William Pardow of the Company of Jesus

Front matter

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Contents

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I. The Divine Allurement . . . 127 Piwherreats to the Clergy... 182 III. Retreats to the People . . . 146 wreorvomen of Leisure...) $3). 160

V. Penitentsand Converts . . . 165 vi

Introduction

EN and women are not born saints. We

all start out from the same point and saints, like the rest of us, have to take the Kingdom of © Heaven by storm. With some, the marks of battle show on the outside. With others, the drama is entirely within, and only a faint indication, barely perceptible, betrays the inward struggle. There are fighters whose advance upon the citadel is marked by many failures but whose indomitable spirit brings them back again and again to the assault until final victory is won. There are others, few indeed in number, whose path seems blazed in a direct line forward, unmarked by a single defeat. But one thing is common to all holy lives, and that is struggle, a struggle which admits not a moment’s pause or stagnation, nor any slackening of the pace until the final goal is reached.

The life of William Pardow is bare of dramatic incident. No sudden conversion marks his course, no spiritual upheaval punctuates his inner life. Yet it would be a mistake to assume that all was plain sailing. His life was a battle from beginning to end, distinguished for quiet courage and heroic persistence. His power and influence were attained through unceasing effort and attenx INTRODUCTION tion to minute details, through study and rigid self-criticism, and through inviting the criticism of other people; all of which kept him, to the last day of his life, in a state of growth and development. When, at the summit of his power, he was called out of this world, then — the battle won — he exclaimed for the first time: “It has been a hard struggle.”

The following pages attempt no biography in the usual sense of the word. In a life like Father Pardow’s, where exterior events played so subordinate a part, strict chronological treatment is hardly called for. I have tried to set forth the principles which animated his life, and to do so, as much as possible, in his own words. “A saint’s writings are to me his true ‘Life,’” said Cardinal Newman, and it is such a “‘Life” that I have sought to present.

There are, it is true, few finished writings of Father Pardow’s to draw upon, for his work, like our Lord’s, was sown upon the passing breeze and written only upon the hearts of his hearers. But fortunately for the purposes of this biography, a large number of personal notes remain, ideas jotted down by Father Pardow for use in sermons and instructions of various kinds, which, while brief, — hardly more than germs of thought — are intensely suggestive to anyone who is familiar with his finished style. In addition to these notes, there are stenographic records of a few of his sermons, some of which are sufficiently accurate and characteristic to be available.

INTRODUCTION xl

Father Pardow’s sermons and retreats abound with unconscious, but sincere and intimate, self-revelation. He drew his instructions to others from the depths of his personal experience and self-analysis. He rarely spoke directly of his own difficulties, but he understood the difficulties of others with so wide a range of vision that his advice to them may reveal, as it were by induction, some of the formative processes of his own soul. I have therefore tried to let him speak for himself wherever possible. Owing to the character of the notes, so much piecing together and filling in was required that direct quotation has not always been possible, but wherever quotation marks have been used without a reference in the course of these pages, the words are Father Pardow’s own. In many of the chapters, notably the one entitled Ambulare, much more of the text is drawn from Father Pardow’s notes than would appear from the quotation marks; indeed almost the whole description of Jesuit education has been taken from his writings.

Originality is often confused with eccentricity, and an originality which is shorn of its eccentricity fails to impress the world. Yet, in reality, eccentricity is but the imperfection from which originality is apt to suffer, and which so often limits its usefulness. The fact that Father Pardow was original without a trace of eccentricity will make his character seem paradoxical to many people. That one who was so flaming could be so disciplined; that one whose genius was on such xil INTRODUCTION individual lines could be so minutely systematic, so literal in his observance of the details of his Rules, seems at first sight an anomaly. Yet the perfect balance which enabled him to turn the light of his genius upon the dry details of daily life, making them as luminous as the events which the world calls great; the way in which these details were gathered up, and, as it were, made to feed the flame, is the clue to the mystery of his strength. It would therefore be impossible to give a true picture of Father Pardow without describing the admirable training which moulded his strong, dauntless character; under which his talents lost their crudity and became, through concentration, a force that could be applied definitely and at will.

Saint Ignatius’ system of training the soul is founded on the principle that asceticism is a science, partly natural and partly supernatural. In the fundamentals of the spiritual life there are definite rules that can be learned. Mysticism, on the other hand, is purely supernatural; a state of union to which God lifts individual souls, but which no soul could reach by his own efforts. To bring a person to the portals of mysticism is all that the wisest training can do. Saint Ignatius’ system should take a sincere soul to that portal; but the system will not work by itself. It is not a panacea, but demands intelligent, energetic and enlightened response to its suggestions. I propose to give an account of a man who responded fully to that training, whose life was a direct outgrowth of those

INTRODUCTION xlil great principles — taken literally — which Ignatius gave to his little band as their working principles. Here is a man who brought them to bear in practice, directly and without reservation of any kind, without thought of self or fear of others. He

fought so gallantly that few suspected the struggle. Yet the scars of battle showed plainly on his face, deeply lined, emaciated with suffering, but surmounted by that calm brow and serene glance which told of victory.

“The lives of men are written,” said Father Pardow, “their biographies press down the shelves of our libraries, yet when you have read the biography of the greatest of men, what do you know of the man himself? You know what this, that, or the other man thinks about him, but you know nothing of the real life of that man, nothing of his interior life which the eyes of God alone can penetrate. About that life you know absolutely nothing.” Yet, unless a biography can help us to penetrate into this inner life, be it ever so little; unless it enables us to catch a vista here and there, be it only by induction, of the soul’s journey through creatures to God, of its unswerving advance in spite of discouragements and temptations — turning each obstacle into a principle of growth — if it fails to do this it may contain every date and event of the outer life and yet remain so much waste paper.

To seize and lay bare these psychological processes is no easy task. Father Pardow himself defined the difficulty: ‘‘A saint’s life is hard to

XIV INTRODUCTION write, because it is an inner life. The lives of the saints and their pictures show the saint in his victory; I want to see him bleeding. I do not care to see him rapt in ecstasy, his eyes raised to heaven; I want to see him wounded, bleeding, in the dust, and rising up in spite of the wounds. For if you are going to put the saint on his pedestal —in his crown — with rays of glory about his head, then I say: ‘It is too much for me to hope for.’ But show him to me bleeding, and I say: ‘Oh, yes! I, too, can bleed!’”’

The phrase might be the summing up of his own gallant fight.

To those who have made it possible to write the following pages, I wish to express my deep gratitude: to Mother Augusta Pardow, and Mother Pauline Pardow, to the Very Rev. Joseph Hanselman, S.J., Provincial of the Maryland New York Province, through whose kindness Father Pardow’s papers were placed at my disposal, and to the other members of the Company of Jesus, who have contributed in an invaluable manner to these reminiscences. May the result tend to perpetuate Father Pardow’s influence and keep alive that quality in his work which was of more than passing value. As for the personal record, it must await correction on that day when “the Lord shall open the one universal biography, wherein every life, however short, will be fully written, and every life, however long, will be condensed into that which has been inscribed by the Almighty.”

BOOK I ** Free, : When His wings pen thee.”

Francis THOMPSON

CHAPTER [I PILGRIMS

S the sun was sinking on a warm afternoon of early spring in the year 1865, a pair of odd figures appeared in the streets of Montreal. Their like had never been seen before. Each was wrapped in an impossible cape of black oil-cloth, tied around the neck with a shoe string; from the shoulder hung a dilapidated bag, and the whole was topped by an old felt hat, which, had it ever belonged to a fashion, must have lost caste these many years. But as though this were not enough, each of these strange figures carried in his hand a long thick stick, reaching high above his head, and surmounted by a rude cross. Thus attired, they moved through the city and surrounding villages inspiring terror as they went. Young and old drew back at their approach and viewed them askance. What strange new kind of highwaymen might these be? For even in this peaceful Canadian country robbers were not unknown, and what robbers on earth could look more robberlike than this pair? Even the dogs set upon them, barking savagely.

But, quite undismayed by the stir their presence created, they made their way to the parish church, which is ever the centre and dominating point of these lovely Canadian villages. There these strange men could be seen to kneel down before the altar and remain motionless for some time, long enough, indeed, to be carefully scrutinized by the curious villagers, who could then perceive below the oil-cloth cape the familiar lines of a soutane. Yet surely these men could not be priests. The mystery deepened. Perhaps, as they came out of the church, some one of the group of little children, whose curiosity soon gets the better of their fear, may have ventured a peep under one of those mysterious hats, and behold! instead of the fearful ogre of his dreams, he saw a young, boyish face, direct, determined and emaciated, but in years hardly more than a child, who, out of cheerful blue eyes, returned his shy advances with a look so frank and reassuring that all fear vanished forthwith.

When questioned, the answer of the pair was always the same. They were pilgrims. They were on their way to Quebec, without a cent of money for the journey, this determined boy of seventeen, and his companion hardly older. The younger of the two was William O’Brien Pardow, who a few months before had entered the Novitiate of the Company of Jesus, and he and his companion were two of the first band of pilgrims to set out for a month begging their way, to experience, as it were in miniature, something of the poverty and humiliation which this picked band of men must be ready to face at all times for the commanding officer whose name they bear. This pilgrimage was, so to speak, an outward expression, a symbol of the entire life of the Company. Poor they were to be, with a deliberate poverty; travellers and wayfarers on the earth; ready for instant mobilization to any point; taking with them nothing for the journey, and wearing a uniform which was to attract the mockery, the misunderstanding, nay, even the terror of the world in general. They were to be humble and misunderstood, because their Master had been misunderstood; persecuted, if possible, because He had been persecuted; cast out from one village and another, from one nation and another, that the resemblance might be perfect, and that in all things, even in death, they might be as soldiers in the army, as officers in the Company of Jesus.

CHoaPpTeErR II THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY

BELL rang and a frail child sprang from

his bed into the cold winter air of a New York morning. The room was dark, and as he felt for a match to strike a light, another boy, some eight years his senior, called out from across the room: ‘“‘Is it already time, William?” In the room below, two sleepy little girls heard their brothers moving, and they too, shivering, crept out into the icy air, ashamed to be less courageous. For these children were brought up to no life of softness or compromise. Their parents believed in discipline and like a little regiment those growing boys and girls were trained.

Hastily William slipped into his clothes, stole down stairs and out the front door. The east wind nearly swept him off his feet, and the sleet stung his face as he hurried along Third Street to Second Avenue. But he could not turn back, nor could he wait for the other children, for he had promised to serve Mass at the Church of the Nativity, and it would be a serious thing for an acolyte to be late. At seven o’clock to the minute the boy could be trusted to appear each day at the door of the sacristy. He braced himself against the storm, wondering whether he would find a priest, for once or twice, in such weather as this, no priest had been able to reach the church and the little alcolyte had waited a full half-hour before making up his mind that there would be no Mass. But today he found the priest ready. Serious and erect, William preceded him to the foot of the altar, a figure tiny yet military in its bearing. Stiffly he knelt in his little cassock, performing his own part of the Mass with precision and deep reverence, making the responses in his clear child’s voice, his attention focussed on the great Sacrifice.

From his present post of dignity he could look back on those years when, as a tiny child in kilts, he had stolen out in the early morning to that same Mass. Then he was so small that when he knelt his head was quite hidden by the front of the pew, and he had felt hurt that the people around him smiled. But now he had attained the ‘“‘age of discretion.”! Only a few months before he had made his first confession, that milestone in the life of a Catholic child when he first realizes that character cannot be carved from without, even by the hand of a careful mother, but must be formed by a vital impulse from within, the result of a personal battle fought and won.

As soon as he was free, William started home at a run, for he must have his breakfast and be at school by nine o’clock. The storm was behind him now and blew the little figure along the pave-

1 He was born on June 13, 1847.

ment like a feather. He could look up the street and see his sisters Augusta and Pauline climbing the stoop of the brown stone house which was their home, and his brother Robert with his hand on the door bell. They must all have been at Mass. And as the wind blew the children, dripping, into the front hall, they looked at each other with an enquiring smile, as much as to say: “‘ You too?” Breakfast was waiting, a grateful sight. At the head of the table sat their handsome mother, while in her hand loomed the familiar form of an old English book, from whose pages a chapter was read aloud each day during breakfast. To hungry boys and girls just back from Mass and from the chilly morning air, the words of those “‘Every Day Reflections” frequently fell upon indifferent ears, and once or twice the book had been hidden, in an effort to escape the wise counsels with which the day began. But in vain. The mother of that most Catholic family was firm; no one was allowed to leave the table until the book had been found and the chapter read. Fifty years later, Father Pardow remarked to his sister Augusta: “I believe we owe our religious vocations to that book.”’! But in spite of the “Reflections” the children could not sit long at table, but promptly set out for school. Old St. Peter’s in Barclay Street had been the scene of William Pardow’s first experience of school life, that historic building opened a year before the Declaration of Independence, and fifty

1 Of the five children, four entered religion: Robert and William, the Company of Jesus, Augusta and Pauline, the Society of the Sacred Heart.

years before the first public school of the country. **T can still see the class-room,” said Father Pardow after the lapse of half a century, “‘and remember especially the statue of Saint Aloysius.”

But this year the children went to school nearer home; Augusta and Pauline to the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Seventeenth Street, William to the preparatory day school of St. Francis Xavier’s College in Sixteenth Street.

William Pardow came of a race of warriors, the O’Briens of County Clare. Many an ancestor had fought and died for a principle, and from Brian Boru, the warrior king, down through the centuries, the military tradition keeps recurring in almost every generation. Among the officers of the Irish Regiments in the French army we find the names of many an O’Brien, bearing the proud titles of Marquis of —Thomond, Earls of Inchiquin, and Barons Burren. When in 1800, William O’Brien sought the New World, he did so as the result of an unselfish struggle for a principle. Pure patriotism had led him to identify himself with the cause of the United Irishmen; as a result he forfeited his title of Inchiquin, sold his property, and set sail for New York. There he established a successful banking house, but though the ocean lay between him and his beloved country, he never wavered in his loyalty to his own people and their cause, and it is characteristic of the man that when, many years later, he was offered the agency of the Bank of England, the loyal Irishman would have none of it.

Such was the maternal grandfather of William O’Brien Pardow. From the O’Briens he received his fighting blood, his ardent loyalty to a principle, his keen wit. From his father’s family he inherited a strain of austerity and the long oval face of his Norman ancestors, for the Pardows had been originally De Par Dieu, and it had taken many centuries in Lancashire to Anglicize them to Pardow. But if the name had succumbed to environment, the faith had been valiantly retained, and the centuries of persecution that followed the Reformation had but strengthened it. In 1772, the first Pardow, Robert by name, came to New York, with his wife, Elizabeth Seaton, and his six children. He at once identified himself with the parish of St. Peter in Barclay Street, that first home of the faith in the city, and published New York’s first Catholic newspaper, the weekly Truth Teller. Meanwhile his sons were educated in England by the Jesuits. Gregory, the elder, became a priest.! Robert, the younger, was anxious to follow his example, but finding that he had no vocation, returned to New York and married Augusta O’Brien. To his two boys and three girls he handed down, not only the family tradition of faith, but a capacity for concentration and steady work which was developed to the full by their training.

But it is to the mothers of great men that we turn instinctively in order to trace the first stamp on the coin of character, and Augusta Pardow well

1 He became rector of the first Catholic church in Newark, New Jersey.

repays a passing glance, for hers was the strength and good judgment that kindled the healthy home atmosphere of that Catholic family. In her case the family traditions found vent in a less dramatic form than in her warrior forebears, yet in a true sense hers was the harder part to play. Many a man or woman is defeated by ease who would have flashed forth under persecution with the heroism of the martyr. In the more complex struggle against the imperceptible encroachment of a lax moral code, Augusta Pardow stood firm. She brought up her children with almost military discipline, grounding them firmly in the nobler qualities which such training brings out, courage, obedience, and devotion to a cause outside of self. She needed no punishments, it would appear, to enforce her will, for her children realized from the first the principle of authority and its source. It was a point of honor to obey.

Toward her children, the mother’s point of view was simple. Here were five young souls whom she held, as she felt, in trust for Christ. It was her duty to study their individual gifts, their inclinations and weaknesses, in order to kindle them to their true vocation in life; avoiding the danger of ignoring their real inclination and bent, without, on the other hand, yielding to every thoughtless whim. The responsibility could not be shirked by leaving them to choose anything they might happen to fancy. She kept a faithful watch, therefore, over what they read; indiscriminate reading being, as she thought, as dangerous to her children as indiscriminate eating. In later years nothing so exasperated her Jesuit son as the lax bringing up of children that encourages habits of self-indulgence so difficult to uproot in later life. His own mother had sowed what she expected to reap, and her memory remained close to him throughout the years in which he sought to train the less “‘vertebrate’? mothers who flocked to his sermons and retreats.

The Pardow household was well known for its warm-hearted generosity to the poor in those days when there were few organized charities in the city. Moreover, in Mrs. Pardow her friends found that ready sympathy in their troubles — the simultaneous flash of smile and tear — that is the genius of the Irish race, and which in her case was combined with a fund of common sense, and on occa-— sion with considerable severity.

The two older girls and William came home from school early in the afternoon. Robert, who worked in his uncle’s banking house, did not arrive until five, but William waited eagerly for his homecoming, for with Robert’s return began the real fun of the day. When the familiar figure appeared, William’s hand flung open the door, and the two boys rushed upstairs together. From their room the sqund of boxing and fencing could be heard all over the house, a deafening noise, followed, as usual, by a sudden silence, which had been the cause of intense curiosity to the little girls. But today the mystery was to be solved, for Pauline had hidden herself in the boys’ room, and from a vantage point behind the bed she was to discover their secret. At a fixed hour the big brother and the little brother laid down their foils and knelt, side by side, to say their Rosary. Regularity and discipline were already in a real sense part of their young lives.

The evenings were merry in the Pardow household, for to their minds sadness and holiness were contradictory terms. The dinner table sparkled with their keen Irish wit, and the children were expected to contribute to the general gayety. After dinner there were family games, but William was inclined to wander off with a book, a silent little student from the first.

The day ended as every day had ended since the boy could remember. Parents, children and servants assembled in the little oratory, and, — patriarchal in their democracy before God — they all joined in reciting the Rosary, that universal prayer, so beautiful and so plastic in its application to each individual soul. While their united voices repeated, as in a running accompaniment, the words of the Angel to Mary,—the message of God Almighty to the greatest of all Mothers, — their minds dwelt in contemplation on one after another of the great events in the life of her Son, the Redeemer of the world; and each one freely drew from the meditation the help he needed in his particular state of life.

Thus the day closed with prayer of the lips, prayer of the mind, and prayer of the heart breaking out in the cry of all generations to that Mother, blessed among women: “Pray for us sinners!’’

CHapTreER III

AMBULARE

‘As the eagle that stirreth up her young to fly, and fluttereth over them.” — Deut. xxxii.

ROM the year 1855 when the eight year old

boy first came under the range of Jesuit formation until 1881 when, fully equipped, William | O’Brien Pardow emerged, a finished soldier of the Company of Jesus, the powerful process of preparation was at work. Twenty-six years of formation may seem exaggerated in these days of quick results, but the Jesuit system is nothing if not thorough. “Instruction may be rapid,” said Father Pardow in after life, ‘‘but education must be slow.”’ In his own case, twenty-six years, he thought, had not been too many.

Numerous volumes have been written about the Company of Jesus, but, strangely enough, there is hardly a religious order whose spirit is less known or more persistently misunderstood. Ignatius Loyola lived in the sixteenth century, yet the wide scope of his genius included many of the so called discoveries of our own day in regard to psychology and the reaction and correspondence between mind and body. On the other hand, his knowledge of human nature in all its phases armed

THE BOY

Foley Photo.

him against the fads and exaggerations into which much of our contemporary training falls when his broad spirit is lacking.

Saint Ignatius left practically nothing in writing, with the exception of the Book of the Spiritual Exercises, and the whole educational system of the Jesuits — indeed all their work, whether ascetic, literary or scientific, —is based on the principles of this little volume, so brief yet so dynamic.

The Exercises have been called the school of the will, for the will, in the plan of Ignatius, is the most necessary faculty in our life, that on which dignity of character depends. His is a system of spiritual calesthenics which brings every faculty and sense, like a well-ordered regiment, under perfect command. Ignatius was a soldier. He became a soldier-saint. He applied the principles of military discipline to the undisciplined tendencies of man. *‘He found piety in many minds an inorganic mass of prayer, aspiration and sentiment; he organized it. It was not vertebrate; he made it so.” In his training school no spiritual muscle is overlooked or over-exercised, but is gradually, consistently developed until the whole man, — if his own efforts co-operate with those of his trainer, — becomes fitted for his special vocation in life, be that vocation what it may. So far, then, from crushing the will, as is commonly supposed, the Jesuit system enthrones the will as supreme ruler and leads to the formation of a Spartan character. But, like steam which escaping at random is a source of danger, the will must be controlled and directed before it can be converted into power, the mighty power that is to move the whole man, against his own impulses, against his private interests and the pressure of his own passions.

The Company’s most serious dyatlenee to the world of today, with its weak deterministic theories, lies precisely at this point: it undertakes to train the will, to develop it like the mind or the memory. The Jesuit teacher begins this training in the primary grades, strengthening the will by constant exercise, on the theory that a child who follows every impulse, and does not form habits of self-conquest when young, will find his will ever weaker and weaker in proportion as he advances in life.

“You may keep a boy at school as long as you like,”’ said Father Pardow, the teacher, “‘but if his will is not educated with his head, his conscience with his memory, knowledge of algebra and skill in penmanship, the date of the Battle of Bunker Hill and the number of gallons of water contained in Lake Michigan will be no guarantee that he will not use his acquired knowledge to fashion himself into as consummate a scoundrel as ever entered a prison cell. We have no quarrel with intellectual culture. Our only contention is that it has no necessary connection with morality, and that however valuable it may be to the individual, it has no saving virtue for the state. ... The country’s greatest need is character; not so much the making of laws as the making of men.”