by Fabian Parmisano, OP

CHAPTER 5 : BROTHERS IN CONFLICT [i]

We declare that as a beginning of the foundation of a convent in the aforesaid city [San Francisco] a house shall be erected under the title of the Most Holy Rosary, in which two priests with a laybrother have been assigned and in whose care the parish of St. Brigid has temporarily been committed. Likewise, we declare that to secure more easily and readily the propagation of our Order and to be of help in the archdiocese which is suffering from a lack of priests, our brothers have accepted for a time the care of the parish of St. Francis in the same city.

So reads the Denuntiatio XV of the first biennial congregation of the western Dominicans, 1865. The ambiguity with regard to parish ministry is apparent. By ministering in parishes the friars could satisfy an urgent need in the diocese at large; they could also "expand" the Order, meaning, no doubt, that parishes might be an inviting source of vocations. But a serious qualification is introduced: the parishes are accepted "temporarily" (pro presenti), "for a time" (ad tempus).

There is less ambiguity in Vilarrasa's Chronicle for 1863. Here is expressed the need for a convent, not a parish, and if the latter must be it is only that the former might be realized.

On a lot which we had bought at an opportune moment in the city of San Francisco, which was rapidly growing into a very noble city, it was determined to build a church, to which a convent would later be joined. Since, however, it seemed very difficult for the brethren to subsist there without a parish, and the Archbishop was of the opinion that all parish churches should belong to the Ordinary, an agreement was reached with the Archbishop on April 28, 1863, that we should sell him a portion of our lot so that a parish church could be built there, while we should buy another lot to build a convent without a parish. On the lot bought from us by the Archbishop, then, the parish church of St. Brigid was erected and was solemnly blessed by the Archbishop on February 14, 1864, and committed to our care. To the house annexed to it was given the name of the Holy Rosary with which title it was then our intention to adorn the future convent of the city of San Francisco.

In a report written at the Minerva in Rome on July 3, 1864, when he was there for meetings with the Master General, Vilarrasa refers to the committing of St. Brigid's church to the brethren, noting that they assumed it "with a view to preparing the way for the erection of a convent [priory]. After this convent shall have been erected and the church completed, the church of St. Brigid, together with the parish, will be put back into the hands of the Archbishop." The convent or priory he had in mind was not the house which in fact was adjacent to St. Brigid's, serving as the domicile for the resident Dominicans, but another which should have a conventual church attached to it. For on October 6, 1863, we find Alemany granting Vilarrasa permission to build a house of the Order with a public church in the "Western Addition" of the city of San Francisco between the squares called Lafayette, Hamilton, and Alta. These squares bound the area that would later be occupied by St. Dominic's church which was to be conventual, not parochial, in status and function.

As mentioned by Vilarrasa in his Chronicle, the second San Francisco church committed to the care of the Dominicans was St. Francis of Assisi, the oldest church in the city after the Mission. Built in 1849, small and modestly appointed, Fr. John Brouillet celebrated the first Mass there the same year. In the following year we find Fr. Langlois, who had welcomed the Dominicans to the diocese, as pastor of the church. It became Alemany's pro-cathedral when he resided in Monterey and, until St. Mary's (present-day "Old St. Mary's") was completed, served as his de facto cathedral when in 1853 he moved into San Francisco. St. Francis was built anew in 1857, and it was left to the Dominicans to complete the project and pay off the debt. As Vilarrasa chronicled:

In the month of June, 1865, the church of St. Francis of Assisi in the city of San Francisco was committed to us. The church was weighed down by an enormous debt. It was administered by us until October, 1872, at which time the church edifice was elegantly completed and the debt paid in the most part.

Having parishes may have been only a means toward an end, but it was an important means because the end was so desireable. At the conclusion of his Minerva report on the acquisition of St. Brigid's, Vilarrasa put the matter clearly and succinctly, and in a way that would certainly have pleased the local Chamber of Commerce, had there been one at the time: "It is of the greatest importance to our Order to have a convent in San Francisco, which is one of the most important and richest cities in the whole of America and even of the world."

But the great moment for the Dominicans as an Order in San Francisco occurred on June 29, 1873, for it was on this day that Archbishop Alemany solemnly blessed St. Dominic's church on the property noted above. In his Chronicle Vilarrasa gives due space to so important an event in his eyes. In the presence of a "great concourse of people" the blessing was bestowed and

The Very Reverend Father Masnata, superior of the Society of Jesus in California, celebrated the Solemn Mass, assisted by ministers and a master of ceremonies of the same Society.  The Reverend John Harrington, pastor of the church of St. Francis, preached a sermon during Mass on the utility of the Religious Orders. There were, furthermore, present at this ceremony fourteen Brethren of our Order, one from the Order of Minors of the Observance, the Vicar General of the Archdiocese, as many priests of the secular clergy as could be present, and some young men from the altar boys' societyin the church of the Fathers of the Society of Jesus.

Obviously these were gratifying times for Fr. Vilarrasa. He could now see the Order in California as something more than a seedling. But what of the archbishop who, with Fr. Anderson years ago, had conceived and started it all, who had labored with Vilarrasa in Monterey to nourish the beginnings, had cooperated with him in the move to Benicia, and helped him get started in San Francisco? Much has been made of the opposition between the two, and there is evidence aplenty to suggest that their conflicts were serious. Even as Vilarrasa ends his Chronicle after noting the archbishop's presence and blessings on the new St. Dominic's, a discordant note is struck. He is pleased with the progress made since 1850, but there are regrets, and they seem to center around the archbishop:

This [the Chronicle] is a concise history of the Order in California from its beginnings to this day. The Order has progressed slowly up to now, but if it be recalled that only one Father was sent here in the beginning, that he was for a long time the only priest of his Order here, that the Order was completely destitute of any temporal help and furthermore that the Order received little or rather no incentive from the Archdiocese, indeed that grave impediments were placed in its way from time to time, then it will seem wonderful that there are now found in California two houses [priories] of the Brethren with 17 priests, six students (including five still living in Europe) and six laybrothers. It may be hoped, however, that with God's help and the foundations now having been laid, we may make more rapid progress, so that California may be soon erected into a Province, for the spread of the Catholic Faith and the added luster of the Order. Fiat. Fiat.

Was Vilarrasa here being altogether fair in his judgment upon his archbishop and brother Dominican? Or was he allowing certain recent unhappy events to distract him from the recollection of happier, more positive and cooperative times? On a first reading of Alemany's episcopacy, it may seem the answer is "no" to the first question and "perhaps" to the second. As recalled above, Alemany's role in the establishment and early nurture of the Order in California is beyond dispute. But also the Dominican archbishop in and by himself would seem to have done more for the Order in the western United States than any other single Dominican of his time, including, perhaps, Vilarrasa himself.

Certainly when San Franciscans of those days considered the Dominican Order, it would have been the archbishop who would have been central in their thought. He was their archbishop, but they could not escape the fact that he was also very much a Dominican. His ordinary day-to-day dress was his Dominican habit, signifying to all that at heart he was a simple Dominican friar. Religious simplicity, lack of all pomp and circumstance, seems to have been his hallmark. Seldom would he be seen in the episcopal purple. He was even reluctant to have the bishop's throne set up in his new cathedral. Until pressured into acting otherwise, a simple chair off to the side was sufficient for him. Although as bishop he was unbound from his vow of poverty, he still lived it to the hilt. There are many stories corroborative of this. When, for instance, he visitated his vast diocese he would travel modestly, usually by public carriage and sitting up next to the driver. He expected little if anything by way of comfort when he reached his destination. Thus in a note to Fr. Benedict Piccardo who served the new Almaden mines from Santa Clara he wrote: "Will go to Almaden on Saturday, November 17. Will hear confessions. Any bed will do, please -- no ceremonies about it, anything will suit me." "No ceremonies." The missionary bishop was not much for formality, a result of the simplicity born of his vowed poverty. Such informality was recorded by two seminarians who arrived at the cathedral rectory unexpectedly and too late for dinner. The archbishop himself prepared and served them a meal and then personally escorted them to the house of some friends for lodging, since the guest room in the rectory was already occupied. At another time, when waiting in the sanctuary for a newly ordained priest to enter and begin his first Solemn Mass, he asked why the delay. He was told that the young priest was shining his shoes. Alemany sent word that if the procrastinator didn't appear pronto he himself would come and shine the shoes himself!

Spending himself for others he naturally received an abundance of gifts in return, but he kept little if anything for himself. On the occasion of his episcopal silver jubilee he was given, to keep as his very own, a carriage and team of horses, but he promptly sold all and used the money for his orphanage. He did likewise when he received larger gifts upon his retirement as archbishop. "With permission"  these gifts he set aside to be used for the mission school he hoped to establish in Spain or, if this should fail, to be returned to the archdiocese. Fr. Herbert Vaughan, future Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, England, who visited San Francisco in 1864, wrote in the Dublin Review, January, 1866, his lasting impressions of Alemany. In the playground adjacent to St. Mary's Cathedral, he recalls, "stands a miserable, dingy, little iron or zinc cottage containing two rooms. One is the Archbishop's bedroom, the other his office where his secretaries work all day. No man in the whole city is more poorly lodged and no man preaches the spirit of evangelical poverty and detachment, in the midst of this money-worshiping city, like this Spanish, Dominican Archbishop of San Francisco." And Vaughn might well have added that this modest cottage and cathedral were located in the poorest area of the city, that of the Chinese, whom, incidentally, Alemany  would be quick to defend whenever their rights or dignity were violated.

However, he made no deliberate show of his poverty and was prompt with his thank-you's to rich and poor alike. He thanked benefactors graciously, and with intended or unintended humor --"Thank you for your beautiful check" of $100.00, to one benefactor, and, to Sr. Mary Joseph, superior of the Dominican Sisters now centered in San Rafael, "The six thousand dollars are all right and safe. Please live long to keep the poor Bishop in socks!" And if he lived poor he was not snobbishly poor. He often served the rich, who could be very rich indeed. He was, for instance, near center stage at perhaps the richest, most elaborate wedding in early San Francisco, that of Senator Sharon's daughter. Senator Sharon was one of the silver kings and railroad magnates (his railroad alone brought him over $12,000.00 a day, tax free!). His daughter inherited the Catholic Faith of her mother and so, though her fiancee was not Catholic, the wedding was, and it was Alemany who directed the ceremony.[ii] No mention is made of the stipend he received for the service, but, as with the horses and carriage and other gifts mentioned above, it would seem that one or other of his many projects for the poor benefited from it.

His vow of obedience also remained intact. Certainly as bishop he was not bound to any Dominican superior, but once he retired from his active episcopacy his very first act was to place himself under the authority of both the Master General and Vilarrasa, even though, again, as retired bishop he was not bound to do so. We have his letter to Vilarrasa humbly and happily willing once again to live his vow of obedience as well as poverty:

Yesterday I received the happy news that the Holy Father has finally accepted my resignation, for which I had been working these last seventeen years. The Cardinal Prefect in sending   me that communication seems to intimate that I remain under a sort of annual pension. But I will at once write to the General to dispose of me any where he may see fit. But until I hear from him I must ask you several questions and permissions.  I will naturally have to remain here settling affairs, conveying church properties to Archbishop Riordan, etc., etc.  Hence, until, under the direction of the General, I go to some convent, may I not continue as heretofore chiefly about the office and Mass?

I may receive some little presents, besides some little   pension; therefore, may I continue to give some little alms   to the poor, and provide myself with moderation and prudently give and take? Moreover, my work for the next month or two    will have to continue pretty heavy, while my stomach has become semiprotestant, and several Doctors say I should not eat fish; ergo, may I have some power to dispense myself, under a prudent confessor, in matters of fast and abstinence of the Order.

All through his episcopacy he remained a prayerful man, and central to his prayer was the liturgy of word and eucharist. It is not easy to judge the prayerful quality of someone's life: actions are overt and so can be observed and recorded; but prayer, even when public, is often hidden even from the one who prays. But there are good indications that Alemany was uncommonly prayerful. As a young priest in Italy he would not have been chosen assistant novice master unless a contemplative spirit was in evidence. This spirit of prayer would have been too deeply ingrained to have been lost in his missionary work in the eastern United States. True, in his early days in St. Joseph's Province, Vilarrasa and others lamented his lack of religious observance, but this in no way was meant to deny his prayerfulness, only his taste for formal, conventual prayer. No one even suggested that this young, zealous missionary did not make good use of his long solitary mission journeys for intimate conversation with his Lord. As we have already noted, when the newly consecrated bishop took ship for America, it is recorded that through the whole of the voyage he daily offered Mass and preached to some 500 people each Sunday, and upon arriving in California his first concern was to celebrate Mass. Throughout his episcopacy the eucharist was his "daily bread," and daily he prayed his breviary, not nearly as brief then as it is now. When St. Mary's was built Alemany converted a small room off of his bedroom into a private oratory with a window overlooking the sanctuary. "Here, it was reliably reported, San Francisco's first Archbishop spent, unobserved, many a nocturnal hour in quiet prayer."[iii]

Intellectual curiosity and integrity, manifest throughout his years of philosophical and theological studies, Alemany seems always to have cherished, for himself and for others. There is that charming incident, mentioned above, when in his early days as a missionary in the Eastern Province he readily disposed, by easy recourse to St. Thomas, of the Cuban General's objection to his ordering of the sacraments, and received an ounce of gold in return -- sign of a ready theologian, in theory and in practice! He was equally practical and more original when he offered his addresses at the Vatican Ecumenical Council. Cuthbert Butler in his history of that Council mentions Alemany five times in connection with his presence at and participation in the Council. In his first address to the Council on May 14, 1870, Alemany argued that since it was evidently impossible for bishops from different places such as Australia or America to come frequently to Rome for general councils, "it would seem providential that Christ had bestowed an infallible pope on his Church to care for it between such meetings." This was obviously a missionary speaking, one with an eminently  practical turn of mind, and, seemingly, with a higher regard for the collegiality of a Council than the independent workings of a pope. In his second address he again argued for infallibility "but proposed a long insertion in the preliminary part [of the definition] to forestall misconception"[iv] 

That he had a true Dominican concern for the intellectual formation of others is amply evidenced in his efforts to establish schools and seminaries well-staffed with dedicated teachers. He himself, together with Vilarrasa, taught the youngsters at Santa Catalina in his first years in California, and immediately upon his move to San Francisco he set up a day school for boys at the Cathedral and was very much present personally to it. The Jesuits, though involved in serious disputes with their archbishop through the years, nevertheless were indebted to him for his encouragement and assistance in their academic endeavors both in San Francisco and Santa Clara. In 1863 he founded St. Mary's College for young men. He wanted the Jesuits to staff it, but he thought their tuition was too high. For him the poor were to have equal access with the rich to education, including higher education. So he called in the Christian Brothers, dedicated to educating the poor, to do the job.[v] Later on, together with his Vicar, Fr. John Prendergast, he founded the Holy Family Sisters precisely for the free religious instruction of the youth of the archdiocese....>>>

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