Memoirs and writings of the Very Reverend James F. Callaghan, D. D.

Front matter

UC-NRLF

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1 i uiiihiiiiii'

Preface

In giving this book to the world, the chief object of the compiler is to preserve to Catholic literature some of the valuable writings of the late Rev. Dr. Callaghan.

In doing this, it seemed fitting that a few striking incidents of so full and fervid a life should precede the writings, in the form of Memoirs.

For those pages that relate to his life at Mount St. Mary's, as editor of the Catholic Telegraph, and pastor at All Saints' Church and St. Peter's Cathedral, Cincinnati, I am indebted to the pen of one of his college friends, who knew him better than any one on earth. That he has written of him in "pure English, undefiled," goes witliout saying; that he has written truthfully of him, even his enemies will concede. What I have added was told me by Right Rev. Edward Fitzgerald, Bishop of Little Rock ; by the people of that place, who loved and admired him ; and by the late Rev. Edward Slattery, of New York City, who administered the last Sacraments, received his dying wishes, and accompanied the venerated remains to tlie home of his boyhood.

If it be thought egotistic for one to quote so well of her own, my only apology is : there was no one else to do it ; and though I realize how much better it might be done, yet I know that love is more powerful than light in revealing the truth.

EMILY A. CALLAGHAN.

December 12, 1902.

Book II. Sermons And Lectures

Page

Pentecost 39

Saint J oseph 73

Death of Rev. John Baptist O'Donoghue 93

Religious Celebration 99

Ireland and Her Wrongs 106

Influence of Catholicity on Civil Liberty. . . 125

Character and Times of Pius IX 145

Th:e Principle, Matter, and Form of Christian

Poetry 161

St. Ignatius, the Founder of the Society of Jesus : 180

TABLE OF CONTENTS. VII

Book III. Articles And Letters From The Catholic

TELEGRAPH.

Page The Infaelibility of the Pope 197

The Infallibility of the Pope — Continued 202

The Infallibility of the Pope — Concluded 207

Dr. Doellinger against the Church — Janus Epitomized 213

A Catholic and the Dogma of Papal Infallibility 223

A Chance to Interpret Infallibility 229

The Delay of the Dogma of Papal Infallibility 231

The New Englander on the See of Peter 249

The Church Journal on Papal Supremacy, . . . 258

The Church Journal on Roman Supremacy. . . . 270

The Christian Quarterly on Divorce 278

The Cincinnati Gazette Prays for an American Bismarck 290

VIII TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page The Church and Liberty 302

The Weakening of the Gazette 312

The Commercial and Galileo — Continued 335

The Commercial and Galileo — Concluded 352

The Encyclical 360

Church and State 367

doellinger vanishes 373

doellinger on the use of the scriptures. . . . 377

"Liberal" Hostility to tpie Religious Orders. 384

The Catholic Church and the World 396

Dr. Lord and Hildebrand 405

Ingersoll and jMoses 422

Death of Very Rev. Edward Purcell 555

Valedictory 564

Book I. Memoirs And Letters

MEMOIRS OF DR. CALLAGHAN.

Chapter I. Boyhood

James Frederic Callaghan was born of Irish Catholic parents in Trenton, New Jersey, March 28, 1839. In 1845 his parents removed to Cincinnati, on account of the educational advantages of the " Queen City of the West." Although but six years of age at this time, he could read fluently, and at the age of eleven was admitted to Hughes High School. Though he was the youngest of his class, and the youngest ever admitted to the Cincinnati High Schools, yet he stood at the head. He excelled in Latin, Greek, and Mathematics; nor was he second to any in English. Mr. R. D. Barney, of The Robert Clarke Company, Cincinnati, whose father was Principal of Hughes, told the writer, not long since, that his father used to get James Callaghan "up" on all occasions as "one of the ablest speakers." Sometimes he introduced him as a young son of Erin, for even in boyhood he was a warm defender of the Irish.

At the age of twelve, he made the acquaintance of the late Archbishop Wood, of Philadelphia, who at that time was one of the pastors of St. Peter's Cathedral, Cincinnati. Father Wood had organized a Sundayschool in the basement of the Cathedral, and to this Sundav-school James Callaghan was sent to prepare (I)

2 ME;M0IRS and writings OI' dr. CAIvI^AGHAN.

for his First Communion. Father Wood, seeing the superior mind of this young- boy, and becoming well acquainted with his soul, in the confessional, turned his thoughts toward the priesthood, foreseeing the great good to be accomplished in the vineyard of the Lord by such extraordinary talents. What a true prophet he was, is told in the pages of these Memoirs by one who was ordained a priest at the same time, and who was his closest friend during their college days, and during the first twenty years of their ministry.

At the age of fifteen he entered St. Thomas's Seminary, near Bardstown, Kentucky, which was then the preparatory school of Mount St. Mary's of the West. Having completed the course there in two years, and standing at the head of his classes, as he had at Hughes High School, he entered Mount St. Mary's of the West in his eighteenth year.

Chapter II

DR. CALLAGHAN AT MOUNT ST MARY'S OF THE

WEST.

In the autumn session of the year 1857 James Frederic Callaghan entered Mount St. Mary's of the West as an ecclesiastical student. The seminary and the college, then in the second year of their promising but brief existence, bore the same name, and were in the same building. The college afforded instruction both to students intended for some worldly calling, and to seminarians who had not yet begun the study of theology, as well as to some theological students.

There for two years the young student attended the college classes. The distinction that he had won at Hughes High School and at St. Thomas's Seminary was enhanced at Mount St. Mary's. Here he had for competitors young men who had already distinguished themselves in their studies at other colleges, and from the start he took the lead among them.

The brilliancy of his talents was shown not only by his pre-eminence, but also by the disadvantages at which he won it. Being appointed one of the college prefects, he had less time for study than his classmates ; and to supply the loss as best he could in the distracting occupations of his office, he had to devote appointed hours of rest to his studies. His nervous system and his general health suffered from the strain, the signs of which were so manifest that at the end of his second collegiate year at Mount St. Mary's he was, as one of his companions remarked, "as thin as a ghost"; but

A MEMOIRS AND WRITINGS OF DR. CALLAGHAN.

he bore up by force of the strong will-power for which throughout his life he was remarkable. This nervous strain, however, told on him during his seminary course and after his ordination, and it probably made itself felt more or less during all his after years, although the same strong will sustained him to the end, without the use of remedies or precautions that might have prolonged his life.

At his graduation in June, 1859, he stood foremost in a class, to be a member of which conferred distinction. Of the seven honors — the Latin, the Greek, the philosophical, the literary, the scientific, the mathematical, and the historical — awarded to its six members, he received two, and the others, one each. According to the marks he had received during the preceding year, he might naturally have looked to the winning of all, or nearly all, the honors, rather than to the distinction of receiving one more than any of his classmates. Whatever he may have thought of the matter, he never said anything. Even in his boyhood, though an ambitious student, he was too great to entertain petty jealousies. Had he had a vote in the distribution of the honors, he doubtless would have given it for their partition among his comrades, for he was always ready to help them in their difficulties, — a generous and loyal soul from his youth.

He began his theological course in September, 1859, and finished it in June, 1862. During its continuance, his humble appreciation of his own worth and his lofty ideal of the dignity of the priesthood led him to think that he was unworthy of that high calling. He thought of entering the legal profession, and even left the seminary : but its wise and saintlv rector. Father Barry, of happy memory, soon sent a messenger to recall him, and he returned immediately. During his short absence, as his looks showed only too sadly, he had suffered an agony of grief.

While reading theology he also taught some of the college classes ; and from early spring in 1862, after his return to the seminary, till the end of the scholastic year in June, 1863, he was one of the regular college professors. Soon after his ordination as priest, on the thirtieth day of May, 1863, he was appointed pastor of the church of All Saints, in Cincinnati. He set to work only too earnestly, and in 1865 was forced by broken health to retire from the discharge of his duties, but -after some months of illness was able to resume his pastoral charge.

From that time until the autumn of 1869 he combined the duties of pastor of All Saints and of professor at the seminary. Heedless of the warnings of his experience, in the year 1865, he was, like his patron, St. Paul, whose name he took at ordination, unsparing of himself. After the pastoral and professional labors of the day, he was to be found at ten o'clock at night conscientiously preparing for the work of the next day at the seminary. It was about five miles from his residence, and for a while, daily, he walked the entire distance to and fro. Sometimes, when there was an unusual press of parish work upon him, such as collecting money for building or improvements, and visiting the sick in sickly seasons, he did not go to rest until midnight. At such times he was up in the morning at four o'clock, that he might prepare himself fitly for the classes, and attend to other duties for which there was no time in the evening.

During his pastorate of about six years at All Saints, nearly all of which time he was also one of the seminary professors, some property was acquired for the church, its costly marble altar and steeple erected, the

6 MliMOIRS AND WRITINGS OF DR. CALLAGHAN.

school-house built, the church and parsonage completely furnished, and other improvements made. "Zeal for Thy house hath eaten me up" was to the tireless and exemplary pastor a motto worthy of all acceptance ; and in his zeal, and his blameless, priestly Hfe, his people were blessed in him who walked so reverently among them, seeking not his own, but the things that are of Christ. They had reason to be thankful in another respect in which he was a pattern worthy of all imitation,— all the more admirable when one considers how many other things he did, and how well he did everything he took in hand : he never preached without preparation, and no matter how weary and worn with work or care, he always found time to Wf-ifc his sermons, — those sermons one would ever gladly hear, but may not ever hear again.

His capacity for work was indeed wonderful. It seemed that more work than he was able to do could not be found for him, though often the too willing worker was overtasked. Once, when he was editor of the Catholic Telegraph, and at the same time assistant pastor at the Cathedral, and much occupied otherwise, he said to a friend : '' Many a morning, after being up all night writing, I have walked back from the printing office to the Cathedral to be in time to say my mass."

In 1869-70, for about a year, his labors were somewhat lightened. At that time he was made associate editor of the Catholic Telegraph, with the Very Reverend Edward Purcell as chief, and went to live at the seminary, where he remained professor till the consecration of the Keverend Casper Borgcss as Bishop of Detroit, in April, 1870. From that time until the summer of 1880, when he went abroad and made a tour of six months in England, Ireland, Germany, France, and Italy, he lived at the Cathedral, filling at the same time the

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place of assistant pastor, of secretary to Archbishop Purcell, and until the latter part of the year 1879 edited the Telegraph.

For a year or so before his editorship of that paper he had written its leading articles, so that all, or nearly all, of them were written by him for about a dozen years. He became at the same time both editor and proprietor of the paper, in which until then money had been sunk annually for many years ; but he soon made it selfsupporting. More than that, he made it a power that was felt both within and without the Church. His leaders on the school question made it feared and hated by politicians, who cared more for political expediency than for moral or religious principles. The papers he wrote on papal infallibility were adopted by Archbishop Purcell as the expression of his own sentiments, and sent by him to Rome when after the A^atican Council he had to make his submission to its decrees. They were some of the best the editor ever wrote.

It must be said, only to his praise, and not to his discredit, that neither as an editor nor as a professor did Dr. Callaghan please every one. Loving not "the praise of man more than the praise of God," he made his own the thought of the Doctor of the Gentiles, "If I would please men, I should be an enemy of Christ.'' As an editor he was considered by worldly-wise men imprudent and intractable, because he would not do a little wrong that a great good, seeming or real, might ensue. Imprudent in some of his utterances and incorrect in some of his judgments he may have been (for who is infallible?), but he was always true to the right as he saw it, and fearless in its advocacy. His faith in it and in its ultimate triumph was unshaken. The faith of the just man showed itself in his life, and in the works of a life " full of days," reckoned by the Scriptural standard, and full of promise that is now fruition. His passing misgivings about his vocation indicated his profound faith in the supernatural, in human responsibility, in the judgment to come, in the Unseen Judge who searcheth the reins and the heart, in the unspeakable mysteries of the altar, and in the sacred character of the ministry that he honored by his meritorious and spotless priesthood. Perhaps the most striking instance of this occurred on the evening of his ordination day, when with a fellow priest ordained with him, he was returning at nearly midnight from the seminary chapel, where they had both been preparing to stand for the first time at the altar on the morrow. He stopped his companion and said in a voice and manner that conveyed somewhat of awe: "Do you think that I am really a priest?" Another instance might be told in which there was a touch of the serious and the diverting blended. Late one night, looking at himself in a mirror, as if thinking aloud, he said in the hearing of a comrade : " Well, you're a queer looking priest."

As a professor there was never a question of his ability and learning and careful fulfiUment of duty. He was found fault with, however, by some of the slower, but not saner sort, for overstrictness in class. Strict he certainly was in requiring his pupils to do their best work, and for this they ought to have been thankful, — as the better part of them probably were in later years, — not querulous and resentful. They were taught by him how to study and learn as they had never learned before ; but it is possible he forgot that his pupils were not as gifted as he was, and that he did not make enough allowance for dullness. But certain it is that no pupil who did his work ever fell under his censure ; and that his chidings, however vigorous, had no bitterness in them to rankle in the mind ; or if there was rancor, it was in the heart of the pupil, not in that of the kindly and conscientious professor.

Kindness of heart, accompanied sometimes in the very act of doing a kindly turn by a certain brusqueness, occasionally even gruffness of manner, and sometimes with unsweetness of speech, was one of the marked characteristics of Dr. Callaghan. This arose from the sincerity of a nature that, often even to imprudence, and oftener to impolicy, was intolerant of deceit and sham; and of the hollow show that counterfeits sterling worth, and but too often passes as current coin of the intercourse of life. His sympathy with suffering and want and sorrow was so keen and warm that no worthy appeal for help — to say nothing of only too many unworthy applications — ever fell unheeded on his ears, as a goodly number of the beneficiaries of his bounty could testify.

He sometimes divined the needs of others, and imsought, unlooked for, came to their relief. Of his money he was liberal even to lavishness, and, alack, in too many instances received in return not even thanks. It is known that he lent hundreds of dollars that were never returned ; and once, about thirty years ago, he said, with some warmth and with good grounds : " I have lent thousands and never got a cent back." Still it is written : " Blessed is he that considereth the poor : the Lord will deliver him in the time of trouble." He, and the friend so like to him in many traits of mind and character, his near friend for many years, whose last sad, dark days were lightened by his active sympathy — good, kind, generous Father Edward Purcell, by some so much misjudged, so cruelly condemned — now inherit together that blessing.

Like that friend whose memory is still so tenderly cherished by those who knew him best, he had gifts of

TO MEMOIRS AND WRITINGS OF DR. CALI^AGHAN.

mind of the first order. By long and diligent use of them he acquired a store of widely varied learning, that gained in extent and variety by whatever it may have lacked in scholastic method and profundity. Though well versed in science, he was of a literary rather than of a scientific turn, always impressive and often eloquent as a preacher and lecturer, instructive, entertaining, humorous, even witty in conversation, and eminent as a writer. He could learn better and more quickly than others anything he gave his mind to. Though his talents were not of the precocious kind, they soon matured, and won for him a meed of praise above his fellows. This was markedly the case with his talent for composition, the style of which in the boy was a promise and a foreshadowing of the perfect performance of the man.

In the year 1858, in a large class — several of them his seniors, and students of theology, — that attended the lectures of the Reverend Xavier Donald Macleod, he won the admiration and praise of that fastidious scholar in English by an essay that still lives in the memory of at least one that heard it read that night four and forty years ago. It was read aloud to the class by the essayist at the bidding of the lecturer. Fellowstudents envied and admired the literary graces of an essay which, it is not too much to say, was to them at once, both for style and thought, an object of admiration and despair.

For maturity and finish of style the essay would compare favorably with printed productions more widely famed. It was remarkable as showing the characteristics that were most admired in the writings of his later years by critics none too partial. The same praise may be given to his commencement speech in 1858, on " The

AT MOUNT ST. MARY's OF THE WKST. 1 1

Hopes of the American Scholar," and to his graduation speech on " Reverence."

The fashion of this world passeth and changeth ; as in other things, so in matters of literary taste. The number of the admirers, as well as of the masters, of the rounded-period style, with its fullness and cadence, and careful balance, has, since the days of Dr. Johnson, been growing small by degrees, and, as old-fashioned folk would add, lamentably less. Anyway the style, like the good manners of the old school, is now called old-fashioned, it needs must be that " the old order changeth, giving way to new," if not better; and it is idle to lament the change. Still those who have read the leaders that Dr. Callaghan during his editorship of the Catholic Telegraph wrote leisurely and carefully, when he had time, — which he seldom had, — and those who have had the pleasure and the profit of listening to his sermons and lectures, in which literary touch and voice and the style periodique combined to heighten the efifect, will hear in their hearts evermore the wailing cry :

" Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand And the sound of a voice that is still. "

He was master of a style which is, whatever be its merits as viewed from the old, or its defects as viewed from the present literary standpoint, in a master's hands always pleasant to read : scholarly, effective, and on occasion, eloquent. Such a cadenced prose style, with its long and carefully constructed sentences, its skillful selection and marshaling of words and phrases, its studied antitheses, and its gradations towards a climax, deserves praise like that bestowed by a poet on the style of a brother poet, who "taught to join"

'■ The varying verse, the full resounding hne. The long majestic march, and energy divine. "

It goes without saying that there are good writers whose style is concise, and good writers whose style is diffuse. It is not a matter of course that conciseness in writing — especially if, as in writers not a few, it lack clearness and smoothness, — is better than diffuseness that is smooth and clear. Perspicuity, strength, grace, copiousness of thought, expression, and illustration, and full, rounded sentences, are distinctive marks of Dr. Callaghan's style.

In this style of writing he had, at least at his best, no superior, and few, if any, equals among the Catholic writers of this country. There are bits of ornate writing from his pen that are perfect in their kind, or if faulty in any respect, the fault arose from a cause that is rather commendable than blamable, and for which in point of fact popular writers of our day incur no blame — an embarras des richesses. Original thought, apt quotation or allusion, play of fancy, happy illustration, suggestive phrase, argument, poetic idea, cold reasoning, warmth of feeling, striking imagery, learning, and reflection, were all so mingled, and so illumined with the radiance of a glowing imagination, often within the compass of a few lines, that to read them, and still more to hear him preach or lecture, was, as one of his hearers said, "like looking through a kaleidoscope." The comparison is, however, inadequate to convey a just appreciation of him as a lecturer or a preacher. After listening to a series of lectures by him at the Cathedral of Cincinnati, Archbishop Purcell, no mean judge of literary values, compared them to the lectures of Lacordaire.

Some critics have thought they discovered a want of action in Dr. Callaghan's delivery, and a lack of variety in the modulations of his voice ; but others have justly found both in his voice and manner, as a public speaker, an admirable harmony with his style of literary composition. His sermons and lectures, excellent as they were, if delivered by another with more gesticulation, and more varied inflections, and intonations of voice, would not have been as effective as when spoken with that reposeful yet impressive manner that was his, naturally, as a public speaker, and in those full, deep, earnest tones, which had in them somewhat of solemnity, and which so many would, but none may hear again as of old. His voice was heard to most advantage when he sang Mass. Then its solemn, devotional intonations added to the solemnity of the religious ceremony ; and at the Snrsmn corda the worshipers had hearts, for the nonce at least, raised heavenward. One of them, fondly recalling religious services of thirty years ago, wrote in a public print that to him it seemed to reach the perfect ideal of solemn religious worship when Archbishop Purcell preached and Dr. Callaghan sang the Mass.

Those were bright, happy days for both ; but dark, sorrowful days were coming on. Their last years were the saddest of their lives — sad and sorrowful to both of them even unto death. Being dead, they still speak by the example of their lives as well as by their recorded words, written with ink and also in fleshly tables of the heart. One hardly needs assurance that their voices now join in the new song in the new Jerusalem, which no man could learn, but only the pure in heart and clean of hand, who are redeemed from the earth to ascend the mount of the Lord and stand in his holy place.

The mortal remains of Dr. Callaghan, together with those of the Archbishop and of Father Edw^ard, now lie at St. Martin's, Ohio, in the little country churchyard of the Ursulines, who gave the two sorely stricken brothers — truly par nobilc fratruvi, and never nobler

14 MKMOIRS AND WRITINGS OF DR. CAIvIvAGHAN.

than in their fallen fortunes, — a welcome and a home, when there was none other for them in all the wide world beside.

The record of Dr. Callaghan's fealty and devotion to the noble twain in misfortune would fill some of the most glorious pages in the annals of loyalty and self-sacrifice. The tender strength of a strong manhood supporting the weakness of old age in the person of the afflicted Archbishop, whom he watched and tended day and night for two and a half years, makes a strikingly beautiful and pathetic picture. The details of those years of more than loving, motherly care, of more than brotherly fidelity, of wakeful nights and weary days, are something too sacred to expose to the public gaze or strangers' eyes ; and the memory of them is, like Ossian's music, at once " sweet and mournful to the soul." More than another score of years is needed to deaden that memory. It would be alike painful and improper to imveil the mournful and touching scene of sorrow, to which no sorrow of the two mortally stricken sufferers was ever like ; of their sad, yet sweet resignation ; of the consoling sympathy and services of the angelic St. Angela's daughters ; of tender and gentle ministrations to those whom the ungentle hand of man and the healing hand of God had touched.

To do something for their honor and at the same time for even more sacred interests that were touched nearly, if not imperiled, by the business failure of the Archbishop and Vicar-General of the Diocese, a movement towards the payment of the debt, thereby incurred, was set afoot in November, 1882. When, before its inception, it was made known to Dr. Callaghan, he pointed out the difficulties it must encounter, the dangers that might be looked for by its leaders, and, out of regard for the friend who had told him of it, rather dissuaded him from the undertaking than advised him to proceed. It needs not to say that he was in full sympathy with its aim and motives ; and, after it was started, his name and efforts, with material aid, were enlisted in a cause in which, had he been able to leave his post of duty, he would have been the natural and actual leader.

Opposition and some ill results, as he had forewarned, were incurred. Even the existence of his paper, the Catholic Telegraph, was threatened, if not jeopardized. Its articles on the Debt, certainly due to some creditors and owed by some debtors, were widely read, and were successful in awakening much interest in the movement toward its payment. Its list of subscriptions for the purpose was headed by Archbishop Purcell, who subscribed all he had, a thousand dollars, just received by him at the time ; and within about two years it filled two columns of the paper, including among the subscribers a bishop, several clergymen, and of the lahy, some who had lost money by the failure. The comments of the press. Catholic and non-Catholic alike, all over the country were almost unanimously in favor of the movement. The general sentiment was expressed by the Ciitcimiati Gazette, which said : " The Telegraph is on the right as well as the popular side."