Tradition Adrift

TRADITION ADRIFT: THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BLESSING OF THE FLEET IN STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT, 1950-2007 Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences of the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in Theological Studies By Justin James Menno Dayton, Ohio August, 2011 TRADITION ADRIFT: THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BLESSING OF THE FLEET IN STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT, 1950-2007 Name: Menno, Justin James APPROVED BY: ___________________________________________ Anthony B. Smith, Ph.D Faculty Advisor ___________________________________________ William L. Portier, Ph.D Faculty Reader ___________________________________________ Sandra Yocum, Ph.D Faculty Reader ii ABSTRACT TRADITION ADRIFT: THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE BLESSING OF THE FLEET IN STONINGTON, CONNECTICUT, 1950-2007 Name: Menno, Justin J. University of Dayton Advisor: Anthony B. Smith, Ph.D The following study is a narrative account of the history and development of the annual Blessing of the Fleet held in Stonington, Connecticut from its earliest celebrations in the 1950s to its most recent in 2007. Particular attention is devoted to the ethnic Portuguese community of Stonington, their historical organization and shaping of the local fishing fleet, and their creative development of the annual Blessing. By attending to the history and development of the annual Blessing, this account primarily seeks to describe the event in terms of the people who simply and affectionately referred to it as the “Blessing.” As a historical-theological account, this study proceeds according to a lex orandi, lex credendi approach. As a consequence, special attention is given to the content and mode of prayers that have been offered over the course of the annual Blessing‟s history and celebration. These prayers are not only primary sites for reflection on the origin and destiny of this community‟s historical and anticipated life in Christ, but are departure points for iii analysis concerning how various dimensions of the local fleet‟s life have been formally shaped through the celebration of the annual Blessing. In short, this study is a particular reflection on the integration of labor in liturgy in the U.S. An important focus of this study centers on how the history and development of the annual Blessing has been informed by other popular liturgies in the ethnic Portuguese community of Stonington, American Protestant piety in the mid-twentieth century, economic and regulatory issues concerning the local fishing fleet, and the pressures fishing exerted on local family life. And no figure at the annual Blessing drew together these various influences more than St. Peter. Because the life this community celebrated and anticipated was publically displayed at the annual Blessing in terms of the life of the communion of saints, this study describes in detail how the community addressed St. Peter, where they variously placed and processed him over the course of the event, how devotion to him was integrally related to the vocation of fishing in the local fleet. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………….iii CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….1 CHAPTER TWO: DAYS AND NIGHTS OF THE ANNUAL BLESSING…………....14 CHAPTER THREE: THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE ANNUAL BLESSING……………………………………………………………………………….29 CHAPTER FOUR: THE INNER MEANINGS OF THE ANNUAL BLESSING…….175 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………….206 v Chapter 1: Introduction This is a story about the “Blessing.” Specifically, it is a narrative account of the history and development of the annual Blessing of the Fleet held in Stonington, Connecticut from its earliest celebrations in the 1950s to its most recent in 2007. While this is primarily the story of an event, it is also a story about the Portuguese immigrants and their children who resided in and fished out of Stonington. These otherwise ordinary people who raised nets, families and prayers together cooperated to create a remarkably exceptional event uniting their shared way of life in a novel celebration of their present and anticipated life. The renewal of this life was a thematic concern of the Blessing‟s annual celebration, and took shape in the community‟s activities of praying and parading, revelry and remembrance, and feasting and fellowship. By attending to these activities and their development, the following account attempts to describe this event in terms of the people who simply and affectionately referred to it as the “Blessing.” In short, this is a narrative about a people who prayed and worked, and who distinctively prayed about their work. While distinctive is an appropriate word to describe both the history and development of the annual Blessing, complexity is another. The written records of this event and the oral testimony of its participants and chroniclers provide at least four different dates for the “first” celebration of the “Blessing of the Fleet”—1950, 1954, 1955 and 1956 to be exact. The written sources, in particular, indicate that the event‟s 1 established origin was variously dated from 1954, 1955 and 1956. The transition among the three dates was largely fluid and unremarked in these different sources. 2 Oral sources, however, are even more complex and contentious. Disagreements about the Blessing‟s “first” celebration continue even today to animate disputes among older members of the Portuguese community in Stonington. However, amidst these competing claims, the annual Blessing held in 1955 has eventually emerged in most of the source material over the past three decades as the popularly recognized “original” Blessing of the Fleet. This development inevitably raises a number of important questions about interpretive privilege and criteria. The annual Blessing held in 1955 did not come to be privileged as the “first” because it was the earliest. Nor was it privileged because it fixed the earliest system for dating subsequent annual celebrations—the 1956 Blessing was, in fact, originally used to do this. And as far as the historical record indicates, the Blessing held in 1955 did not achieve its privileged status as the result of some debate that ultimately adjudicated competing claims to the title of “first.” Searching for criteria external to the Blessing held in 1955 to help determine the reasons for its privilege may indeed be the wrong interpretive approach. This is not to diminish the importance of critical analysis and research. Rather, it is to note that close attention to the history of the Blessing and its development indicates that these approaches did not principally guide decisions about privileging one celebration as the unambiguous “original” over another. These decisions, if the term can be permitted, were more subtle, more affective, and more related to the total involvement of the gathered community in the annual Blessing. In short, they were not fundamentally logical or individual. The Blessing held in 1955 creatively introduced many of the aspects that constitute the contemporary practices of the annual Blessing, including the celebration of the “Fishermen‟s Mass,” the procession of St. Peter, the street parade in Stonington Borough, the boat parade at the 3 Stonington Town Dock, and the offering of prayers for each Stonington fisherman who has died at sea. If the privilege of this particular Blessing was not immediately recognized at first, it was not due to the absence of its form and content in subsequent celebrations. The following account of the multiple popular “histories” of the annual Blessing, and their relative resolution into a single coherent narrative claims that the formal development of this resolution cannot be understood apart from the local celebration of the Eucharist in Stonington. As a creative and formal prompt, the living recollection of the paschal mystery in sacrament has been integral to the annual Blessing and its development. Over the course of this celebration, the activities of blessing and commemoration drew together the anticipation of abundant life and the inheritance of a tradition of sacrifice and commitment to work in and through the performance of the annual Blessing. Long before the earliest celebration of the annual Blessing, the Eucharist had served to organize the history of St. Mary‟s Parish in Stonington. Even though the parish had been formally organized in 1850, the standard history of the parish has instead used the date of the parish‟s dedication and first public mass in October of 1851 as the founding date of the parish. Like the history of this parish, the account of the history of annual Blessing gestures toward a similar founding in and through the celebration of Eucharist. Establishing the founding of the annual Blessing‟s history apparently was not simply a matter of comparing competing accounts, judging their merits, and selecting the most “authentic” narrative. These accounts were never put on trial, and arbitrated once and for all outside of the celebration of the annual Blessing. Instead, the tradition of the Blessing and the history which unfolded from its celebration were more related to fleet members who, over the course of the Blessing‟s annual celebration, cast about for this history in and with the Eucharist they annually shared, the blessing they annually received, and commemoration 4 they annually performed. Their settled sense of this history was not only drawn from, but inseparably related to, these activities. The ordinary work of fleet members was linked to and integrated within the work of their organization and transmission of the annual Blessing‟s history. Like the ordinary grounds of their work, the liturgical ground of the annual Blessing implicated them in a labor that interwove excitement, hope, surprise, vulnerability, suffering, and commitment to preserve the integrity of creation and the dignity others. At this annual celebration, labor was integrated and given meaning within liturgy. For fleet members, the ordinary experience of the life-giving waters at sea was not only informed, but, in a way, reformed through the formal blessing‟s life-giving waters and the Eucharist‟s life-giving bread.

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