by Fabian Parmisano, OP

CHAPTER 5 : BROTHERS IN CONFLICT

In the active part of his Dominican vocation we find more tangible evidence. He was zealously apostolic from his beginning years as a religious. As we have seen, his earliest desires were to be a missionary, and though he would have preferred the Philippines he obligingly settled for the eastern United States and then for California. In the east, so eager was he for ministry that he was criticized by some, Vilarrasa included, for giving undue weight to active over the monastic demands of his vocation. This activity increased as bishop and archbishop. Once in California Alemany was everywhere doing everything. There is an enormous amount of reportage on his energy and zeal. There were the many visitations of his huge diocese, his building of churches and chapels, establishing of schools and orphanages, all his pastoral activities from hearing confessions to blessing of churches and homes, his voluminous correspondence, official and personal, his preaching and teaching, and just being with the people in their needs. The latter is well illustrated in an incident which is one of many of the same. Fires in early San Francisco were quite common -- the reason why the Phoenix is San Francisco's official symbol: the city time and   again burned to the ground but continually rising up out of the ashes, and ever more beautiful. Practically all of the buildings, private homes, businesses, saloons, churches, schools, were made of wood, and many of them heaped together so that if one building caught fire the rest were in dire peril. We have an eye-witness report of one such conflagration which gave the observer, and gives us, further insight into the zeal, courage, and leadership of the then Archbishop of San Francisco.

At some of the large fires which devastated the city in the   early days, the regular firemen would become wholly exhausted   by their prolonged exertions, and some would fall to the ground while working at the breaks. I was always on the spot assisting in my humble way at the engines or in saving property. On one occasion, during a large fire, the firemen of one of the engines were completely worn out, and appealed in vain to the crowd standing around to aid them, until a man came running up, having just rescued two children from a house burning nearby, and called out to the crowd, in English, to go to work, and also spoke in Spanish for others to assist.  Immediately they began to work at the engines, relieving the exhausted firemen. When inquiring who this man was, I learned that it was Dr. Allemany [sic], the present Bishop of California. Though a small man physically and slightly built, he worked for hours that morning at the engines, and influenced others to do the same. There was not a stronger man for his size in California. There were no important fires in San Francisco where the Bishop and his friend Reverend Mr. O'Connell were absent. The exertions of these clergymen at fires were well known and appreciated by the firemen of San Francisco, by whom, as well as by their own flocks, they were beloved and respected, their humble and unassuming manners endearing them to every one.[vi]

Alemany could be fierce and tenacious, sometimes stubborn in his ministry. We saw this in his early struggles with some of the brethren in the Eastern Province when he was provincial. As archbishop in San Francisco we find the same qualities manifest on many occasions. Through several months he adamantly opposed Denis Kearney, the some-time Catholic Irish immigrant who had formed "The Workingman's Party" directed mainly against the Chinese. Due to the failure of the Comstock Lode in the '70s, unemployment was high throughout northern California. Kearney blamed the presence of the large numbers of Chinese for the plight and raised his cry against them: "The Chinese must go -- Denis Kearney says so!", was one of his many slogans. Since many of his followers were Catholic as well as Irish, Alemany had to step in. At first in a brief pastoral, issued July 25, 1877, he simply and in general terms warned clergy and laity alike "to shun suspicious company, to listen to no declaimer conniving at the subversion of quiet and order, to participate in no unauthorized move and to sustain to their utmost the legally constituted authority." But Kearney and his agitation continued until Alemany found it necessary to issue a more direct and explicit pastoral with a definite prohibition attached. The pastoral, dated April 7, 1878, concluded: "We, therefore, admonish and even require everyone to stay away from such seditious, anti-social and anti-Christian meetings." The bishop's authority held, and soon, with diminishing numbers at his meetings, Kearney left the city and brought his cause to the east coast. He later returned to San Francisco, but his influence there could not be revived. He managed to acquire large holdings in Imperial Valley and made a sizable fortune, and thus forgot about the plight of the workingman and the evil of the Chinese.[vii]

The little archbishop also showed his stubborn Catalan streak when, at the outbreak of the Civil War, he was pressured into "flagging the churches" of the archdiocese. In a neutral California, in which southern sympathies seemed to match northern, Alemany, though personally loyal to the established government, took no public stance; he could only raise his voice against dissolution of the union and the tragedy of war. As the conflict threatened, he wrote to his churches a sincere and eloquent plea for peace.

It is our painful duty to have to request your prayers for our country. Far be it from us to assume the character of a   prophet of evil tidings; equally far be it from our tongue to speak the language of a politician but, in the present crisis, we cannot remain silent. We deplore the calamity and sad consequences of divorce...we deprecate still more the unparalleled disaster of the duel...but we fear that we are about to witness the most disastrous divorce that can befall the noblest family, and the most calamitous conflict ever witnessed between brothers...when commerce shall be paralyzed, industry unbefriended, prosperity checked, the halls of learning mourning in solitude, passions unrestrained, hatred enkindled, peace forced to give way to strife, devastation made a virtue, houses and cities wasted and destroyed under the name of triumph, the brave citizens of a mighty nation armed to strike each other, their mother country gaping at the wounds received from the hands of her mad children. Such would Civil War be...

But when demands were made upon the archbishop to have the Stars and Stripes raised above his cathedral on July 4, 1861, and above all the Catholic churches in the archdiocese, he steadfastly refused. The Catholic Church was the Church for all, and both northerner and southerner were to feel perfectly at home within it.

One of Alemany's chief activities as archbishop was to staff his archdiocese with priests and religious, both sisters and brothers. This was his first concern when consecrated bishop in 1850. He immediately set to work pleading for help, from the Propagation of the Faith by letter and personal visits, but also from individual dioceses and religious orders directly. He wrote to his brother Dominican, Henri Lacordaire, asking for Dominicans, and to John Henry Newman requesting the aid of the Oratorians; and many other similar requests issued from the tireless begging pen of Alemany all through his tenure as bishop. The episcopacy of Patrick Riordan, Alemany's successor, has been called "the Age of the Builder," for it was under Riordan that Catholic schools and hospitals and other Catholic centers multiplied. But Riordan could build buildings only because he had the personnel to staff them, and these came largely through the efforts of his predecessor. We have seen how Alemany insured that at the very start of his work as Bishop in California there would be sisters to educate the young. Other invitations quickly followed, some rejected, at least for a time, others accepted. In March of 1851 Alemany welcomed to San Francisco the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and in the following July they opened the doors of their convent in San Jose to its first pupils. Here was the beginning of the college which would, in 1923, be moved to Belmont  and function there to the present day. In August of 1850 Alemany had visited the superior of the Vincentian Fathers and the Daughters of Charity with the request for help. This resulted in the arrival in California in June, 1851, of five Daughters of Charity. Seven had set out from Emmittsburg, Maryland, but two succumbed to Yellow Fever along the Isthmus of Panama. Their initial losses, and other trials, weighed heavy upon this pioneer group, as the following letter, dated "March, 1853", of Sr. Francis McEnnis to her U.S. superior betrays:

... I had not the heart to write to anyone, our prospects were so bad. I was truly disappointed and not only myself, but everyone is so, when they come here. It is so different from what we expected but God had dealt with us for the best. It was His Holy Will that we should suffer, and we ought to obey Him under all circumstances...

Our prospects are brighter now; it seems to me as if the sun was under a cloud since we have been here. The last time the Bishop was in the city I went to see him. I was much pleased and I find he will do anything he can for us. He even told me, if he could get Sisters of Charity he preferred them to any other Order. I must tell you that I was not much pleased with the Bishop when I first saw him, but indeed, I am now...

A good concerned bishop and, evidently, a shrewdly politic one! In a final note Sister Francis reveals perhaps the main reason for her and her sisters improved though continuing sadness with their San Francisco mission: "This is a strange place, a real bad place. Immorality seems to be the favorite virtue here. God pity us! We need prayers and good fervent ones, for we see nothing good in this miserable place." But they made the most of it. In October, 1852, the Daughters opened St. Vincent's School at St. Patrick's church in Happy Valley (south Market), and soon an orphanage was added. In 1854 Alemany sent Fr. Hugh Gallagher to Ireland to gather more recruits from the sisterhoods there. The mission proved highly successful. On November 13, 1854, five Presentation Sisters of County Cork arrived in San Francisco and in little more than two weeks had opened a free school on Green Street and laid the corner stone for a permanent foundation on Powell Street. Less than a month later, on December 8, 1854, eight Sisters of Mercy arrived from Kinsale, Ireland. Initially they visited the homes of the sick, but were soon ministering at the City Hospital. But it was in the following year of 1855 that the Mercy Sisters proved their mettle and became endeared to San Franciscans generally. It was in this year that a severe plague of cholera broke out in the city, and the Mercy Sisters were in the forefront of those nursing the sick and the dying.

At the prodding of the persistent archbishop, priests, too, continued to volunteer for California, and, of course, the Catholic laity grew with the fast growing population of the newest State. "By the end of 1855, the number of Catholics under Alemany's pastoral care had grown to 68,000. Forty-six priests served the diocese (all foreign-born), but encouragement was to be found in the fact that a diocesan seminary, located at Mission Dolores and christened by the Dominican archbishop St. Thomas Seminary, contained ten students for the diocese. Moreover, fifteen other aspirants were studying for San Francisco in the Irish seminaries of All Hallows and Carlow and in the Roman College de Propaganda Fide. The City Hospital, conducted by the Sisters of Mercy, was caring for 200 sick persons. There were two orphan asylums, one housing thirty boys at San Rafael and one for girls under the Sisters of Charity in San Francisco with one hundred in residence. There was a convent of Dominican Fathers in Benicia, as well as 'Female Academies, number of ladies, two hundred'."[viii] In the following years more priests and religious were welcomed into the archdiocese by its archbishop. The Marists were here for a time as administrators and teachers of the seminary. In 1872, as noted above, the vicar general, Fr. Prendergast, with the sanction of his archbishop, founded the Sisterhood of the Holy Family whose purpose it was, as stated in Sadlier's Catholic Almanac and Ordo for 1879, to "devote themselves to the sick and the poor, provide for the Christian education of young children, and take care during the day of small children whose mothers have to go from home to work.". On November 11, 1876, a second congregation of Dominican sisters arrived. Originally from Ratisbon, Baveria, these sisters had, in 1853, founded the Convent of the Holy Cross in Brooklyn which in a short time gave birth to ten other distinct offshoots of U.S. Dominican sisters. The sisters who accepted Alemany's invitation to come to California settled in San Jose and became the Congregation of the Queen of the Holy Rosary. Originally they were to serve the German Catholics of the Bay Area, but in a short time we find them in addition conducting many schools for whatever nationality throughout and beyond the archdiocese.  

In all this ecclesiastical expansion under Alemany it was perhaps the religious sisters who attracted most attention and admiration. They were to the forefront in the very beginnings of the diocese, and in works that were at the heart of life itself -- physical life in their nursing and administration of hospitals, intellectual life in their teaching and establishment of schools, spiritual life in the living of their own spirituality and their teaching of religion. Catholics may have come to take them for granted, as children do their parents, but the non-Catholic population in and about San Francisco could not help but wonder at them. For them they were something new and different among womankind, at once displaying and expanding its potential. A statement in this regard appeared in an article of September of 1873 in one of the local newspapers noting the growth and influence of the Catholic Church. It was evidently written by a Protestant, but one intrigued by "Romanism," at least as he was observing it in the San Francisco of his day. He seems to have been especially appreciative of the opportunities it offered in its sisterhoods for the advancement of the "female sex":

The San Francisco diocese has 104 churches and chapels and 92 priests. Among the convents are "Presentation Convent" and Dominican monastery on Bush St., the convent of the S. Heart and several others. The majority of these establishments have schools attached, and it is noticeable in these as in all other institutions of this church that women are employed most unhesitatingly in the most responsible positions. One cause of the success of Romanism is found in the fact that it opens so many avenues for women, cultivated and otherwise, to engage in legitimate work.

... If the network of this organization [Romanism] which covers the land could be someday suddenly presented before the public gaze in its entirety, like the instantaneously illuminated powder traceries of a fourth of July fireworks exhibition, people outside of the Roman communion would be greatly startled...

Although Alemany was always eager, and often desperate, for priests and religious to satisfy his present needs and future plans, he was properly selective and was circumspect with regard to discipline. "Good priests and religious or none at all," was the qualification of his every petition. He was understanding of failure and sin and was quick to forgive and reinstate, as early evidenced in the case of the suspended Dominican, Fr. James Aerden. But he demanded real change of heart. There are instances of his issuing of reprimands to individual priests, always, however, with paternal charity, even in the most recalcitrant cases. Thus he wrote to one of his problem priests: "You know that I have loved and do love you as a dear son. I have admonished you and advised you as a father -- and you have turned a deaf ear. This I feel very deeply in my soul, but, as a Bishop, I feel myself obliged to take away your faculties. But remember that, when you repent and behave yourself and do as you are told, I am ready to lift the suspension."

By the time of his retirement in late 1885 the Monitor of February 4 of that year offered the following summary of the apostolic work accomplished in and through the leadership of this Dominican archbishop:

It is only 36 years since a small wooden shanty on Vallejo Street sufficed to hold the Catholics of San Francisco whenever they desired to worship Almighty God. The churches in the other portions of the vast diocese were simply the ruined adobe buildings left by the missionary Fathers. The native congregations were scattered and rapidly disappearing, but our venerable Metropolitan has lived to see this spiritual wilderness blossom as a rose, and has been the husband-man of Heaven who has labored to bring about this state of Christian cultivation in the Lord's vineyard.

More than 150 churches and chapels to the glory of God attest to the zeal of the pastor and the generosity of the flock. Nearly 200 priests, the majority of whom were educated and ordained for this diocese, lift up their voices to the throne of God and ask Him who sent them such a beloved bishop to bless his last days even as his whole life has been blessed. A theological seminary, 6 colleges, 18 academies, 5 asylums, and 4 hospitals are all living monuments of the watchful care of the prudent pastor for his people... The flock which has grown up from a few hundred to 200,000, finds itself surrounded by churches, schools and institutions wherein they can find salvation for their souls, solace for their afflictions, mental strength to serve God in their religion, or to preserve their faith while fighting the battles of life.

We would not dare to offend the well-known humility of our holy Archbishop by any reference to his corporal works of mercy. The recording angel will reveal them on the last day...

A major part of Alemany's apostolic activities was his preaching. As bishop this was certainly his prerogative and duty, but it was long since exercised to the full by the Dominican friar-missionary. Whether in one of the small parishes in Ohio or Tennessee or on the road moving from settlement to settlement, preaching was his meat and drink. From his days as simple friar there is no evidence that he was known particularly for his eloquence; and none of his sermons or sermon  notes (had he written any) survives from those early days. But apparently he was a quiet, natural preacher, speaking simply and directly to his congregation, holding them by what he preached rather than how he said it. We have more to judge by when considering the friar preacher now become bishop preacher. There are his numerous pastoral letters, which were his "sermons" to his flock at large. They are well-written, without the flourish and lengthy  preamble and peroration customary at the time. Some letters are very short, others much longer, with size depending, it would seem, solely on the importance of the theme and the demands of the content. Not much has been recorded of his extempore verbal preaching, but the few instances we have of it seem to substantiate these observations. Directness, simplicity, and restraint characterized his remembered words spoken on the several ceremonies of his retirement. In response to the clergy gathered on May 19, 1885, to honor him and present him with their gift of $10,000, he spoke briefly and warmly, concluding in the same conversational style in which he had begun:

I do not think I was born to be a Bishop and I told Pope Pius IX so, but nevertheless they made me a Bishop. Now in my old age it has seemed best to resign the arduous task into younger hands... I thank you most sincerely for your kind words and for your handsome gift. I hope you will pray for me that God may preserve me through life, and particularly at the hour of my death.

The next day, when it was the laity's turn to do the honors, Alemany replied with equal simplicity and warmth, and quiet humor:

Let me say now at my old age I want to enjoy a little rest, and yet when I say this, when I say that I want to go away, my heart is again pained for I know that with departure I sever the bonds of a great love, the love I have for you, my children... I seek your prayers for my welfare wherever I go, that I may be kept safe from all harm. My children, my body goes, my heart is with you and will remain with you.

One of the reporters from the San Francisco Call made a telling comment...>>>

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