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Chapter Three

Following a New Direction (1891–1898)

When Barney went to talk with Sacred Heart Parish’s Fr. Edmund Sturm, he knew only that he wanted to move toward priesthood. Beyond that, he had almost no ideas about the kind of ministry he wanted to do or the sort of seminary he should choose.

Fr. Sturm listened to the young man seated in front of him, dressed in the trim, dark uniform of a streetcar motorman. He seemed a likable fellow. Though the Caseys had only recently moved into his parish, the pastor had heard quite a bit about them. He was very impressed with the young man’s parents, Ellen and Bernard Sr. And the town of Superior was impressed with the “Casey All-Brothers Nine,” a baseball team composed of the Casey brothers, for which young Barney fearlessly played catcher.

After listening to what the young fellow had to say, Fr. Sturm quietly suggested that he apply for admission to St. Francis de Sales Seminary in Milwaukee. This was the same “German seminary” where Barney’s brother Maurice had been enrolled. His brother’s attempt to study for the priesthood there had ended disastrously, Barney knew very well. Maurice had come home convinced that he was both a failure and a deep disappointment to his family. But Barney took Fr. Sturm’s advice and made plans to follow the path Maurice had taken. He believed that this was the life God wanted for him and God would move him toward this goal.

Barney stood up, shook hands with his pastor, and left. The anxious, heavy feeling that had been burdening him seemed to be gone. He walked out of the rectory and made his way to the streetcar station, where he was to begin work within the hour. Later in the day, he would tell his family about the new track he would be taking.

At the Casey household, Barney’s news was greeted with great joy. Ellen and Bernard Sr. were almost speechless, although they had suspected that Barney had been thinking of such a move. Their son explained that he would have to enroll at the high school level with fourteen-year-old boys. At that, fifteen-year-old Gus told Barney that he would be one semester ahead of Barney, his older brother, who would begin in the middle of the school year. But Barney wasn’t disturbed by that prospect. In fact, he was eager to begin.

So, in January 1892, a few months after the streetcar episode in Superior, Barney was in school in cold and snowy Milwaukee. This was a different world, conducted in a language he didn’t know. At dinner, during recreation, and in classes, young Casey found himself immersed in a German world. Barney probably didn’t realize it, but St. Francis Seminary was already at the center of a controversy over ethnic bias — a common concern during these decades of immigrant settlement. Long before he set foot in St. Francis, the controversy had been brewing.

The Diocese of Milwaukee was founded in 1843, and the diocesan seminary had begun to enroll young men in 1856. Even in its first year, according to its rector, Fr. Michael Heiss, German and Irish Catholics were defensive about the seminary’s direction. “Some thought that the seminary would become an institution solely for the Germans,” Fr. Heiss said. “When, however, we also accepted Irish youths, certain parties spread the suspicion that it was planned to displace the Germans gradually and to make the seminary Irish.”

German worries were largely misplaced. The diocesan seminary began with a German staff and emphasis, and remained that way for some years. The seminary staff was assigned by Bishop John Henni, the first bishop of Milwaukee, who had come with strong German associations from the diocese of Cincinnati. Nonetheless, it was true that the Irish clergy — both native-born and foreign-born — were clearly trying to gain their own foothold in the German establishment. German clerics in Wisconsin undoubtedly felt that defensiveness about Irish leadership was justified. Over half of all Catholic bishops in the United States from 1789 to 1935 were Irish, even during decades when Irish Catholics represented only 17 percent of the Catholic population. German Catholics had a saying that expressed this fear: Mit der Sprache ghet der Glaube (“With language goes faith”). If they lost their right to worship in their native tongue and to teach their children that language, they feared that their children would lose the faith as well.

When Archbishop Henni was about to retire in 1878, both American and Irish priests wrote letters aimed at discouraging the appointment of another German. They wrote to Archbishop James Gibbons of Baltimore, pointing out that the archbishop of Milwaukee and the bishops of the other two Wisconsin dioceses, La Crosse and Green Bay, were German, as were all ecclesiastical officials. There had never been an English-speaking priest in any of these positions. In spite of these efforts, however, Bishop Michael Heiss, the German bishop of La Crosse, succeeded to the archbishopric of Milwaukee in 1880, and was followed by another bishop of German background, Frederick Xavier Katzer, in 1891.

Barney Casey came to Milwaukee just about one year after Archbishop Katzer. Thus, while Archbishop Katzer struggled with Irish-German sensitivities at the chancery across town, one of his newest seminarians did battle in the classroom.

At a German seminary, German and Latin were required courses. It was in the academic arena that Barney began to understand the pains and frustrations that life can bring. Stress — and, possibly, living in the cold rooms in this five-story seminary near Lake Michigan — contributed to his frequent attacks of quinsy sore throat.

Barney was well-liked at St. Francis. Though quite a bit older than his classmates, he did not put himself above them in any way. To help pay for his tuition, he even became the seminary barber. Since students rose at 5:30 a.m. and were required to follow a rigid daily routine, the barbering job took time away from study, and Barney struggled to fulfill all of his obligations.

Although he had to work hard at his studies, he also took time to skate on the big rink during the winter and to play ball during the warmer months. When he assumed the role of catcher for the first time, however, he shocked his classmates. To their horror, and despite their appeals, he refused to wear a catcher’s mask. With a quiet grin, the wiry young man simply made a huge Sign of the Cross in the air where balls would be zooming in and bats would be swinging at dangerous speeds. Then, he crouched down on his haunches and proceeded to play.

This approach seemed to epitomize his particular spirituality: those who came in contact with him sensed a deep spiritual quality about him. He was extremely and deeply prayerful, they noticed. But he was very approachable, too.

Despite his busy schedule, Barney did extremely well at his studies during his first semesters. The school years of 1892, ’93, and ’94 passed in a blur of unceasing work, broken only by some vacation and time spent with his family back in Superior. During the 1894–95 school year, Barney was able to raise his grades high enough to enter the “fifth class,” which was actually the first year of college seminary training. During the second semester of the 1895–96 term, however, his grades dropped seriously, and seminary officials brought the young man in to talk to him frankly. They told Barney they doubted he could handle the academic demands that further college-level seminary work would require of him, and he was asked to leave.

Barney couldn’t completely understand their concerns. He had earned grades in the 70s in Latin, algebra, geometry, and history, and in the 77-to-85 range in German. In vocal music, U.S. history, and natural philosophy, his marks were in the 85-to-93 range. His grades in Christian doctrine and English were also good, just as they had been during the first semester. His marks were a bit low in some areas, but he clearly was not failing. So, it mystified him. Why was he being dismissed from the diocesan seminary?

Bewildered, he prepared to leave Milwaukee, believing that his journey toward the priesthood had abruptly come to a halt. But then, diocesan seminary officials assured Barney that he did, indeed, seem to have a vocation, and suggested that he might be more suited to seminary study in a religious order. So, Barney took their advice and went to visit the Capuchin seminary in Milwaukee, also called St. Francis Seminary.

Once there, however, a great heaviness began to fill the young man. The hint of austerity, the unkempt beards, and the somber setting at the Capuchin seminary depressed him, and he left the Capuchins quickly. He headed home for Superior under a cloud that his prayers did not seem to lift. At twenty-five, and after four-and-a-half years of work, his dreams of serving the Lord were already dissolving, seemingly for no reason.

In the months that Barney was still wondering why he’d been dismissed, an editorial appeared in the Milwaukee Catholic Citizen. The editorial writer noted that Wisconsin state colleges, Marquette College in Milwaukee, and Sacred Heart College in Watertown, had all graduated a large number of Irish-Americans that year. But, the writer added, the graduating classes of Pio Nono College and of the diocesan seminary were composed entirely of German- and Polish-Americans. The Catholic Citizen challenge continued:

What is the explanation of the situation? Is there a dearth of vocations for the priesthood among the Irish-Americans of Wisconsin? Or is there something inhospitable about the atmosphere of St. Francis? We pause for meditation.

It’s likely that the editorial never came into Barney’s hands. He was disturbed, but his feelings were more confused than angry. He watched as his brothers pursued their goals. Jim became a mail carrier, while Maurice became a plumber and was traveling. John managed the dairy business for Bernard Sr. while studying law. Ellen, his oldest sister and now in her early thirties, had recently married Thomas Traynor. Edward was in high school but was thinking about the seminary himself, while the younger children were still in grade school. His siblings seemed to have no lack of direction and knowledge about the paths they needed to take.

In the throes of great distress, Barney succumbed to his bothersome throat ailment throughout the summer of 1896. His mother and sister Ellen tended to him and supported him in shouldering the pain in his spirit, but summer and autumn were still a torment for him. Two matters needed clarification in his mind: whether he had the call to the priesthood in the first place, and which religious order he was to join in order to study again for ordination. On August 23, he wrote a letter to Fr. Bonaventure Frey, provincial of the Capuchins. They had already agreed to accept him if he decided to join them. Barney wrote:

Dear Rev. Father:

I received your welcome letter of the 20th a few days ago. I would ask now what I should do with regards to books, clothes, etc., as also when your scholastic year begins. I suppose you were informed about my bill of $525.00 at St. Francis. What should I do about that before I go to join you? — supposing I could not pay cash.

Hoping to hear from you again soon I am, very Rev. Father!

Yours sincerely

Bernard F. Casey

Finally, toward the end of the year, after months of anxiety and prayer, Barney asked his mother and sister Ellen to join with him in praying a novena. He needed to have this matter of a vocation made clear. They readily agreed to his request and joined him in asking heaven for direction. Thus the novena began.

On December 8, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Barney was praying after receiving holy Communion at his parish church, Sacred Heart, in Superior. The novena was almost over. On this day, a feast of the Blessed Virgin, he made a private vow of chastity. No matter what decision was made about religious life, he would give his total devotion to God.

Then, in the midst of his quiet prayer, he received a very distinct message in his heart. The message said, “Go to Detroit.” Barney knew the meaning of that! It could only mean that he was to join the Capuchins, one of the three major branches of the Franciscan order. The Lord had been faithful and answered his prayer.

When he finally left Sacred Heart, Barney felt like a new man. His heart was filled with gratitude for the Lord’s goodness. He jogged home to tell his family of his new call to the Capuchins. Then he set about learning more about the order he was to enter.

Established in Italy as a separate branch of Franciscans in the seventeenth century, the Capuchins were named for the capuche, or hood, attached to their brown Franciscan robes. They were founded by Matteo da Bascio and two others in the sixteenth century. Da Bascio’s little band longed to follow the Rule of St. Francis “to the letter.” Theirs was to be a stricter observance and a life based on absolute poverty, such as St. Francis had lived.

The order quickly gained many members in Europe but was later diminished by plagues and political oppression. Around the time of its greatest decline in membership, in 1883, a Capuchin province was established in America, with its base in Detroit.

The two founders of the Capuchin outreach to America were Fr. Francis Haas and Fr. Bonaventure Frey. When they came, these two were not even Capuchins — they were diocesan priests from Switzerland — but they had a commitment to the Capuchin charism. The two priests had arrived in America in 1856, the year before Barney Casey Sr. arrived from Ireland. In the years that Barney Casey Sr. was founding a family and livelihood, the Capuchin founders were setting up missions in Wisconsin, Michigan, and near New York City.

The Capuchin history was impressive, but Barney Jr. contemplated it with mixed feelings. The message about going to Detroit wasn’t one he would have been likely to “invent” for himself. He had been uncomfortable at the Capuchin house he had visited in late spring. It was quite formal and austere. The Capuchin monks wore beards in imitation of St. Francis, and this bothered Barney. Not so much because of the beards themselves — his own father had always worn a beard — but because the Capuchins left their beards untrimmed out of respect for the Franciscan call to simplicity. The thought of that didn’t appeal to Barney Jr. at all. He was aware that his abhorrence of Capuchin whiskers was a minor factor. Yet, there was really nothing else about the prospect of joining the Capuchins that appealed to him, either.

Regardless of all these doubts, by December 20 he was ready to “go to Detroit.” Because it was so close to Christmas, his family wanted him to stay and spend the holiday with them. They knew that it would be years before they would see him again. But Barney would not yield. It was, he insisted, time to go.

In the midst of a blinding snowstorm, he left Superior on December 20 and headed southwest for St. Paul on the 11:00 p.m. train. From St. Paul, his train then headed east, pulling along slowly through drifting snow to Milwaukee. After a brief layover there, during which Barney stayed with Capuchins for the first time, he boarded a train again. Down through Chicago and over to Michigan, his train headed for his goal — Detroit.

On Christmas Eve, the train pulled into the station in Detroit at last. Barney located a streetcar and headed for Mt. Elliott Avenue. There, at 1740 Mt. Elliott, the young man finally arrived, well after dusk. Exhausted, he refused the offer of dinner. He was too tired. Upstairs, on the second floor, he was shown to his room: a simple, stark little space with a wooden door latch. The sight of it immediately renewed his fears of this Capuchin austerity. But, spent with the strain of travel, he pulled off his shoes and heavy coat, still wet with snow, pulled a blanket up over himself, and soon fell into a deep sleep.

Just before midnight, he awoke to the sound of hand chimes and the voices of men singing. They were singing Christmas carols in German. It was Christmas Eve! As the voices grew louder, Barney could hear other men getting out of bed and coming down the corridor to join their voices with the little group of carolers. Barney joined them, and his heart was lifted. The gloom over his decision to follow Our Lady’s orders and “go to Detroit” left him.

Down and around, through the darkened corridors, the carolers moved. Carrying candles, they roused the other Capuchins who then followed down into the chapel for Christmas Midnight Mass. It was a moving, joy-filled occasion and initiated a week or more of festivities.

Once that week passed, however, the same anxieties about his decision plagued Barney again. The transition to the new year provided no fresh hope or renewed vision that his future here could be happy and fulfilling. Capuchins were invested with the habit very soon after entrance, and he dreaded the finality of that.

His investiture into the novitiate was set for January 14, 1897. The closer the date came, the more anxious he felt about his decision. Penning his thoughts into his small book on the Rule of St. Francis and the Constitution of the Capuchins, he referred to this day of investiture as a “day of anxiety,” and its coming looked to him as “dark indeed.”

On January 14, however, Barney finally slipped the heavy brown cassock over his head and pulled on the Franciscan’s heavy sandals over his socks. Perhaps he pulled some new vision or a feeling of peace over his psyche at the same moment. Whatever the reason, the actual investiture seemed to settle his spirit. Those painful anxieties and second thoughts seemed to dissolve into the wide, high hallways of the friary that he would come to know very well.

From that day, Barney Casey was known among the Capuchins as “Frater” (or “Brother”) Francis Solanus Casey. St. Francis Solano, a Spaniard, was a violin-playing Franciscan missionary in South America during the seventeenth century. Francis Solano had had a powerful gift of preaching and had taken the pains to learn so many of the local dialects that he was thought to have the gift of tongues! In July 1897, seven new men entered the novitiate program to join Frater Solanus and two other novices, Leo Steinberg and Salesius Schneweis. Life in the novitiate was rigorous but not a novelty to the young man from Superior. For four years, he had lived a very ordered life at St. Francis de Sales Minor Seminary. Because the new Frater Solanus had entered the Capuchin novitiate in January instead of in the summer as men usually did, he was between regular groups. Fraters Leo and Salesius were six months ahead of him in the novitiate, and the seven new men were six months behind. Frater Solanus’s novitiate was to be longer because the vows ending the novitiate were made only in July.

Day by day, Solanus merged his life with the schedule of the friary. It was certainly different from the life he had come to know as a conductor on a streetcar line. In that life, he had kept his pocket watch handy to double-check the time. Being at the right intersection, at precisely the right minute, was important. By contrast, inside the monastery, men walked, talked, ate, and slept in a pattern hundreds of years old. The proximity of the twentieth century changed life here very little.

Solanus and the other friars were wrenched from sleep each day at 4:45 a.m. The youngest brother would walk up and down the halls where the friars were sleeping in their rooms — called cells — and clap two two-by-four boards together to awaken the rest of his brothers. After this harsh awakening, the friars then had fifteen minutes to wash a bit and don their brown habits and sandals before they went to the chapel.

Each friar’s cell was simple and spare. That of Frater Solanus, like those of other Capuchins, was a room of about nine by twelve feet. In every cell was an iron bed with a cornhusk mattress and a pillow. The pillowcases and sheets were made from mattress ticking. There was a window, but it had no curtain. A small table, a small armless chair, and two clothes pegs on the wall rounded out the “furnishings.” There was no closet. Capuchin brothers could hang all the clothes they owned on those two hooks.

At 5:10 a.m., the day of prayer began with Lauds. The Litany of the Saints, private meditation, and the Angelus, said just before 6:00 a.m., prepared the friars for Mass, which began at six o’clock. At seven, breakfast was served in the refectory. It was simple — cereal or bread and coffee. It was eaten in silence. Any time remaining before 8:00 a.m. was used for spiritual reading. At eight o’clock sharp, the workday began. For the priests in Detroit, the workday might mean confessions, preaching missions at parishes, or officiating at funerals at Mt. Elliott Cemetery, which was across the street from the friary. The Capuchin priests also officiated, when needed, at parishes around the city of Detroit on weekends.

Capuchin brothers, also in residence at the monastery, shouldered the jobs of food preparation. They were also responsible for making, repairing, and cleaning clothes, maintaining the building and grounds, running the printing press, and performing office jobs, such as serving as doorkeepers and the like.

The novices — both the clerical novices and those headed for the brotherhood — had classes to attend during the day. The novices who hoped to be priests also had other readings to do. They had to learn to say and participate in the reading of the Liturgy of the Hours and helped a great deal with liturgical services throughout the year. The novices, including Frater Solanus, could receive letters from home, but they were not allowed either to have visitors or to visit home during this novitiate period.

In the refectory, benches and narrow tables lined the walls of the large room. Friars therefore sat on the benches with no one seated across the table from them. At noon, while dinner was served and eaten, one of the fathers read aloud from one of the Gospels. Other readings were also taken from the lives of the saints, a devotional work, or one of the papal encyclicals. One priest would read for a while and then hand the reading on to another priest. This reading during both dinner and supper emphasized that no time was to be given to aimless socializing. The rule of silence was therefore observed during the meal but was lifted for Thursday meals, Sunday meals, and feast days.

After the noonday meal, the friars spent a half-hour in recreation while the novices spent some time individually in their rooms. Still later in the afternoon — from three to five o’clock — the novices engaged in manual labor. Generally, this was outdoor work which gave the young men some needed fresh air and an outlet for stored-up physical energy. Whether in the garden or inside the monastery in the kitchen or chapel, the novices worked under careful supervision.

Back in the chapel, the whole community gathered to read the Liturgy of the Hours before supper. Then there was recreation time, followed by some private time and the Hours again. The day was ended at 9:30 p.m. At that point, all the friars were in bed following a full day of prayer, physical exercise, and — for the novices — classroom work and study.

If Frater Solanus was not always asleep just as his head hit the pillow during these long novitiate days, his thoughts turned to his novitiate experience and what he was learning about himself. Like the other Capuchins, he kept a private notebook and recorded his thoughts about his life at St. Bonaventure. This practice of keeping a journal, with the guidance of his novice director, enabled Solanus to experience a growing understanding of his own personality and spirit.

In his journal, it is clear that Frater Solanus was struggling to purify his motives and his heart. He began to see that he operated out of a single-minded intensity in accomplishing tasks. There was certainly no moral or spiritual fault to this tendency. But it was accompanied, he came to see, by a leaning toward perfectionism that was too rigid — a spiritual scrupulosity. Gradually, he loosened up, learning to lean more on God and less on himself.

Solanus also discovered, through his journal and almost-daily conversations with his superiors, how very emotional and impetuous he was by nature. Perhaps, in the context of a large, well-disciplined Irish Catholic family, such personality traits are invariably submerged or played down, especially in boys. Few of his fellow novices recognized these traits. From what they could see, Solanus was an understanding, considerate, friendly fellow very intent on growing in holiness as a Capuchin.

As hard as he worked at his studies, he worked even harder on himself. He understood that the purpose of the novitiate was not to remake him but to take the personality and gifts already there and to develop them further for service to God and others. That was the idea behind the disciplines of the monastery. Capuchin spirituality, or Franciscan spirituality, means attempting to clear away some of the clutter of self-interest and self-indulgence that almost naturally attach to men and women who live life as though it were a right and not a gift.

During this novitiate year, the young man penned in his notebook a sort of plan of action for learning to love God. It reflected the analytical, precise side of his nature. But the five-part plan showed great spiritual maturity as well. The twenty-six-year-old counseled himself to adopt:

1. Detachment of oneself from earthly affections: singleness of purpose.

2. Meditation on the Passion of Jesus Christ.

3. Uniformity of will within the divine will.

4. Mental prayer, meditation, and contemplation.

5. Prayer: “Ask and it shall be given to you” (Matthew 7:7).