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The
Irish Connections of Sacred Heart
When
Kathleen O'Toole and Kathleen Mauger, parishioners of Sacred Heart, poured
Easter water from their century-old church in Camden, New Jersey, on a big
flat rock in Downpatrick County Down on July 18, 1985, they were
celebrating a continuous connection between their beloved brownstone
building in Camden and the precious dust of a saint in Ireland - St.
Patrick himself! Not just a connection between rocks and buildings or
bodies and bones and blood, but the unbreakable bond of an enduring Irish
spirit. They were celebrating the centennial of their church by
concentrating on that connection. When they lit the candle they had
carried from Camden, their tiny flame was a spark that had held Since
Patrick's fire on Slane. Held out in high and icy wind since the Fifth
Century, when he lit new flames on Easter Eve before the angry Druids lit
old ones in Tara, County Meath.
Whether
he admitted it or not, Patrick built his fire on the coals that Druid
hands had raked in the ancient ashes of Ireland. Since then, for 1,500
years, bright sparks have flown as shovels hit the stones and broke ground
for countless Irish churches across the world.
It
was the same spark that stirred the people and moved the stones when
William Lynch, a young 26-year-old priest put his shovel in the sands of
South Camden on May 20, 1886, for the building of Sacred
Heart. He had
purchased the site at Broadway
and
Ferry Avenue
in November of 1885, one month
after the parish was incorporated on October 13th. Another Irish parish
had started and the people who came to worship had names like Boyle and
Doyle, Blake, Doran and O'Toole, Hughes, Larkin and Durkin, and, yet, it
would be 90 years before the parish got its first Irish-born pastor,
Michael Doyle, on November 11, 1974.
Exactly
119 years before, on November 11, 1855, Camden City got its first resident
priest, Father James Moran of Roscommon, born there in 1824, related on
his mother's side to Daniel O'Connell, the Irish patriot. Fr. Moran broke
ground for St. Mary's Church on June 9, 1859. In 1863, he was succeeded by
Fr. Patrick Byrne. It was this Irishman, born in Templeport, County
Waterford, who established the second Catholic Church in the City of
Camden, a little wooden building as a mission in
his parish. The year was 1872 and Camden was in the Diocese of Newark, and
this little church was the first in New Jersey to be called Sacred
Heart.
Following Fr. Byrne, it was serviced by Fr. Peter Fitzsimmons who was born
near Virginia, County Cavan in 1840 and in his pastorate, Sacred
Heart became a parish, and Fr. Lynch came up from Gloucester to run it. He hired
Jeremiah O'Rourke, a well-known Newark architect to design it, Philip
McDonald to build the walls, and Mahlon Harden of Camden to do the roof,
windows and woodwork.
Six
weeks after breaking ground, the foundation stone was laid on Sunday, July
4, 1886 with a show of green pomp and power that "shouted from the
housetops of Camden" that "the faith of our fathers was living
still." The winds had carried Patrick's fire to Nova Caesarea (New
Jersey) just as surely as when "Jesus came to Caesarea Phillipi,"
another colony in another time.
The
Irish came to Camden to build a railroad, the Camden and Amboy Line that
linked Philadelphia to New York in 1834 and changed the city in a century
from a few mudhole lanes of pigs and people into the most dynamic city of
its size in the nation. The population, only 1,100 in 1828 when the city
was incorporated, swelled to 75,000 by the end of the century. The
"coffin ships" of Ireland's desperate famine dumped some of
their tired "huddled masses" in New York and many came down to
the end of the line, Camden. In time, they got to their feet with pick or
potstick, shovel or washboard and took their place in America.
They
came together in little clusters of Catholicism to cling to their faith
and start a church if they could. They were consistently poor and always
powerless, held back, as they were, at the hurting edge of prevailing
prejudice. Their church became a haven of respectability, social activity
and spiritual support. In and around it, they learned urban survival,
urban participation, and ultimately, urban power.
Irishmen
in thousands had walked with Washington in the war with the British,
giving limb and life in a desperate revolution. They had pranced with him
on the Union Jack at Mass in Willings Alley in Philadelphia, when the war
was won. Indeed, many of the stripes - by the stars in the new flag - are
streams of generous Irish blood.
So,
the Fourth of July 1886 was the day! The faith and the flag and the
foundation stone of Sacred
Heart! The Bishop of Trenton, Limerick-born
Michael Joseph O'Farrell with the crozier, and Lynch of New Brunswick with
the trowel, and 7,000 people looking on.
The
Camden
Daily Courier for
July 3rd, 1886, headlined the next day's event as, "A cornerstone
laying that will attract attention." It did. Three days later, the
same paper describes the mighty event:
"The
cornerstone of the new church of the Sacred
Heart, at Broadway
and
Ferry Avenue, was dedicated with impressive ceremonies, and no
such
demonstration of a religious character had ever been seen in this
city."
The
newspaper added that the church would cost about $16,000 and would most
likely be ready for dedication by Christmas, 1886. It was not ready by
Christmas, but it was completed shortly afterwards in what was an
extraordinary achievement because from the "breaking of the
ground" on May 20, 1886, to the breaking of the bread at the
dedication Mass on March 6, 1887, was a period of only nine months.
However, the reported estimate of $16,000 turned out to be inaccurate
because the actual cost of the church and rectory was more than $35,000.
An awesome amount when one considers the total Sunday collection of Fr.
Lynch's small congregation was $2.50. Two years after the establishment of
this beachhead of Irish Catholicism, Fr. Lynch, broken by the burden of
heavy debt, had to be removed from Sacred
Heart. The task of carrying on
the effort fell on the young priest, Maurice Bric, who became pastor of Sacred
Heart for 25 years. For 13 of those years, he went on to the
highways and byways, five days a week, collecting pennies and nickels from
his poor, scattered parishioners to pay the mortgage on Sacred
Heart Church.
In
1900, New York Shipyard opened in the shadow of the church and the
population increased and the parish prospered. The third pastor, Fr. John
McCloskey, burned the mortgage in 1915. He built the school, visited
Ireland and gave a parish donation of $1,500 to the Patrick H. Pearse
branch of the American Commission for the Relief of Ireland, in 1921. In
his words, the donation was "proof of our enthusiasm and willingness
to aid our ancestors in the Emerald Isle in their hour of distress."
Times
have changed in the Sacred
Heart section of Camden. The Irish have long
since left the flat roof factory homes of South Camden. But over the years
the connection with Ireland has not been severed and Irish priests like
James Gaffney, Michael Coyne, Donal Sheehan, and sisters such as Patricia
Margaret Foley of Kerry, Agnes Holmes of Mayo, and Marie McGloin of
Leitrim have done good work in this parish of Sacred
Heart. Present
parishioners like Linda Delengowski and Dan Dougherty have worked with
Paddy Doherty of Derry and his Youth Project in that special city. Good
workers in Sacred Heart today are Paddy Mulligan and Rose Knebles, both of
Ireland.
Sacred
Heart in 1985 is made up of a coalition of neighborhood people and those
who come from near and far to this old church on the corner of Broadway
and
Ferry. Because injustice is high in the consciousness of those who
come, they are often called to pray and work for the people of South
Africa, Central America, the North of Ireland and the South of Camden.
The
old walls of Sacred
Heart have been enhanced by the music of Mick Maloney
and Eugene O'Donnel and by the splendid Gaelic singing of Barbara Dever.
They have throbbed to the piano playing of James McCafferty of Derry and
the golden voice of his daughter, Una. They have braced themselves for the
brilliance of a Daniel Berrigan and the eloquence of a John MacNamee, and
the charming courage of a Paddy Doherty. But most recently, when Kathleen
O'Toole and Kathleen Mauger returned to Sacred
Heart with the stump of a
Camden candle they had lit on St. Patrick's grave in Downpatrick, the
circle of the Irish connection was wonderfully renewed.
lt
will undoubtably endure like the Celtic crosses of Clonmacnoise, the brave
spirit of Camden's poor and the bright flame of Patrick's Easter fire on
Slane.
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