NORBERTINES @ 900 Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré | Santa Maria De La Vid Abbey

NORBERTINES @ 900 Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré | Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey

COMING TO First a Kitchen Table The story of the Norbertine order in the United States starts with a stern- looking immigrant priest named AMERICA Bernard Pennings teaching students Latin around a kitchen table in Wis- consin. Pennings came to the United FEBRUARY 2021 States when a Wisconsin bishop wrote to Berne Abbey, in Holland, asking for help with non-English- speaking students.

Building a New World In 1957, Cardinal James McIntyre – an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1948 to 1970 – invited the priests to teach at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California, and the men moved west and started a home: St. Michael’s Priory, now St. Michael’s Abbey, in California. ‘No New Blood’ In 1983 Abbot Benjamin Mackin proposed to the canonry chapter that it look outward for other opportunities to serve the church. The first result was the foundation of Santa Maria de la Vid Priory, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September 1990 came the foundation of the Priory of St. Moses the Black, in Jackson, Mississippi. Pennings’s Letter Excerpt from a letter home to his family written by Bernard Pennings during a visit to New York on November 16, 1893. Norbertines @ 900

FIRST A KITCHEN TABLE, THEN A COMMUNITY

The ongoing journey started by three Norbertine priests who came to the United States from Europe in 1893.

he story of the Norbertine order to Berne Abbey, in Holland, asking in the United States starts with a for help with non-English-speaking Tstern-looking immigrant priest students; Pennings and two other named Bernard Pennings teaching Walloon-speaking priests arrived at the students Latin around a kitchen table Diocese of Green Bay in 1893 and began in Wisconsin. ministering to Belgian immigrants. Pennings came to the United States Pennings, a frugal man who liked a when a Wisconsin bishop wrote good cigar, wasn’t the first Norbertine in America; holding that distinction were men such as the Reverend Adalbert Inama of Austria’s Wilten Abbey, a missionary priest who died in 1879, and the Austrian the Rev. Maximilian Gaertner, who arrived in Wisconsin in 1846 and remained until 1858. But Pennings’ was the only U.S. mission that endured. He established high schools, founded the priory in De Pere, Wisconsin, that would become St. Norbert Abbey – the first Norbertine Abbey in the "new world" – and, in 1925, became the abbey’s first abbot. Pennings also founded Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Bayview

2 Norbertines @ 900

Gries Hall on the St. Norbert College campus is named after Father Eugene Gries, O Praem.

First a Kitchen Table

Abbey, in Middletown, Deleware. And he with an ongoing jubilee that began on the first established St. Norbert College, the only Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2020, and Norbertine institution of higher education in culminates on Christmas Day 2021, Pennings’ the world, which in turn founded Daylesford legacy in this country remains a well-kept Abbey, in Paoli, Pennsylvania. secret. The Norbertine order is better-known in Europe; Norbert of Xanten founded it, in “He believed in education, not only for the Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s relatively students of St. Norbert College but also for the low profile in the United States is at least young Norbertines whom he sent off one-by- partly because Norbertine vows are stationary one to complete their doctorates – not only in to one house, not missionary. “Localitas” and theology but also in other subject areas,” says “stabilitas,” which are about committing to Rosemary Sands, director of the Center for one place for life and being of service to the Norbertine Studies at St. Norbert College. local bishop and community, are important And yet, this year, as Norbertines around the Norbertine principles, says Father Andrew world celebrate the order’s 900th anniversary Ciferni of Daylesford. “We didn’t have this

3 Norbertines @ 900

First a Kitchen Table strong monastic life to offer like the Benedictines priesthood. With localitas in mind, Pennings and weren’t a purely active community like the realized that what the Green Bay community Jesuits or Redemptorists. We were neither fish needed was a place for all young men to be nor fowl. We were new on the scene, there educated, and not just those planning to become was a lot of competition, and we weren’t well- priests. The curriculum was expanded to known historically.” include business courses, and the student body grew exponentially. The college offered both The Norbertines had a much bigger footprint in high-school and college courses, Sands says. Europe, especially Central and Northern Europe, Sands says. Until the French Revolution, there Pennings’s legacy in the United States, says were 92 Norbertine abbeys in France, she says. Ciferni, is informed by what he saw before In comparison, the United States has only four emigrating: private preparatory schools for abbeys and a single priory. seminaries that cropped up in the wake of the 1545–1563 Council of Trent – the 19th “Throughout the world, Norbertines make a ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. commitment to serve the needs of the local Pennings attended one such school, in his community in which they have settled,” Sands hometown of Gemert. He saw the schools as says. Pennings founded St. Norbert College in seedbeds for vocations, Ciferni says. 1898, with the aim of training young men for the

St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere, Wisconsin

4 Norbertines @ 900

First a Kitchen Table

In 1886, Berne Abbey decided to start its own Latin school, and Norbertines for the first time got into mission work. Pennings volunteered to go the United States. In 1898, he started teaching Latin – the beginning of a minor seminary for men to become priests. That same year, he founded St. Norbert College, adding a fully developed business curriculum by 1902. Abbot Pennings High School In 1932, Pennings sent a handful of Norbertines to open Archmere Academy, a college preparatory school for boys in Claymont, Deleware., which now counts among its alumni U.S. President Joe Biden and his children. Two years later, in 1934, the Norbertines were asked to open an archdiocesan high school for boys in South Philadelphia. First called Southeast Catholic, the school later was renamed St. John Neumann High School. In 1941, the bishop of the Green Bay diocese asked the Norbertines to be founding educators at the new Central Catholic High School in downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin. In due course, because of size limitations, the Norbertines decided to build a new school on the west side of Green Bay, and called it Our Lady of Prémontré. That school opened in 1955. In 1959, St. Norbert High School moved to a new location and was renamed Abbot Pennings High School.

Abbot Pennings with Students

5 Norbertines @ 900

Daylesford Abbey in Paoli, Pennsylvania First a Kitchen Table

Responding to the vocations coming especially Not only was the Norbertine order involved in from these two schools, the community started a educating students, they also saw the need to novitiate-seminary in 1954 at the Cassatt Estate educate parochial school teachers, who at that at Daylesford. In 1956, the community was further time were primarily nuns. In 1934 a summer invited to open and staff the newly founded St. school for sisters was established on the St. Norbert Parish, in Paoli, Pennsylvania. In 1963, Norbert College campus. the Norbertine community moved from the “There is a desire within the Norbertine community Cassatt Estate to Pinebrook, its present site, to plant deep roots in the local community and to an 88-acre farm in Paoli. The abbey church and grow with and among our neighbors,” says Father residence buildings were completed in 1966. The James Neilson of St. Norbert Abbey. abbey church was blessed on August 15, 1967 and dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption. “To this end, we find our essential identity woven into the fabric of the local community from one In 1990, the two Green Bay Norbertine high generation to the next. We are all very grateful to schools merged with the only Catholic high school be living in one accord with our families, friends for girls (not a Norbertine school) to form a new and neighbors in our beloved hometown of De school, Notre Dame de la Baie Academy. Notre Pere.” Dame still counts on Norbertine involvement as staff, faculty, or board of trustee members.

6 Norbertines @ 900

BUILDING A NEW WORLD NORBERTINES IN CALIFORNIA

ppropriating darkness as cover, a small and the men moved west and started a home: group of Norbertine priests slipped out St. Michael’s Priory, now St. Michael’s Abbey, Aof their abbey at midnight and set out on in Orange County. They taught at a high school a daring escape in July 1950, fleeing Communist and served in local parishes. They opened St. persecution in Hungary. Michael's Minor Seminary and Novitiate in Silverado Canyon, which would become St. Arriving in the United States that same year, Michael’s Prep School for boys. the priests settled at a Norbertine abbey in De Pere, Wis., and went to work in parishes and Theirs was, and still is, an education apostolate. schools. Then, in 1957, Cardinal James McIntyre Today St. Michael’s is a community, one of – an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Norbertine canons including about 50 priests Church and the Archbishop of Los Angeles from and as many seminarians. The priests teach 1948 to 1970 – invited the priests to teach at in grade schools and high schools while also Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California, serving as chaplains to colleges, hospitals, and

Saint Michael's Abbey Solemn Professions 7 Norbertines @ 900

Tehachapi Choir

Norbertines in California

prisons. They preach retreats for clergy and St. Michael’s school closed on June 30, 2020, even have under their direction a parish church, upon graduating the largest class in school St. John the Baptist, in Costa Mesa. They also history. The school is expected to remain closed assist at nearly 30 other area parishes. as the St. Michael’s community relocates to a new, $120 million building in Silverado that’s The Congregation of Norbertine Sisters, to be constructed in two phases. Phase one will meanwhile, traces its U.S. origins to 2011 but its include a new abbey. Phase two will include founding to 1902, in the Czech Republic. Ten a new St. Michael's Preparatory School, with years ago, three sisters from the community’s its own dormitory, classroom space, gym and General House in Slovakia accepted an sports facilities. invitation from the St. Michael’s to start a new community in Wilmington, California. By 2019, In September 2020, St. Michael’s Abbey began their community had grown to 10 and expanded the Archangel Institute, a faith-formation to a second convent in Costa Mesa. program for boys from 14 to 18 years old. The institute offers weekly high school-level religion St. Michael’s has a sister community for courses, monthly days of recollection, spiritual Norbertine canonesses north of Los Angeles. outreach to parents, and an annual father-and- The convent – the Bethlehem Priory of St. son retreat. Joseph, in the mountains just outside the city of Tehachapi – is the only enclosed community of Norbertine sisters in the United States.

8 Norbertines @ 900 Groundbreaking on church building at Santa Maria de lea Vid priory in Albuquerque, New Mexico ‘NO NEW BLOOD’ NORBERTINES IN MISSISSIPPI In 1983, when Abbot Benjamin Mackin of De Pere, Wisonsin, proposed to the canonry chapter that it look outward for other opportunities to serve the church and use its resources for the poor, the first result was the foundation of Santa Maria de la Vid Priory, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Then, in September 1990, came the foundation of the Priory of St. Moses the Black, in Jackson, Mississippi – named for an ascetic monk and priest in Egypt in the fourth century C.E. The 15 Norbertines who were involved first resided at Jackson’s St. Mary Parish. On September 9, 1990, about two hundred people gathered at St. Mary Parish Church for evening prayer, during which the Priory of St. Moses the Black was officially inaugurated. Mackin, was the celebrant and Father Gene Gries, prior of the new foundation, was the homilist. After the ceremony, the assembly gathered in the parish cafeteria for a reception, and about 40 guests joined the community for dinner later in the new priory. This marked the official beginning of a new foundation from the St. Norbert Abbey, the fourth in its history. In November 2004, the priests moved into a new priory blessed by Bishop Joseph Latino. But 15 years later, when “after new blood stepped forward to replace us,” laments Father Jeremy Tobin, the priests closed St. Moses the Black and moved back to St. Norbert Abbey.

9 Norbertines @ 900

EXCERPT FROM A LETTER HOME TO HIS FAMILY WRITTEN BY BERNARD PENNINGS Written during a visit to New York

November 16, 1893:

“The general impression we have gotten so far is way beyond our expectations. I don't think they were exaggerating when we heard strange tales about America in Holland. It is beautiful here, colossal, and it is unbelievably busy. “No one troubles anyone else, everybody goes his own way; or rather every- one takes the tram and rides. The most dignified gentlemen and ladies sit next to a working man carrying a saw and a plane; always and everywhere the fare is five cents (that is, 12½ guilder cents) whether you travel for five minutes or two hours. “This evening we rode a train through the city, from one end to the other. It was unbelievably crowded. Between 5 and 7 there is a long tram leaving every minute in opposite directions and every coach, each with a capacity of 100 or more passengers, was so crowded, that many people had to stand. Who would believe it; but that also costs only 5 cents. [On the street] the traffic of wagons and carts is so great that two rows are constantly forming in a kind of procession. It is possible to cross the street only when the policeman halts the procession of wagons from time to time. No drayman will venture to keep on riding then. “Without intending it, I have gone into details, don't forget that right here we are at the busiest spot in America. How totally different our own regions will look. It just would not have been right to travel farther without having seen something at least. About our region later. “Most cordial greetings Mother, Jana, Johan, “also to family and friends “Affectionately yours,

“H. Pennings”

(From Letters Written in Good Faith: The Early Years of the Dutch Norbertines in Wisconsin by Walter Lagerwey, Alt Publishing Co.; 1st edition (1996))