John Neumann arrived in America on June 2, 1836, and left on June 28 for his first priestly assignment near Buffalo, New York.
During the whirlwind month between arrival and assignment, he walked much of the city without a guide or map, met Bishop John Dubois, was accepted as an aspirant to Holy Orders, went through ordination to both the diaconate and the priesthood, and celebrated his first Holy Mass.
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As he stood on a Hudson River liner, a million thoughts must have raced through Father Neumann’s head. At age 25, he was over four thousand miles away from his home, family and friends in Bohemia. He knew little or nothing about his destination. He faced all of the uncertainties of young adulthood except one. After years of arduous self-examination, he had a particular goal.
“Deprive me of everything, my God,” the young priest prayed, “but not of the desire to unite my will to Thy Will in perfect resignation.”
An Able Young Priest
Father Neumann had other assets as well. Raised in a devout home, his conscience was well formed. He was widely read and had a good education. He had a penchant for languages. He knew how to work hard and possessed overwhelming resilience to privations of all sorts.
That last ability was crucial. With minimal resources, he set out to meet the needs of the widely scattered German population on the Western New York frontier.
At first, he had no established home. Father Neumann served four unfinished churches and visited innumerable farmers‘ cabins in between, always moving on foot despite the weather. Long walks were nothing new for the young man who had crossed Europe without money. On the other hand, the brutal Buffalo winter must have been a shock. However, the young priest‘s journal treated all such conditions as preparations for holiness.
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Father Neumann set up his headquarters at Williamsville, where a parish had been organized a couple of years earlier by Father John Mertz from Buffalo. The “building” was four walls without a roof or floor. A makeshift altar had been set up, but the local Protestants amused themselves by tossing rocks over the walls. On at least one occasion, one of the missiles landed on the altar during the consecration.
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The other three parishes lay within a circle about thirty miles in diameter. About four hundred Catholic families lived within those bounds—about three-quarters of whom were German. The remaining quarter consisted of Irish, French and Scots. Most had been in America for less than five years. Their access to the sacraments was intermittent, while Catholic education was non-existent.
Moreover, one of the parishes had a small school. Unfortunately, the schoolmaster‘s conduct was unacceptable, so Father Neumann dismissed him. In the process, he gained another major task—a schoolteacher—for the seven months it took to find another.
This episode contains the seeds of the future bishop Father Neumann was to become. His love and patience for children were evident throughout his career, so much so that there is a sculpture of the saint and schoolchildren outside the parish of St. Peter the Apostle in Philadelphia, where he is buried.
A Legal Conundrum
The new priest also had to confront a legal battle against “trusteeism.” It was a burden that he faced as both priest and bishop.
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New York, Pennsylvania and several other states had property laws inspired by the norms of Protestantism. Under these laws, church land belonged to the church board members—the so-called trustees, rather than any form of hierarchy. This pattern suited Baptists, Methodists, Quakers and Presbyterians because their congregations were largely independent. In these sects, the preacher was not the influential head of the body but rather the trustees’ employee. This manner of organizing church property was entirely opposed to Catholic practice.
Unfortunately, when Catholic bishops and priests needed to exercise their control of the property, the presumably Catholic trustees often opposed them. Local courts usually upheld the trustees’ position.
These situations required infinite tact, patience and perseverance. Father Neumann had all of these gifts, but this Protestant system would be a hindrance at several points in his career in Western New York, as well as in Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
Joining the Redemptorists
During this time in New York, Father Neumann came into contact with German missionaries who were part of the Redemptorist order. Their diligence and the itinerant nature of their mission work appealed to him. Slowly, through 1838 and 1839, Father Neumann began to discern a call to join their order. At the same time, the strains of constant labor under challenging conditions began to show. During the summer of 1840, his health broke because of complete exhaustion, and he could not do parish work for three months.
On October 13, 1840, with the reluctant permission of Bishop Coadjutor John Hughes, Father Neumann left Buffalo and the Diocese of New York to become a Redemptorist. He arrived at the Redemptorist house in Pittsburgh five days later. On November 20, he became a novice.
One of Father Neumann‘s hopes was that he would spend a couple of years under the close direction of more senior members of the order before accepting new responsibilities of his own. However, the need for German-speaking priests was just as acute in Western Pennsylvania as in New York. The sacramental need in the area is reflected in the fact that he conducted fifty-four baptisms in six months—almost one every three days.
Constant Movement and Physical Exhaustion
At the end of those six months, his superiors ordered Father Neumann to report to the Redemptorist house in Baltimore. He was there for three days when they assigned him to Saint Nicholas Church in New York City—where he had offered his first Mass only four years earlier. Two weeks later, the order sent him to Rochester and, after another two months, to Buffalo. As Father Curley described the situation, Father Neumann‘s novitiate “saw him changing his abode eight times in a year, baptizing constantly, preaching incessantly and traveling 3,000 miles through New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, on horseback, on bumpy stagecoaches, on single track railroads or small steamers and canal boats.”
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This frenetic pace corresponded to the needs of the Redemptorist Order, both in the United States and Europe. Nonetheless, Father Neumann persevered in obedience and professed his final Redemptorist in Baltimore on January 16, 1842, the first person to do so in North America.
Two years later, in March 1844, Father Neumann was named superior of the Order and pastor of Saint Philomena’s Parish in Pittsburgh. Three years later, again suffering from exhaustion, his superiors called him back to Baltimore. However, as always in Father Neumann‘s life, the rest break would be short. The following month, he was appointed vice-regent of the Redemptorists in North America. On January 9, 1849, he was named rector of Saint Alphonsus Parish in Baltimore.
During his time in Baltimore, God would open the doors that led Father Newman to become the fourth bishop of Philadelphia.
(This article is the third of the author’s five articles about the life of Saint John Neumann. Read the first article here, the second here, and the fourth here. The Editor)