Curly's Prayerbook

Ach, it's surprising how much stuff I "inherited" after mom passed away in 1996...and how much I've forgotten I even have.  There are three boxes the size of peach crates (remember them?), one with black & white photos, another with color photos, and another with flotsam and jetsam.  A few weeks ago, I opened that third box looking for one thing but finding another, as always happens.

There was dad's missal, The St Joseph "Continuous" Sunday Missal, imprimatur 1957.  It was a funny old religion back then, where Catholicism, nuns and priests were basically infallible, and a bazillion angels and saints were hovering, waiting to judge our every demand/request. Remember the word "beseech"?

I have a feeling Curly the Usher picked this book up after it spent a few lost weeks in a back pew.  He needed to be holding a missal if he were demanding that we follow the mass in ours, but I doubt he ever bought it.  He liked pictures, just like we did, and he had a collection.  Inside, every 25 pages or so, dad kept clusters of funeral or prayer cards. Most I recognize, but a couple may have been the original owners' ☺.

The fronts of the cards are on the left, and the corresponding verses on the right.  Click to enlarge...

 Yup, all from the missal.

Bonus: A scan of the famous laminated Confession Guide we all carried around (still makes me feel guilty)...and an odd esoteric prayer that almost explains the indulgence-mindset that Martin Luther found so disgusting (read the bottom paragraph first).

"Catholic Day" in Pierz and St Cloud

I'm sure you remember a post from December, 2012, about the massive confirmation celebration in Pierz in the fall of 1910.  We were aware of it because a postcard Larry found of St Joseph's church had an arch and banner in front and horses (and a parade with brass bands and a dozen neighborhood priests in attendance). 

We found a write-up in the paper, but no real explanation at the time...not until these two articles!  Evidently it was based mainly around St Joseph societies and other societies organized in Catholic parishes.  I think it'd been celebrated well before Spring, 1899. Read on ☺

"CATHOLIC DAY CELEBRATION

 The German Roman Catholic Benevolent Society of Minnesota will meet at St Cloud Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.  Sunday will be what is known as "Catholic Day" and the various St Joseph societies in this region will be represented.  Members from Pierz, Buckman and Little Falls will attend. A special train which starts from Perham will go down Sunday leaving Little Falls at 8:55 AM.  The city band will accompany the local members to St Cloud and will take part in the parade.
Father Altendorf will celebrate mass at the church of the Sacred Heart Sunday morning at 7:30 and after mass the members of the local societies will assemble at the parochial school to march to the depot.
St Cloud is making great preparations to entertain the visitors and all who go will certainly not only be well entertained but will receive impressions of lasting value."

 "Bishop Trobec will visit Pierz and arrive here June 20th at one o'clock PM.  About 100 persons on horseback, the different societies and the two brass bands will meet him.  Three triumphal arches will be erected in the village.
On Wednesday June 21 in the forenoon there will be a high mass and after mass confirmation will take place.  At 3 o'clock PM the St Joseph society will keep Catholic Day, and the program will be as follows:
Music, Brass Band, "Champion."
President's Address.
Welcome speech by Father Stephan.
Church choir, Song.
Address by John Gueneman, St Paul.
Mannerchor Song.
Music by String Band.
Address by Christ Billstein.
Church choir Song.
Music by String Band.
Mannerchor.                                                                                                         Address by Prof. G. Stelzl, St Cloud.
                                                   Te Deum, with music".

A little Church history from 1910

When Larry found the confirmation celebration postcard sent from Pierz in 1911, Su over in GB saw it and remembered a very similar occasion that took place in Schamers, Bohemia, in--wow, 1910!  She'd read about it when she translated the town chronicles (Schamers Commemorative Book) written by Herr Schimeczek.

 "The event in Pierz and the one in Schamers happened within a year of each other and seem remarkably similar; note the common themes of the mass confirmation and the triumphal arch"!

Here's the first part of her quick translation:

"On 19 June 1910 was held in the local church, the general visitation held by Bishop Joseph Anton Hulke from Budweis.  
On this occasion, the bishop gave 246 believers the sacrament of confirmation, and held in the school with the children the religion test from. 
  The bishop in honor paid the community a forming with matching hearty welcome provided Triumphal Arch, in which he of the community representatives of the parish, the local School board Schamers, from school children and the teaching staff schools Schamers, Neustift and Heumoth and Weissenbach, and numerous popular assembly festive greetings was received. 
  The community representative and the School Board drove the bishop via the municipal boundary to meet the upper tree garden [could be the village of Oberbaumgarten] and accompanied him on the clock at 5 in the afternoon departure to Neubistritz made to Grambacher Kreunze".
----------------------------------------
Right away, we thought about "Year of" declarations by the Vatican--Year of the Priest, Year of Atonement, Year of Repentance--or, maybe 1910 was a Jubilee year:
"In Judaism and Christianity, the concept of the Jubilee is a special year of remission of sins and universal pardon. In the Biblical Book of Leviticus, a Jubilee year is mentioned to occur every fiftieth year, in which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest".
VIA
But no...1910 doesn't seem to have been a special liturgical year...so what else was going on?  Aha, Larry to the rescue again, from a different perspective:

"...much of the first thousand years of the history of the Church, all three sacraments of initiation—baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist—were bestowed in the same liturgy, even for infants. To this day, this continues to be the practice for Eastern Catholics.

But in the Middle Ages, the time for first reception of Communion in the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church was gradually moved to the teenage years. This was done in large part because of the perceived need for a clear understanding of the sacrament before its reception.

This practice continued into the first years of the 20th century until Pope St. Pius X in 1910 allowed for first Communion to be celebrated at an earlier age".

Right, but that's concerning First Communion, not Confirmation, and besides, we know that Buckman, at least, kept the tradition of First Communion at 12 for a good long time after the pope's declaration (see the photo of mom at 5 and her 12-year-old cousin Adela Brandl about 1920, above).  

So things were changing among Catholics--but we still have questions: what prompted such a huge class of confirmants in 1910 in at least 2 parishes that were 4,600 miles apart?  How come both celebrations were so over-the-top that they invited a bevy of clergy, erected arches to decorate the town, and had a brass-band-and-horses parade?  Confirmations are generally not THAT big a deal.  Oh, and besides, where did Pierz FIND 245 un-confirmed souls, anyway? 

Never fear--we'll keep researching!

Comes the dawn ☺

Over the years, I've often wondered what it was that a bishop's mitre reminded me of.  This cartoon made me think "Ohhhhhh!" ☺

(The idea of the American government being taken over by Rome has 

been a scare tactic more than once).

Was central Minnesota REALLY as Catholic as we say?

The caption up there is a little muddy--it says "Benedictine nuns were in the dugout to participate in the dedication of the new grandstand at the Cold Spring baseball park on June 30th, 1950".

They brought prayer books and prayed, and look, the stands were packed.  Nuns lent gravitas and insured blessings, but on which team?

Added later, for Su's benefit: 
Benedictine Nuns in mid-Minnesota were an everyday sight back then. At an event like this, the dugout would have been a place of honor for the sisters.  It was cooler there in the shade, it was right beside the infield, and most likely, some of those nuns were huge baseball fans.  In 1950, these 11 nuns likely comprised the whole teaching staff at St Boniface Grade School, 3 blocks away. Also likely, the parish priest was on the mound, sprinkling holy water and incanting in Latin for the endless years the grandstand needed to stand.  It must have worked, too--they're still there, still being used.

The war on Evil Films

As a Minnesota Catholic school kid in the 50s and 60s, we basically did what ever Sister said to do.
In second grade, if we behaved, we were allowed to stand by the windows and rub the image off B&W 5X7 photo negatives that were soaking in pans of water on the radiators.  The clean pieces of plastic became covers on flash cards of spelling words. 

We were told what clothes were indecent to wear even if it was 20 below (pants, for girls), and that certain head scarves (Disney) were off limits to wear to daily mass cuz they were sinful, and distracting to other children.
We went to confession and received sacraments on the nuns' schedule.  We had our throats blessed on the feast of St Blaise because we all ate pan fish every Friday, like they said to do.


In 3rd or 4th grade, we were told to go see a wonderful new movie about the bible called "The Ten Commandments" (Yes, it came out in 1956 and this was 1958...the nuns wanted to make positive sure the occasional skimpy costume would be worth getting the message across to us.  They finally cautiously decided it was).


We got points for seeing the movies they strongly suggested, like "Ten Commandments"...or the horrible  "Embezzled Heaven", which haunted me for years.  Here's a quick synopsis from another blogger who was also subject to nuns with inspiring movies : "... the plot revolves around a woman who thinks she can gain heaven by paying for her nephew to become a priest. Instead he becomes a layabout. I couldn't bear to read through the entire plot line. Somewhere the Pope factors in."
Wonder what lesson 4th graders were supposed to take from that?

So, there was a nunnish pipeline of permissible movies approved by the Legion of Decency...and they were shown in the "good" theater in St Cloud, the Hayes (above). (The Eastman and the Paramount were dens of iniquity, doncha know).

"The “war on ‘evil’ films” had been waged several years prior by an organization known as the Legion of Decency (“Cardinal declares war,” 1934). A leader of the organization, Cardinal Hayes, condemned “lustful and depraved pictures” that featured “the glorification of crime, lust, and, in general, the serious violation of the law of God.” Hayes pointed to the dire consequences that such movies would provoke: “History records the inevitable ruin of nation after nation when moral laws are violated and spiritual ideals vanish. Evil motion pictures in their baneful influence undermine the moral foundation of the State.”

The causal claims made by the Legion of Decency were, to say the least, immodest. The organization hypothesized that eating popcorn at a showing of The Outlaw, a condemned film about Billy the Kid, could, by a diffuse but inexorable causal chain, result in the destruction of the soul, love, marriage, family, social harmony, and the nation itself"

--from THIS PDF.

Whoohoo...maybe you should cover your eyes after you click "play"....lol