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THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA A Church Apart: The Catholic Church in the Rural South, 1939-1990 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of History School of Arts & Sciences Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree Doctor of Philosophy By Seth R. Smith Washington, D.C. 2016 A Church Apart: The Catholic Church in the Rural South, 1939-1990 Seth R. Smith, Ph.D. Director: Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Ph.D. This dissertation examines Catholicism in the rural South to answer three questions. The first is how did priests and lay Catholics engage in a pluralistic American society before and after Vatican II while drastically outnumbered? The second is what did it mean to be part of the universal Catholic Church while isolated geographically, socially, and institutionally? Finally, how do we balance the impact of major national and international events on the Catholicism in the rural South with the importance of local context? This dissertation seeks to answer these questions by examining the history of seven parishes – four pastored by Glenmary Home Missioners and three pastored by non-Glenmarians – in the rural South between 1939 and 1990. Throughout much of the twentieth century, Southern Catholics were regarded with suspicion by their neighbors without the protections offered by numbers or their own confessional institutions. Catholics in the rural South dealt with this in two ways. The first was by emphasizing their Southerness. Apart from their religious beliefs, they were virtually indistinguishable from their fellow Southerners, and their views on politics, economics, and race hewed much closer to their non-Catholic neighbors than their co-religionists in the North. The second way Catholics in the rural South dealt with an inhospitable religious climate was to make a conscious choice to be Catholic. There was no “cultural” Catholicism here, and minus institutional support, they emphasized the signifiers, such as liturgy, sacred space, and the priest, that marked them as religiously separate. They wanted to be good Southerners, but they wanted to belong to Rome too. The dissertation finds that Catholicism in the rural South could not have grown during the second half of the twentieth century without the New Deal and World War II stimulating the region’s economic modernization or the support and priests offered by Catholicism in the urban North. The Civil Rights Movement and Second Vatican Council altered what it meant to be Catholic here as well. Rural Southern Catholics viewed these national and international events primarily through the lens of local concerns, which reinforced their sense of isolation and Southerness. This dissertation by Seth R. Smith fulfills the dissertation requirement for the doctoral degree in History approved by Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Ph.D., as Director, and by Michael C. Kimmage, Ph.D., and Timothy Meagher, Ph.D., as Readers. _____________________________________ Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Ph.D., Director _____________________________________ Michael C. Kimmage, Ph.D., Reader _____________________________________ Timothy Meagher, Ph.D., Reader ii DEDICATION To my wife, Mary. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Abbreviations v Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter One: Setting the Stage 22 Chapter Two: Into No-Priest-Land, U.S.A., 1939-1957 84 Chapter Three: New Visions for the Church and the South, 1958-1965 133 Chapter Four: Pastoral Approaches to Vatican II, 1966-1975 180 Chapter Five: A Different Kind of Mission, 1976-1990 232 Epilogue 289 Bibliography 294 iv List of Abbreviations DOA Diocese of Owensboro Archives. DSA Diocese of Savannah Archives. DTA Diocese of Tulsa Archives. GHMA Glenmary Home Missioners Archives. ACHRC American Catholic History Research Center and University Archives SMA St. Mary’s Church Archives SWA St. William’s Church Archives v Acknowledgments This dissertation is attributed to one person, but it could not have been completed without the work of many people. A number of generous archivists offered me assistance during my research, including Sister Angela Boone, O.S.U., and Bret Mills of the Diocese of Owensboro; Joann Bradford of St. Mary’s Parish Archives (Franklin, Kentucky); Gillian Brown of the Diocese of Savannah; and Joey Spencer of the Diocese of Tulsa. I am especially indebted to Lucy Putnam, the archivist for the Glenmary Home Missioners, who guided me through Glenmary’s holdings, worked multiple Saturdays so that I could have extra time in her archives, and, for seven years, answered numerous “just one more thing” questions from me. She is a credit to her profession. I am also fortunate to have enjoyed the cooperation and hospitality of several people while traveling the country for my research. The Glenmary Home Missioners provided me with free room and board during the year and a half that I periodically visited their headquarters in Cincinnati. More than that, they offered me invaluable insight into their work and lives in the rural South. My conversations with the Glenmarians were among the high points of my work. So too were my interviews with parishioners at the seven parishes examined in this dissertation. It would have been impossible to complete this study without their contributions, and I am glad to have had the opportunity to give them a voice. They made my months on the road more enjoyable and my work more vibrant. I am grateful for the kindness shown by so many people who opened their homes to me. The writing of this dissertation benefitted from the guidance and feedback of innumerable people. Chief among these is my director, Leslie Woodcock Tentler. I could not asked for a better advisor in and out of the classroom. She helped me see the importance of ordinary people vi in history, and I am a better scholar and teacher for having been fortunate enough to work with her. I am also thankful for the work of my other committee members, Michael Kimmage and Timothy Meagher. Both challenged me to prove my assumptions and place my work in the broader context of American history. Thank you to Christopher Kauffman, who graciously shared his experiences studying Glenmary and offered suggestions as to how I could do the same early in my work, and to Joseph White, who edited a large portion of Chapter Four. Finally, thank you to the many professors, scholars, and graduate students who offered their thoughts on my work at colloquia sponsored by the Catholic University History Department and conferences sponsored by the American Catholic Historical Association and the Cushwa Center. This project could not have been completed without financial support from a number of sources, including the History Department and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of the Catholic University. I am especially grateful to Father Frank Donio, S.A.C., for helping me obtain a travel grant from the School of Arts and Sciences. Thank you also to my parents who never wavered in their love or support of me throughout graduate school. Finally, I need to thank my wife, Mary. She made substantial sacrifices to aid me in finishing this, not least of all she has read every word I have written in the past seven years multiple times. For that, for our two beautiful children, and for a thousand hidden things, I am grateful. vii Introduction “Vast Areas of Nation Priestless” exclaimed the headline of the first edition of Father W. Howard Bishop’s The Challenge. Printed as a promotional newsletter for his still theoretical society of Catholic home missionaries, the February 1938 edition of The Challenge illustrated the virtual absence of Catholicism in the rural South through a map indicating the counties that had no resident priest. This territory consisted of roughly one-third of the counties in America, mostly in Appalachia and the South. This troubled Bishop for two reasons. The first was that he could not understand why such a large portion of the country had been left unevangelized when the American Church sent large numbers of missionaries overseas each year. Secondly, some of the counties that had no priest were among the fastest growing counties in the country.1 Bishop feared that the Church would have no presence in the areas with the most souls to be claimed. He hoped that his call to action would be the first step toward creating a society of priests and brothers who could serve in what he called “No Priest Land, USA.”2 Father Bishop’s concern for the Catholics isolated from both their neighbors and the institutional Church and his desire to create a society that would serve them shows us a group that has often seemed invisible in American and American Catholic history: Catholics in the rural South. Small in number, they did not fit tidily into any religious or ethnic demographic. As Southerners living in small towns and rural areas, they were a minority in the American Church, and as Catholics, they were a minority in the South – what Jon W. Anderson terms a “double minority.”3 1 Howard Bishop, “No Priest Land, USA,” The Challenge 1 (Spring, 1938), 1. 2 Ibid. 3 Jon W. Anderson and William B. Friend, eds, The Culture of the Bible Belt Catholics, (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 32. 1 2 In much of the rural South, Catholics made up less than 3 percent of the entire population.4 In most areas there were no Catholic schools, hospitals, or confraternities such as the Knights of Columbus or Holy Name Society. Bishops rarely visited these Catholic outposts. The parishes were simply too remote and too small to warrant much attention. There were few parishes and fewer priests. Consequently, “Catholic culture” did not exist in the South, certainly not as experienced in the cities of the Midwest or Northeast.