Bulletin Board with News and Events

Next weekend at all Masses, there will be an announcement about the amount pledged to Restore & Renew, Holy Name Cathedral’s five-year capital campaign which already has begun and which already has brought new life to our parish, our Cathedral. Parishioners, please return your pledge cards so that we can include you in the tally. Parishioners who have misplaced their cards or who never received a card, contact Alex Lucio; she can be reached at (312)573-4425. Parishioners who have made a pledge, thank you very much. I hope we can do everything planned to make Holy Name Cathedral look as it should, the place where Chicago goes to pray, where divinity meets humanity in our great city.

Father Patrick Conway was the second rector/pastor of Holy Name Cathedral. Conway was ordained a priest at Holy Name by Bishop James Duggan on July 7, 1865 – 142 years ago next Saturday. An Irish immigrant, the teenaged Conway worked his own business to raise funds so that he could study for the priesthood at the University of St. Mary of the Lake which stood on the very property where our Cathedral rests today. He finished his studies at the University of Notre Dame and served as pastor of St. Louis, St, James, and St. Patrick Churches before coming to the Cathedral. At Old St. Pat’s, he founded the Christian Brothers high school which exists to this day in another incarnation on the northwest side. At St. James, he employed Charles Keely, the same architect who built Holy Name, to build our twin Church on South Wabash. At the Cathedral, Father Conway served also as Vicar-General to Chicago’s first Archbishop, Patrick Feehan. In 1882, the new Rector moved the Holy Name priests who had been living at 306 Chicago Ave. to a new rectory on the spot where ours stands now, except that it faced Superior. That rectory doubled as the Chancery Office. (It was replaced by the “new” rectory, the one we have used since 1929, the one that also needs the attention of our Restore & Renew money.) In 1882, for $60,000, Conway was able to build a school directed by the Viatorians for 600 boys at 79 Sedgewick. A census conducted door to door by the pastor and his assistants determined that there were 2,700 Catholic households in the parish boundaries of the 1880s. Less than a week after the Republicans nominated Indiana Senator Benjamin Harrison for the Presidency at their Chicago Convention, Father Patrick Conway suddenly took ill. At age 50, he died on July 1, 1888 – 119 years ago this Sunday.

John McMullen was born in Ireland in 1832, the youngest child in an immigrant family first to Quebec, then Ontario, then Ogdensburg, New York, before moving to Lockport, Illinois, and eventually the south side of Chicago. At age 20 he was graduated from the University of St. Mary of the Lake. Eventually, he completed theology studies in Rome where he was ordained in 1858. In the first three years of his Chicago priesthood, McMullen worked at St. Mary’s, Chicago’s original Catholic Church and Cathedral; he founded the Magdalen Asylum or House of the Good Shepherd for unwed mothers; and served St. Louis Church (Polk St. between LaSalle and Wells) as pastor. In 1861, while war ripped America apart, 29-year old Father McMullen returned to the University of St. Mary of the Lake as President. Boldly, he tried to maintain a school of theology, medicine, and law! Financial difficulties and a rift between his administration and Bishop James Duggan forced the University’s closing in 1866. After accompanying the bishop to the Council of Baltimore, — remember the Baltimore Catechism written at that Council? — McMullen was assigned as pastor of St. Paul’s Church on the south side. He was one of four priests suspended by the increasingly disturbed and eccentric Bishop Duggan in 1868. McMullen represented their case during a trip to Rome where he was heard, but counseled to come to an understanding with the bishop. When McMullen returned, he discovered that Bishop Duggan had been committed to an asylum in St. Louis where he sadly would remain until his death in 1899. The appointed administrator of Chicago’s Church restored McMullen and appointed him pastor of a parish in Wilmington – 70 miles away from Chicago. When Bishop Thomas Foley arrived from Baltimore as Chicago’s bishop in 1870, he immediately appointed McMullen pastor of Holy Name, Chicago’s biggest Church. A year later, in the Great Chicago Fire, the city and the parish buildings burned down. McMullen himself bravely retrieved the Blessed Sacrament from the flaming Church. McMullen, Foley, and others courageously traveled Catholic America begging for money to rebuild the Church of Chicago. With those funds, the present Holy Name Cathedral was opened in 1875. In 1877, Father McMullen was appointed Vicar-General of the diocese. He handled the day-to-day operations of Chicago’s Church. After Bishop Foley’s death in 1880 and funeral in the new Holy Name Cathedral, McMullen was chosen to administer the diocese in the interim. When Chicago was elevated to the status of Archdiocese and Archbishop Patrick Feehan of Nashville was transferred to Chicago in September, 1880, he asked McMullen to remain as both Vicar General and Rector of the Cathedral. Then, on June 14, 1881, it was announced that Father John McMullen had been named by Pope Leo XIII as the founding bishop of the diocese of Davenport, Iowa. The first consecration of a bishop ever to be held in Holy Name took place on July 25, 1881, when Chicago’s Archbishop Feehan assisted by Bishop John Hennessey of Iowa’s original diocese, Dubuque, along with Bishop John Lancaster Spalding of Peoria, ordained John McMullen to the episcopacy. He was 49 years old. His brief accomplishments in Davenport most especially included the establishment of St. Ambrose College, now St. Ambrose University. Bishop McMullen died on the 4th of July, 1884 – 123 years ago Wednesday.

Bishop John McMullen was Holy Name Cathedral’s first Rector. Father Patrick Conway was the second. I am the ninth. This week we pray for those mighty men who stepped up to the Holy Name altar ahead of me in our history, those powerful men who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith in His Holy Name. God rest their souls.

On Wednesday, Americans will celebrate Independence Day. At Holy Name Cathedral, Masses will be offered at 8:00am, 12:10pm, and 5:15pm. Let’s celebrate the greatness of the United States of America, the first nation founded on principles like freedom and justice. Let’s pray that our nation remain true to our birthright and that our leaders exercise courage in pursuit of whatever is true and not simply what is popular. Let’s enjoy a summer holiday with prayers, fireworks, picnics, food and music that can unite us under one flag. Let’s remember those in military service protecting that flag; let’s take care of their anxious families. As the United States turns 231 years old, let’s hope that God graciously will bless America. Happy 4th of July!

Fr. Dan Mayall