Beacons of Light is not the first of it’s kind, nor is it even the first of the archdicoese’s attempts to re-form the Church. In 1985 it was “For the Harvest”, in 1990 it was “Ministry 2000”. Now, in 2021 it was announced as “Beacons of Light”. It’s also a misconception and false that Beacons of Light is the first of it’s kind in the Church. Beacons of Light is creatively marketed and developed by the Catholic Leadership Institute (CLI) , who was hired as a consultant by the archdiocese. (Run a search for Catholic Leadership Institute in the Beacons of Light Website) The CLI developed and implemented the same model in many other dioceses on the east coast, and has literally destroyed churches. The program, “On Mission”, in the Diocese of Pittsburgh (where CLI is headquartered) was implemented in 2016. We can anticipate that what has happened in their diocese, will also happen here. “All Things New” is experienced in the Diocese of St. Louis, Missouri (Save Our St. Louis Parishes https://www.sostlp.org/), and there are many more. Take the time to educate yourself on this. As has happened in the past, our culture is creeping in and changing the landscape of our church. Go to your search engine and enter Catholic Church mergers, or closures.
Text in black is excerpted from the book, “A History of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati” by M. Edmund Hussey and was published in the year 2000. Text in red, is an elaboration on the importance of stated history as documented by our own archdiocese. It is very important to understand our history, where we started, and how we got here.
“In 1802, the year before Ohio became a state, a German farmer named Jacob Dittoe settled near what is today the village of Somerset in Perry County. He was a Catholic and he wanted his family an dhis Catholic neighbors to be able to worship within the traditions and rituals of the Church which meant very much to him. So, after settled in the rolling land of Southern Ohio, he wrote a letter to Bishop John Carroll in Baltimore, begging him to send a priest to Ohio. He letter was not answered, perhaps because it was lost en route and never reached Carroll.”
“On January 5, 1805, Dittoe addressed another letter to “The Reverend John Carroll, Bishop of Baltimore, Maryland”, begging for a priest and even inviting the bishop himself to visit them. Dittoe told Carroll that he had heard that a new bishop was soon to be sent to Bardstown, Kentucky, whim ich visit the Dittoes and their neighbors. This letter is still preserved in the Baltimore Archdiocesan Archives.”
“About three years later Farmer Dittoe again wrote to “John Carroll D.D., Bishop living in Baltimore,” informing him that the Catholic families of the area had taken an option on some land for a church. We do not know what action Bishop Carroll took on this letter, but he did write the word “important” on the back of the letter and he may have discussed the matter with Reverend Mr. Edward D. Fenwick, a Dominican priest who was stationed in Kentucky. At any rate, Father Fewick stopped at Somerset, probably in 1808 on his way back from Baltimore to Kentucky. The Catholics of the nieghborhood were overjoyed and welcomed the priest as an angel from heaven”
The first Catholics who settled Ohio waited 6 years for a priest to arrive. They longed for their children to be baptized, confirmed and married. They longed to received Jesus in the Eucharist. Persistence and perseverance in prayer were necessary to carry them through this desert. They also persisted with the nearest bishop, all the way in Baltimore, Maryland, to finally have a priest sent to this newly settled land.
“A small, vivid painting at St. Joseph Church in Somerset records the event, at least as it lived in the memories of the Perry County Catholics. This painting pictures Fenwick standing before a log cabin, wearing a long coat, holding a walking stick and a top hat in his left hand and raising his right hand in blessing. He is surrounded by a crowd of men, women and children who are kneeling for his blessing. In the distance other people who had heard of the priest’s arrival are running toward the group, one man vaulting a fence in his eagerness to see the priest.”
“The real dynamism for the establishment of the Catholic Church in Ohio actually came from the laity who had already settled here. In a very real sense, therefore, Jacob Dittoe and other Catholic laypersons who had settled in Ohio and who had worked to obtain priests for their religious needs were the true founds of the Church in Ohio. The foundation of the Catholic Church in Ohio, and indeed throughout the United States, was usually laid not by the clergy but by the energetic and dynamic and creative Catholics who longed for the nourishment of the mass and the sacraments in their new homeland.”
The laity are the foundation and the body of the Church. The priests are necessary to be hands and feet to bring Christ to us. We can think of it like this: the lay people, the families young and old, who fill the pews each Sunday, are the cornerstone of the Church, the brick and mortar building. The priest is like the steeple. Each Mass as he raises his hands, Heaven and Earth come together. Both need each other. For centuries, millennia, the lay people have congregated together to build a church, and priests came to us. This is documented in the Gospels and New Testament clearly. St. Paul’s letters in the New Testament were written as he traveled from village to village starting new churches and maintaining existing churches. Read more about St. Paul and his journey here.
“In 1812 the new bishop of Bardstown, Benedict Joseph Flaget, visited Catholic families in Ohio, including those near Somerset, on his way to Baltimore to attend a Council. By this time Somerset Catholics had secured 320 acres of land for Church purposes. Some land had been cleared and a Chapel was planned. In 1816, Bishop Flaget was finally able to assign Edward Fenwick to the Ohio missions full-time. On December 24, 1818, Fenwick entered his first baptismal record in the newly built log cabin church at Somerset…”
“Fenwick summed up his previous activities in the following note, “In the years 1817 and 1818, I baptized in the different parts oh Ohio 162 persons both young and old whose names and sponsors cannot now be recollected , as I was then an itinerant missioner and such persons were generally discovered or brought to me accidentally.”
“In 1819, Bishop Flaget wrote to Rome that the State of Ohio had three permanent congregations from 250300 Catholic families scattered throughout the state and that two Dominican priests, Father Edward Fenwich and his nephew, Father Nicholas Young, were serving them. Bishop Flaget went on to recommend that Ohio be made a separate diocese with its own Bishop. On June 19, 1821, documents establishing the diocese of Cincinnati and appointing Edward D. Feniwick its first bishop were issued in Rome.”
“Although Fenwick made his headquarters at Somerset, Ohio, he was actually an itinerant missionary with the entire state as his parish. In 1819, he was joined by his nephew, Nicholas Young, also a Dominican Friar. When the diocese of Cincinnati was established, four Dominican priests from St. Rose Priory in Kentucky were assigned to assist Fenwick and Young, so that the Ohio diocese would initially be served by six Dominicans. In 1823, Bishop Fenwick went to Europe to beg for his diocese. Pope Leo XII gave him $1,200 and some vestments. Cardinal Joseph Fesch gave him twelve fine paintings to adorn his churches. One of these paintings, at that time attributed to Murillo, depicted the release of St. Peter from prison and would be hung in a new cathedral which would be dedicated to St. Peter. The Association of the Propagation of the Faith in Lyons promised him an annual financial subsidy. Most importantly, Fenwick managed to recruit four priests: one Swiss, two French, and one Spanish. After his return, he began work on a cathedral, rectory, seminary and college in Cincinnati, and he successfully recruited four Sisters of Charity from Maryland to work in Cincinnati and four Dominican Sisters from Kentucky to work in Somerset."
“Shortly after his tenth anniversary as a bishop, Fenwick wrote to the Rev. P. Portier, a friend in Surrey, England, that his diocese now had 24 priests and 22 churches, whereas when he had first come to Ohio there had been no churches and he had been the only priest in the State. He also delightedly reported that he now had a college in complete operation, which was next door to the recently established St. Francis Seminary and the new St. Peter’s Cathedral, thirteen seminarians studying for the priesthood and a weekly paper, the Catholic Telegraph.”
“The following year, during his annual visitation to his diocese, Fenwick fell victim to the cholera epidemic which was then rampant in the Great Lakes region. ON September 22, 1832, he died in a hotel room in Wooster, Ohio. By the time Father John Martin Henni arrived from nearby Canton to give his bishop the last sacraments, he found him already buried because of the great fear of contagion. The earthly remains of this first bishop of Cincinnati were later transferred to his cathedral in Cincinnati.”
Is it not beautiful that each year our bishop traveled the whole diocese to meet the people in the rural towns which congregated together to form new churches? He traveled by horseback, steam boat, canal, and stagecoach. Bishop Fenwick died of cholera doing this work, going to the people, in Wooster, Ohio.
“On October 27, 1829, four Sisters of Charity arrived in Cincinnati from Emmitsburg, Maryland. The pioneers were Sisters Francis Xavier Jordan, Victoria Fitzgerald, Beatrice Tyler and Albina Levy, who immediately opened a school adjoining the cathedral. Their first students were six orphans to whom they also gave a home. From this small beginning grew a large community of sisters who have operated grade schools, high schools, hospitals, an orphanage and a college. Their present motherhouse and college are at Mt. St. Joseph on the Ohio.”
“On February 25, 1833, Pope Gregory XVI presided at a meeting of the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the Roman office which supervised the Church in countries which were still considered mission lands, to select a new bishop for Cincinnati. Bishop John England of Charleston, who was in Rome at the time, later that same day, dashed off a letter to John Baptist Purcell, the rector of MT. St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, Maryland, informing him that he had been appointed bishop of Cincinnati.”
“Purcell would be the bishop and later archbishop of Cincinnati for a half century, from 1833 to 1883, and would preside over the transformation of his scattered missionary diocese into a vigorous, well-developed and influential archdiocese. The number of priests and religious would increase dramatically. Churches, schools, orphanages, hospitals and other institutions would multiply with breathless speed.”
“In the first five months in Cincinnati he resolved some legal complications in settling Fenwick’s estate, wrote a number of articles for the Catholic Telegraph, taught some theology classes to the seminarians, wrote two pastoral letters to the clergy and the people of the diocese, purchased a lot for a church for the German Catholics in the western part of the city and blessed the cornerstone for the new church.”
“By April, Purcell was ready to visit the rest of his diocese. He left Cincinnati on April 21 for a three month tour of the state, traveling by river steamer, canal boat, stagecoach and horseback. He celebrated masses, heard confessions, administered confirmation, dedicated churches and preached countless sermons. Along the way, he mailed back to the Catholic Telegraph, detailed accounts of his travels which are now an excellent resource for the early history of the Catholic Church in Ohio. This was the first of many such tours which not only enabled him to know and appreciate his diocese but also made his own dynamic and gracious personality familiar throughout the state. He cultivated many small groups of Catholic families that subsequently grew into strong congregations. He also devoted considerable energy to Protestants who were the overwhelming majority of the citizens of Ohio, addressing them in courthouses, in schools and even in their own churches.”
“In the 1830’s and 1840’s, Catholic communities sprang up throughout Ohio’s rich farmlands. Ethnic groups often clustered together. One such group were the French, who were among the earliest Euro-American settlers, coming into the area first as traders.”
“Although the first Catholics in Cincinnati were natives of Ireland or descendants of Irish immigrants, in the 1830’s and 40’s, Cincinnati became a mecca for the farmers and skilled artisans of Germany. Their native cities and states were experiencing severe economic reversals, whereas Cincinnati, a growing city on a major river near much fertile land, was experiencing great economic expansion. By 1840, native Germans in Cincinnati numbered, 14,163 or 31% of the city’s population. It was estimated that three fourths of those Germans were Catholic. The influx of Germans peaked in 1890, when the German’s numbered 57.4% of Cincinnati’s total population.”
“Establishing a pattern which he would follow throughout his fifty-year tenure as bishop and archbishop, Purcell allowed the Germans to manage their own affairs as much as possible. Accordingly, the German Catholics held a series of meetings to make the necessary decisions about their new parish and they chose a board of twelve trustees who would manage the parish. Work on the building proceeded so quickly Holy Trinity Church, the first German Catholic Church west of the Allegheny Mountains, was dedicated on October 5, 1834, less than a year after Purcell arrived in Cincinnati.”
Father John Martin Henni from Canton, was assigned to the pastorate of Holy Trinity.
“Henni became both an effective pastor and popular community leader for the Germans of Cincinnati. Born in the Swiss Canton of Graubuenden in the Upper Valley of the Rhine River in 1805, he had come to Cincinnati as a seminarian and was ordained a priest by Bishop Fenwick in 1829. The new pastor immediately opened a parish school which enrolled 150 pupils in its first year. Next he turned his attention to the education and care of the many German orphans in the era of urban epidemics. He elisted the cooperation of several leading Catholic laymen to form the St. Aloysius Orphan Society which was formally organized on January 27, 1837. The orphan society was later independently incorporated by the State of Ohio on March 2, 1843. Consequently, its assets were not owned by the bishop of the diocese and its activities were, therefore, more completely controlled by the German Catholics themselves.”
“The German Catholic population in Cincinnati continued to grow throughout the 1830’s and Holy Trinity Church became crowded farm beyond it’s capacity. In 1840, the parish had 550 baptisms, 221 marriages and 307 funerals.”
“This new parish was still not sufficient. In 1846, two more German parishes were established in the city, St. Philomena on the lower east side and St. Joseph on the west side. And the following year, Father Ferneding directed efforts to build yet another large German church in the Over-the-Rhine district. In the first year of St. Paul’s church, two priests baptized 224 infants, officiated 79 weddings and conducted 195 funerals.”
“There never seemed to be enough priests to care for the stream of German immigrants pouring into the city of Cincinnati and the state of Ohio. Purcell’s predecessor in Cincinnati, Bishop Fenwick, had successfully recruited several German-speaking priests and seminarians from Europe. But Purcell had to continue and even intensify these recruitment efforts. By 1840, he was able to count 38 priests in his diocese, which still embraced the entire state. Five of these priests were natives of Germany and at least five others were German-speaking and devoted their time to German Catholics.
In 1840, just 38 priests covered the entire state of Ohio. The new bishop, soon to be archbishop, Purcell and his predecessor Fenwick, continued making annual trips to visits his dioceses across the state of Ohio traveling by steamboat, canal, stagecoach, and horseback. Can you image living in a rural farm, meeting maybe once a month in a barn or a log cabin for Mass , then to see the bishop of your diocese arrive on horseback to celebrate Mass? What a beautiful sight this must have been to our ancestors!
“The German Catholics were an independent lot. They wished to be actively involved in the on-going administration of their parishes through their own elected trustees. In other dioceses throughout the United States, parish trustees had been the occasion of serious conflicts, and many bishops had over-reacted to these tensions by completely excluding parishioners from all decision-making. Purcell certainly recognized the risks of the trustee system. But he also understood the German need for independence and self-determination. Accordingly, in 1850, he gave official recognition to the self-government system which the German Catholics themselves had already developed. Purcell sought only to minimize the risks of conflict inherent in the system.”
“Each German parish was to have six elected wardens, at least thirty years of age, of exemplary character, active in the practice of their faith and listed on the membership roster of the parish. Their responsibilities concerned the temporal affairs of the parish but did not extend to the areas of worship and doctrine. They were to provide funds to meet the debts of the parish, establish the amount of pew rent, ensure that the buildings remained in good repair and deposit surplus funds “in some safe public institution.” Large and unusual expenditures were to be submitted to the congregation at a public meeting.”
“This system of wardens apparently served the German parishes quite well, and there is no evidence that the bishop ever had to intervene in any disputes. In a circular letter to the clergy in 1864, Purcell expressed his satisfaction with the wardens but showed no inclination to extend this system to the Irish parish. Purcell also recognized the special identity of the German Catholics in his diocese by appointing a German vicar-general as well as an “English” (more specifically, Irish) vicar general to assist him in the administration of the diocese.”
“An important reason why Purcell had such a good rapport with the German Catholics of Cincinnati was that he genuinely admired them and made very effort to make them feel welcome in the diocese. He recognized their need to have an effective voice in the management of their own affairs and in the settlement of their own disputes. He was also gracious enough to speak well of their many dedicated priests and to praise their beautiful churches, their large and ably managed schools, their well-groomed cemeteries and their attractive orphanage. He realized that they were a great source of strength for the diocese and took every opportunity to tell them so. Whenever he made pastoral or ceremonial visitations to German parishes, he was always accompanied by a german-speaking priest who would deliver a German sermon in addition to his own English sermon. Apparently Purcell never leared more than a few words and phrases in German. There is no record of his ever having given an address in German and his extant letters are only in English, Latin and French.”
From the very beginning of the Catholic Church in Ohio, or ancestors who traveled here on faith alone, took pride in their beautiful churches and were actively involved in the day to day activities and planning of their parishes. The determination of these strong-willed German immigrants who had a deep, un-wavering faith, is the backbone of our Churches today. We are incredibly grateful for the sacrifices, prayers, and efforts they poured into our Church. How beautiful that our own archbishop recognized the strong virtue and character in our ancestors enough to fully entrust to them the management of the parishes. He allowed elected “trustees” or the “warden system” to oversee the management of the parishes. It’s noted that to our knowledge, there was never a need to intervene over disputes. Our Catholic ancestors took the faith and the Church so seriously, that there was no need to ever intervene.
“The other congregation of priests which Purcell was able to recruit for work among the German Catholics was the Society of the Precious Blood. The first meeting of Purcell with Father Francis de Sales Brunner, who would become the founder and first superior of the American Province of this society, was an unplanned and even an unintended encounter.”
“Brunner was somewhat of a restless and ambitious adventurer. Born in Switzerland in 1785, he was successively a Benedictine priest, a cloistered Trappist monk, a missionary in eastern Switzerland and, finally, a member of the newly formed Society of the Previous Blood. In 1839, he established a new foundation of this society in his native Switzerland and recruited a number of young men to be the nucleus of a missionary enterprise in America. In March of 1842, He wrote to Father Henni (Pastor of the first German Parish), in Cincinnati about the possibility of transferring his community to Ohio. Several months later he received a favorable reply from Purcell.”
“Within a year of Brunner’s arrive in Ohio a community of Precious Blood sisters who had been founded by his own mother, Maria Anna Brunner, also came to Ohio. Except for Brunner himself, the small band of missionaries was probably not yet a very well-trained or well-educated group. Yet in time, they grew into a large and effective company of priests, brothers and sisters who cared for large numbers of German Catholics in northern and wester Ohio. The Society of the Precious Blood served the rural Germans of Ohio in much the same way as the Franciscans served the urban Germans of Cincinnati and its vicinity.”
“In 1864, the first Cincinnati-born German Priest, Anton Walburg, was ordained. From that time on, there was an adequate supplyof local German-speaking clergy and foreign recruitment was no longer necessary. Ironlically, the problem of too few preists who spoke German eventually became a problem of too many German priests who could not speak English. While on pastoral visit to Mercer County in 1852, Archbishop Purcell complained that none of the Precious Blood Fathers could hear confessions in English. And two years later a separate retreat was held in Cincinnati for twelve German diocesan priests who could not understand English.”
“When Cincinnati became an archdiocese, its own diocesan territory was the southern half of the State of Ohio. The diocese of Cleveland, which had been established in 1847, included the northern half of the state. After the erection of the diocese of Columbus in 1868, of Toledo in 1910, of Youngstown in 1943 and of Steubenville in 1944, the territory of the diocese of Cincinnati was reduced to its present area of nineteen counties in the southwestern quarter of the State.”
“The parish has long been the basic manifestation of the Church, the place where most Catholics gather to worship and celebrate their faith. In Ohio, the early parishes, following the settlements of the people, developed along the newly dug canals and then along the rapidly expanding railroads and finally along the primitive roads that soon became designated as national highways. By the time of Bishop Fenwick’s death there were twenty-two parishes throughout the state of Ohio which were served by twenty-four priests. In 1883, the year of Archbishop Purcell’s death, although the diocese had twice been divided by the establishment of the dioceses of Cleveland and Columbus, there were approximately 150,000 Catholics in 157 parishes served by 189 priests. In 1921, the centennial year of the archdiocese, the numbers had further increased to 210,000 Catholics in 186 parishes served by 391 priests.”
“The growth continued and in 1971, the sesquicentennial year of the diocese, there were 529,220 Catholics in 259 parishes served by 417 priests. But the growth seems to have peaked, at least for the time being, and recent statistics indicate some drop in the numbers (published in 2000). In 1977, there were 513,778 Catholics in 259 parishes served by 384 diocesan priests as well as by some religious priests. The 2000 archdiocesan directory indicates that there are 547,000 Catholics in 235 parishes served by 239 diocesan priests as well as by some religious priests and an increasing number of lay pastoral administrators and lay pastoral associates. Although the number of Catholics continues to have at least a slight increase, the number of parishes and priests has continued to decrease.”
“In 1958, there were 13 priests ordained for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati. That class was not an unusually large one, since there had been sixteen priests ordained for the archdiocese the previous year. But in 1998, fourty years later there were only two priests ordained for the Archdiocese. In the 1950’s the Church was in an expansionist period in this country and there were an unusually high number of vocations. Among them was the fact that a strong religious revival followed the tragic chaos and upheavals of World War II. But in the late 1960’s the number of vocations to the priesthood and the religious life began to decline, rather slowly at first, but then with increasing rapidity. The reasons for this decline were also, of course, quite complex. One most important reason was that the Second Vatican Council indirectly changed the role of the priest in the Church by emphasizing that the Church is not jus the hierarchy and the clergy, but the entire community of believers. Lay ministry began to be encouraged. Baptism, rather than ordination, was recognized as the primary sacrament empowering people to fulfill the mission of the Church and the ministries within the Church. Rather than being exclusively charged with ministry and mission in the Church, the priests and the religious are now called to support the ministries and the missions of all the baptized. This major change of focus gradually began to have an enormous impact on the Church ministry. But there were, of course, many other reasons for the decline in vocations. Catholic theological education is now available in many other schools as well as seminaries. Modern society seems to resist hierarchical and authoritarian structures. Clerical celibacy seems to have much less appeal today for a younger generation. And an increasing number of women questions their continuing exclusion from leadership roles in the Church.”
“In 1985, an archdiocesan program called “For the Harvest” was inaugurated to help deaneries and parishes understand what steps they might have to taken when the decline in the number of preists becomes critical. Although this program was perhaps somewhat over-organized and also underestimated the problems, nevertheless, it did help parishes understand that they must begin to do some thoughtful and effective planning for the future. And so in 1990, the Archdiocese launched a follow-up three-phase planning program called Ministry 2000.”
“Phase one of Ministry 2000, involved meetings of the deanery councils or other regional organiations with the director of the archdiocesan planning office, in order to articulate possible models or strategies for dealing with the declining number of priests and the consequent pastoral needs of the parishes. Generally, neither the benefits nor the weaknesses of these models were analyzed by the deanery council during phase one nor were they placed in any order of preference. The discussions in phase one were only tentative and preliminary and did not establish definite goals or directions. At the conclusion of phase one, Archbishop Pilarczyk met with the deanery councils to review the possible models and strategies which were envision.”
“During the second phase of Ministry 2000, the deanery councils were asked to appoint a steering committee to oversee the planning process and to divide the deanery into smaller clusters in which any consolidation, merging or closing of parishes would actually take place. Although several factors were weighed in organizing these clusters, nevertheless geography was their primary justification. The clusters were then to discuss six objectives:
In the third phase of the process the deanery councils were asked to propose a concrete way or ways in which they might be adequately served by fewer priests, to list a set of criteria for determining whether their plan will insure that future ministry in the area will be adequate, to explain both the advantages and the disadvantages of their plan and spell out both its pastoral and its financial consequences and, finally, to explain why they recommend one particular plan and why they did not choose other plans which they might have considered. The archbishops final decision s and the timetable for their implementation were set to follow phase three.”
“Some parishes have already been closed or merged. In 1989, the three parishes in Hamilton were merged into St. Julie Billiart Parish. In 1991, the three parishes in Middletown were merged into Holy Family Parish. In 1992, St. Patrick Parish in Cincinnati was absorbed into St. Boniface Parish and St. Richard of Chichester Parish in Cincinnati was absorbed into St. Therese the Little Flower Parish. In 1993, St. George and St. Monica parishes near the University of Cincinnati were merged. In 1994, the three parishes in Norwood were merged into Holy Trinity Parish, and St. Patrick parish in Rural Shelby County was closed (later demolished). And in 1995, Our Lady of Loretto Parish in Cincinnati was closed.”
“Although Ministry 2000 is still in progress at this writing and each deanery or region is developing its own proposals, they generally favor only minimal changes in the current structures, encourage further study about the ordination of married men and about a more complete inclusion of women in ministry and support the commitment of more resources to the development of lay ministry and lay leadership. They also seem to agree that each parish must develop a greater consciousness of being linked to neighboring parishes and to the diocese in order to train and support its lay ministers effectively and to recognize that the priest can no longer be as personally and intimately involved in every single aspect of parish life.”