The History of Catholic America
In His Service

While the bishops were carrying on their national and international crusades, each parish - country farmer or city polyglot - had its own mission to fulfill.

As the century came to a close, there were not very many plush churches in this land. Far more common were little wooden cross-topped structures with coal or wood stoves and outhouses. Even in New York City, miles of streets were unpaved and it was not strange to see cowboys breaking horses on dirt roads that rambled through rolling farmlands. Each evening, the lamplighter toured the neighborhood, climbing his ladder and touching his torch to the gas lamp atop each post. The iceman's horse clopped slowly down the street, pulling his cart, as his master checked windows for signs propped up by housewives - "50 lbs.," "75 lbs."

Reminiscent of Chicago's "shanty cathedral" was the location of the first Mass in Wendell, Massachusetts, for one hundred and ten people on August 20, 1882, in a shack belonging to the Fitchburg Railway Company, which served as a home for itinerant railroad workers. But this, too, was typical of the times.

Maspeth, Long Island's first Sunday Masses were held in a storefront, beginning in 1869. The first Masses of St. Philip Neri Parish in the Bronx were offered in 1898 in the former clubhouse of the Jerome Park race track and later in a store until the church was built. Men of the parish were expected to aid in the excavation for the structure or to lend their horses and carts.

In the spring of 1904, the mission parish of St. Francis de Sales in Washington, D.C., celebrated Mass in a private home and then in a chapel set up on the second floor of the town hall. Subsequently, the chapel was moved downstairs to a room especially redecorated by the building's owners. The altar used for Mass was on rollers. After Saturday night dances, parish men would clean up the hall, roll out the altar, and unfold chairs for Sunday morning worship. When parish men began construction of a church building, their chapel landlord took a horse-drawn wagon to the Carolinas seeking lower-priced lumber. Some of the interior appointments of the church they built were purchased second-hand.

Through the years and right into our own day, Masses have been celebrated wherever the faithful may gather. In September of 1914, St. Pascal's Parish of Chicago, Illinois, worshiped in "the Nickel Show." A parishioner recalls that "many of the children who attended Mass in the theater in the morning returned in the afternoon for the five cent movies. To the amusement of all, some would genuflect before taking their seats, completely forgetting that they were now attending a movie."

In May of 1921, when Ty Cobb was managing the Tigers and Henry Ford had initiated an assembly line that was producing thousands of Tin Lizzies a day, a weather-worn wooden tavern, vacated for two years by Prohibition, was converted to the church of St. Cecilia in the Grand River-Livernois section of Detroit. Its first Mass welcomed an overflow crowd of some 250 persons, many of whom had to stand on the building's long and narrow front porch.

Polish factory workers built their own Church of St. Stanislaus Kostka in New Brighton, Staten Island, New York, in 1923. Parishioners excavated the ground, pushed wheelbarrows, built the stone walls and the concrete stairs. Their first Masses were held under a tarpaulin in the sub-basement.

In 1924, the new parish of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Pittsburgh, had no building, and all of its vestments and appointments were borrowed or donated. For its first twenty Sundays, four hundred people gathered for Mass in private homes - a different one each week.

And through four twentieth century wars, those at home received letters from sons, fathers, husbands, lovers, brothers, and friends, telling of Masses in a tent on a battlefield, from the tailgate of a jeep on a hilltop, or in a dimly lit foxhole.

Bishop Alfred Curtis of Wilmington, Delaware, was a most unusual member of the hierarchy for his day. The people of his more remote missions, in the "wilderness" as he called it, were accustomed to seeing him arrive on a bicycle on Saturday evening, open the church, sweep the floor, kindle the fire, and then roll up his coat to use for a pillow on his floor-bed. In the morning he would be at the door to greet parishioners as they came for Mass. He recommended the use of bicycles to all his clergy, explaining they were much more economical than horses and they could be conveniently carried on the train.

The dedication demonstrated by Bishop Curtis in the 1890s was a story similar to so many others over the years. One priest in Maryland built a beautiful altar for his church. Even the brass on the tabernacle door was hammered out by him, with the assistance of a young man of the parish.

And a letter written by Father John Basty to Archbishop John Shaw of New Orleans in September of 1919, which tells of how he managed to build a rectory for only $4200, using his personal stocks and bonds as mortgage collateral, suggests the need for a new church building:

"The old Red Church built in 1806 with rough boards, painted in deep red, is a relic of long ago it is true; but very much dilapidated, parts of which are nothing but dry rot. I have seen most of the parish churches of the diocese and none looks so bad as mine. The Red Church has to be repaired and somewhat enlarged for the time being. It holds twenty-two pews only with practically no sanctuary. The sacristy is a shed which is a haven of lizzards [sic], spiders, mud-diggers, and birds of all kinds. When you come up here which I hope will be soon, you will realize the truth of my statements. I may not be able to conjure snakes to appear in church when you are there, (I am not a St. Francis) still I can produce witnesses who will tell you that snakes come to hear Mass occasionally and of course produce great disturbance amongst the fair sex..."