Holy Trinity, Alabama

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Map of Alabama

Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity

Introduction

Holy Trinity, Preface

Founder

Holy Trinity, Early Days

Social Mission

Habit and Dress

Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Holy Trinity Freshmen Class 1956–1957

Chapter 2: Holy Trinity Sophomores 1956–1957

Chapter 3: Holy Trinity Juniors 1956–1957

Chapter 4: Holy Trinity Seniors 1956–1957

Chapter 5: Holy Trinity First Year College 1956–1957

Chapter 6: Holy Trinity Second Year College 1956–1957

Chapter 7: Holy Trinity Freshman 1957–1958

Chapter 8: Holy Trinity Sophomores 1957–1958

Chapter 9: Holy Trinity Juniors 1957–1958

Chapter 10: Holy Trinity Seniors 1957–1958

Chapter 11: Holy Trinity First Year College 1957–1958

Chapter 12: Holy Trinity Second Year College 1957–1958

Chapter 13: Holy Trinity Freshmen 1958–1959

Chapter 14: Holy Trinity Sophomores 1958–1959

Chapter 15: Holy Trinity Juniors 1958–1959

Chapter 16: Holy Trinity Seniors 1958–1959

Chapter 17: Holy Trinity First Year College 1958–1959

Chapter 18: Holy Trinity Second Year College 1958–1959

Chapter 19: Holy Trinity Freshmen 1959–1960

Chapter 20: Holy Trinity Sophomores 1959–1960

Chapter 21: Holy Trinity Juniors 1959–1960

Chapter 22: Holy Trinity Seniors 1959–1960

Chapter 23: Holy Trinity First Year College 1959–1960

Chapter 24: Holy Trinity Second Year College 1959–1960

Chapter 25: Holy Trinity Work 1959–1960

Chapter 26: Holy Trinity Turkey Bowl 1959–1960

Chapter 27: Holy Trinity Olympiad 1959–1960

Chapter 28: Holy Trinity Chronicle 1959–1960

Chapter 29: Holy Trinity Summary 1959–1960

Chapter 30: The Cenacle Family Twenty-Five Years 1908

Chapter 31: Father Judge, the Humble Servant

Post Script

About the Author

Holy Trinity Alabama

Terry A. Maurer

Copyright © 2023 Terry A. Maurer

All rights reserved

First Edition

Holy Trinity, Alabama 1956–1960

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88731-146-3 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88731-147-0 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Map of Alabama

Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity

Trinity Missionaries is a religious congregation of men in the Roman Catholic Church whose headquarters is located in Silver Spring, Maryland. Its members are brothers and ordained priests. Members engage in missionary work with the poor and abandoned in both the United States and Latin America. One of their principal aims is to promote the missionary in United States and Latin America. One of their principal aims is also to promote the missionary vocation of the laity. They are also known for supporting parish ministry and for promoting social justice. Presently, the superior general is the Very Reverend Michael K. Barth, ST. The Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity is an affiliated women's congregation.

9001 New Hampshire Avenue,

Silver Spring, MD 20903

866.809.0815 | info @trinitymissions.org

© 2023 Trinity Missions

Introduction

Holy Trinity, Alabama, tells a story of young men studying for the priesthood in a Catholic seminary in the second half of the l950s. Like the movie Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, Holy Trinity, Alabama, like the deep South plantations in their time, is no more.

The stories here are taken from the Spes Gregis, which means hope of the flock, yearbooks during the last years of this seminary in Alabama, 1956–1960. In fact, I was in the last graduating class from Holy Trinity, 1960.

In this book you will learn where seminarians came from, their names, and how they spent their days in prayer, work, recreation, and study as they follow a seminarian's schedule laid out by the founder of this religious order: Father Thomas Augustine Judge.

This book will show photos of the priests who taught us and the brothers who kept the facility going. Then it will show the students in the grade levels—freshmen in high school all the way through second year of college—from the years 1956 to 1960 to the last years of seminary life in Holy Trinity, Alabama.

Holy Trinity, Preface

This seminary moved in its entirety to Monroe, Virginia, some six hundred miles north but still south of the Mason-Dixon line. None of the students knew (at least I didn't) about the coming transformation move during our time in Alabama. Likely, very few of the faculty knew of this coming exodus either. Maybe that is the way the higher-ups in Silver Springs, Maryland, wanted it while the new ultramodern state-of-the-art facility was being constructed. Ignorance is bliss, I guess. I remember hearing that the new seminary cost five million US dollars in 1960.

Before the summer of 1956 was over, I was on the train heading south to Alabama. My mother, Pauline, went with me on the train as far as Chicago in late August that year. I was to be fourteen years old in another month on October 1. My mother had cousins in Chicago who invited her and me to stay the weekend with them as I waited to catch the midnight train to Georgia.

The weekend came to an end, and my mother told me goodbye at Grand Central Station in Chicago. There were at least forty of us young seminarians boarding the train that day for the South. We were the boys from the Midwest, and we filled an entire private railcar. I had already said goodbye to my dad and brothers in Roscommon and now goodbye to my mother in Chicago as I boarded the train for the second half of the trip to Holy Trinity, also known as Saint Joseph's Preparatory Seminary. There was another train car departing New York—stopping in Newark, Trenton, Philly, Baltimore, and Washington—picking up the seminarians from the eastern part of the country including Ed Murphy, Jim Gillin, John Cox, Jim Weighorst, and Tom Farrell.

Founder

Thomas Augustine Judge was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 23, 1868, the fifth of eight children born to Thomas and Mary Danahey Judge. They were Irish immigrants who settled in South Boston. Thomas Judge Sr. was a painter who died at the age of forty-five, when young Tom was eighteen. His youngest sister, Alice, joined the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul. After his father's death, Judge found work at a post office while completing night school at Boston High.

In January 1890, Judge entered Saint Vincent's Seminary, Germantown, Pennsylvania. He was received into the novitiate in 1893, made his vows in 1895, and studied theology until his ordination in May 1899. During his last years in Germantown, he organized catechetical and social work among the Italian immigrants in the neighborhood. Shortly before his ordination, Jude was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis. He was sent home to Boston to rest over the summer and then to Emmitsburg, Maryland, on light duty. He was not assigned to a Vincentian mission team until 1903. For the next twelve years, Judge preached parish missions from New Jersey to Puerto Rico from his base in Germantown. In 1908, he was assigned to promote the archconfraternity of the Holy Agony, related to a devotion founded in France in the 1850s.

In April 1909, he met at the Saint John Gabriel Chapel in Saint John the Baptist Church in Brooklyn with six women volunteers interested in assisting new immigrants from the Catholic countries of Eastern and Southern Europe to adjust to life in their new country. They began an outreach program to visit homes and offer what help they could. This was the beginning of the Missionary Cenacle Apostolates (lay missionaries). In 1924, Judge established the Shrine of Saint Joseph in Stirling, New Jersey.

Outstanding as a preacher of missions and retreats and manifesting an extraordinary zeal for souls, he was widely known and revered. Although remaining a Vincentian priest, his superiors relieved him of his missionary responsibilities so that he could focus on the Cenacle apostolate. He died on November 23, 1933. Father Judge High School in Holmesburg, Philadelphia, is named for him.

Holy Trinity, Early Days

In 1915, Father Judge was assigned to a mission in Opelika, Alabama. Some of the men and women who assisted up north followed. In 1921, the congregation was formally recognized by Edward Patrick Allen, bishop of Mobile. In 1953, the Missionary Servants purchased the Jordan Springs Estate near Winchester, Virginia, for a monastery and seminary. The property was leased out in 1972 and is now an event center. In 1958, they were granted approval as clerical religious congregation of pontifical right.

As of 2019, there are 121 members of the Missionary Servants including priests, deacons, brothers, and novices, serving in 39 missions located in the United States, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico.

Social Mission

Across the United States, Mexico, and Puerto Rico, Missionary Servant priests and brothers are working in poverty-afflicted urban neighborhoods, immigrant communities, Native American reservations, and small towns in the rural South. In Costa Rica, Honduras, Colombia, and Haiti, they serve communities of people living in towns and tropical rain forests. The priests and brothers serve as pastors, professors, lawyers, chaplains, and counselors.

The Missionary Cenacle volunteers provide young Catholics with volunteer opportunities in the United States, Mexico, and Costa Rica.

Habit and Dress

The Missionary Servant habit consists of a black cassock closing at the right shoulder with three buttons symbolizing the Holy Trinity, only with a military collar. The cincture has three tabs, representing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Sometimes a white habit is worn in warmer climates.

Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity

In 1916, Margaret Louise Keasey from Butler, Pennsylvania, joined Judge to teach in the Cenacle mission school in Phenix City, Alabama. By 1919, when the fledgling women's religious community was being formed, Judge named her the first general custodian (major superior) with the name Mother Boniface. Mother Boniface died in 1931. In February 1932, the sisters received canonical status from Rome under the title Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity. Today the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity serve the church in many dioceses across the continental US, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.

Fr. Adrian Doherty (Vocation Director)

Fr. Doherty was the first S.T. priest I met in the spring of 1956 while I was still in mtilitary school in Michigan. He died in an automobile accident in September of 56 in Minnesota while visiting another possible seminarian. Fr. Doherty was buried in Holy Trinity, Alabama late in September. I was part of his all night vigil the day of the funeral.

Dedication

With deep respect and gratitude, we dedicate this Spes Gregis to Father Adrian Doherty, MS. SS. T. It is most fitting to pledge this hope of the flock to the memory of the man who labored fruitfully to bring so many of us to follow the Good Shepherd. On this page that is all too small to capture his spirit, we shall attempt at least a suggestion of the noble qualities that made Father Adrian a faithful servant of the Most Holy Trinity and an example to us who hope to serve the Triune God.

Charity, yes, and the love and kindness that radiated from this missionary servant endeared him to the hearts of all who knew him. Indeed, it was his charity and warmth that drew many souls to Christ. His friendliness made him welcome wherever his work took him. When he was forced to depart from one's company, there would be a little ache in one's heart, a little empty spot there.

Father Adrian's self-sacrifice was another one of his outstanding virtues. To him, no distance was too great, no time too long while he was doing the work of his community and the will of his God. To show you an example of his sacrifice, let us tell you of his schedule on the day he was summoned to his reward. Father Adrian was in Saint Paul, Minnesota, attending a special dinner. The dinner ended about five o'clock, and Father Adrian was due to catch a plane for Chicago on the following morning. The tireless Father Adrian rushed off in his car for Marshall, Minnesota, a distance of a good hundred miles, to see a boy interested in the priesthood. It was while he was returning from this visit that God beckoned his magnanimous servant.

Acknowledgments

I must thank the following

Fulton books;

Scott Parker and Liz Bosley, my Publications Agents;

My wife, Mary Ann Horning Maurer;

Ann Marie Clifford, my neighbor and friend, for her patience and invaluable support, expertise, and diligence as she organized and transcribed the info from my Spes Gregis 1956–1960 Holy Trinity yearbooks; and

The faculty, students, and writers of the Holy Trinity yearbooks from many years ago.

Chapter 1

Holy Trinity Freshmen Class 1956–1957

Twenty-six of my classmates were either asked to leave or left on their own before me. It was not a stigma to leave, at least not for long. It was also about bragging rights that you hung on longer than someone else. Pete Krebs and John Marquis were ordained in 1969. Two out of thirty-two is probably more than the average, completing the grueling thirteen years of training required. It was four years of high school, two years of college, one year of novitiate (where first vows are taken), two years of philosophy, and finally, four years of theology.

Late August 1956 was just the beginning of what was to be the first of five years in the seminary for me. We arrived in Columbus, Georgia, early afternoon and boarded either an old school bus or open state truck for the trip to Holy Trinity crossing the Chattahoochee River into Phenix City. Then south on the Gerry Pruitt Highway through cotton fields and peanut fields some twenty miles to the entrance drive on the west side of the road up to the seminary campus. Most of the students knew each other from last year. We were the new guys and just soaked in the whole experience. The hot, humid summer weather felt strange to boys who had never seen cotton fields ready for the harvest or scrawny cattle scattered on sparse pasture fields with more red clay visible than green grass. We learned quickly that Attorney General Patterson of Alabama was murdered a year or two earlier for trying to clean up the red-light and gambling city of Phenix City. Phenix City was the sin city patronized by the regular Army troops at nearby Fort Benning. There is a movie entitled Phenix City about the Paterson murder. We students did not have to worry much about any of that because we only went to town a couple times a year. We were isolated in the Alabama pines on about three hundred acres that had its own farm with milk, chickens, eggs, and beef.

Although the seminary farms reminded me of our family farms in the Roscommon-Grayling area, there was one major difference. In Michigan, my dad had us picking acres of sweet corn. Here in Alabama, the seminary had us all picking peanuts. The school had at least fifty acres of peanuts, and we were all (120 of us) required to work in the peanut fields for a full week. We pulled the loosened peanuts clinging on vines like potatoes, shook off the red-dry clay, and wrapped the vines (peanuts to the outside) around ten-foot peanut poles. These days combining driers and shakers do it all. All the while Father Norbert would jump from row to row larking, Hubba, hubba, to keep us picking in the Alabama heat.

On our first trip back to Columbus, Georgia, for Christmas shopping, Columbus (because Phenix City had no real shopping area) had just closed down bars and brothels. The persistent prejudice toward Southern blacks became clear to me as I was drinking from the fountain at the Greyhound bus station when a stranger slapped me on the shoulder and said, Can't you read, boy? I had no idea why he said that until I looked up and read the sign above the fountain: Colored only. The guy informing me of my mistake was white, and I guess he wanted to be sure that the colored would not see me at the wrong fountain lest they might try the water at the Whites only fountain. I remember thinking that water from a Colored only fountain tasted exactly the same