Last week we heard that Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann was elected president of the UN general assembly. A Maryknoll priest, D’Escoto was suspended when he defied instructions from the Holy See in becoming foreign minister for the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. News of leftist/communist political activism among Maryknoll missionaries has long been commonplace. Readers will hardly be surprised to learn of it.

The surprise for some readers would be to learn what Maryknoll was in its first fervor, for if we look not too far back — through the “smoke of Satan” that Pope Paul VI said entered the sanctuary of God — we will see Maryknoll’s early history as one of great heroism, beginning with its two venerable founders.

Known as “Walsh and Price” — people said they sounded like a business firm — Fathers James A. Walsh and Thomas F. Price were a wonderfully complementary pair. They were two very distinctively American types: Father (later Bishop) Walsh was a city slicker from Boston with a head for organizing things on a grand scale; Father Price, a “Tar Heel” from North Carolina, was a country boy, homespun and personable — and very saintly. It is the latter half of this diverse duo that I would like to feature.

We begin with a brief sketch: Thomas Fredrick Price (August 19, 1860 – September 12, 1919) was the son of two converts of Wilmington, North Carolina. Learning to serve Mass as a young man, he occasionally accompanied Bishop (later Cardinal) Gibbons on his rounds among the few Catholics of the region. The tender piety of the boy’s mother and his close relationship to his parish priests awoke in young “Freddie” the idea of a priestly vocation. He went to Saint Charles Seminary in Catonsville, Maryland, followed by Saint Mary’s in Baltimore. In 1886, he became the first North Carolinian ordained to the priesthood. Initially a parish priest, he became a missionary to non-Catholics in his home state. Included in his apostolic undertakings were the foundation of a boys’ orphanage and, later, of a seminary to train young men to be priests in the North Carolina mission. In 1910, he became acquainted with Father James Walsh at a Eucharistic Congress in Montreal. The two nurtured the same zealous aspirations, and, eventually, founded the first foreign missionary institute in the U.S.: The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. Commonly known as Maryknoll, the institution was approved by the U.S. hierarchy and blessed by Pope Saint Pius X, who personally encouraged the founders. Father Price performed many functions in the Society’s early days: He was their advocate among the bishops, a fund raiser, recruiter, seminary instructor, and spiritual director of seminarians and brothers (a position which allowed him to put the stamp of his deep piety on the fledgling institution). When the new Society’s first three priests were ready to depart for China on September 7, 1918, Father Price went with them. Just over a year later, on the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary (September 12, 1919), he died in Hong Kong of a burst appendix.

Father Price was considered a saint by many who knew him, but of this, we will give only one illustration: At the end of his life, the Chinese faithful of the Yeungkong mission called him simply, “The Holy Priest.”

The secret of his sanctity lay in living the Marian Consecration promoted by Saint Louis de Montfort. He wore chains on his arms and legs — padlocked ones! — symbolizing his slavery to the Blessed Virgin. He first consecrated himself in Lourdes, France, where he became deeply impressed with the message of Our Lady and the virtues of Saint Bernadette. He became a pioneer in promoting the apparition in this country, translating one volume on the little visionary, and authoring another. By the Mother Superior at Nevers, he was given the unique privilege of saying Mass at the tomb of Bernadette, who had not yet been declared “venerable.” More strikingly, the sisters allowed his heart to be buried near Saint Bernadette’s remains. A plaque on the wall marks the spot of its repose. The message of Lourdes — “I am the Immaculate Conception” — was something he thought particularly relevant to the U.S., given the fact that our nation was consecrated to Our Lady under that title.

But if this Marian missionary was so desirous of the conversion of his homeland — as a lad of seven, he said he wanted “Every Tar Heel a Catholic!” — why is he the cofounder of a foreign missionary society? The answer to this question only confirms the Tar Heel’s supernatural wisdom. Back when Cardinal Manning began the English congregation known as the Mill Hill Fathers, critics asked why English Catholics would go abroad as missionaries when Albion was not yet reclaimed from Henry VIII’s treachery. The Cardinal’s reply was that God would reward the generous spirit of England’s Catholics in evangelizing the heathen: “If we desire to find the surest way to multiply immensely our own material means for works at home, it is by not limiting the expansion of charity and by not paralyzing the zeal of self-denial.”

Manning’s ideas had impressed Father Walsh, and he, in turn, convinced Father Price of their merit. Father Price’s beloved “North Carolina Apostolate” — he had built a seminary for it, and another when the first burned down — was turned over to another priest. Just as Mother Cabrini, Father Kino, and others were “supposed” to go to China and ended up here, our American apostle ended up in China.

To Father Price, the home and foreign missions were of a piece, and he was indignant that neither was sufficiently supported by American Catholics. Accusing them of “apathy” and “indifference,” he thundered: “If the Catholics in this country but did their duty to both home and foreign missions a mighty change would take place both in ourselves and in the whole foreign-mission world. The matter of missions will not down. It lies in the very essence of Catholicity, and it is shameful that at present we do so little.”

But what did the Church think of Maryknoll’s roundabout way of converting America? In the person of Pope Saint Pius X, she heartily approved! Father Price related the saint’s reaction: “He said, when he read the schema prepared for him of the work — and he read every word of it — that he granted it, and us, all benedictions. As he was reading, he said twice that we had in America enough outside the Church — millions — who needed to be converted, but he thought this work would stimulate that, besides bringing about its own good.” (emphasis mine)

If today’s Maryknoll has abandoned the founders’ vision, it is no doubt due to the fact that, unlike Saint Pius X, they do not believe that those “outside the Church… needed to be converted.” And would they say, as Father Price did, “Pray and work for the conversion of countless millions now perishing”?

Their interest having shifted from the supernatural to the natural, from Christian salvation to Marxist “liberation,” it seems that prominent Maryknollers would have other interests.

Through the intercession of the Immaculate One of Lourdes, of Saint Bernadette and — I shall include him “privately” — of Father Thomas Price, may there arise many true sons and daughters of “Walsh and Price” to make America what they wanted it to become, the world’s great missionary superpower.

Feedback from Last Week
Demographics are pointing to a Catholic America, but let’s not rest on our statistics

Last week’s Ad Rem, (“The Conversion of America to Catholicism: What’s the Holdup?”), brought a response from a sociologist friend, who gave me the following information worth passing on: “In the 1800 Census approximately 3% of the US population was Roman Catholic. And in the 2000 Census approximately 27% of the US population was Roman Catholic. If the trend continues the 2100 Census will show that approximately 81% of the US population will be Roman Catholic. Try to be patient, Br. Andre, we’re winning the war.”

Assuming their accuracy (I’m trusting my friend), these are encouraging numbers. But numbers give only part of the picture, and the Church has never relied on demographic trends to spread her message — although taking advantage of these trends is something we ought to do. Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.S.C.O., in The Soul of the Apostolate, gives us an example of the inadequacy of numbers:

“As I visited certain parishes, I was delighted to find out that a good number of men there were faithful to the Communion of the First Friday of the month. But a holy New York priest commented on my delight with: ‘homo videt in facie, Deus autem in corde’ — Man sees the face, but God sees the heart! ‘Do not forget,’ he went on, ‘that you are in a country where nobody is held back by human respect, and where bluff is fairly universal. Restrain your admiration until you come to a parish where a reliable observer can testify that frequent Communion is a genuine indication, if not of a complete amendment of life, at least of sincere efforts to lead a Christian life, and a loyal desire not to compromise with heavy drinking and the ruthless ambition to make a lot of money.”

Let’s hope that my friend’s numbers are an indication of a Catholic America in the near future, but let’s also do our part to unite to our numerical gains the essential elements of orthodoxy, orthopraxy, and fervor of life.

Tags: Bishop James Walsh, Cardinal Manning, Father Price, Liberation Theology, Lourdes, Maryknoll, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, Saint Bernadette, Saint Pius X, The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America