by Fabian Parmisano, OP

CHAPTER 5 : BROTHERS IN CONFLICT

5. Our Convent in the city of San Francisco was erected as a formal convent from the concession of Pius IX and with the consent of the Archbishop himself, providing there are present in it six religious observing strict religious life. But it is entirely impossible that there be in it regular observance if the Archbishop interferes with the Superior of the Convent as he has thus far done.

6. The Archbishop has also tried to exercise his jurisdiction in the Convent of Benicia where we have the novitiate and studium, since once he insisted that one of the Fathers who speaks Spanish should visit a Mexican town far distant from Benicia and although this could be done only with the greatest difficulty; also there were present in the diocese Hispanic secular priests. Further, the Archbishop has compelled the Convent of Benicia to render each year an account of the income and expenses of the parochial Church annexed to the aforesaid Convent, although in the decrees of the Holy See designating the rights of Ordinaries over parochial Churches administered by religious not a word may be found concerning such a rendering of accounts.

7. Given this present opportunity it may be allowable to recall an abuse which is the cause of no small scandal. There are some priests of the secular clergy in San Francisco, who, given the opportunity, especially at Easter, when the faithful are bound to receive Holy Communion at the parish church, insultingly and harshly assail the faithful because in place of their own they go to the churches of the religious in order to hear Mass; and when the faithful who frequent the churches of religious call on their pastors for the administration of the sacraments for the sick, they (the faithful) are not seldom received uncivilly and indeed shamefully by their own pastor.

8. The Archbishop never administers the Sacrament of Confirmation in churches of religious and forbids religious to receive the young to their first communion. We willingly admit that the Bishop in no way is bound to the administration of Confirmation in churches of religious; however, given the circumstances of this city, we experience that great harm comes to religion if the young must always have recourse to their proper parish for the reception of first communion and confirmation. There is in this city a great number of young people of both sexes learning catechism with regular clergy [regulares], to whom it would in many cases be very difficult and repugnant to go to their parish to receive the aforesaid sacraments, rightly fearing that they would not be as charitably treated as others who frequent parochial churches.

9. Although our Order does not possess property [proventus] in California and [our] actual buildings are very insufficient the Archbishop denies us the faculty of collecting funds from the faithful. The result is that some very fine young men burning with the desire to embrace our Order cannot do so.

10. Since now on the lips of many is the matter of designating in the near future a Coadjutor to the illustrious Archbishop, may it be allowed to express to your Holiness with what anxiety the religious families are troubled in the matter from which their prosperity in no small way depends..

The note by Fr. Varsi reads:

I, the undersigned, having been asked, bear witness to the    many grievances enumerated above by the excellent Fathers of St. Dominic, especially those under the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 6 with regard to the rendering an account of income and expenses of our church of S. Clara; also 7, 8, and 10 are the same which the Society of Jesus has suffered in California from 1862 forward at the hands of the Most Reverend Archbishop of San Francisco, besides other injuries of no slight moment which the Very Reverend Father General of the same Society has often explained to the Holy Roman Congregation of the Propagation of Faith...

The conflict continued on into the new year. On February 6, 1881, Vilarrasa wrote another letter to Alemany. He told the archbishop that it was impossible for the Dominicans to furnish further help in the various parishes in San Francisco and vicinity, and that he could not commit the friars to give one quarter of the retreats and missions requested by Alemany -- "such a promise would indicate that we have been previously unwilling. Not so. Actually, we probably have given as many as one quarter already. We'll continue to do the best we can. We are not only willing, but anxious. Same thing about confessors of nuns -- we shall do the best we can."

A possibility of resolving matters arose in this year with the Master General's visitation of St. Joseph's Province. Vilarrasa sent a petition signed by the California brethren gathered in   biennial congregation asking Fr. Joseph Larocca for a visitation: "Though the Father General will not find here things entirely as he would wish, yet I am confident that, as a general rule, he will find the fathers well disposed. This visit would give great encouragement and it would enable him to be acquainted with the circumstances of this country." However, the Master General did not appear. In a letter from New York to a friend in Rome, June 3, 1881, he states that though he would like to visit California he could not spare the time. He adds a sentence which may reveal the real reason for his abstention: "And then there is that blessed Archbishop, who is not much to my liking [mi e poco simpatico]." Evidently Larocca preferred to let the lambs fight it out with the wolf on their own.

The other prong of the conflict between Alemany and the Dominicans was the matter of the ownership of church property. In this area the Jesuits featured much more prominently than did the Dominicans. Alemany put the question quite clearly and succinctly in a letter dated August 7, 1861, to Fr. Burchard Villiger, superior of the Jesuit missions in California:

The matter is this: Religious Orders naturally desire to have the Church property, which they administer, vested in themselves. The Decrees of Baltimore governing all the dioceses in the States require the property of parishes and such like to be vested in the bishops. If so, how can Religious have charge of Parishes? This is the grave question.  I desired to obviate this difficulty by obtaining from Rome   a moderation, or such an entrusting of the Parish as to become impossible for the bishop to change the administration without the previous determination or decision from the Propaganda.  But it seems, that the S. Congregation will not likely accede. It appears to wish, as is natural, that the emoluments due to the Pastors should be of the Religious serving the Parish; but it contemplates the bishop owner and unrestricted in the government.

I may have presumed too much or undertaken more than I was allowed, when allowing all the offices of a Parish performed in St. Ignatius Church of San Francisco. But now when more explicit instructions are received, and when it is desired to build another Church; what should I do not to displease and yet do my duty?

Fr. Villiger's reply pleased Alemany but still left him with questions which he would have liked to resolve in favor of religious but which as yet he could not do. The archbishop wrote to Villiger Aug. 22, 1861:

I received in Placerville your esteemed favor of the 12th inst. in answer to my proposal of the 7th that seems to ease the main difficulties... this was now my only difficulty in your building a New Church, supposing that you desired that it should be a Parish Church; for then it appeared to me, that I could not allow it, unless you would make me the Deeds of the Church, (which looked at least curious), or unless I could have obtained permission from Rome that you and the Dominican Fathers might have retained the Deed of the     Parochial or proparochial Church, which after the departure of Father Sopranis [Jesuit visitator in 1861] I learned from Rome the Holy See was not inclined to grant.  But as you do not desire to retain the parish, then all the main embarrassment seems to be removed.

Now while I need very badly the prayers of St. Ignatius, and of St. Dominic, and their children almost as bad; yet put in the position in which I am placed, I do not see that I can do differently from what I am doing in these things.

In spite of St. Ignatius' and St. Dominic's prayers tensions grew, with other fuel added to the fire. Alemany details his disappointment with the Jesuits in a letter to Fr. Felix Sopranis, December 23, 1862:

I consider it the duty of the Ordinaries in the United States to have in their name the Churches that are parishes or proparishes. You consider the thing differently. But suppose the Holy See directs it as I view it; then there can be no harm either in my requiring it, or in your Fathers complying with it. Should there be any uncheerfulness in children to do their Mother's will? But I have many reasons to believe, that it is our common Mother's will to have such Churches vested in the bishop; therefore, it appears to me, I have no alternative.

Then, having heartily invited your Fathers to Santa Clara, that they might facilitate good solid Christian education, placed almost within the reach of all, and notwithstanding my having made over to them considerable property, yet very very few of my Catholic people can avail themselves of that, owing to the high, too high prices of the College; and I am forced to beg from door to door to make other provisions to have the young educated; and even this, I am told, meets with condemnation.

I invited your Fathers heartily to San Francisco with the express understanding that they should have a kind of free school, or nearly so; now, the way it is, I must have a free school with room for 400 boys (most of other Churches,) at the Cathedral under great expense; and St. Ignatius' issues   tickets of from $4. -- to $8. -- per month. I think, if St. Ignatius was in California, he would help the little bishop in another way, he might likely take the poor and leave the rich to the bishop...

I thought the Jesuit Fathers would cultivate a due regardfor other priests and other Churches; but I fear they, or some of them, forget that... There are other Churches in this city besides St. Ignatius, and they are much in debt, and are entitled to the support of their respective faithful; if the Jesuit Fathers wish to ignore this, no written agreements can satisfy me.

This last paragraph seems to go to the heart of the matter. In spite of Alemany's harsh words against them, many of the Jesuits still held him in high esteem as well as affection. They believed that the secular clergy was poisoning his mind against them by claiming they, the Jesuits, were robbing their parishes of people and so of funds. There were good grounds for the claim. The Jesuits at St. Ignatius, and, later on, the Dominicans at St. Dominic's, were by and large better preachers than the seculars and they offered the people more opportunities for a richer spiritual life with their various confraternities and specially indulgenced devotions. What, then, was the poor beleaguered bishop to do? It might be conjectured that naturally he would have wanted to side with the religious, especially his Dominican brothers, but he would have to move to the opposite extreme in order not just to be fair but to give not the least impression of bias. If any bias should appear it would have to be in the direction of his own secular clergy whose immediate superior and father he was. So, for instance, when it came to locating his brother Dominicans in San Francisco, he made sure that their church would be far from any other parish, out in the Western Addition, which in 1873 was still sparsely settled, and would remain a conventual church. This was fine with Vilarrasa except that the archbishop, while denying St. Dominic's the rights and privileges and revenues of a parish, was demanding of it all the obligations of one and, according to the resident fathers and their commissary general, much more that interfered with their Dominican way of life.

As for the Jesuits, matters were finally settled in their favor in 1878. Both they and the archbishop had been writing their respective letters to Rome until finally on May 24, 1878, the new Prefect of Propaganda, Giovanni Simeoni, wrote the letter that ended the affair. Since December of 1870 the Jesuits had been in search of a new location for St. Ignatius College. Originally, in 1855, it had been erected on Market Street between Fourth and Fifth -- a quiet, relatively secluded area at the time and thus conducive to learning. But the area had since grown in population and noise, which, as the Jesuits found, militated against discipline and scholarship. When they finally settled upon a new location in the vicinity of Hayes and Van Ness Streets they encountered the archbishop's firm opposition. The college and attached church would, he claimed, be too close to parishes already established and also to the new projected cathedral. Cardinal Simeoni thought otherwise. In summary, he wrote that Alemany was not to oppose the move of the college to the new site even though close to the new cathedral. The Jesuits had a guaranteed right to build a college with a church for public worship in connection with it. If, Simeoni added in mollification, the cathedral would suffer financial loss from the proximity of the new St. Ignatius, the archbishop could seek indemnification from the Jesuits. Basta! In his response to Simeoni of July 22, 1878, Alemany said he would yield to the Society of Jesus with regard to the new location. But that he was not happy with the verdict is evident in his concluding words: "I bow my head and accept your decision with holy resignation."

This seems to have ended any overt controversy with the Society. The Jesuits, having won the battle, found it easy enough to forgive and forget. They graciously asked the archbishop to give the address at the laying of the cornerstone of the new church and college. Alemany excused himself. However, two years later, February 1, 1880, he officiated at the ceremonies and blessings of the completed structures, and pontificated at the Mass which followed.

In Alemany's last two years in San Francisco the conflict between the archbishop and the two religious Orders seems to have subsided. The Jesuits continued to speak their reverence and appreciation of Alemany, echoing the Society's high regard for him from its earliest days in California, as when Fr. Michael Accolti, founder, in 1849, of the Jesuit Order in California, wrote, November 8, 1852, to a Missouri Jesuit superior: "And here I must confess for the sake of justice and truth that, if we have laid some solid foundation for our future and permanent existence in California, all this we owe to the disinterested and charitable liberality of the zealous and wise prelate, Bishop Alemany." Fr. John Nobili, S.J., founder, at Alemany's request, of Santa Clara College in 1851, wrote November 8, 1852: "The new Bishop, J.M. Alemany, is one more devoted to our Society in deeds rather than by mere words..." And when Alemany was about to take his final departure from California, among the few select clergy gathered in the cathedral rectory for a farewell dinner were three Jesuits, including Fr. Nicholas Congiato, who as president of St. Ignatius College at the time of its relocation, had firmly opposed the archbishop. As Archbishop Riordan, also present at the occasion, later reported:

On the 19th of May, 1885, Father Sasia, in company with Fathers Kenna and Congiato, waited on the Archbishop to wish him Godspeed and, five days later, he departed. Whatever differences had existed between him and the Fathers had long since been healed -- differences, in fact, which were rather due to external influences which had been brought to bear upon the pious prelate than to anything spontaneous on his own part. An ornament to his noble Order and to the Archdiocese, he left behind him no sincerer admirers of his many virtues than the Fathers of St. Ignatius... 

Alemany's uneasy relationship with his own brethren seems to have outlasted that with the Jesuits. It continued until his last two years in California when, perhaps, he was too busy wrapping up his episcopal affairs to engage in minor family feuds. However, there is more than a hint that the past adverse relationships carried over into Alemany's final years. At his several farewell ceremonies it is reported that only four Dominicans were present, and notably absent were Vilarrasa and Benedict McGovern, prior of St. Dominic's and one of Alemany's severest critics. Not a happy sign. True, some twenty years later in 1905, Fr. McGovern wrote some kind words about his former adversary. He described him as "a man of great intellect... one of the brainiest and most cultured of the prelates that have adorned the American hierarchy." He spoke of his thin, closely set lips as pointing to "a strong and firm character" which he had "in a marked degree." He was "meek, humble, kind, generous, friendly, condescending, forgiving -- and all almost to a fault -- he won the hearts of all of those with whom he came in contact." And "though twenty-one years have come and gone since his retirement, he still lives in the memories and affections of the Catholics of San Francisco. His name is a synonym for all that is good, holy and true." This is more than faint praise, and surely McGovern was sincere and true in writing it. But in a good man twenty years can heal many wounds and allow him to forget as well as forgive. Of more telling significance, however, than any delayed panegyric is what did not happen once Alemany was back in his native Spain. It will be recalled that once retired from the active episcopacy, he had hoped to establish a school for the training of future Dominican missionaries. This he tried to do but was unsuccessful, certainly because little time remained for him to accomplish the work -- within two years of the attempt he was dead -- but also because he lacked the necessary support from his Order. It did not oppose the project, it simply ignored it. Could the Order's reluctance to enter into Alemany's dream have been due to the bad publicity he must have garnered in the Generalizia because of what appeared to be his adverse treatment of his fellow Dominicans in California? And especially on the issue of his interference with the religious communal life of his brothers, the Dominican curia would have been loathe to commit to his care young men fresh from formation, or, as novices and students, new to it. It would have been as in his early days in St. Joseph's Province when he was being considered for provincial. He may have been the best of missionaries, but what of the Dominican religious life that should be the grounding and inspiration and end product of specifically Dominican ministry? This is speculation, admittedly, but worth considering in view of his enforced isolation as a Dominican at the end of a dedicated and remarkably fruitful life.

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