The Society of St. Columban : a historical sketch


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J# A Historical SketchBy Rev. E. J. McCarthy

St. Columbans/ Nebr.



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G^OLUMBAN

April E2nd, 1931.

Dear Father l-

"Priests as a rule are most gullible in making invest-

ments, are you any better?" This poser came to me recently from

a priest whom I tried to interest in our Annuity Plan. That

priests sometimes get badly stung on investments, we all know,

but so do bankers. On the other hand, I know priests who have

made wonderful investments in their time and. a good deal of what

you read about in the enclosed booklet was made possible through

their ability and charity.

But as a matter of fact we have not the same investment

"temptations" that other priests have. If we ever feel like

"getting rich quick" to pay off a debt with a profitable looking

investment that some "high-power" salesman is trying to force on

us, we get a whole lot of "efficacious grace" from our Constitu-

tions and Normae and Articles of Incoporation, not to speak of

Canon Law.

With our Society, the investment of funds is not left

to any one individual. There is always a Council to vote on each

investment and we are obliged to get the best expert advice
available. Then we are allowed to invest only in such high-grade
securities as are usually recommended for trust funds. Even with
all this red tape, we may make a mistake, of course, but it will

never be a very serious one. So far, thank God, we have come
through the present depression without a single loss.

Just now we hold 274 Annuity Contracts. A large number
of these were given us by priests who want Masses said for them
when they die. Some stipulate that the Interest be used for
Masses for the first year or two after their death, others that a
definite sum be taken from the principal for that purpose. They
know this is their safest plan. There will be no deductions for
taxes or legal expenses.

Father, I would like to interest you in our Annuity
Plan and I will be glad to send you privately the details of our
financial standing. If there's a promising boy or two in your
parish whom you tliink would make good missionaries, ask them to
write me and if you send us an annuity or a donation we will be
doubly grateful.



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Our Lady’s Shrine in the main corridor, St. Columbans

Preparatory Seminary, Silver Creek, N. Y.

[ Page One ]



The Chapel at St. Columban’s Seminary, St. Columbans, Nebraska.

^he Society ofSt. Qolumban

N the morning of December 3, 1917, the
Feast of St. Francis Xavier by the way, two young priests stood on the

steps of the Archbishop’s house on Madison Avenue, New York, and
inquired if the Cardinal wasirat home. Yes, but he was busy for the

moment. Father Qalvin, who was himself to become a bishop ten years

later, and better known as the founder of a missionary society, now famil-

iarly called ”St. Columbans,” had come to what he referred to as the

"kick-olF in an important game.”

"It was with fear and trembling, I must confess,” he wrote in a letter

to a friend, "that I mounted the steps and rang the Cardinal’s bell.” I

always recall this letter with a good deal of consolation, for the feeling is

quite a normal one with myself not only when I have to ring a Cardinal’s

[ Page Two ]



bell, which I rarely get a chance to do, but even when I ring
the bell in

a parish house.

In a room of ''cardinal red/’ they spent the time as men in similiar

circumstances usually spend it "thinking out pretty little speeches
and

putting their thoughts in order/’ all of which subsequently
evaporate.

There are always paintings to be admired in a Cardinal’s reception
room,

and in this one there were portraits of those great Archbishops with
whose

names the Archdiocese of New York is linked in history. The Cardinal s

secretary looked in once to ask their names and business, and then a sec-

ond time to say the Cardinal would be down in a moment. "Hughes and

Corrigan and all the other great men were forgotten in a moment and

Cardinal Farley became the man of the hour.” Then he suddenly ap-

peared in the doorway. "There was no room for formal speeches, for the

Cardinal was delightfully informal.” He made them feel "entirely at

home and in the home of a friend.”

Yes, he had heard of this new missionary movement in Ireland and he

was glad of it; pity it had not started fifty years before, but even now it

was not too late. It seemed indeed providential. Father Galvin outlined

the story and the Cardinal listened. "Yes, it is wonderful,” he said, "but

Ireland has never turned a deaf ear to an appeal made in such a cause.

He gave them a letter authorizing them to collect funds in the Arch-

diocese, and next morning the mail brought a personal check from His

Eminence. A new missionary movement was launched in the United States.

^ ^ ^ ^

S
IX years before^ Father Galvin knew Manhattan; he knew Brooklyn

better, for the first years of his priesthood were spent there at Holy

Rosary Church. In those six years many interesting things had happened in

his life and other lives now associated with him. For one thing he had felt

that strange imperative impulse we call a missionary vocation and which

few can understand who have not felt its urgent insistence. It casts cau-

tion and human prudence to the winds, tramples on ties that are nearest

and dearest and goes out over the dark places of the earth to bring souls

into touch with the Infinite Source of Light and Life.

For four years, from 1912 to 1916, he worked as a missionary in China.

He saw there paganism and the fruit of sin in all its dark horror, and the

[ Page Three ]



[ Page Four }

St.

Columban’s

Seminary,

St.

Columbans,

Nebraska,

the

Major

Seminary

of

the

Society

of

St.

Columban

in

the

United

States.



sight saddened him, as it has saddened many another heart before and

since. He saw how the missionaries of France were recalled from their

missions to become soldiers. He knew that many of them would never

return. And as he saw the utter spiritual helplessness of Qiina with all its

cruel fearsome superstitions, his thoughts turned to other lands where the

Faith was strong and fervent and where men, many of them at least, loved

God; to Ireland, where he was born, and to America, where he had lived

and worked. In these countries there was a strong, virile Faith. Ireland

had a missionary history unparalleled; in America the idea of foreign mis-

sions had scarcely begun to stir abroad, but Father Galvin had vision

enough to grasp its possibilities.

He began his campaign. He wrote for the Irish Catholic and he wrote

for the students of Maynooth. His letters were read and published there

by a friend whose interest was awakening. If he failed to receive a ready

response, he got at least a sympathetic hearing. He wrote constantly for

such American papers as The Lamp (Graymoor) and the Brooklyn Tab-

let. Two Irish priests joined him in 1915 and their sphere of influence

spread to Australia. More than one Australian priest now attributes his

missionary vocation to articles that appeared in the Austral Light at that

period. Something was taking shape. Neither Father Galvin nor his com-

rades could guess then what the future would bring, and as a matter of

fact it far surpassed their wildest dreams. But the ground was being pre-

pared, and in 1916 Father Galvin himself appeared on the scene. In the

summer of that year he was in America, in the autumn he was in Ireland.

His first appeal was to Maynooth. It was his Alma Mater and, as the

national seminary of Ireland, it was a center of spiritual and intellectual

culture. This time the response was definite. Four priests joined him,

one of them a professor, two from the Dunboyne establishment and an old

comrade from his college days. The Bishops approved and the work

began. In less than a year it had all the evidence of success. Maynooth

subsequently gave the movement two of its professors and three of its

Doctors of Divinity. Father Galvin could now turn to America, and he

did. So we find him this winter morning, a little over a year since he

left China, jumping on a street car in Madison Avenue, with a Cardinal’s

letter in his pocket.

[ Page Five ]



The Chapel at St. Columbans Preparatory Seminary, Silver Creek, N. Y.

I
T is no easy matter to found a religious society. One needs courage
and a great many other things, but especially courage, or, rather, one

must be unconscious of possible difficulties. Too much prudence is often

as bad as none at all. Father Galvin rarely saw difficulties in those days.

"Keep going until you’re held dead up,” was his motto as he often ex-

pressed it, and to give him his due, he put it into practice consistently

enough and managed to keep going.

Early in 1918 he started out West, for one reason because the East was

already crowded with religious projects, and even missionary ones were

already taking shape there. Besides, war fever was at its height and even

good Churchmen saw no particular hurry about the conversion of China.

But, like every other passing mood, the war fever passed and the conver-

sion of China goes on. As a matter of fact, the first donations Father

Galvin received were Liberty Bonds and later on they helped to put the

Society on its feet. But his immediate need was a suitable headquarters,

and possibly he had some preconceived notions of what the word "suit-

able” implied. That these ideas were not realized, we know, and, looking

[ Page Six ]



[ Page Seven ]

St.

Columbdns

Preparatory

Seminary,

Silver

Creek,

N.

Y
.,

as

seen

from

the

New

York

State

Highway.



back now, with an intimate knowledge of the story of St. Columbans in

later years we are not sorry. Providence has a way of its own.

There was in Omaha at the time an Archbishop who had just been

transferred from the Philippines, where he had left after him a fine record

of achievement. Archbishop Harty was appointed to the Archdiocese of

Manila in that difficult period following American occupation. There were

tangles to be unraveled in the relations between Church and State. It

took him thirteen years to do it and, incidentally, wrecked his health. Then

Rome recalled him and made him Bishop of Omaha. Father Galvin knew

of his work in Manila. He was a missionary and he might be expected

to receive a missionary kindly. So Father Galvin came to Omaha.

The Archbishop thought the matter over, as one might expect an Arch-

bishop to do, and from my knowledge of him in later years, I know he

prayed over it. Whatever his sympathies might be it was no small thing

to sponsor a movement like the one Father Galvin outlined. This was on

March 25th, (in Ireland they call it Lady Day). The following day

Father Galvin called on the Archbishop again to find that the result of

his thought and prayer was this, ''Father, I have only one doubt, Fm

afraid Omaha isn’t big enough for a work like yours.” Father Galvin

had no such fear, and, I must confess, his successor never felt very

cramped in this little western city of a quarter of a million.

He rented an office and bought a typewriter, a desk, a table and a

couple of chairs. The story goes, and I believe it is true, that when he

reached Omaha he had only a few hundred dollars in his pocket that he

begged from his friends in the East. In those days of war prices I

imagine he had little left when he hung his sign on the door. But that

was one of his least worries. He wrote to a friend, "Thank God, we have

a little place of our own at last where we are free to do almost anything

we like, provided we don’t set the building on fire. It is a room twenty

by ten, with two large windows, plenty of light and air, fresh and other-

wise. We have fixed our camp in the center of the city. We pay eigh-
teen a month and they give us the noise gratis.” And so St. Columbans

in the United States began.

[ Page Eight ]



On the Seminary Grounds at Silver Creek, there are leafy woods where

students spend many a pleasant hour.

Towards the end of the year 1918 Father Galvin left
Omaha for

Ireland and Rome, and I became his successor. From now on I shall

speak as 'we”, for whatever has been accomplished since has been due,

under God, not to any one man but to the united efforts and co-operation

of the priests who have formed the personnel of St. Columbans in the

United States.

Our first home in Omaha was a fair-sized frame house on a five-acre

plot near what was then the outskirts of the city. Later we added a chapel

and a few additional rooms and it was here that we opened our first

seminary in 1921. For two months we had only one student, then two

mere came along and then a fourth, but he got lonesome and I could

never blame him. Two others came in the course of the year and left

again, but the original three remained and they are priests now.

We knew all about Bethlehem, at least we had read about it, but it is
not so easy to live it humbly in a country like ours where success is judged

[ Page Nine ]



by numbers and buildings. "Only three students,” and the good Sister

threw up her hands, "my, but what on earth are you all doing?” If she

only knew! In this advertising age one must do something better or worse,

or at least more remarkable, than anyone else to attract any notice at all.

We were doing things, not only less remarkable than others but we were
actually following the ordinary hum-drum humble beginnings of every

similar movement since the Holy Family went down to Egypt. Looking

back now, of course, all this is very clear, but it needed faith to see it at

the time.

It must have been something like this the Archbishop had in mind when

he laid the foundation stone of our new seminary on September 8, 1921.

For a sermon he read to us the whole of the eleventh chapter of St. Paul

to the Hebrews
—

"Faith is the substance of things to be hoped for,” and

so on. He was himself a man of great faith.

The building went up quickly enough. It was finished in May, 1922,

and dedicated on June 29th. We had twelve students in September. The
missionary spirit that came in later years had not yet gripped the soul of

the American boy. For a year they came and went. St. Columbans, I

must admit, was not a very inviting place in those days. It was a new

building on a bare, bleak hill, without a single tree or shrub of any kind

except a few that had just been planted. Omaha was nine miles away

and a street car, an unpaved road and an old Ford were our means of com-

munication. In very bad weather they did not always communicate. Visi-

tors to St. Columbans today find a hill covered with trees and shrubs and

are amazed to hear that they have grown there since 1922, far more than

when you tell them that seventy-five years ago the Omaha Indians roamed

free over the land on which St. Columbans now stands. The street car is

still running and we have a concrete highway and our mode of conveyance

has been advanced into the six-cylinder class. We find it more economic,
especially in patience.

St. Columbans, as I have said, is built on a hill, and the hill looks down

on a long, wide valley through which a river flows. It would have been

the longest river in the world had it been called the Mississippi instead of

the Missouri, but when it got its name, there were no modern journalists

with an over-developed sense of the extraordinary, and so it is just what

the unlettered Indians knew it as, "The Big Muddy.” Even an Indian

[ Page Ten ]



[ Page Eleven ]

The

Students'

Corridor

at

St.

Columban'

s

Preparatory

Seminary,

Silver

Creek,

showing

the

Shrine

of

Our

Lady

at

the

end

and

the

Crucifix

of

Limpias

on

the

right.



The Calvary at St. Columbans, Nebraska, in mid-winter.

could scarcely miss such an obvious name. From St. Columbans though,

two miles away, it looks quite picturesque, but then we rarely go near it

except in the springtime when the ice in Dakota is breaking up and the

floes are drifting down in a mad, wild whirl. For once in the year a close-

up of the Missouri is fascinating. But, all things considered, the view

from St. Columbans, the rolling country to the west, the woods, the fields

in summer, the snows in winter would be rather hard to beat. Visitors, at

least, speak admiringly of it, and sometimes one even suspects a little note

of jealousy when they tell you on a nice, cool summer day, ''Fll bet it s

cold here in the winter.” We cannot deny it, even if we wanted to, but
at St. Columbans we have little time to think of cold or heat. We just
try to keep going "till we’re held dead up.”

One of the things we are very proud of at St. Columbans is what we

call the Calvary Walk. Like the rest of the hill, it was a bare, bleak tree-

less place in 1922, but now there is plenty of shade on the long white

walk between the elms, and beside it there is a wide cliff-like bank of

[ Page Twelve ]



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[ Page Thirteen ]



The Students’ Dining Room at St. Columban’s Preparatory Seminary,

Silver Creek, N. Y.

thick shrubbery where the birds can sing their love songs and build their

nests. Down at one end of a vista is the Calvary silhouetted against the
sky and set in a dark green frame of cedars. The figure on the Crucifix

is modeled after the ''Holy Christ” of Limpias, that famous shrine in Spain

where infidels and atheists have miracles performed for them before their

eyes. At one side, cut into the hill is a Lourdes grotto, the gift of a

client of Mary. During our Laymen’s Retreats in the summertime, which

by the way are a regular feature of our activity at St. Columbans, the

grotto is illuminated for the closing Benediction. Those who have been

present at that scene never forget it.

Jfs sfs Jjs ^

VERY soon after building St. Columbans, within a few months in fact,we found that a preparatory seminary was a necessity. The studies
for the priesthood are long and difficult and the spiritual life and self-

discipline especially require a training that is not given in ordinary high

{ Page Fourteen ]



[ Page Fifteen ]



f

The View from the Tower at St. Columbans Preparatory i

shores of Lake Erie, and out <
|

schools or colleges, intended, as they are, for a very different kind of

education. The solution of this new problem was what we now call ^'Silver

Creek,” the Society’s preparatory seminary that takes its name from the

neighboring town in western New York. Silver Creek and St. Colum-
bans were acquired in very different ways. The latter was an ordinary

business transaction. The land belonged to a Presbyterian College that

for some reason had ceased to function. Just to make sure of it at a

reasonable price, it was bought under the name of an individual and then

transferred to the Society. At Silver Creek there was something more

—something that, as I think, showed a definite Providence in the back-
ground.

We had two fixed ideas about the site. The first was that the Diocese
of Buffalo was the most desirable place in all America for a junior semi-

nary. It is the center of that great thickly populated Catholic section

along the Atlantic seaboard, that we westerners call ''down East.” For-

tunately, as indeed we expected, the Bishop of Buffalo agreed with us.

The second idea we had was that it should be near a railroad center and

a state highway and that it should have some scenic attractions, an im-

[ Page Sixteen J



lary, Silver Creek, stretches away for miles along the wooded

t wide expanse of blue water.

portant, though perhaps much neglected factor in the growth of a boy’s

mind. There was only one place in the Diocese of Buffalo, I believe, that

fulfilled all these requirements and we found it at Silver Creek. When
we bought the property indeed we had everything but the highway, but

in New York one does not wait long for such things. Now a fine con-
crete road runs along the Lake front within a few hundred feet of our

new seminary. Beside it Lake Erie stretches away north into the horizon

and we find plenty of scenic attractions in its changing moods. If you

happen to be going by, remember you will always find the latch off the

door, that is, after you ring the bell, and there is always something in

the icebox for a 'Triendly stranger.”

Personally I thank Our Lady for Silver Creek, and I would not feel

that I had done my duty in this little sketch without giving testimony

to the fact. It happened in this way—not very convincing perhaps to
others but very much so to me. After looking over several places that

could be bought, and some that could not, we decided to take an option

on a place about twenty miles east of Buffalo on the state highway. It

had a great many things to recommend it and, though I was never really

[ Page Seventeen ]



[ Page Eighteen ]

A

Group

of

Students

at

St.

Columban’s

Preparatory

Seminary,

Silver

Creek,

N.

Y.



satisfied with it, there seemed to be nothing else to do. Though the Silver

Creek property had just come into the market, we had not seen it. It

was too far away, at least that was how it appeared then. Now there
is a little custom I have had for many years, possibly twenty or more,

and I recommend it to you. Before undertaking any important work

recite the Litany of Our Lady of Good Counsel. If you say it every day,

all the better. On this particular occasion it caused so much uneasiness
in my mind that I began to feel there was something wrong and ''Silver

Creek” kept ringing through my brain with an insistence that I could

not deny. To put the matter, as it were, beyond all doubt, when we went

to close the option the owner raised the option price. Next day we went

to Silver Creek. It was a warm Sunday in August and the Lake looked

cool and sparkling. This was just the thing we had been looking for,

but the owner, a ruddy, comfortable-looking son of the South, whose

father, he told us, was a priest in the Greek Church, had a rather ex-

aggerated idea of its value. For the moment I thought the deal was off.

A few months later we returned. This time the owners, (for we learned
that the Greek was only one side of the picture) were in a more reason-

able mood. There were other circumstances in the background which

have no interest for us now, though they did at the time. Eventually we

bought the place for fifty-five thousand dollars less than they had asked

for it three months before. There was a large frame house on the prop-

erty in pretty good repair, and a nice orchard, twenty acres of grapes and

a few hundred acres of land more or less. It was formerly the summer

home of a New York lawyer. I merely state that as a fact, and I know
it because he left some volumes of New York statutes and some Sunday
school sermon books in his library. He evidently had a hobby. But New
York statutes go out of date quickly and the sermons that this particu-

lar lawyer possessed were never really in date, so they were not consid-

ered in the purchase price. There were a few small houses and chicken

coops and they were of far more value to us.

The seminary, such as it was, opened in September, 1924. It was dedi-

cated by Bishop Turner on the Feast of the Holy Rosary. We had
twenty-four students, some of whom had come from St. Columbans, again

reducing our student body there to four. The following year things be-

gan to hum. The enrollment at Silver Creek ran up to thirty, then to

[ Page Nineteen ]



forty. The chicken coops were brought into service, cleaned and
re-

modeled—any port in a storm. We were faced with the problem of a

new building, but the problem was all we had. The Society had
already

too hea\y a debt, so the old houses and the chicken coop
had to do for

five more years, until in September, 1929, our present new
building was

completed, thanks to the generosity of our friends. The foundation
stone

was laid on the Feast of the Holy Rosary again— the fourth
anniversary

of the dedication of the old house, and the following year,
September

12th, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, the new building was dedi-

cated. The Bishop of Buffalo, God bless him, was there on all three oc-

casions. This time Silver Creek had forty-five students.
In 1930 it

opened with sixty-five, bringing the total student body of St.
Columbans

in the United States from three students in 1921 to eighty-three
in 1930,

and it is still growing.

The Chinese Room at St. ColumbanT Preparatory Seminary, Silver Creek, furnished

in Chinese fashion with furniture and tapestries made in China.

[ Page Twenty ]



[ Page Twenty-One ]

O 5
»- .s
<u

CO o
^ «-»

S §
^ i
V. ^
o -c:
^ ?.



One of the three dormitories at St. Columbans Preparatory Seminary,

Silver Creek, N. Y.

1
ET us return to Father Galvin. We left him on his way to Rome. It
jwas not his first visit, for he went there in 1917 to obtain the Pope’s

approval for his project. In 1919 he met Benedict XV again and this time
the Holy Father assigned him a mission field. China is a big country and
the activity of man is limited, so the Vicar of Christ divides the Master’s
Vineyard. Hanyang was the little comer where Father Galvin and the
priests who followed him were to reap the harvest. It is a squalid Chinese
city of half a million souls, six hundred miles up the Yangtze, in the

Province of Hupeh. Around it is a densely populated district of ten
thousand square miles with six or seven millions, as millions are counted

in China, where one or two ciphers more or less make little difference.
He entered the mission field again in the following year, 1920, traveling
via the United States with a band of fifteen priests. A few years later
the Holy See appointed him Prefect Apostolic and then a Bishop.

As the new Society, now Pontifical, and immediately dependent on the
Holy See, found itself developing rapidly, other missions were soon estab-
lished, not only in China, but also in the Philippine Islands. The invita-
tion to the latter field came from Archbishop O’Doherty of Manila, suc-

[ Page Twenty-Two ]



[ Page Twenty-Three ]

The

Calvary

Walk

at

St.

Columban’s

Seminary,

St.

Columbans,

Nebraska.



The Gymnasium at St. Columbans Preparatory Seminary, Silver Creek, N. Y.

cessor to the man who, more than anyone else, had helped to establish

St. Columbans in the United States. We are pleased with this little link
of circumstance, and I am sure the soul of the Archbishop too is glad.

Down in Kiangsi, five hundred miles from Hanyang, another group

of Columban missionaries are now at work. It was there that the Society

received its baptism of blood when Father Leonard was killed by bandits

in 1929. In all these missions steady progress has been made, in spite

of difficulties, and our priests have gathered ’round them groups of fer-

vent Catholics who can stand persecution, as proved by the fact that they

have already stood it. Wars and revolution, and all the hateful things

that go with them, have stalked throughout China in these first years of

gathering hope. That it would come sometime, we knew, but it came

sooner than we expected. St. Columbans and its new converts have al-

ready been tested, and thank God they have stood the test. War clouds

may yet hang over China for many a year, but the future is bright be-

cause the hearts of the ordinary people are good. They are unspoiled

and simple and poor, all of which must make them very dear to the heart

of our Saviour.

[ Page Twenty-Four ]



AWORD now about the Saint from whom St. Columbans takes itsname. St. Columban was an Irish missionary, that is, he was bom
in Ireland, though he spent the greater part of his life as a missionary

in

Europe. He died early in the seventh century and was buried in northern

Italy, after preaching the Gospel for forty years in the countries that
are

now France, Germany and Switzerland. There is not one of us who does

not owe him something, for his influence has come down to us in that most

precious thing a human soul can possess—its faith in God and its hope
in a happy immortality. St. Columban was selected as the patron of St.

Columbans because he best represents what, we all think, its spirit should

be—^the spirit of dauntless courage and sacrifice for the love of God.

No matter what we might say about Columban’s place in history, it

could never be more significantly described than it has been by Pius XI

on the occasion of the Saint’s thirteenth centenary: "'St. Columban,” the

Holy Father writes, ''is to be reckoned among those distinguished and ex-

ceptional men whom Divine Providence is wont to raise up in the most

difficult periods of human life to restore causes almost lost. This illus-

trious son of Ireland worked within no narrow limits. As scholarship

throws an increasing light on the obscurity of the Middle Ages, the more

clearly is it manifest that the renaissance of all Christian science and cul-

ture in many parts of France, Germany and Italy is due to the labors

and zeal of St. Columban—a demonstration to the glory of the whole
Church and more particularly of Catholic Ireland.”

In many ways China today is something like what Europe was in the

days of Columban, a wild, lawless, pagan world. It needed courage then,

as now, to leave a peaceful homeland and preach the Gospel of peace

and love in a land that was war-ridden and in ruins. It was a still hard-

er thing to quell the hates of fierce tribes and transplant among them the

spiritual life he knew at Bangor. Yet all this was what Columban did

and his work will never die, for to him the men from the Rhineland and

the Alps, from Lombardy and France, so many of whom have fathered

the children of the Faith in America, may trace their great inheritance.

The Society of St. Columban indeed reflects his work and spirit in

quite a remarkable way. Like him, it was born in Ireland; but, as in the

course of Columban’s life he gathered round him missionaries of many

lands, French or German or Italian, so with St. Columbans. Towards

the end of his life he would have gone to Poland had not Providence

turned his footsteps southwards. What he desired, St. Columbans, in

the course of time, has done. It has gathered the children of every

Catholic people of western Europe within its walls.

[ Page Twenty-Five ]



[ Page Twenty-Six }

Our

Lady

of

Lourdes

Grotto

beside

the

Calvary

Walk

ctt

St.

Columban’s

Seminary,

St.

Columbans,

Nebraska-



Recently we took a census of the students of St. Columbans and Silver

Creek by nationality of origin and this is what it shows: Irish blood pre-

dominates, with German a good second; then, in order, come Polish,

French, English, Scotch, Slovak and Italian. But the same spirit that

knew no difference of race in Europe in the seventh century recognizes

no distinction in nationality or blood in America in the twentieth.

* * *

The Student life at St. Columbans is happy. It is happy because
of

the common bond of friendship and fellowship that naturally binds

men who are striving for a great ideal, for the highest of all ideals, to be

one in Christ and to bring Him close to other human souls. Of hard

work there is plenty. The beginnings of a lasting education have to be

laid deep and sound. At first our boys find it difficult. It is different from

the education they have been accustomed to in other schools, for the world

trains men only for success in this life. Education for the priesthood

must go deep down into the well-springs of life’s problems. All his life

the priest is dealing with things that reach under the surface of human

nature; things that are deep and hidden and spiritual, like the soul. His

mind must be taught to dig under the surface of physical realities and

fathom those mystical and supernatural realities that lie beyond. His

training must be essentially different from the outset. For this reason

one of the greatest mistakes a boy could make is to delay his preparatory

studies for the priesthood. He is not merely wasting time, but he is

taking too serious a risk with a precious gift from God and when he

comes to St. Columbans it is more than likely that he must begin all over

again. The proper age to enter St. Columbans is at the end of grade

school, and the average boy knows his mind at that age far better than

he will three years later. Strange as this may sound, it is the general

experience of every priest who has to deal with vocations. If a boy is not

sure, he can find out in a seminary better than anywhere else and he is

always free to leave.

The preparatory seminary lays the foundation—five years Classics and
Science. Then comes what is called the spiritual year. It is really equiva-

lent to a novitiate, but as the Society of St. Columban is not an Order,

but a Society of secular priests, we give it a different name. The spirit-

ual year is not difficult, but it is an entirely new experience in a boy’s life.

It begins with a thirty days’ retreat that is spent in meditating in silence,

chiefly on the life and virtues of Our Lord, the model of every priest.

The remainder of the year is devoted to spiritual studies, character build-

ing and the study and practice of those virtues necessary for the work of

a missionary in after life. It is a time of prayer and work, a time when

r Page Twenty-Seven 1



One of the Class Halls at St. Columban s Preparatory Seminary,

Silver Creek, N. Y.

the great truths of faith become convictions, a time of great joy, of sur-

prises and spiritual adventure. It changes a man’s outlook, gives him a

true perspective of values and he comes out of it immeasurably nearer to

God. The foundation has now been laid, the mind has become strong

and clear and thoughtful. The soul develops balance and poise and the

aspirant to the priesthood, with a strong good will faces the second half

of his studies where knowledge still beckons to him.

Philosophy is the next branch of study. It gives him a grasp of the

great fundamental problems of the universe. He begins to see mysteries
where he thought there were none. That in itself is an education. The

average unthinking man remains far from God because he fails to recog-

nize the mysteries of every day, mysteries of growing things, of light and

darkness and of the starry heavens at night. But the student of Philos-

ophy investigates these things. He tries to penetrate the mysteries of
mind and matter, of soul and body. He learns how to think. He studies
the vast cosmic system and becomes familiar with its known laws. He
ponders over the ultimate constituents of things. He compares and
analyses theories of being and morality and through reason alone attempts

[ Page Twenty-Eight ]



[ Page Twenty-Nine ]

Eagle

Bay,

a

little

inlet

of

Lake

Erie

at

St,

Columban’s

Preparatory

Seminary

giving

delightful

facilities

for

boating,

swimming

and

skating

in

season.



The Gothic Cloisters give St. ColmmbaiTs Preparatory Seminary the additional

charm of a monastic atmosphere.

even to grasp the knowledge of the Infinite. Two years are all too short,

indeed, to study these mysterious problems that the combined
intellects

of the scientists of the world have scarcely begun to penetrate. But
life

is short and the work of Christ is calling to the young soul.

The next step brings him from Philosophy to Theology. In Philosophy

the student never appeals to Revelation to aid him in his search for truth.

He depends on reason alone and on his methods of reasoning. Theology

is based primarily on Revelation supported by reason, and is therefore the

more exalted science because the truths that are discovered depend on the

infallible word of God. In Philosophy there may be doubt; in Theology

there is none. It is the study of God’s Revelation to man in all its, in-

finitely complex variety, but at the end of four years the student has little

more than begun to grasp the vastness of a field that has already been

traversed so thoroughly by the world’s greatest minds. The years of his

priesthood will bring him a deeper understanding of these hidden mys-

teries of God, until in death the veil is lifted and his soul will find its hap-

piness in contemplating them through eternity.

[ Page Thirty ]



The whole course takes twelve years, but the time goes quickly and

happily, for each day brings new courage and the joy of a life that is

being lived for God.

At our preparatory seminary two very important departments—the
kitchen and the infirmary—are under the excellent supervision of the
Sisters of St. Columban. Good health is an essential condition of every

boy who aspires to be a missionary priest, and the Sisters do their part to

maintain that good health by providing cur students with proper whole-

some food. But even healthy boys get sick—nothing serious you know

—

little aches and bruises, coughs and colds, and a little care from experienced

hands, sanctified with a prayer, just at the right time, may save a lot of

suffering in later life. Here again the Sisters’ work is supreme.

Of course there is plenty of play, for play is necessary for happiness,
and without happiness there can be no real work. At Silver Creek our

gymnasium is the envy of many a secular college. A mile and a half of
the shore line of Lake Erie belongs to the Society and the swimming is

excellent in the summertime; so is the skating in the winter when Eagle

Bay is frozen over with a deep strong coat of smooth ice. At St. Colum-

bans there is football and handball and basketball and hiking and there

is always the joyful ring of laughing at recreation and somewhere the

sound of a violin or a mandolin or a jewsharp or a mouth organ. There

are plays and concerts and free days enough to lighten the burdens of

young lives. St. Columbans, both of them, are happy places where only

happy men should live.

^ ^ Hi

All this is what that young priest who stood on the steps of the
jLjl. Cardinal’s house in New York on a winter’s morning in 1917
called into being. The official statistics of the Society of St. Columban

in 1930 read as follows:

Priests . . . - 143

Students - 200

Lay Brothers 11

Total . - - - - 354

When you try to realize what it costs in will power and sacrifice to
give up home and friends and become a missionary, to spend one’s life

in a place like China, you will agree that there is something more than

human in success like this in a little more than a decade.

[ Page Thirty-One ]



The Crucifix of Limpias in the main corridor at St.
ColumbanT Preparatory

Seminary, Silver Creek, N. Y., is an exact replica of the famous

miraculous Crucifix at Limpias in Spain.

[ Page Thirty-Two ]



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