UPDATING FATHER ALOYSIOUS' TRAVEL REFLECTIONS
January 8, 2007
To: Brother Augustine Campion, St. Bernard Abbey, Cullman AL
http://www.stbernardabbey.com/
Copy to: Sisters Eleanor Harrison, Mary Ruth Coffman and Bertha True, Sacred Heart Monastery, Cullman AL
http://www.shmon.org/
Brother Augustine,
Thank you for the folder of
Father Aloysius Plaisance articles. I'm thinking these are the tip of the iceberg, you said there were three large collections. I've been doing a quick "look-see", hopefully to find potential historical moments I can update.
My first tour of 2007 at the end of January is heading to Mobile, via Gees Bend and Monroeville, all unfamiliar territory for me. At last Saturday's Witness for Peace vigil, Sister Bertha showed me on a map her youthful stomping grounds around Newbern, which may put me in the radius of
Selma, Demopolis and Moundville on the return leg.
You mentioned that Fathers Edward and Abbot Victor are at parishes on the eastern side of Mobile Bay, and that Bishop Oscar Lipscomb, OSB in Mobile probably has his own Father Aloysius memories.
Those first paragraphs from 1976 says it all-
CULLMAN-Some of Father Aloysious Plaisance's friends call him the unlikely monk. They remember when he rode a big motorcycle around Birmingham, and to New Orleans and Florida. He still rides a motorcycle occasionally, delighting in the surprised faces he passes.
Some of his friends have wondered why he became a monk, but he can name off the advantages those friends cannot see even after he names them. They see confinement: close. tight life of isolation.
"FREEDOM" he says, "It gives me freedom."
When I am riding long distances, I always think about how Father Al would have thought "
this is SO cool", especially the "surprised faces".
When I read through these sample "
Travel Reflections" columns, and knowing what a unique character he was (
I contend he was better known than Thomas Merton outside Benedictine circles, because his columns appeared in syndication throughout the south), an idea has occurred to me.
Sister Eleanor noted my conundrum at lunch last Saturday. She and I found that when we Googled "
Aloysius Plaisance", there are not a lot of actual articles he wrote on the internet, and in many cases the entry is simply a casual mention of his attendance here and there, or how Senator Howell Heflin honored him in the US Senate, with few details.
http://www.google.com/search?source...D,GGLD:2005-02,GGLD:en&q="Aloysius+Plaisance"
Plaisance, Aloysius, O.S.B., "Dom Joseph Didier, Pioneer Benedictine Missionary to the United States," 3:1 (1952) 23-26
Plaisance, Aloysius, O.S.B., "Emmeran Bliemel, O.S.B., Heroic Confederate Chaplain," 17:2 (1966) 209-216
Plaisance, Aloysius, O.S.B., "Ethan Allen's Daughter, First United States Nun," 8:2 (1957) 144-152
Plaisance, Aloysius, O.S.B., "The Catholic Church and the Confederacy," 15:2 (1964) 159-167
Cataloging the first batch of his works, there are "
Travel Reflections" east to Atlanta and Belmont, north to Chicago, Philly, Seattle. There are a couple of European articles when he biked from monastery to monastery (
always arriving in time for lunch), some letters to Abbot Hilary Dreaper.
So far, no articles south by southwest, toward the Gulf Coast.
Of course there is his famous "
Bear in the Smoky Mountains" story. I heard that warm-up opener in his History classes, with the
more realistic and profane commentary he likely made when waking up with a black bear in the bunk next to him, rummaging his backpack full of fresh food.
There are two historical papers, one delivered in 1962 to the Alabama Historical Association meeting in Mobile, titled "
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE CONFEDERACY", another titled
"EMMERAN BLIEMEL, O.S.B. HEROIC CONFEDERATE CHAPLAIN" (1966, The American Benedictine Review) . That Googlesearch mentions many more, on some Adobe or pdf file.
Picking through the first article, the Sisters of Charity in 1861-1865 Mobile are mentioned.
"The work of the nearly 200 sister-nurses did a great deal to lessen the misunderstandings of the Church and produced a much greater appreciation of the Church's good works.
In Mobile the Sisters of Charity operated City Hospital. In the last days of the war, when the Confederates were evacuating Mobile, on April 12, the sisters gladly took charge of the Confederate sick and wounded. Sister Gabriel Larkin, Superior of City Hospital, has left an interesting description of their work in this regard.
"When the Confederates saw that they were obliged to evacuate Mobile their anxiety was what would they do with their sick and wounded who were about to be removed from the city....after some deliberation they came to the conclusion to send them to the City Hospital, knowing as they said, that they would not be molested while in the charge of the Sisters of Charity. They sent them all to us, and provided them amply with provisions. Our hospital was crowded and I hardly knew what to do when I was told they were going to send them to us, but it was useless to demonstrate with them, the only answer I got was, Sister we are ordered to leave them with you.
Wagon after wagon came and emptied their sick and wounded at our door, the front yard and the street around the hospital were buried with them, it was a cold rainy day, and to leave them there much longer would certainly cause their death. I had them crowded into every corner of the hospital."
I couldn't find a Sisters of Charity contact in my search, and also I was hoping I'd find a Father Al angle about the
Visitation Monestary in the packet.
http://www.visitationmonasterymobile.org/
My original idea was to simply find the "
Travel Reflections", especially which involved his bike travels, to
Canada, those trips he peddled
along the Natchez Trace, AND especially articles about the southwestern area below
Montgomery and Selma where I will be traveling in January.
I was thinking of revisiting his routes, comparing what I find decades later.
I know he wrote about nearly every Civil War site over 4 decades.
The first packet did have one sabbatical article featuring his biking the British Isles while at Cambridge in 1975-76. There were none about the trips to the Continent, except the letter to Abbot Hilary regarding N. Italy.
The packet included two "
Pastoral Life" articles, "
A Southern Priest Up North!" (1966) and "
Traveling in Coat and Collar" (1963).
The funny part about the second article, like when he traveled by Greyhound and introduced southerners to a real "catholic priest" in small rural coffee shops and bus depots,
it should be updated with the stories circa mid-1970's when he was having medical treatment in Memphis.
Abbot Hillary assigned him the fastest Abbey vehicle, which had no air conditioning. So the collar sat in the passenger seat. When the inevitable state trooper finally caught up, with a quick "attachment", the collar and the glaucoma excuse got him out of three or four speeding tickets.
"Rolling Asylum" it could be called.
I tried to scan some of the copies of "
Travel Reflections" into my upcoming pre-Mobile preparations, with less than steller results. In the "
Traveling in Coat and Collar" article, which is mostly humorous, he does not mention any small town names, in fact, the only city mentioned is
St. Louis, after chiding "alter Christus" wearing sports shirts on vacation, where he ponders what would happen in a catastrophe.
A personal case came up when I was waiting for a train in the Union Station at St. Louis. A large group of soldiers entered the station and headed for one of the trains. One soldier appeared to be rather loud and out of order when a MP came to him and ordered him over to the MP desk. The soldier refused and began to attack the MP. Drawing his pistol the MP fired a shot, wounding the soldier who was a short distance away from me.
When I heard the shot I rushed to the side of the wounded soldier. He was dying. At the sight of a priest, the crowd moved quickly aside and allowed me to be with him as he died. Would I have been permitted such a quick access had I been without my "coat and collar"?
I hope could be relayed to Abbot Cletus and Prioress Sister Janet,
if we could find a place to link articles written by the monks of St. Bernard and the Sisters at Sacred Heart, an archive, and I would volunteer to type in some of the hundreds of Fr. Al
Reflections.
Don't the Benedictines have
Scribes anymore?
The primary reason for my Mobile journey is to attend the January 27, 2007 rally, as a juniorest member of the sisters of Sacred Heart
Benedictines for Peace.
Along the way, I'm aiming to see the Gees Bend Quilters, riding the new ferry crossing near Camden, strolling around Harper Lee's Monroeville. Each new trip will try to feature a figure from American Literature.
For instance,
when I visit Oxford Mississippi one day, my William Faulkner experience will be enhanced by Father Malachy's many "front porch drinking juleps stories". Hopefully Father Malachy had some hard copy for posterity.
Well, I guess Faulkner's confessions wouldn't be written down, now that I think about it.... :???:
And there are Sisters from
Covington LA now, so this summer I could refer to any archives they have when I travel toward Abita Springs.
Anyway,
what is the status of the Scribe program? Typing isn't half as tough as quill and ink, the good old Abbey days......
And please pass along my idea about archives of community members works, links I could reference along the backroads of America.
Yours truly,
Paul