Cura Animarum:: The Sacred Heart Province of the Order of Friars Minor in North America: 1858–2023

By Joseph Zimmerman OFM

Cura animarum was once used to describe the role of priests: to care for souls, not bodies. This ensured that priests would ignore the external characteristics of the person they were serving. Today, ordained priests are assisted in most parishes by deacons and laity. Therefore, friar brothers and priests see their places in the church as ministers who save souls and share stories of Jesus, themselves, and of the people they minister.

With the intent of preserving a record of institutional structures that have shaped the lives of the friars of the Province of the Sacred Heart, Father Joseph Zimmerman reflects on a time when the province had over seven hundred members while vividly describing the parishes and other ministries carried out by its friar brothers and priests over the past one hundred and sixty years. This resource is shared for those wishing to study developments in a group of vowed religious men as they moved from flourishing roles in immigrant US Catholicism to respond to changes in the Catholic Church and the wider society during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Cura Animarum details how Franciscan friars from Germany shaped Catholicism in the United States and responded to cultural trends in the late twentieth century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781663253163

Joseph Zimmerman OFM

Joseph Zimmerman, OFM, PhD, was born in Decatur, Illinois and entered the Franciscan Order in 1955. He was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1962 and earned a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1973. Father Zimmerman has been teaching at Quincy University since 1970. His recent interests focus on promoting Pope Francis's approach to religious issues within the Catholic church and among religions worldwide.

Book preview

CURA

ANIMARUM

THE SACRED HEART PROVINCE OF

THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR

IN NORTH AMERICA: 1858–2023

JOSEPH ZIMMERMAN, OFM

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CURA ANIMARUM

THE SACRED HEART PROVINCE OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR IN NORTH AMERICA: 1858–2023

Copyright © 2023 Joseph Zimmerman, OFM.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-5317-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-5316-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023909007

iUniverse rev. date: 08/08/2023

CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

The Seal of the Province

Acknowledgments

Disclaimer

Introduction—Brothers and Priests Saving Souls

Chapter 1     The German Friars Arrive: 1858–1874

1855—Gregory Janknecht

1858—Teutopolis, the Parish

1859—Quincy, the Parish

1860—Quincy, the School

1862—Teutopolis, the Seminary

1863—St. Louis, Missouri, St. Anthony

1868—Cleveland, Ohio, St. Joseph

1870—Memphis, Tennessee, St. Mary

1873—St. Francis Solanus College is Accredited

Fr. Augustus (Augustine) Tolton

Chapter 2     Kulturkampf: 1875

1875—Chicago, Illinois, St. Peter

1875—Indianapolis, Indiana, Sacred Heart

1875—Jordan, Minnesota, St. John the Baptist

1875—Hermann, Missouri, St. George

1876—Joliet, Illinois, St. John the Baptist

1876—Wien, Missouri, St. Mary of the Angels

1877—Columbus, Nebraska, St. Bonaventure

1878—Chillicothe, Missouri, St. Columban

1880—Chaska, Minnesota, Guardian Angels

1880—Rhineland, Missouri, St. Martin

Chapter 3     Missions: 1878–1885

1878—Ojibwe Nation, Bayfield, Wisconsin

1881—Individual Missionaries in China

1881—Menominee Nation, Keshena, Wisconsin

1884—Ojibwe Nation, Superior, Wisconsin

1885—Ottawa Nation, Harbor Springs, Michigan

Chapter 4     The California Outreach

Chapter 5     Back in the Midwest—1885–1927

1885—Chicago, Illinois, St. Augustine

1885—Humphrey, Nebraska, St. Francis

1885—Ashland, Wisconsin, St. Agnes

1894—Washington, Missouri, St. Francis Borgia

1895—Omaha, Nebraska, St. Joseph

1896—Parish High Schools

1897—Petoskey, Michigan, St. Francis Xavier

1898—Minor Seminary in Teutopolis

1905—Cleveland, Ohio, St. Stanislaus

1906—Sioux City, Iowa, St. Boniface

1907—Cleveland, Ohio, Our Lady of Angels Seminary

1909—St. Paul, Minnesota, Sacred Heart

1911—Dubuque, Iowa, Holy Trinity

1913—The Franciscan Herald Magazine and Press

1914—Mokena, Illinois, St. Mary

1921—Third Order Conventions

1922—Cleveland, Ohio, Our Lady of the Angels Parish

1924—Chinese Mission Territory

1927—The New Minor Seminary

1927—Theology in Teutopolis

1927—Mayslake Retreat

Chapter 6     The Depression Years: 1929–1940

1929—Chicago, Illinois, Corpus Christi

1931—San Antonio, Texas, San José

1932—Omaha, Nebraska, Immaculate Conception

1934—New Lenox, Illinois, St. Jude

1934—Washington, DC, Sacred Heart Friary

1936—Madison, Illinois, St. Mary

1937—The ATP (Around the Province)

1937—Memphis, Tennessee, St. Augustine and St. Thomas

1938—St. Louis, Missouri, St. Francis (Oakville)

1938—Reserve, Wisconsin, St. Francis Solano

1939—Quincy, Illinois, St. Benedict the Moor

1939—Quincy College Academy closes

1939—Riverton, Illinois, St. James

1940—Lincoln, Nebraska, St. Patrick

1940—Louisiana: Monroe, Ruston, Bastrop

Chapter 7     The World War II Years: 1941–1959

1942—Nashville, Tennessee, St. Vincent

1942—Cleveland, Ohio, St. Jude

1943—The Brazil Mission

1944—Seraphic Society for Vocations (Vocation Office)

1945—San Antonio, Texas, St. Joseph

1946—Midlothian, Illinois, St. Christopher

1946—Indianapolis, Indiana, St. Roch

1947—The Fifth Year

1947—Indianapolis, Indiana, Alverna Retreat House

1948—Eureka, Missouri, Sacred Heart

1949—Muskegon, Michigan, St. Thomas

1950—Lay Brother Formation

1951—Corpus Christi High School

1951—Province Mission Band

1953—Chicago, St. Peter’s in the Loop

1955—Neopit, Wisconsin, St. Anthony

1959—Waverly, Nebraska, Good Counsel Retreat

1960—San Antonio, Texas, Our Lady of the Angels

Chapter 8     The Vatican II Years: 1960–1969

The 1960 Provincial Chapter

1960—Ministry Boards

1961—Cleveland, Ohio, Padua Franciscan High School

1962—Renewal Programs: TEC et al.

The 1963 Provincial Chapter

1963—Chicago, Illinois, Hales Franciscan High School

1963—Chicago Outreach Programs

1977—The Greater Chicago Food Depository

1983—The Franciscan House of Mary and Joseph

1964—Quincy, Illinois, Our Lady of Angels Seminary

1964—Quincy, Illinois, Quincy College

1965—Provincial Staff Offices

1966—Dittmer, Missouri, Evergreen Hills

The 1966 Provincial Chapter

1967—Open Line and Other Provincial Publications

1968—Individual Missionaries

1968—Catholic Theological Union (CTU)

1968—Taize: New Forms of Community Living

The 1969 Provincial Chapter

June 1969—Unofficial Chapter

November 1969—Official Chapter

Chapter 9     Adapting to New Realities

1970—Friar Aging

1970—Friar Departures and Friary Relinquishments

The 1972 Provincial Chapter

The 1975 Provincial Chapter

1975—The Assisi Pilgrimage

1976—Tau House

1977—Zaire Mission

1977—Closing of the Minor Seminary

The 1978 Provincial Chapter

1979—Chapter of Mats

1980—The English-Speaking Conference (ESC) of the Order

The 1981 Provincial Chapter

1982—The Hermitage

The 1984 Provincial Chapter

1985—Alaska Mission, Athabaskan and Iñupiat Peoples

1985—Franciscan Mission Service

The 1987 Provincial Chapter

1987—Safe Environment Efforts

1987—The Franciscan Central American Pilgrimage

1987—Quincy, Illinois, Our Lady of Angels Seminary Closes

1989—Franciscans International

1989—Indian River, Michigan, Cross in the Woods

The 1990 Provincial Chapter

1990—Arkansas and Tennessee, Hispanic and Appalachian Catholics

1991—St. Louis, Missouri, Franciscan Connection

The 1993 Provincial Chapter

1993—The Interprovincial Novitiate

1993—Hispanic Ministry in Indianapolis

1995 and 1996—Three White Papers

The 1996 Provincial Chapter

1996—Interprovincial Postnovitiate House

1998—Annual Joint Definitorium Meetings of Four Provinces

1999—Interprovincial Convocations

The 1999 Provincial Chapter

2002—East Saint Louis, Illinois, St. Benedict the Black Friary

2006—Discussion of Merging of Provinces

2007—The Franciscan Action Network

2012—The Milwaukee Gathering

2013—Report of the Interprovincial Commission

2013—Br. Michael Perry Becomes Minister General

2014—The Franciscan Interprovincial Team (FIT)

2015—Coming to the Table

2016—Decision about Restructuring Delayed

2017—Decision to Propose Merging Six Provinces into One

2018—May 30, 2018, Decision for One National Province

Conclusion

Appendices

Appendix 1: Prehistory of the Province

Appendix 2: The White Papers

Appendix 3: A Statistical View of Entrances and Departures

Appendix 4: A Statistical Overview of the Province in 1964

Appendix 5: The Province and Asian, Black, and Hispanic Populations

Appendix 6: Minister Provincials and Councils: 1960–2017

Appendix 7: Other Provincial Offices

Appendix 8: Stories

Appendix 9: Heralds of the King Table of Contents

Appendix 10: The Lesser Brothers 1959–1980 Survey of Province History

Bibliography

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FOREWORD

In 1958, Friar Marion Habig authored a history of the Sacred Heart Province numbering over eight hundred pages, titled Heralds of the King. He wrote the volume to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of Franciscans arriving in the Midwest from the Holy Cross Province in Saxony, a part of Germany, to serve German immigrants here. These friars laid the foundation for what would later become the Sacred Heart Province.

In 1979–80, the province published six relatively short articles updating Heralds of the King in Lesser Brothers, the province’s news magazine at that time. These articles were written to commemorate the centenary of our becoming a province. Aside from these articles, the province has not published another comprehensive history.

It was my predecessor as provincial, William Spencer, who asked our brother Joseph Zimmerman to update the province’s history. Although his professional training is as a sociologist, he had recently finished a history of Quincy University. Updating the history of the province proved to be no small challenge. Much has happened in the province, in the church, in the United States, and in the world in the sixty-five years since the publication of the first volume. But our brother and his collaborators proved equal to the task.

Much like Heralds of the King, this volume is not a comprehensive history of all that has happened in the Sacred Heart Province since 1958. It is not meant to be. Rather, it is a history of the institutional presence of our province in the Midwest United States and elsewhere as vast changes have occurred in the church and world.

I would like to thank our brother Joe for the time and energy he has devoted to this project. I would like also to thank his many collaborators and especially Mrs. Denise Thuston-Weber, the provincial archivist, for their contributions. This volume is especially timely. In October 2023, the Sacred Heart Province will cease to exist as we move with five other Franciscan provinces in the United States to establish a new province—Our Lady of Guadalupe. This will be an exciting new chapter in the life of the Franciscan Order in the United States, building a new province on the great work that has gone before in six individual provinces. What better gift can we give the new province than a record of our province’s legacy extending over 160 years!

Thomas Nairn, OFM

Provincial Minister, Sacred Heart Province

September 2022

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PREFACE

The official name for the group described in this book is the Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. The shortened title, Sacred Heart Province, will be used by this author.

Even though Sacred Heart Province was not officially recognized as a province by the Order of Friars Minor until 1879, the province¹ really began in 1858 when nine friars arrived in Teutopolis, Illinois, from Germany. To mark the one hundredth anniversary of that event, one of the province’s historians, Father Marion Habig, published an 850-page history in 1958 with the title Heralds of the King: The Franciscans of the St. Louis–Chicago Province—1858–1958.²

In 1979 and 1980, the provincial journal Lesser Brothers devoted six issues, edited by Fr. Marion Habig, to the history of the province from 1958 to 1979. Numerous friars contributed to the writing of these issues. In order to simplify citations from this source, this author will cite each Lesser Brother article as "Lesser Brothers, issue x, [pages] xx," and will reference the article in footnotes without crediting individual authors.

Friars in the province hoped to produce another history in 2008, bringing the story up to the fiftieth year since Father Marion’s book, but such a history did not materialize. When Father William Spencer was minister provincial, he asked this author to try his hand at writing such a history. His background is sociology, not history, but he accepted the challenge. The province’s decision in May 2018 to merge with five other US provinces highlighted the value of telling the story of the years since 1958.

Terminology

Most of the men described in this history were Franciscans and members of Sacred Heart Province. It seems excessive to use OFM after each name cited; that suffix can be assumed unless otherwise specified. All the members of the province are either lay brothers or priests. Lay brothers usually use the title Brother in front of their name, and priests use the title Father. This author abbreviates these to Br. and Fr., along with their plurals. He uses the friar’s religious name, not his baptismal name.³ The leader of a Franciscan province is called the minister provincial, usually simplified to the provincial. The friar second in charge is called the vicar provincial.

The minister provincial and vicar are advised by a panel of four to six friars. Traditionally, those advisers were called definitors, and the group, along with the provincial and vicar, comprised the definitorium. Beginning in the 1960s, the friars of the province began using other terms, such as council and councillor.

First Order, Second Order, Third Order

Even while Francis was alive, three groups of people followed his vision. They were called the First Order, the Second Order, and the Third Order.

The First Order are the men who today are labeled as Conventuals, Observants, and Capuchins.⁴ The Second Order were women who joined a noble woman of Assisi named Chiara (Clare) Offreduccio in living Francis’s vision. The customs of medieval Europe required that women should either be married or live in a cloister, separated from the world. They could not follow the wandering lifestyle of the First Order men. They came to be called the Poor Clares.

Men and women who could not leave their families and occupations, yet wanted to be part of Francis’s movement came to be called the Third Order. The Latin word for third is tertius, so they are also referred to as tertiaries, and more recently as Secular Franciscans.

Over the years, many other groups of men and women formed, sharing the Franciscan vision. They are referred to generically as the Third Order Regular, as opposed to the Third Order Secular, which is the lay branch of the Franciscan movement described in the previous paragraph. While there are relatively few communities of men using the title, there are literally hundreds of communities of women who claim membership in the Franciscan tradition, though they are usually referred to by a distinctive community name; for example, School Sisters of Saint Francis.

At present, there are estimated to be 13,000 Observant friars in the world, 4,000 Conventual friars, 11,000 Capuchin friars, 20,000 Poor Clares, and 350,000 Secular Franciscans. This author has not located statistics on the number of Third Order regular men and women.

Provinces of the First Order

First Order Observant friars are organized into about one hundred provinces around the world. In the United States, at this writing, there are seven provinces. Each province has an official title in the order, and each one is usually identified informally by the location of its curia (headquarters) or by some other characteristic. The seven, arranged geographically from the East Coast westward, are listed here, with the number of friars reported in the 2012 and 2019 issues of the Acta Ordinis Minorum,⁵ the official journal of the Observant Order in Rome. The year 2012 was the year immediately preceding the first serious consideration of merging some of the seven; 2019 is a more recent picture of province membership, reflecting the diminishing number of friars in each province.

The term in parentheses is where the headquarters of the province is located.

Number of Friars

Beginning in 2013, the seven provinces began discussions that came to be labeled Restructuring and Renewal The term restructuring refers to merging of some of the provinces. The term renewal was added to emphasize that a simple reconfiguration of boundaries without accompanying spiritual renewal would likely be of little benefit for both the friars themselves and the people they serve.

Developments in the merger process will be described later in this document.

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THE SEAL OF THE PROVINCE

This design is the seal of the province, used to stamp official documents. The inscription reads SIG. PROV. SS CORDIS JESU IN AMERICA SEPT. ORDINIS FRATUM MINORUM. Translated, it reads Seal [of] the Province of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in North America of the Order of Friars Minor. Sept. is the abbreviation of Septentrionalis—North.⁶

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Image of the seal of the province

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus arose in France in the seventeenth century. The traditional symbol of the Sacred Heart is a heart surrounded with a crown of thorns with rays coming from the left side—representing the pierced side of Jesus on the cross—and flames, representing love, emerging from the top. The traditional logo of the order is a cross with two arms superimposed, one clothed, representing Francis, and the other unclothed, representing Jesus himself.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This author wishes to acknowledge the contributions of Mrs. Denise Thuston-Weber, archivist of Sacred Heart Province, for her help in beginning this project and supporting it as it developed. Her professionalization of the archives has laid the foundation for the contributions of future historians, of the province, and of the entire Franciscan Order.

Fr. William Spencer not only inspired this author to take up this work but has continued to support the effort by correcting errors and by offering suggestions for further development of some topics.

Fr. Donald Blaeser read through the entire manuscript and made helpful suggestions.

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DISCLAIMER

This author’s purpose in writing this document is to preserve a record of institutional structures that have shaped the lives of the friars of the province since 1958. To provide background for events, he locates events in their historical context, beginning with the earliest days of the province. As a sociologist, he occasionally speculates on the effectiveness of those structures in achieving the goals of Franciscan religious life, but it is not his intention to tell many stories of friars’ activities during those years. He recognizes that some of those activities admirably exemplified how friars carried out their mission and ministry and that some of them were not so exemplary. He is writing neither hagiography, which would portray sanctity, nor its opposite, which would focus on sinfulness.

Joseph Zimmerman, OFM

Holy Cross Friary, Quincy, Illinois

Spring 2023

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INTRODUCTION

Brothers and Priests Saving Souls

When people quit attending one church and look for a different one, they often say, I wasn’t being fed there. The language is not new—Jesus told Peter, three times, Feed my sheep.

A hundred years ago, the Catholic Church thought it knew how to feed people spiritually. There was a structure: bishops, priests, sisters, laity. Most of them were organized into parishes.

The priest-philosopher Ivan Illich once said, I like the Catholic Church—it lets mushrooms grow. He was pointing to both the strength and the weakness of church structure. Catholic life is not completely controlled by bishops, cardinals, and popes. Those leaders do support a matrix within which life can grow and even flourish. Cultural environments change, so the leadership structures may change, but for the last few hundred years, Catholics knew what they had to do to be fed spiritually. They recruited priests to say Mass, hear confessions, and anoint the dying. The priests also baptized children, married adults, and buried the dead.

The twentieth century saw huge changes in Western European and North American culture. The church is changed by the culture within which it lives. Technological changes upended centuries of custom. The industrial revolution replaced the home as the focus of daily life; with factories, men spent most of their working time away from the home. In the 1880s, the workplace became more and more oppressive, arousing the criticism of authors like Karl Marx. The Enlightenment had upended centuries of philosophical and theological traditions, dating from the time of St. Thomas Aquinas and other medieval theorists. Theologians and scripture scholars questioned traditional beliefs.

Church hierarchy fought the changes. Pope Pius IX produced his infamous Syllabus of Errors in 1864, in which he condemned virtually everything in the modern world of his time. Pope Pius X tried to stop Catholic scripture scholars from joining their Protestant colleagues as scientific advances in history and archeology raised questions. But in 1943, Pope Pius XII reversed Pope Pius X and opened up scripture studies with his encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu. In 1947, the same Pope Pius XII issued an encyclical titled Mediator Dei. One of its effects was to institute the dialogue Mass, where the congregation responded, in Latin, to "Dominus vobiscum" and other parts of the Mass, the first step toward active participation of the laity in the Mass. In 1955, Pope Pius XII revised the Holy Week rituals.

The first hundred years of Sacred Heart Province history took place within the older cultural framework. Immigrants from Europe to the United States were the focus of the friars’ work, and most of that work took place in parishes.

The term care of souls, cura animarum in Latin, summed up what friars did. They were friar priests or friar brothers supporting friar priests. The climax of the fourteen years of education that led to priestly ordination was the granting of the cura, which meant that the new priest could preach and hear confessions. He was ready to work in a parish. And most did.

Parishes provided the sacraments. The priest’s job was to save souls, which was no more mysterious than fixing the furnace—you knew what you had to do, and if you did it, salvation occurred. Dioceses collected statistics on Communions distributed, confessions heard, numbers of baptisms and marriages. Building churches and schools motivated parishioners to contribute their time and resources to the church and created an environment rich in social capital, networks of human relationships that supported parishioners when no other institution was doing that.

World War II focused everyone’s attention on life and death—the novena to the Sorrowful Mother was wildly popular. Returning military veterans created the baby boom, which contributed to an explosion of young people entering the priesthood and religious life.

Then, precisely when the friars of Sacred Heart Province had worked here for one hundred years, the Second Vatican Council upended the system.

The council recognized the immense cultural changes that were occurring in the world. The church had to deal with the developments described earlier—technological and intellectual. The year 1960 was when many of the former colonies of European countries became independent, opening the world and the church to global realities. Soon, the information revolution brought even more world-shaking innovations. It became possible to talk openly about sex, contraception became readily available, and the women’s rights movement gained traction.

Priesthood and religious life became less attractive to young Catholics. Andrew Greeley once observed that two classes of people suddenly quit encouraging young people to become priests: mothers and priests. One reason mothers may have lost enthusiasm for priesthood and religious life for their sons and daughters was grandchildren. In the 1950s, Catholic families were large—the church forbade contraception. With the invention of the contraceptive pill in the early 1960s and the theological ferment around the Second Vatican Council, which seemed to promise a change in church law about contraception, the size of Catholic families dropped dramatically. Parents with fewer children realized that a vocation to priesthood or religious life might threaten the presence of grandchildren in their family.

Women religious, especially those working in schools, worked without pay. As more women worked outside the home, a sister teaching in a parochial school could compare herself with such women and see her own work as undervalued. Previously, for a member of a religious order, religious life opened up the possibility of being an executive in a school or hospital. As such opportunities opened up for laywomen, membership in a religious order lost that advantage.

Many priests saw Vatican II’s description of the sacredness of the married state as an invitation to reevaluate their own decision. The council raised hopes that the church would allow priests to marry. Celibacy was no longer a badge of status.

The result was an aging priesthood and a vanishing sisterhood. Parishes had to be closed or merged with other parishes because of the lack of priests.

Saving Souls

Cura animarum. Saving souls.

At the time of this author’s ordination, the care of souls (cura animarum) was not immediately entrusted to the newly ordained priest. For a year, he was considered a simplex priest, able to preside at Mass but not to hear confessions or preach. After a year of additional study and the completion of the cura exam, he was granted the cura and became a fully accredited priest. He was expected to gather for further training and examination each year for the next five years of his priesthood.

Cura animarum was the phrase used in the old days to describe what priests did. The priest took care of souls, not bodies.

One advantage of talking about souls instead of bodies is that priests and religious were taught to ignore the external characteristics of the person they were serving. They didn’t care what color skin the person had, what that person had done in the past, or what kind of disability the person was living with. They just, in the old language, wanted to save the person’s soul.

Number of attendees is not the best criterion for judging the quality of pastoral care in a parish, but the church does have a mission to evangelize, and if only a tiny number of people in a heavily populated area are involved in a parish, all is not well. One factor that seems to correlate with attendance at Sunday Mass is openness on the part of parish leadership to involve a wide variety of parishioners in the parish’s religious mission.

To put it another way, ordination or religious vows are not the only way that Catholics can be active contributors to a parish community. In friar life, this is especially true for the lay brother.

Clericalism

The word cleric connotes heritage, privileges acquired by ancestry. The tribe of Levi, one of the twelve tribes of Israel, had no land allotted to them in the settlement of the promised land because the Lord was their heritage—the community supported them.

In recent centuries, the church drew its model of priesthood from the Old Testament Torah,