Stewards of the Mysteries of God: Immaculate Conception Seminary, 1860–2010 by Robert James Wister

Abstract

Reviewed by: Stewards of the Mysteries of God: Immaculate Conception Seminary, 1860–2010 by Robert James Wister Joseph M. White Stewards of the Mysteries of God: Immaculate Conception Seminary, 1860–2010. By Robert James Wister. (South Orange, New Jersey: Immaculate Conception Seminary, 2010 Pp. 496) For the 150th anniversary of the Archdiocese of Newark’s historic institution for educating “Stewards of the Mysteries of God” (its motto), Robert J. Wister provides an outstanding narrative of one seminary’s progress from the immigrant-Church era to the twenty-first century. His meticulous attention to contexts and lived experience of a seminary community for each period makes his story a model of scholarship and enjoyable to read. For New Jersey, the diocese of Newark was established in 1853—one of ten sees created that year as Irish and German immigration to the United States surged. In 1855, founding Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley, Mother Elizabeth Seton’s nephew, opened male-only Seton Hall College in Madison. In 1860, the college was relocated to South Orange, closer to Newark, and in its new building a seminary was opened. Like most antebellum U.S. bishops, Bayley started a seminary to train diocesan priests locally to diminish the dependence on recruiting priests from Europe. Fire destroyed the building in 1866; a new three-story Gothic structure, still in use, took its place. Despite seminarians’ services in staffing the college, the institution struggled with debts, low enrollment, and calls for its closing. [End Page 356] Bishop Michael A. Corrigan’s family wealth rescued it. Its standards were high, and its state charter enabled seminarians to earn a bachelor’s degree for collegiate studies and a master’s degree for theology—credentials not available at most diocesan seminaries. For the early twentieth century, Wister integrates the seminary story with the Holy See’s new direction for priesthood formation worldwide, hence addressing the condemnation of Modernism (1907), the Oath against Modernism (1910) mandated for faculties, the creation of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities (1915) to issue regulations and require reports, and the Code of Canon Law (1917) that outlines the Church’s first-ever organizational plan for the seminary. In light of Church authority’s hostility toward new directions in theological learning, Wister profiles seminarian Will Durant, enrolled 1909–1911, whose restless intellect prompted him to leave the Church. He went on to publish his bestselling, The Story of Philosophy, and, with wife Ariel, the eleven-volume Story of Civilization. As New Jersey’s Catholic population grew, Newark’s diocesan area was reduced with the formation of new dioceses at Trenton in 1881 and Paterson and Camden in 1937. In the latter year, Newark was raised to an archdiocese. To expand enrollment, the seminary was relocated in 1927 from the Seton Hall campus to two mansions at Darlington in the scenic isolation of northern New Jersey. Wister vividly portrays Archbishop Thomas Walsh’s wily depression-era fundraising to construct an imposing seminary building there to accommodate 275 and was completed in 1938. Between the World Wars, Msgr. Thomas McLaughlin, seminary rector 1922–1937, like counterparts elsewhere and at the legalistic Walsh’s behest, enforced the era’s vision of seminary life that kept the students at their rural redoubt during the summer. The “Teutonic Irishman” (111), McLaughlin had taken seminary and graduate studies with the Jesuits at Innsbruck, Austria. A “terror in his own right,” (143) this classic rector enforced detailed rules keeping seminarians’ personal freedom and initiative narrow to ensure docility and humility. He and Walsh required of students high academic performance and bilingual skills to serve a multi-ethnic flock. They developed a high-quality priest faculty with doctorates from European universities. Seton Hall College continued conferring bachelor’s degrees on seminarians, but its own accreditation prompted ending the master’s degree in theology in 1932. For the period 1961–2010, Wister presents the seminary culture in a complex transition from the Walsh-McLaughlin legacy to positive responses to current educational and theological standards. During Vatican II (1962–1965), anticipation of change created varied expectations in the seminary community’s sometimes bewildered staff and faculty and assertive seminarians. The U.S. Bishops’ Program of Priestly...