The Catholic Revival Meeting

Chapter 3 of Catholic Revivalism: 
The American Experience 1830-1900

by Jay P. Dolan

There are 108 footnotes for this chapter which I did not transcribe

Thus far this study has traced the development of Catholic revivalism throughout the nineteenth century. It is clear that by the 1890s the parish mission was a commonplace experience in the Catholic community. But in order to understand the revival phenomenon more completely it is necessary to examine the event itself and the men who made it work. The preachers and the themes they expounded in the pulpit, along with the rituals and ceremonies they performed, were the principal ingredients of the Catholic revival meeting. An analysis of these elements, the medium so to speak and not the message, will help to explain what the Catholic revival was like.

The scene is the West Side of New York in January 1895. The Ninth Avenue El is chugging its way downtown, jammed with the usual early morning crowd of commuters. As it passes by 59th Street, two huge structures rise up, dwarfing the rows of tenements that line the street. One is Roosevelt Hospital, the center of a continual flurry of activity and a familiar landmark. On the adjacent block is the other fortress-like building, St. Paul's Church, another landmark and also a daily reminder that the West Side is a Catholic stronghold. But on this particular day in January 1895 something unusual attracts the eye of the commuter. Stretching across the entire front of the church is a large white banner. Emblazoned on the sign in letters large enough not to be missed are the words, "A Great Mission."

Beneath the headline more particulars are given. The Paulist Fathers will conduct the exercises of the mission beginning at high mass on the following Sunday and continuing for the entire month of January.

The eye-catching banner was an unusual way to attract the public's attention, but parish missions were special events in the Catholic community, and no technique was left untried in promoting them. What was taking place at St. Paul's and at scores of other parishes across the country was a Catholic revival meeting. A four-page leaflet distributed throughout the parish explained it in the following manner "for those of you who do not know what a mission is":

A mission is a time when God calls with a more earnest voice than at other times all persons, but sinners especially, to work out their salvation with fear and trembling. It is an extraordinary time to make your friendship with God. It is a time when the greatest truths of religion - heaven, hell, the evil of mortal sin, the justice of God, his tender mercy - are preached to you. It is a time when priests from early morning till night wait in the confessionals for you, to absolve you from your sins, and restore you to God's favor. it is a time for you to remember that you have a soul to save, and to try and save it. It is a time when all things are made most easy and favorable for you to save that soul which will live on after your body is dead, and never die. It is a time when you are exhorted, by the cross and blood of Christ, if indeed you have a spark of gratitude or love towards God, to turn your face to him with contrition.

A more graphic description given from the pulpit defined the mission as "something which gathers into one powerful showing all the warnings of Divine Justice: fully explaining the enormous folly and ingratitude of sin; it leads the sinner back to his very childhood and traces his downward track through youth and manhood towards his last death; which stands with him at his open grave; which calls in his ear the summons to the judgment seat of an offended God; which scorches his face with the fires of Hell and all in an atmosphere of fervor, aided by the entreaties of the sinner's friends, their prayers to God, their tears, the example of the repentance of other sinners.

Four years had elapsed since the last mission at St. Paul's, and the revival would be a good occasion to round up many newcomers who during the interval had moved into the neighborhood. An economic depression had put many men and women out of work. The mission would help people to forget their distress for a while and remind them that God did not create them for this world, but for his kingdom in the world beyond. The salvation of their souls was to outrank all other concerns "for nothing can give truer comfort than to be in the state of grace. This was a message applicable for both the best and worst of times.

During the week preceding the mission the parish neighborhood was alive with activity in preparation for the upcoming event. Fences and buildings were placarded with handbills - dodgers they called them - announcing the revival. It was also advertised in the daily newspapers with a schedule listing the time of services and the roster of preachers. The priests in the parish were busy making "a thorough visitation of the parish," urging people to attend the revival, because "in a city like New York it is very difficult to excite that general and popular enthusiasm comparatively easy in country parishes. Prayers were offered each day during mass for the success of the mission. Local craftsmen were even involved; a preacher's platform had to be constructed as well as a cross, fifteen by seven feet, which would be mounted on the platform. The parish choir was busy with extra sessions preparing for the month-long revival. Down the street, Hutchinson's dry goods store had an ample supply of religious articles in stock in anticipation of the mission; the parish book exchange at 120 West 60th Street was also selling copies of The Mission Book, "a little manual of instructions and devotions" useful both during and after the revival.'

The elaborate preparations for St. Paul's mission were not unusual. Any parish in city or town underwent a similar routine if they were scheduled to have a revival. Revivalism had been "reduced into a kind of science," remarkably systematized with elaborate directions on how to promote, conduct, and prolong a revival of religion. Handbooks spelled out in detail the sermons that should be preached, the ceremonies that should be conducted and the atmosphere to be created. Father Weninger's instructions even included illustrations on how to build a mission cross correctly, what the candelabra should look like, how the church should be lighted, and how many flowers would be necessary. His instructions were so demanding and costly that some parishes refused to have a mission preached by Weninger. They simply could not afford it.

The preparations for the revival at St. Paul's clearly indicated that parish missions were not the result of spontaneous, popular religious awakening. They were manufactured events promoted by the clergy, and "specially calculated to excite the piety of the faithful and to prepare them for the sacraments of penance and communion." This was not unusual in religious revivals. George Whitefield was a master promoter; Charles Finney knew how to get up a revival, and Dwight Moody's advance preparations were sometimes so elaborate that he needed a Wanamaker to finance them. Catholic revivals were also run according to a set plan. The unexpected could and did occur - a dramatic conversion, an extraordinary healing, even the sudden death of a hardened sinner - but generally people knew what to expect.

It was up to the pastor of the parish to decide when a revival would take place. Usually they occurred at intervals of four to five years. This was the optimum lapse of time recommended by many church councils and suggested by the preachers themselves. If they were more frequent, they became too routine; the more novel they were, the more enthusiasm they engendered since people had not been burned out by a continual succession of revival preaching. Missions were calculated "to startle, to terrify, and to rouse the consciences of the people," and this could best occur only periodically.

According to the preachers, the degree of popular enthusiasm was in inverse proportion to the frequency of missions. If a community had been "missioned to rags," the revival invariably elicited little excitement. If "the mission was something new to the people, the interest and enthusiasm was greater. As expected then, in the early years of the Catholic revival movement missions always aroused a great deal of excitement. But as people became more familiar with them, the revivals were less a novelty and the possibility for "rousing great enthusiasm" diminished.

It all depended on how commonplace the mission was in a particular locale. During the 1890s they were still "a kind of novelty" in California and "more attractive on that account." It was not until 1879 that Catholics in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, experienced a mission. The preacher noted that it "had all the characteristics of a first mission - it was as lively as it could be." Geneva, New York, had not had a revival for fourteen years; then in 1891 the Paulists preached a mission in the local parish, "an enthusiastic one" it was noted, "with the church always well filled." The following year they gave a mission in Mott Haven, New York. "It was like an old-time mission, rousing great enthusiasm not only among the Catholics but the non-Catholics as well."

There was no question that the best revival was one in which religious excitement prevailed. This could happen in any given year depending on the circumstances, but as missions became a standard feature of Catholic life, it was advisable to space them every four or five years so that they could be as effective as possible in exciting the piety of the people.

The promotional publicity associated with the mission and the calculated manner in which they were scheduled at first glance appears to undercut a basic rationale for Catholic revivalism - widespread religious declension and the urgent need to reclaim the fallen away. In a certain sense this was true. In the early stages of the revival movement the religious condition of Catholic immigrants was poor. The scarcity of priests and churches aggravated the problem, and the revival meeting was adopted as a ready remedy to an urgent problem. Over the course of time the mission was systematically organized and became an integral part of the church's devotional crusade.

In established parishes it was a regular feature of their religious activity promoted to achieve the best possible results. At this level, revivalism was less an urgent response to unusual religious malaise and more a periodic spiritual overhauling. It supplemented the ordinary day-to-day parochial ministry by attempting to reach out to the lukewarm and the indifferent by soul-stirring, God-fearing preaching. The preachers had been called in to tune up the body religious, and after an interval of time had elapsed they would reappear ready to repeat their performance. Thus, what had begun as an urgent response to an unusual condition, a form of mass evangelization, became a special routine that took place at regular intervals.

But not all of Catholic America moved along at the same pace. Late into the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth century certain areas resembled the missionary conditions of an earlier age. In 18 7 3 the manufacturing town of Fall River, Massachusetts, was in need of a "thorough mission." Scores of young people "were ignorant of the first rudiments of Christianity, several not knowing how to make the sign of the cross, nor indeed what the cross meant, did not know how many Gods there were, nor who Jesus Christ was."

Certain areas of the state of Michigan during the 1870s resembled the primitive religious conditions of other areas a half century earlier. Further west, in the Dakota territory, the people were "in a wretched state spiritually." The South was never a showplace of Catholicism and Catholics "generally were very negligent." The new immigrants of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries suffered from the same lack of clergy and churches that earlier groups had experienced.

The consequences were much the same, and for these groups the parish mission was often the first round-up of  a community too long neglected by its spiritual overseers. In these instances the parish mission was a self-conscious effort to evangelize a spiritually impoverished community. The usual promotional trappings were employed, and the event was organized and regularized as usual. The sermons did not change, and no special ceremonies were added. But this was no routine revival. It was an extraordinary happening that took place under unusual conditions; according to the wisdom of the day, the general poverty of religion could be attacked in no other way.

Thus, on one level, the revival aimed at the overhaul of church Catholics. The spiritually destitute also showed up - they were always a special catch at any mission - but in established parishes they became less and less prominent. They were always around of course; in fact, preachers had coined a phrase for this special clientele, "mission Catholics," people who only came to church during a revival. At another level, however, the revival was primarily aimed at the spiritually destitute since they made up the bulk of Catholics in the area. Regular, church-going Catholics were not a common breed in those regions where the Catholic community was only recently organized and adequate numbers of clergy were lacking. 

This was the situation in St. Paul's at the first revival held in 1859, shortly after the parish was organized. "The object of the mission was to give a start to the new congregation," and a highlight of the revival, according to the preachers, was the "great many young men who received communion for the first time during the mission."  Almost forty years and seven missions later the great revival of 1895 took place. "The number of negligent was very small," noted the mission chronicler, and the highlight of the mission was the "booming up" of the parish societies, "and best of all a Holy Name Society was started among the men with a membership of 850." In St. Paul's, as in many other established parishes, revivalism had ceased to be a technique of mass evangelization, but it remained an integral part of the religious experience of Catholics.

Once the pastor had decided that the time was ripe for a revival, he set out to choose a group of preachers. He had a wide variety to select from, and it did not make much difference what group he chose. They all were specialists trained in the art of revival preaching, and only minor differences distinguished one group from another. The Jesuits encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart; the Redemptorists put a special emphasis on Mary; the Passionists singled out Christ's passion for particular attention; and the Dominicans fostered the rosary. These were about the only points of difference among the groups. 

This became especially evident when several religious orders collaborated in canvassing a city or a diocese. Each group dressed differently, fostered its own favorite devotions or saints, and followed a particular rule of life. But when they stepped into the pulpit, their goal was the same - "to excite the piety of the faithful and to prepare them for the sacraments of penance and communion." 

In the early years preachers often traveled alone. Later as the movement became regularized and more priests were available they generally traveled and worked as a group. At least thirteen different religious orders conducted parish missions between 1875 and 1885. Each order had its own band of preachers numbering as few as two or as many as six or seven depending on the size of the parish to be evangelized and the length of the mission. The roster of preachers continually changed depending on the needs of the order in other apostolates and the demand for missions. 

Between 1832 and 1865 at least fifty-two Redemptorists traveled the Midwestern mission circuit. Within a twelve-month period in 1890-91, twenty-two Jesuits journeyed up and down the Atlantic seaboard preaching missions. The core group was made up of seven priests, but other Jesuits periodically stepped in to help out. Theoretically, any Jesuit or Redemptorist was able to preach a mission, but the nature of the work demanded special oratorical talents, and the full-time revivalists were men who best possessed these skills.

As in any profession, certain men stood out above the crowd. Among Protestants names like Finney, Moody, Jones, and Torrey were front-page headliners, giants in a profession that had hundreds of practitioners. Catholic revivalism also had its star performers. They never made it into the textbooks of American history, but in the Catholic community they were as popular and as important as a Sam Jones or a Dwight Moody. A look at some of these revivalists is necessary to better understand the profession and the type of men it attracted. To accomplish this I selected eight preachers whose achievements set them apart from the scores of other revivalists.

In studying this group of three Paulists, three Jesuits, and two Redemptorists certain characteristics were more common than others. Two of the group were converts to Catholicism, the Paulists Clarence Walworth (1820 -1900) and Alfred Young (1831-1900); six were immigrants to the United States, the Redemptorists Joseph Wissel (1830 - 1912) and Francis Seelos (1819 -1867), the Jesuits Francis X. Weninger (1805 -1888), Bernard Maguire (1818 -1885), Arnold Damen (1815 -1890), and Young. Walworth and another Paulist, Walter Elliott (1842 -1928), were the only American-born priests. The immigrant character of the group mirrored the nineteenth-century Catholic population. As the number of American-born Catholics increased the number of native clergy also grew. This shift was very noticeable among the Redemptorists. At mid-century they were overwhelmingly a community of foreign-born clergy; by the end of the century three of every four Redemptorists were native Americans.

Weninger was the only preacher who came to the United States as an ordained priest. The others emigrated with their families or traveled to American as young men, eager to work as missionaries in the New World. The immigration of Seelos and Wissel was particularly illustrative of the attraction that the New World had on a young man's imagination. Born in Bavaria, Francis Seelos studied at St. Stephen's Gymnasium in Augsburg and later entered the Maximilian University in Munich, an institution whose faculty included such scholars as Schelling, Dollinger, Moehler, and Goerres. 

As a young man, Seelos was familiar with the United States, having frequently pored over maps of the New World with his younger brother. In 1842, while still a student at the university, he decided to become a priest, not in Germany, but in America as a missionary of the Redemptorist order. Seelos had read about the work of the Redemptorists in the United States in the German press and had seen newspaper advertisements written by the superior of the American Redemptorists urging young German men to come to the "rescue" of their countrymen who "were in danger. . . of losing their souls" in the New World. Inspired by the thought of becoming a missionary, Seelos cut short his university education, left family and friends and emigrated to America to prepare for the priesthood. How much influence the newspaper articles had on him is difficult to determine, but it was clear that the New World held a special attraction for Seelos and not even his close family ties could weaken his determination or delay his speedy departure once he had made up his mind.

Joseph Wissel also came from Bavaria, the birthplace of many German Catholic immigrants. In 1848, at the age of eighteen, he decided to study for the priesthood, much to the dislike of his parents. Without their approval he was refused admittance to the seminary. Shortly afterwards he read an immigrant letter from the son of a neighboring family; as was true for many immigrants, the letter from America provided the necessary spark. For Wissel the deciding influence was the letter's reference the dearth of priests in the United States. "This letter set me thinking," he said. "The thought of going to America entered my mind and never left it again." This time his parents approved and within a fortnight Joseph and his brother left home and set out for the New World. The two brothers arrived in New York City penniless. His brother quickly found a job, while Joseph, in fluent German and occasional Latin, spent ten days pleading with various priests to help him gain entrance into the seminary. His efforts were unsuccessful until he finally contacted John Hughes, the bishop of New York. Within a week he was enrolled in the New York seminary at Fordham. Later he left to join the Redemptorists who at that time were working principally with German-speaking Catholics.

For both Seelos and Wisscl, America possessed a special attraction; it was a missionary territory desperately in need of German-speaking priests, and this fired their youthful imagination and inspired them to travel to a distant foreign land where they could work as missionaries.

Seelos, in particular, possessed an attribute that was common to the group - a solid nineteenth-century college education. Young was a graduate of Princeton; Walworth gained Phi Beta Kappa distinction at Union College; Elliott attended Notre Dame; Weninger earned a doctor of divinity degree in Vienna. Maguire and Damen, like Wissel, pursued their higher education in Catholic seminaries. All of them were better than average students and their subsequent careers testified to their intellectual talents. 

Before he died Weninger had written at least seventy-four books and pamphlets, including three books on the art of preaching missions; Elliott wrote the popular and controversial, Life of Fatber Hecker, translated the sermons of John Tauler, compiled a mission manual and contributed numerous articles to the Paulist periodical, The Catholic World. Wissel wrote a three-volume mission handbook for the Redemptorists which remained in use well into the twentieth century,. Young was an occasional poet, an exceptional musician and composer, as well as the author of an apologia for Roman Catholicism. Maguire and Seelos were the only ones who were not accomplished authors, but they had their own special talents. Maguire was president of Georgetown College; Seelos was the holy man of the group, one whose cause for beatification by the church began shortly after his death in 1867.

All but Weninger and Elliott had spent a substantial amount of time in the ordinary parish ministry acquiring the necessary pastoral experience judged essential in revival preaching. As was true of most mission preachers, the majority of the group began their full-time work during their thirties after some years of pastoral experience had demonstrated their oratorical skills and when they were still young enough to endure the rigorous schedule of an itinerant missionary who was on the road for at least six or seven months a year.

Another common trait that linked this group of preachers was their basic emphasis on preaching to the hearts of their audiences, a style that was "of the greatest importance in the mission. Their aim was to move sinners to repentance and conversion, and they aimed their sermons at the heart, seeking to elicit an emotion-filled response that was ratified by a confession of sins. Intellectual arguments, the doctrinal dimension of their sermons, were often interspersed in their preaching, but only insofar as they reinforced the stirring appeal to the heart of the sinner. Some made this appeal with more flair and drama than others.

Clarence Walworth was certainly one of the most forceful preachers to step into a pulpit. As a student at Union College he had undergone a conversion at a Protestant revival in which he said, "a real, substantial, and lasting impression was made upon me which changed the whole current of my life" Later as a young Catholic priest in England, he wrote to his father to describe his mission work; he told him that "he was giving a spiritual retreat, that is, as you would say in America, a revival." 

Later, as head of the Redemptorist mission band in the United States and then as a member of the Paulists, he excited his audiences with his drama-filled preaching. He himself had experienced the religion of revivalism, and as a mission preacher he knew what he was about. He was a revivalist, that is how he described his work to his Protestant father and that was the style of preaching he adopted. A young teen-age girl said that his sermons were "impossible to describe.... His gestures, his delivery, gave it [the last judgment scene] the appearance of reality, that is, made it pass in imagination before us." 

First he would speak in a quiet, gentle manner, then he "screamed out so that the walls of the Cathedral reechoed it back again; it reverberated and resounded. It was magnificent and terrible and the people cried, groaned, beat their breasts ... and when he spoke of the wicked they all cried out Oh Oh Oh Oh My God, My God and then crosses all over their faces."  Appropriately he was described "as the one with the clarion Voice. His flair for the dramatic included a particularly striking trait. During his sermons he not only pointed to the mission cross, "but he even clung to it, till it swayed back and forth with the weight of his body, whilst the people conscience-stricken and pale with emotion watched and listened in almost breathless silence."

Joseph Wissel was the foremost Redemptorist revivalist, a recognized authority on how to conduct missions. During his career he preached close to one thousand missions in both German and English . Catholic folklore remembers the Redemptorists as singularly forceful preachers, prototypes of the hellfire and brimstone school of preaching. A contemporary said of them that they used 

". . . Stern, strong, rough words they use. So did John the Baptist; so did the Prophets; so did our Savior on more than one occasion.... They are men who do not believe in treating evil with politeness; they stand on no ceremony with sin; they call things by their right names. Rough truth rather than smooth phrases is their motto. Their sermons are something more than tinkling sound. Unused to mingling with the world, they know not how to deck Truth with flowers and ribbon-rhetoric. They are ignorant of the latest styles of presenting eternal realities to men's minds. New fashions of preaching find no fashion with them. To the old, old fashions prevalent in the times of the Apostles they cling. And hence they preach with power; hence sinners throng about their pulpits; and crowd to their confessionals. They are terribly in earnest, and the people love and trust, and believe the earnest man."  (Father Abram Ryan, Banner of the South, Augusta, Ga. Jan. 16, 1869).

The regulations which the Redemptorists issued in 1861 to standardize the parish mission alluded to this penchant for 41 tumultuous and clamorous" preaching and urged the priests to tone down their preaching style lest they be subject to ridicule. Wissel was particularly known for his "vehement" style, and Seelos urged him to treat the people "softly," not like the battering ram that he usually was.  Described as "frank, plain, and forceful in his delivery," he also advised others to be "forcible" in their language with "the delivery impressive and vigorous"; certain sermons, he said, demanded "a tone of severity (but not passion) and the attitude of an inexorable judge." Though he counseled against an eagerness "to make people shed tears," Wissel was known for his ability to elicit such a response from his audience.

On one occasion he delivered a sermon on the death of Christ in such a manner that "one woman began to cry aloud; twenty others joined in as a chorus; and the whole congregation showed similar symptoms when the preacher said: 'Don't cry now but cry at your confession: then bewail your sin.

Another effective preacher was Walter Elliott. He was the foremost authority on missions in the Paulist community, spending better than twenty years crisscrossing the country preaching Catholic revivals. For Elliott the mission sermon was calculated to arouse "the emotions of fear, reverence, awe, hatred of sin, and the love of God." It must "convict them of sin and infuse the fear of the Lord into their hearts by the terrors of judgment." Six feet three inches tall, his presence in the pulpit was truly impressive and his preaching was "intensely dramatic." One priest noted that he "trembled" during Elliott's sermon on hell and added, "what must have been the effect on the people." 

His sermons bristled with picturesque, fear-inspiring images, but he always saved his best for the temperance sermon. He was ruthless in his denunciation of drunkenness, and his enmity toward saloon keepers was such that he even refused them absolution in the confessional unless they abandoned their trade. The temperance cause was a special crusade with all revivalists, but none could match the Paulists for their persistent denunciation of the demon rum. The Paulist, Alfred Young, was described by Elliott as "a powerful and dramatic preacher, but not at all theatrical." He wrote out his sermons in their entirety and read them. Unlike Elliott's or Walworth's they lacked fervid imagery and emotion-packed drama; they were bland, all except the sermon on temperance. Then, predictably, Young rose to the occasion and preached a terrifying attack on the evils of drink and its perpetrators, the saloon keepers.

Among the Jesuits the premier revivalist was Francis X. Weninger. He had volunteered to work in the United States as a missionary specifically to preach parish missions, and for nearly forty years that is about all he did. There is little doubt about the effectiveness of his preaching; numerous accounts of his missions attest to his "straightforward," direct style, and he could massage the hearts of an audience as effectively as anyone. Weninger's principal genius was his calculated, systematic approach to the parish mission. He arranged every aspect of the revival to suit his goal of gaining the conversion of sinners. He was the tactician, the master planner, of Catholic revivalism whom German, French, and Irish pastors called upon to revive the religion of the people.

Arnold Damen was recruited for the American missions by the famous Jesuit missionary, Pierre-Jean De Smet. While visiting the school in Belgium where Damen was studying, De Smet spoke to the students in such a compelling manner of the needs and opportunities in the United States that Damen decided to dedicate hiis life to the American foreign mission. As the pastor of a growing parish in Chicago he took time out every year to hit the mission circuit. For a time he was the only Jesuit preaching English missions in the Midwest; then in 1861 the Jesuit, Cornelius Smarius, teamed up with Damen. Weighing close to three hundred pounds and possessing a booming voice, Damen was judged to be "a most successful preacher to the masses of people." He himself admitted that he preached "with great vehemence," and he "strongly favored the dramatic method of presenting a subject." 

One woman recalled the impression he made on her as a young child:

After a thrilling sermon on the Passion he held aloft in the pulpit a huge crucifix and addressed the Saviour as follows: "My God, it was my sins of wantonness and rebellion, leading me to occasions of sin that caused those fearful wounds in your sacred Feet; my refusal to walk to Sunday Mass drove the nails deeper and deeper; my cursing, swearing, my uncharitable and blasphemous speech that caused the awful parching of your sacred lips. . . ." As he went on, the sobs and cries that broke forth from the congregation of men and women were terrifying to me. The words "wantonness and rebellion" never left my memory. 

From this brief sketch it is clear that these preachers adopted an evangelical style of oratory. They went straight to the heart of their audiences, seeking to stir the emotions and to move people to conversion. Expectedly, some had more flair for the dramatic than others. They were individuals and each had his own particular style in the pulpit. Seelos was admittedly more mild than Wissel; Young's sermons were more refined and less dramatic than Walworth's; the Jesuit Maguire, who worked the eastern mission circuit, did not have the dramatic style of Damen, but like all Catholic revivalists "his fervid eloquence carried conviction to the heart of the unbeliever and strengthened the faith of the wavering."

With all the preparatory and promotional activities completed, the mission could then begin. It commenced on Sunday and would last for one, two, or even four weeks. Weninger's revivals seldom continued for more than eight days, but other missions preached by a group of at least three missionaries, could go on for two weeks, occasionally even four. The length of the mission varied, depending on the size of the community. It never was less than a week, and only occasionally did it go beyond fifteen days. A practice which was followed by many mission bands was to hold a two-week mission, dividing it up between men and women. One reason for this was that the churches were not large enough to accommodate the large crowds, and such an arrangement would also spread out the number of people going to confession over a longer period of time. Another reason was that the women, who made the mission first, were of "great help to the missionaries to induce the men to attend the men's mission." 

The great mission at St. Paul's went on for a month. Each week was aimed at a specific clientele, married women, then single women; afterwards married men and then single men. This arrangement "contributed immensely to the convenience of the people and to the thoroughness of the work." It was not the customary arrangement and only took place in large city parishes, but it was said to have "met with extraordinary success." 

The daily schedule was very similar regardless of what religious order was involved. Each day began with a mass, usually at 5 A.M., followed by a thirty-minute instruction. "Punctuality must be strictly observed," it was noted, "so as to give time to those attending the instructions to go home take their breakfast, and be on time for their work, that begins usually at seven o'clock." Later in the morning a second mass and instruction repeated the earlier exercises. The next service took place in the evening. A brief instructional talk was followed by the recitation of the rosary; then came the highlight of the day, the mission sermon, which lasted for about one hour. The day closed with benediction of the blessed sacrament which together with the rosary was a traditional devotion in the Catholic community.

The morning instructions or doctrinal sermons focused on the sacraments of penance and the eucharist as well as the commandments of God. Their aim was to teach, not to exhort, and to complement the major sermons that were given in the evening. Since confession, or the sacrament of penance, was the heart of the mission, the instructions emphasized this a great deal. 

In a two-week mission, the first week of instructions would be given over to explaining the sacrament of penance, hitting on such themes as the necessity of confession, how to make an examination of conscience, the true spirit of contrition, and the need for a firm purpose of amendment. The following week would focus on the necessity of attendance at mass and receiving communion as well as on one or two of the commandments . The instructions comprised the catechetical aspect of the mission and were thought to be especially necessary in the United States where 

on the one hand Catholic education still labors under great defection, and on the other Catholics are continually associating with an unbelieving population. Many are deficient even in the rudiments of faith, or at least have not a sufficient knowledge of their meaning.

In the evening, before the rosary, another but briefer instruction was given. This centered on either the great truths of Christianity outlined in the Apostles' Creed or on the meaning and appreciation of certain "objects of piety and devotion" such as the rosary, wearing of medals, the scapular, crucifixes, and sacred pictures."

A practice strongly favored by Weninger and also used by other preachers was a series of instructions on the different states of life, that is, married and single men and women. Generally given in the afternoon, or in the evening for men, they centered on the principal duties of each state of life . The main thrust in each instruction was on marriage, correctly preparing for it or faithfully living up to its responsibilities. A mission for children occasionally took place during the adult mission. It was aimed at school children between the ages of ten and fourteen. The sessions were held in the early morning and afternoon; ordinarily the superintendents of public schools "showed some generosity in allowing the Catholic children to leave school sooner for such purposes." 

The highlight of the revival was the evening sermon. One Jesuit put it, they were "the big guns in our engagement, with boom and reverberation overwhelming by irresistible force." According to Walter Elliott "the mission sermon ought to be a masterpiece, arousing the emotions of fear, reverence, awe, hatred of sin and the love of God." The evening was a time for "invective; intreaty [sic]; reproach; pleading; impassioned remonstrance; warning and threatening: all resulting in horror of sin, terror of the Divine wrath; and towards the end of the mission compassion for Jesus Crucified, and tender sentiments of hope and love." The style as well as the content of the evening sermons sharply differed from the morning instructions. The latter were plain, simple catechetical lessons delivered in a didactic manner; the sermons were basically moral "harangues," as one revivalist described them.

When the preacher mounted the platform to give the great sermon of the day, he was following a centuries-old tradition. The themes he addressed himself to had been tried, tested, and confirmed by the great masters of Catholic revivalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A schema of sermon topics had developed over the centuries and throughout the nineteenth century it remained fundamentally the same. The traditional themes were occasionally supplemented by topics which responded to the particular needs of the age (Catholic schools, temperance), by apologetical sermons (the church), or by certain devotional topics (the Sacred Heart, sodalities, the Holy Name). 

After studying mission sermons for over a century, one scholar concluded that "the main stream, the general direction and the peculiar form of mission sermons remained the same until very recently, right up to the second world war." The framework for this schema was to be found in Ignatius Loyola's Spiritual Exercises where the themes of the first week furnished the fundamental motifs of the Catholic revival: salvation, sin, death, judgment, hell, and the ways of conversion. Alphonsus de Liguori, Vincent de Paul, Paul of the Cross, and Paul Segneri preached sermons that, "apart from a few negligible variations," were "more or less identical." The same can be said of Walter Elliott, Joseph Wissel, Clarence Walworth, and Francis X. Weninger. They all followed a similar plan, preaching the great truths of salvation which aimed at a religious revival by bringing people face to face with the evil of sin and the harshness of God's judgment.

At the first mission held in St. Paul's in 1859 the opening sermon took place at the Sunday morning High Mass, the customary time for beginning a parish mission; that evening the sermon topic was salvation. In the next seven days the revivalists preached on mortal sin, death, penance, judgment, mercy of God, occasions of sin, and the closing sermon on perseverance and the renewal of baptismal vows. 

A recommended schema for a one-week Jesuit mission began with a sermon on the end of man, followed by sermons on sin, hell, death, judgment, mercy, and the closing ceremony; on the last Sunday, the eighth day of the mission "a sermon on the Sacred Heart will be appropriate and encouraging." 

The core of a Redemptorist revival included the following themes: salvation, mortal sin, general judgment, hell, Blessed Virgin Mary, precepts of the church, and means of perseverance. These themes were never to be omitted, but could be added to according to the length of the revival. 

 Depending on the needs of the parish, a point that every preacher was to familiarize himself with, certain sermons were added, such as intemperance, attendance at mass, duties of parents, Catholic schools; or they became the concrete specification of a more generic topic, such as intemperance for occasions of sin and attendance at mass for precepts of the church. The basic thrust of the mission, however, was clear. The first stage of the revival aimed at conversion which was then followed by the theme of perseverance. 

A more theological breakdown of the sermon topics further illustrates the design of a Catholic revival. It aimed at conversion by (a) making man return to himself to recognize his sinfulness (sermons on salvation and sin); (b) arousing in his soul a fear of God's justice (sermons on death, judgment, hell); (c) awakening hope in his heart (sermon on mercy); and (d) finally trying to rekindle the love of God and the Christian life (sermons on perseverance, precepts of the church). 

The design of revival sermons underscored the point that revivalism had been "reduced into a kind of science." From the opening-day ceremony to the final sermon everything was arranged to achieve the best possible results. For a week or more the drama of salvation was acted out on the preacher's platform. to emphasize certain scenes, the words of the preacher were reinforced by the ritual of ceremony. One of the more dramatic was the ritual that accompanied the sermon on death. Among the Redemptorists the custom was to use a catafalque, placed "so that it can be seen from every part of the church"; candles were placed around it and lighted just before the sermon, then some mournful piece is sung.... It is well to begin the sermon abruptly with the solemn question, Who is dead? Then continue by answering: The sinner is dead! Dead to God! dead in his soul! He shall die another death this night at the foot of this catafalque: die to sin, lest he die in sin sooner than he expects. Then, addressing himself to all, the preacher asks them where, they think, their souls would be if their bodies were lying there ready for burial. But how soon may not one or the other be there, etc. This ceremony never fails to make a very deep impression."

The Passionists occasionally used the figure of the dead Christ to dramatize the sermon on his passion and death. The paraphernalia used to decorate the mannequin were so unique and tradition-bound that priests repeatedly wrote to Italy requesting the desired costume.

The sinner's bell was another ritual used in many missions. It tolled each evening at the close of the services "to carry to the cars of the wayward sinner the report that the congregation is just now praying for him on their knees before the Blessed Sacrament.

Francis X. Weninger was unquestionably the most dramatic performer of his day. His handbook on missions minutely described in over two hundred pages how his revivals were conducted, and it was evident that for Weninger ritual as well as rhetoric was an indispensable ingredient for a successful parish mission. Elaborate processions were scheduled throughout the mission; bands and choirs marched in these processions and performed at all the services. Every detail of the mission, including the placing of flowers and candles, was designed for the best possible effect. Weninger was such a stickler for detail that he even carried his own incense, since American priests were using all types of unorthodox mixtures.

But the piece de resistance of a Weninger mission, and of many other missions as well, x@ was the erection of the mission cross. Almost every page of Weninger's autobiography alluded to this ceremony. At first the cross was erected outside the church, preferably on a knoll or hillside to enhance its prominence. Thirty to fifty feet in height, inscribed with the names of Jesus, Mary, the word Mission and the date, along with the inscription, "He who perseveres to the end will be saved," the cross stood as a continual reminder of the mission. Experience eventually determined that it was better to place the cross inside the church; outside in the open air it was subject to deterioration, during the bad weather the ceremony could not take place and the cross also was exposed to desecration by "scoffers of religion."

Inside the church the cross was naturally smaller in size, only ten feet in height, but the ceremony of the mission cross, inside or outside the church, was always an inspiring ritual. Isaac Hecker described an outdoor ceremony which took place in Loretto, Pennsylvania, and it conveys as well as any account the pomp and splendor of this popular ritual.

I must describe to you in a few words the closing ceremony, the plantation of the cross. We all assembled in the church on Sunday afternoon at 3:30 to recite the Rosary. The procession then was formed outside the Church. First came the processional cross with the boys, then the men carrying a large cross 40 feet long entwined with garlands of flowers borne by 60 of them; on each side of the cross was a file of soldiers with a band of music; then came 20 or 30 Franciscan brothers of the third order with their cowls; then the clergy; after them the missioners in their habit, followed by the Sisters of Mercy, and these by the girls and women. The number of the procession was about 4,000. We marched through the village to the site of the cross with music, and there we blessed and erected the cross in a most conspicuous place. The farewell sermon was preached at the foot of the cross and the papal Benediction given. It was a novel scene for America, a famous one for our holy religion, and one which never will be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The cross overlooks the whole village, and when you look that way you will always see some one or more saying their five paters and aves to gain the indulgence of 10,000 years which is attached to the missionary cross

.None of the ritual were unique to the United States; like the mission itself they were European imports. But some ceremonies popular in Europe never made it to the United States, or if they did they were not long on the scene. The major reason for this was that too much emphasis on the theatrical "in this country ... would only excite the ridicule of the people" This particularly applied to the ceremonies of the Italian-style mission developed by Alphonsus de Liguori, Paul of the Cross, and others. 

In contrast to the mission north of the Alps, the Italian mission put a great deal of emphasis on extravagant ceremonies that appealed primarily to the senses. The process of adaptation that some of these ceremonies underwent was best illustrated in the Passionist order. Founded in Italy by Paul of the Cross in 1720, the order had its roots in the baroque period when gaudy, even grotesque, practices began to creep into the mission program. To emphasize the passion of Christ, the keystone of their spirituality, Passionist preachers employed such ceremonies "as the repeated processions with the mission crucifix, the taking of the discipline at the foot of the cross, and the impressive ceremony of the burial of Christ. None of these rituals made it to the United States; few of them ever got outside of Italy. They were too Italian, too culturally conditioned, and younger Passionists looked unfavorably upon them as too theatrical for an Anglo-Saxon audience. One unique Passionist ritual did make it to America. Father Anthony Calandri was the only one who employed it, "and with impressive results," noted the American historian of the order. After the sermon on death, Calandri placed a rope around his neck and a crown of thorns on his head, and then while he knelt at the foot of the crucifix facing the congregation, he begged pardon for his sins. Then the people were to beg pardon of each other. 

The Redemptorists had a special ceremony to drive home the evil of a sacrilegious communion. The 1861 directives spelled out the ritual which was carried over from the days of Alphonsus de Liguori. First, the eucharistic host was exposed in a monstrance placed on the altar; then the preacher, kneeling before the altar, gave a stirring sermon on the eucharist, gradually introducing the theme of sacrilege. The monstrance was then covered with a veil; at this point the preacher could publicly bemoan his own sins or end his sermon with an act of reparation. Having aroused the people to a "sense of most profound humility and most intense contrition," he then ordered that the veil be removed from the monstrance, once again exposing the eucharistic host for all to see. He concluded the ceremony by asking the people to make a solemn act of atonement for the evils done by sacrilegious communions. 

Such a bland description hardly conveys the emotion that accompanied such a ritual during the course of a mission. Priests objected to it because it could do more harm than good. It was thought to be too dangerous, exciting the people too much, even frightening them and keeping them away from the sacraments. Eventually the Redemptorists abandoned the practice and incorporated the theme of a sacrilegious communion in another sermon in a more subdued manner. 

The abandonment of certain old-style rituals, however, did not mean that the American Catholic revival lacked emotion-packed ceremonies. The entire mission was a dramatic process, and there were enough ceremonies available, even for an Anglo-Saxon world, to intensify the drama of salvation. Some were planned; others like the reconciliation of sinners before a packed church, the public validation of marriages, and the reception of converts into the church were more spontaneous and arose from the circumstances of particular revivals. If things were not going well, the preachers even took to the streets in elaborate processions to arouse the lethargy of the community and boom up attendance at the mission.

To enliven the ceremonies and the sermon, music and song were incorporated into the revival. They were a natural, necessary ingredient and "ordinarily a very attractive one."  Each evening the services began with the traditional hymn, Veni Creator, and closed with the customary hymns at benediction. In addition, other vernacular hymns specifically composed for revivals were sung to accentuate various themes emanating from the preacher's platform. The songs of Father Faber, the noted English spiritual writer and preacher, were very popular; the Paulist Alfred Young also composed mission hymns. Other parish song books generally included a section of mission hymns. The church choir usually did the major work, but in the late 1880s the Paulists introduced the practice of congregational singing, "a feature entirely novel and experimental" at that time. They continually fostered this practice, and it did catch on with other religious orders. The Jesuits adopted it in the 1890s, but at the close of the century congregational "singing at missions was not common." 

Twenty years later Walter Elliott was still trying to promote it. The choir was the key to revival song, and only occasionally, at the closing ceremony especially, did the people raise their voice in song. Like the ritual of ceremony, revival music was used to create the appropriate atmosphere and to reinforce the sense of conversion and repentance urged upon the people; to loose "the chains that have bound me," as one hymn put it, so that "by the mercy of God the poor slave is set free."

To break the "chains of sin" was the goal of the revival; for Catholics this was achieved through the sacrament of penance, or confession as it was more commonly referred to. Half of the instructions focused on it, and the first group of sermons sought to move people toward the "sawdust trail" that led to the confessional. Priests began hearing confessions only on the third or fourth day of the mission, after the people had been sufficiently warmed up so that they could seek the sacramental ratification of their conversion. Since it was a private affair between priest and sinner, extra priests had to be recruited to help out with the large crowds that lined up day and night at the confessional. 

The revival was theoretically limited to people who belonged to the parish; to enforce this admission tickets were often distributed to the parishioners. This restriction was also observed in the confessional where only those people who made the mission were allowed admittance. Such a regulation was not always easy to observe, but preachers were urged to "be strict in enforcing this regulation." The sacramental complement to confession was communion. To highlight this as much as possible, Weninger urged that different groups of people, specifically married and single men and women, receive the sacrament in a body at a specified mass. For Weninger it was a natural complement to his emphasis on singling out the various states of life for special treatment. Other preachers were less specific, but in a two-week revival divided up among men and women, a similar effect was achieved since one week the mission was limited to women and then the next week to men.

The last night of the mission was the capstone of all previous ritual, song, and preaching. In some instances it was the occasion for the erection of the mission cross in the church; at other times it featured the renewal of baptismal vows; occasionally both ceremonies occurred together. Perseverance in the Christian life was the theme for this service; the mission cross ritual underlined this as did the renewal of baptismal vows. The church was always packed with a standing room only crowd. Elaborate arrangements of flowers and candles decorated the altar; during the renewal of their vows the people, with lighted candles in hand, stood up to renounce the devil and proclaim their faith in Jesus and the church. Oftentimes the mission scorecard was read which included the numbers who had received communion and those who had been converted to Catholicism. The preachers were making their final appearance, their grand farewell. Newspaper reports always singled out this event as the climax of the revival. The Newburyport, Massachusetts, Daily Herald gave the following description of the closing of a Paulist mission where the renewal of baptismal vows took place. As well as any account it conveyed the sense of religious enthusiasm that pervaded the revival's grand finale.

We are not unacquainted with revival meetings, and we have before seen people at camp meetings and other excited gatherings, stand up and vow,; but we never before saw such a scene. The multitude looked as though they would have sunk into the earth or been burned together at the stake, before one of them would in the slightest manner have denied the faith. We saw before us both the material of which martyrs are made and the fiery zeal that would make them. During some parts of the service, especially at the farewell, the people were greatly moved. The speaker held them as by a sort of electrical influence, and the whole audience quivered like the leaves of a tree in the breeze. Now they sunk; and now the rising tide found vent in sobs and moans.

One event which often took place at the closing of a mission, and on other evenings as well, engendered a good deal of controversy. It was a typically American theme - the collection of money. In reading over the conciliar legislation of several countries the similarity of concern and the importance attached to the mission was universally apparent. Only in the United States, however, does the question of money arise. The discussion of missions at the 1866 Baltimore council was relatively brief, but the one issue that aroused the concern of the theologians was this issue of "filthy lucre." The preliminary acts of the council referred to the practice, urged preachers and pastors to avoid scandal in this regard, and stated that before such collections or the sale of religious articles took place the preacher had to obtain the consent of the pastor and the bishop. The theologians thought that such practices were unwise and out of order and wanted to abolish them entirely. Their advice was overruled, and mission collections and the sale of religious articles were allowed to continue with the caution that any action which might arouse suspicion of any semblance of "filthy lucre" and thus cause severe harm to the mission be zealously avoided. Subsequent events indicated that such scandal could not be avoided, given the zeal with which some preachers and pastors acted.

The reason for the collection was ostensibly to cover the expenses of the revivalists. But the records indicate that their stipend was generally a small portion of the total collection - two, three, or even four hundred dollars - the rest went to the pastor.  Mission collections also took place to raise money for a new church, a new school, or any other parochial expense. For some pastors the only reason for having a mission was to raise money for their parish. Yet, such crass motivation was more the exception than the rule. Despite the possibility of causing scandal, the collection continued to be a regular feature of Catholic revivals. Preachers approved of the practice and on occasion even took up the collection themselves to dramatize the need for a new church, a new school, or a new altar. Later on, the collection was used to support the non-Catholic mission.

The selling of books and religious articles was also commonplace at missions. Such materials were an integral part of Catholic piety. Weninger carried his own supply of books which he had written, and his zeal in selling them eventually led his superiors to forbid such sales at the mission. Damen followed a similar practice and ran into the same trouble. Naturally the volume of sales varied. At a Redemptorist mission in Philadelphia 1,825 books and religious articles were sold, netting a total of $3,000; at a Cleveland mission the sales brought in $600.97.  The proceeds went either to the parish, to the preachers, or to a local merchant who had the franchise for the mission. People freely purchased these items, and it did provide an outlet for the mass distribution of Catholic literature and devotional materials. It was primarily through mission sales that Cardinal James Gibbons's Faith of Our Fathers got into the hands of thousands of Catholics and non-Catholics and became one of "the most widely read books on religion in the English language."

Another controversial aspect of Catholic revivalism was less tangible. It was the debate over the propriety of religious enthusiasm at Catholic revivals. The two major essays on Catholic revivals in the nineteenth century both addressed themselves to this issue. One, written by Father Frederick Faber in England, was conditioned by the English environment and was an apologia for religious enthusiasm over against Anglican critics. The second, by Orestes Brownson, which also appeared in the 1850s, was another apologia for a "religious excitement" in Catholic missions against those "superficial observers" who claimed that Catholic and Protestant revivals closely resembled each other.

Both authors articulated an attitude which was common to many Catholic publicists. They were opposed to religious enthusiasm as an end in itself, or better, to the "base" type of enthusiasm that they associated with Methodism; for Brownson this was most evident in the western camp meeting.  As he put it, "in Protestant revivals, excitement is carried to excess, and made the end aimed at. In Catholic retreats and missions, it is wisely managed and made simply a means." He acknowledged that in some Protestant revivals it was not carried to excess, but ultimately it was not useful since, in his opinion, such a revival did not offer salvation. Catholic revivals, however, were "a vehicle of the supernatural graces and gifts of God." Faber's argument was basically the same: grace sanctified religious enthusiasm and made something which was not decorous legitimate. 

Within the Catholic community there definitely appeared to be some people who criticized the revival because it was "an imitation of the old Methodist revivals. This was not a widespread concern, but it surfaced periodically in oblique comments in parish mission accounts. One such report of a Redemptorist mission observed that

Catholics never forget themselves in the house of God as to disturb its solemn stillness by any audible expressions of feeling. They never fall into what is called "religious excitement," even when their hearts are most deeply moved.... Their excitement is all within, quiet, subdued, working to salvation, never noisy or demonstrative.

Another account noted that the Paulists discarded "the rant that characterizes so many religious leaders and teachers who strive by stage effects and sensational recitals to charm or frighten proselytes into their ranks." It was clear that such references were apologies on behalf of Catholic revivals against any type of religious excitement which Catholics associated with Protestant revivalism. Indeed, parish missions did not evidence the physical frenzy associated with the early western camp meetings, but it was also apparent that religious enthusiasm despite any disclaimers to the contrary, was an integral part of Catholic revivalism.

It was principally a question of style. Some individual preachers, like Weninger and Damen, were accused of appealing too much "to the heart" and thus effecting only temporary results. Wissel too was cautioned about the vehemence of his style, and the Redemptorist regulations urged their priests to tone down their preaching. Other preachers prided themselves on "the total absence of any striving after excitement or sensational effect." The enthusiastic style was believed to effect only temporary results, and for some it was not decorous and proper. But this issue of religious enthusiasm was clearly a marginal concern that surfaced only occasionally. It was never a major debate and did not cause the type of divisive conflict which took place over Finney's new measures. Church councils never alluded to it; a reading of newspaper accounts and mission reports indicated that it was not a major concern. Nor can it be associated with the style of any one religious order over against another. All groups had their fiery, dramatic performers, and those were the men most celebrated by the community and singled out in historical memory.

The issue of religious enthusiasm was a question of preferred style, and the majority of preachers, certainly the giants in the profession, were soul-stirring, exciting preachers. This was what the revival was about. It was designed to excite, to shock, the religious sensibilities of people. Too much theatrics did not go over well with American Catholics, and revivalists had to abandon some of the rituals common in European countries. But some theatrics were necessary since revivalism thrived on dramatic, evangelical preaching. By adopting an evangelical style parish mission preachers fostered a type of religious experience which tradition has generally assumed to be uncharacteristic of modern Roman Catholicism. 

But revival religion not only found a home in the Catholic community, it also became the most popular religious experience of Catholic Americans in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its popularity, however, was not entirely based on the drama of its ritual or the appeal of the preacher. Surely these were critical elements in the success of the revival, but equally important was the message of the preacher. People came night after night, not only to see him in action, but also to hear what he had to say. And in the final analysis what he said was to have a more lasting effect on the culture of Catholicism. Thus, not only the medium, but also the message of revivalism has to be examined for a fuller appreciation of the evangelical strain in American Catholicism.

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