A Marianist Miscellany Selected articles originally written by Joseph Stefanelli, SM Marianist Center Cupertino, California 2008 Contents Part I: Personages of the Early Years Chapter 1: The Hijacked Virgin ............................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Marie Antoinette. A Chaminade Connection..................................................8 Chapter 3: When the Pastor Was a Woman ......................................................................11 Chapter 4: I Will Stay Here..................................................................................................14 Chapter 5: The First To Go (Cantau) ..................................................................................17 Chapter 6: My Brother, François.........................................................................................19 Chapter 7: Couillard, . aka . .aka ..................................................................................27 Chapter 8: Return of the Exiles (Christian Brothers) .......................................................32 Chapter 9: A Life of Many Colors (Lafon).........................................................................35 Chapter 10: A Different View (Roussel) ............................................................................44 Part II: Two Hundredth Anniversary Chapter 11: January 1797 .....................................................................................................47 Chapter 12: February 1797...................................................................................................50 Chapter 13: March 1797........................................................................................................53 Chapter 14: April 1797..........................................................................................................56 Chapter 15: May 1797 ...........................................................................................................59 Chapter 16: June 1797 ...........................................................................................................62 Part III: Some “Acts of God” Chapter 17: 1906. “Reporter on Site”..................................................................................65 Chapter 18: 1906. “Reporter at Large” ...............................................................................68 Chapter 19: Across the Pacific.............................................................................................71 Part IV: “A Time for War” Chapter 20: Repercussions from an American Civil Conflict.........................................76 Chapter 21: Repercussions from a European Conflict.....................................................80 Part V: Property, Asset or Liability Chapter 22: The Other “Saint‐Remy”.................................................................................87 Chapter 23: On the East Coast.............................................................................................93 Chapter 24: On the West Coast ...........................................................................................96 Part VI: The Beginnings. Chapter 25: From Saragossa, and Beyond.......................................................................101 Chapter 26: Founders, Alive and Well.............................................................................104 ii Chapter 27: A “Founding Instinct” ..................................................................................106 Chapter 28: Old Bones, New Vigor ..................................................................................109 Part VII: An “Operational” Charism Chapter 29: Resurrection! Alleluia! ..................................................................................114 Chapter 30: Schools. An Inconsistency? ..........................................................................117 Chapter 31: A Very Special Classroom ............................................................................122 Chapter 32: Our “Tradition” Is Innovation.....................................................................124 Chapter 33: Option for the Poor........................................................................................127 Part VIII: From Beginning to End Chapter 34: Bethlehem .......................................................................................................130 Chapter 35: Calvary ............................................................................................................133 iii Part I Personages of the Early Years Chapter One The Hijacked Virgin1 It was a still early evening of a winter day (Saturday, January 14, 1792), but darkness was already thick on the almost‐deserted country road leading from the city limits toward the hamlet of the Tondu, to the southwest of Bordeaux. The rain continued to fall. The two men stopped. They had already been walking the better part of a hour. One, Boutou, a colporteur (peddler) by profession, was carrying a heavy load wrapped in a bed sheet. The other helped him lower it to the ground as they discussed their situation. This second man was Melchiou, a former Christian Brother and former cook at the Brothers’ school at Sainte‐Eulalie parish in Bordeaux until the religious community had been disbanded. He had been hired by Father Chaminade, a newcomer to the city who less than a month before had bought from M. Fouignet a sizeable piece of property a short distance outside the city. Father Chaminade had named the property Saint‐Laurent, from its proximity to a small chapel dedicated to that saint. Originally they had been a party of four. Bruno, another of Father Chaminade’s servants, had meanwhile gone about some other business. A second colporteur had also been hired to help carry two large packages from their storage place in the monastery of the Discalced Carmelites on the northern end of the city to Saint‐Laurent. But he had found the load he was asked to carry too heavy and had refused to take the job. So around five o’clock, Melchiou and Boutou had started their trip. Now they stood in the rain debating. Melchiou recalled that an acquaintance lived nearby; he would go there to borrow a lantern so they could continue on their way with some sense of security. Having found his acquaintance cooperative, he returned with the needed light. With Melchiou’s help, Boutou hoisted the load to his shoulders again. It was a large gilded wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Its companion piece, left behind for the moment because the second colporteur had refused to carry it, was a similar statue of the Angel Gabriel. Together they had formed an Annunciation scene in the meeting room of the Sodality of Our Lady of the Rosary, in the church of the Dominicans (the “Jacobin Friars,” as they were known, from the name—St. Jacque, James—of the street where their first house in Paris had been located). 1 See: Apôtre de Marie, vol. 10, pp. 123-132, 391-400; J. Stefanelli, Mlle de Lamourous, chap. 1; H. Kramer, Chaminade Lore, pp. 158-162, 280-288. 1 The church and monastery of the Friars in Bordeaux had by now been confiscated by the government. When the government agents had sought to include the two statues in the inventory of State property, the officers of the Sodality had pointed out that the statues did not belong to the church, but to a lay confraternity; they did not, therefore, fall under the law which declared that all properties, buildings, or furnishings previously “managed” by the church were the property of the Nation. This claim was recognized by the agents; the statues were not included in their list. When in May of 1791 one of the more radical local revolutionary clubs (thereafter dubbed “the Jacobines”) began meeting in the former Dominican monastery, its members demanded that the officers of the Sodality remove the statues because they were not “suitable décor” for a meeting room of the “progressive” club. For safekeeping, the two statues had then been stored in the Carmelite cloister with other possessions of the Sodality now awaiting sale, a sale whose proceeds were earmarked for the poor. There Father Chaminade had seen them and determined to buy them, as well as a large, seven‐foot‐high painting of Our Lady of the Rosary, fifteen two‐foot‐ high paintings of the mysteries of the Rosary, and a low stand of gilded wood—all for the price of 300 pounds. He had sent Bruno and Melchiou into the city that afternoon to claim the statues and bring them to Saint‐Laurent. Now, as Melchiou and his companion resumed their journey, shouts rang out in the night: “Who goes there? What are you carrying?” Corporal William Laville, of the 44th company of the regiment of Sainte‐Eulalie, and M. John Rocolle, a baker in Tondu, had spotted “two people, one carrying a lantern and the other apparently loaded down with a large bundle.” Sensing some misconduct, the two patriots raised the alarm and stopped the two travelers. While Laville questioned them, Rocolle went for help. He returned with a group of citizen‐soldiers; a crowd of curious onlookers soon assembled. Unwilling to believe the story Melchiou was giving them, Laville marched them to the residence of his regimental captain, M. Rey, which happened to be nearby, on the Rue de Berry just outside Sainte‐Eulalie gate. But M. Rey was not about to assume the responsibility of making a decision in such an important matter: he, the suspects, and the whole arresting cohort would go to the