on the rolls of the patriot dead who shed their blood and offered their lives in defence of the Union, were many of Kearney's boys.
What has become of the Irish schoolmaster? He seems to be as extinct as the great auk. The Kearneys of Newark, the Cur- rans of Orange, the O'Neills of Morris County, the O'Connors and Doughertys of Paterson, strong of muscle, arithmetic, and penmanship, they did not spare the rod, and most of us are like a certain British admiral, who stated in the House of Commons that he was the better for the floggings he received at school. Peace to their ashes! In many parishes they kept the faith alive, on a pittance of a salary, and turned out a larger percentage of chil- dren thoroughly grounded in the three R's, good spellers and good penmen, than schools do nowadays.
The Christian Brothers came in September, 1866, and are fol- lowing out the traditions of their order, and carrying on the good work inaugurated more humbly in old St. Mary's Hall. They may count their alumni among the leading business and profes- sional men, not only of the city, but of the State and among the clergy, and their loyal adherence to their Church is at once the
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reward and merit of their Christian teachers. The same is like- wise true of the girls, whose school has been in charge of the Sis- ters of Charity from the beginning. The old building gave place to the present substantial school in 1887.
The Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Morristown.
IT is quite certain, then, that during the winters of 1779 and 1780 the number of Catholics in and around Morristown far ex- ceeded the number of Catholics at present in our parish, made up of the Irish Catholics in the Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey regiments, and the French and Polish officers attached to the line.
In the Pennsylvania line were many Irish, both officers and soldiers; and in the Official Register of the Officers and Men of
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