The Sunday Gentleman (17 page)

WHAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE…

Because I am fascinated by the highly formal and intricate, inflexible rituals of the Catholic Church—but no more and no less than I am interested in the equally involved machinery of the Communist party. General Motors, Rotary International, the Nobel Foundation—I follow the activities of the Vatican with unflagging interest. In fact, I have visited and researched inside Vatican City numerous times, and written and published stories about its Pontiff, its daily newspaper, its censorship office. But above all, I have been intrigued by the process through which the Catholic Church elevates one of its own to the universal veneration that accompanies sainthood.

As long ago as 1949, apparently, I was already possessed of this curiosity, for when I learned in that year that a friend of my wife’s was working as a secretary to Father Eric O’Brien, I was instantly eager to know more about him and his activities. I spoke to my wife’s friend (in the years since, she has become a nun, and we have an Easter card from her occasionally), questioned her about her work, and gained my first information about the Cause of Junípero Serra. The superficial knowledge I acquired only whetted my appetite. I knew that I must see Father O’Brien himself as soon as possible, and write about him and about the entire evolution of mortal to saint. When approached, Father O’Brien was agreeable to a meeting, and this soon took place in my living room. Stimulated by a few drinks and my own questions, the handsome, thirty-six-year-old priest exceeded mere eloquence. Following that first meeting, there were several more—one, if I remember correctly, in a room of St. Joseph’s Church in downtown Los Angeles—and soon I was supplementing these interviews with additional research material gathered through intensive reading about the procedures for gaining sainthood and the life of candidate Junípero Serra.

Presently, I wrote the first draft of my story. Being a non-Catholic, I had inadvertently filled the article with minor errors and heresies, and Father O’Brien was justifiably appalled. But being a servant of Christ, and endowed with patience and tolerance, and desirous of promoting the Cause of Junípero Serra still further through me. Father O’Brien did not reject my writings. Instead, he suggested revision and corrections of facts. These changes I dutifully made. My next submission to Father O’Brien received his approval.

The story, through my literary agent in New York, was submitted to the marketplace. It went out, and it came back. Like so many of the short pieces I wrote without assignment, but merely for pleasure, this one drew praise but no acceptance. It was seen by two or three editors, no more. They were in complete accord: It was not commercial, did not have enough popular appeal for the broadly circulating periodicals (largely read by Protestants), because it was “too special, too Catholic, too limited.” I put it aside, reluctantly but with confidence that one day I should be able to include it in a book, when commercial appeal would not be the decisive criterion for my choice of subjects.

In re-editing the story sixteen years after originally writing it, I wondered—as I have wondered about the subjects of all my earlier projects—what had happened to Father O’Brien and to the Cause of Junípero Serra. I had not seen the energetic priest since 1949. From time to time, in the years after, I had read newspaper accounts that gave evidence that the Cause of Junípero Serra was still being vigorously promoted. But, I speculated, how near had Serra been raised toward the high seat that his supporters desired for him? And, indeed, what had his crusaders been up to and what were they doing today? While Serra’s name was often in print, I realized that I had not seen the name of his champion. Father O’Brien, mentioned for many years. What, I asked myself, had become of that incredibly dedicated traveler-scholar of the Roman Catholic Church?

The last that I had known of Father O’Brien’s activities was that he had completed his extensive legal brief, the
articuli
, setting forth in Latin the virtues of Junípero Serra, and he had presented it to the Bishop’s Court in the Monterey-Fresno diocese of California. At the time, Father O’Brien had had every hope that the Fresno hearing would endorse his efforts with its approval, and forthwith submit the favorable decision to Rome. Father O’Brien expected to go then to Rome and continue the good fight.

Through recent interviews and correspondence, I have now learned that Father O’Brien’s faith in the imminent progress of his Cause was not unjustified. The initial test, before the Diocesan Court, lasted eight months. Father O’Brien paraded his research and his witnesses, and when the court sessions came to an end, there were 1,260 pages of testimony. It was agreed by the Diocesan Court that Serra’s heroic virtue had been satisfactorily proved. Photostatic copies of the bulky records of the trial were sent on to Rome, to be studied by the Sacred Congregation of Rites. This success was Father O’Brien’s first major accomplishment after his unremitting labors for the Cause, and his victory was rewarded by a worldly bauble in the summer of 1950 when St. Bonaventure University conferred upon him the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.

But the first triumph did not make Father O’Brien complacent. The battle had been joined, the opposition armor shallowly pierced, but the Devil’s Advocate in Rome had not been unseated. Continuing his assault. Father O’Brien left his and Serra’s easy, sunny California for the sophisticated, political, competitive arena that was Vatican City in Rome.

As Father O’Brien recently reported to me, he arrived in the Eternal City during September of 1950, and dwelt in Rome for almost four years. In those years, he did “the historical work for the Cause.” No doubt he kept a careful watch over his photostated research documents on Serra, one copy of which rested in the office of the Franciscan Order while the other copy received consideration in the office of the Relator General at the Sacred Congregation of Rites.

Father O’Brien’s activity in those four years was divided—on one hand, he gave a portion of his time and energy to continuing the hunt for new facts about Junípero Serra in the archives of the Vatican, and on the other hand, he toiled at propagandizing the Cause, at making the Movers of the Vatican (and, in fact, all the world) Serra-conscious. Tirelessly, he corresponded with prelates in Latin America, and with organizations in the United States, seeking “commendatory letters” and backing for Serra. He delivered public addresses extolling the virtues and holiness of California’s Apostle. In the field of promotion, his greatest achievement was arranging to give a series of twelve talks on Serra, to an international audience, over Vatican Radio.

In April of 1954, Father Eric O’Brien left Rome and returned to the United States. When he arrived in California, his role as leader and Vice-Postulator of the Cause came to an end. Whether or not he requested to be relieved of his arduous position, whether or not the Church removed and replaced him as a matter of rotating policy, I do not know. In any event, what he had begun as an eager young priest of twenty-nine was, so far as his part was concerned, ending in his forty-second year. He had done the pioneer work. He had traveled widely, read deeply, written ceaselessly. He had delivered an impressive total of 500 speeches on behalf of the Cause. His Franciscan brothers gave him their supreme accolade in print. Of Father O’Brien they said: “For sixteen years, the zealous Friar dedicated his talents to tracing around the head of Padre Junípero Serra the halo of a Saint. Inasmuch as one man can be credited with the present happy status of the Serra Cause, that individual is the former Vice-Postulator.”

After relinquishing his leadership of the Cause in 1954, Father Eric O’Brien moved into the Serra Retreat in Malibu, California, and there he dwells at present, devoting his peaceful, contemplative days to retreat work, such as giving time to lay Catholics, and to writing. His writing, of course, concerns his old friend, Junípero Serra. According to a recent issue of the
Apostle of California
, a quarterly bulletin that keeps all Serrans informed of the advances being made in the Cause for the Canonization of Junípero Serra:

“The ascetical stature of the candidate presented for canonization is the most important consideration in the eyes of the Sacred Congregation of Rites. This particular aspect of Padre Junípero Serra has been the specialty of the Rev. Eric O’Brien, O.F.M. It is his intention to compose an ascetical ‘life’ of California’s Apostle. The friends of the Cause not only wish him every success in this distinctive endeavor, they pledge their prayers…”

Meanwhile, the Cause goes marching on. The players change. The goal is the same. Not until four years after Father O’Brien had gone into his ocean-side retreat was there an official replacement named for him. In July of 1958, the Reverend Noel F. Moholy was appointed the new Vice-Postulator of the Cause. Father Moholy, a wiry, middle-aged native of San Francisco, was not a stranger to Junípero Serra. After being ordained a priest in 1941, Father Moholy taught languages and theology in California, did graduate work in Quebec, and then resumed teaching—but for five of those years he had collaborated with Father O’Brien. During the entire period that Father O’Brien had been in Rome, and for more than a year afterward. Father Moholy had served as his American administrator of the Serra Cause.

Upon succeeding Father O’Brien as the main leader of the Cause, Father Moholy applied himself to promotion of sainthood for the California Apostle with as much vigor as his predecessor had shown. Working out of the Old Mission Santa Barbara—which he had helped restore and expand through his fund-raising campaigns—Father Moholy threw himself into writing, and appeared on radio and television, in a further effort to impress upon the Vatican and the world the Serra Cause.

In 1961, Father Moholy took on as an aide the scholarly Father Florian Guest, sending him to Rome to continue the historical phase of the work. In Rome, Father Guest found that the next hurdle to be overcome was the requirement that all the basic Serra findings be translated into Italian. Father Guest accepted the challenge, but before he could proceed very far with the project, he fell ill. A little more than a year after entering Rome, the ailing Father Guest was forced to return to Los Angeles.

Today, under the guidance of the new Vice-Postulator, Father Guest, who is attached to St. Joseph’s Church in Los Angeles, is slowly going ahead with the Italian translation of the voluminous Serra case.

As Father Guest explained to me: “The historical work for the Serra Cause is to be completed in two volumes, both in Italian. The first is to contain a translation of all the most important documents bearing on the Cause, together with a critical introduction to them. The second is to include the historical proof that Junípero Serra practiced heroic virtue. When these two volumes are completed and approved, Serra’s Cause will have been canonically introduced. Partly because of the large number of Causes being considered by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, the work may be prolonged for several years. The Franciscan Order alone is promoting the Causes of 190 candidates for the honors of the altar.”

Because of the competition from the large number of other candidates for sainthood, because six proved miracles are needed for Serra’s beatification and for his canonization, some supporters of the Cause believe that it may be another ten years before the California Apostle is presented for the final judgment in Rome.

But the promoters of the Serra Cause have been trained in patience. They remind themselves that it took more than five hundred years for Joan of Arc to be made a saint. They know that it took forty years for Pope Pius X to be so recognized. Yet, most encouraging is the fact that Mother Elizabeth Seton—the remarkable New York-born Protestant convert to Catholicism, who bore her husband five children before she was widowed, and who died in Baltimore in 1821—required only twenty-three years to attain beatification, the almost certain prelude to canonization. Mother Seton’s Cause was introduced in 1940, and she was beatified and praised by Pope John XXIII in 1963.

The Serrans know the odds they must overcome. Since the founding of the Church of St. Peter, the Vatican has raised perhaps twenty-five thousand of its own to sainthood. In the three and a half centuries since the Church began listing its saints, there have been fewer than three hundred who have been canonized. Despite these awesome odds, despite the fact that there are nearly 1,200 candidates, including five popes and thirteen cardinals, contending for sainthood in Rome at the moment, despite the fact that there are 190 of their own order among these candidates, the California Franciscans remain confident that Father Serra will ultimately be so honored.

One hundred and eighty years have passed since Father Junípero Serra, that “useless servant of God,” as he characterized himself, died in Carmel, California. Only thirty years have passed since the Franciscan Order first undertook to prove that Father Junípero Serra was worthy of international veneration and prayer. Ten more years of effort seem little enough when weighed against the magnitude of the success in sight. Then, if the human race has survived, there will be time enough for those who are believers to enjoy the guidance and pray for the miracles they hope the vision of the lame, old, courageous padre, Mallorcan and Californian, with his hard-won halo, will provide. Amen.

5

Everybody’s Rover Boy

One day in the year 1890, Miss Nellie Bly, of the New York World, came roaring into Brooklyn on a special train from San Francisco. In a successful effort to beat Phileas Fogg’s fictional 80 days around the world, Miss Bly, traveling with two handbags and flannel underwear, had circled the globe in 72 days, 6 hours, and 11 minutes. Immortality awaited her.

Elsewhere that same year, another less-publicized globe-girdler made his start toward immortality. He was Mr. Burton Holmes, making his public debut with slides and anecdotes (“Through Europe With a Kodak”) before the Chicago Camera Club. Mr. Holmes, while less spectacular than his feminine rival, was destined, for that very reason, soon to dethrone her as America’s number-one traveler.