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vii.

Private Concerns

FROM THE FIRST it was comforting to Lamy to receive much help in the building of his churches and the making of his communities from numbers of non-Catholic settlers. Yet there were always others who glowered hot-eyed from the periphery, hissing of “priest-craft,” and rejoicing in the national “Know-Nothing” movement which sought to discredit Catholicism in the growing society. Convents were burned in various sections of the country, and lurid books, such as that by “Maria Monk” which professed to describe horrors of every sort in the conventual life, were popular among those who feared “popery.” Lamy and his colleagues were aware from the first of such a hostile climate in certain quarters, and had to meet it face to face now and then. The only answer was to go on modestly and calmly in the work of the Church, without mounting counter-attacks of any sort. In the end, such a posture won tolerance, which was all the Catholics asked, sure as they were of what they preached and sought to live by.

Lamy, receiving converts, reported that “the Methodists were furious about here”—Danville—and went on to say, “they are holding quantity of meetings to stop as they call it the progress of popery.” Machebeuf, in upper Ohio, in his early days there, said Mass in Toledo in a private house, and declared that at the same time and in the same house, the Methodists held their services, and “following their honorable custom, the minister made such a din and such howlings that we were singularly inconvenienced.” The Catholics were upstairs, the Methodists on the first floor. Machebeuf disliked knowing what thoughts were going on under his feet, he said. But at Lower San-dusky, where every Sunday he could hear the singing of nearby Presbyterians in their services, it often happened that many of them would attend also the Catholic Mass, and some even vouched for Catholic credit at the banks, and he saw with gratification that as prejudices lessened, priests were no longer regarded as “monsters,” and Catholics as “ignorant and superstitious idolaters.” He had an ingenious theory why Catholicism became gradually acceptable—it was that the great number of conversions effected in England at the time of the Oxford Movement gave Americans reason to examine a religion which hitherto they had known only through “the most atrocious calumnies.”

But as always, while public matters went along, private concerns bore heavily at times; and when in October 1843 Machebeuf received word that his father was critically ill at home in Riom, he resolved to go to France to see him before the end. He would need Bishop Purcell’s permission, but since the bishop was himself abroad at the time, the vicar general of the diocese must act for him. Machebeuf submitted his request. It was denied—justly enough, as Machebeuf had to admit, for at the moment there was no replacement for him in Sandusky, and he had committed the parish to so many works that must be continued. Moreover, he had no money for the journey. Writing home for “two hundred piastres,” he was forced to say that he had only five in his pocket. The baker’s family sent him the necessary funds—but still he could not leave. He wrote to his father, enclosing the letter in one to his sister if the old man should be too ill to read it for himself, hoping that a beneficent Providence would grant a few more weeks of life to the invalid so that he might see him once more before he died. Meantime, he was saying Masses for him, and could only add, “Farewell, dear papa, we shall meet, I hope, either in this world or in heaven.” His heart was heavy, his friend knew it, and when work allowed, Lamy journeyed to Sandusky to console him, offering to come there whenever he could, during Machebeuf’s absence, if arrangements for the journey should ever be managed.

So they were, when Purcell returned from abroad. He at once gave permission for Machebeuf to go—but in addition to his merciful purpose, the bishop added an important mission to be carried out in France. Purcell charged him with the complicated task of recruiting clergy and religious for the Cincinnati diocese—priests for the missions, Ursuline nuns to found a convent in Brown County, Kentucky. Finally, in June 1844, nine months after the first word of his father’s grave condition, Machebeuf was able to set out. It was to be a year before he returned. In due course, Lamy learned, as he did in all matters concerning his closest ally, the adventures of Machebeuf on the first journey home made by either of them since they had left France in 1839.