The Last 150 Years
by
Thomas H. Clancy, S.J.
When Huey Long became governor of Louisiana there were 331 miles of paved roads and three major bridges in the state highway system. In a state with as much water as Louisiana it is difficult to think ourselves back to a time when every lake, river, and bayou except three had to be crossed by boat. That was 1928. But here's an even more staggering challenge to the imagination. Go back almost a century further and think of the state of Louisiana with a grand total of 26 churches and 24 priests.
It's no wonder then that Bishop Leo De Neckere, the fifth bishop of New Orleans, was tempted to highjack four French Jesuits who arrived in the port of New Orleans in January of 1831. They were on their way to Bardstown, Kentucky to help Bishop Flaget in his new diocese. Bishop De Neckere succeeded in detaining them almost a year and even after three of them departed one, Fr. Pierre Ladavidre, continued to work in New Orleans and Southern Louisiana as a traveling missionary. When Bishop De Neckere died Fr. Ladavidre administered the diocese sede vacante along with the vicar-General, Antoine Blanc. When the latter was appointed bishop of New Orleans in 1835 he made it his first priority to get more priests from Europe. When he sailed for France in 1836 he took the Jesuit with him.
Jesuits Arrive in 1837
Their pleas to the French Jesuits were unavailing, however, and they had to appeal to the Jesuit General, John Roothaan. He directed the French Jesuits, then splitting up into the Paris and Lyons provinces, to find some men to help Bishop Blanc establish a Jesuit college in Louisiana. Eventually four priests, a novice and two brothers arrived in New Orleans in February of 183 7. Fr. Nicholas Point, a French Jesuit who had been working in Kentucky, had been designated as the rector of the new college. He was on hand to meet them. After considering several sites they decided to open their school in Grand Coteau. St. Charles College at Grand Coteau opened its doors in January of 1838. At the time it was the only Catholic school for boys in Louisiana.
The following year Fr. Roothaan made the new college the responsibility of the Jesuits of the Missouri mission. In 1840 Fr. Point, who had served as the spiritual director of Cornelia Connally while in Grand Coteau, left to pursue his first love, work among the Indians. He became one of the great missionaries of the Rocky Mountain Indians and his exquisite paintings of the Indian life are still valued by historians and ethnographers.
The Missouri Jesuits were never really happy with their southern appendage and when in 1847 Bishop Portier of Mobile succeeded in getting a commitment from the Lyons Jesuits to take over the direction of Spring Hill College, which he had founded in 1830, Fr. General decided to unite the two colleges into one administrative unit, the New Orleans mission of the Lyons province. In July of 1847 the new mission superior, Fr. Jean Baptiste Maisounabe, arrived in New York. A few months later he was in New Orleans working to establish a Jesuit college in New Orleans, up to then the hole in the doughnut of the mission.
Baronne Site Purchased
In his first year he chartered La Société Catholique d'education religieuse et littéraire, still in its English form the corporate title of the New Orleans province, and, with a loan from the Ursuline Sisters, bought the first parcel of land on Baronne and Common, the future site of the Jesuit college and church. But Fr. Maisounabe had a short life on the mission. He contracted yellow fever while helping the victims of the disease and died on 12 September 1848. It was left to Fr. John Cambiaso, who arrived as visitor shortly after the death of Maisounabe, to complete the buying of the plot and the construction of the church and school. The College of the Immaculate Conception flourished and by 1852 there were 160 students enrolled. Five years later there were 250. That was about as many as the old buildings could hold and the number remained stable until a new building was erected in 1882 and enrollment rose to 400 where it remained for the rest of the century.
All these colleges followed the same general pattern traditional in Jesuit education for three centuries. They took boys in their 11th or 12th year, although there was constant pressure to admit younger students. The full curriculum ran for 6 years and at the end of it the A.B. degree was awarded. Those who completed the course and had professional ambitions passed immediately to medical school or the study of law either under the tutelage of an attorney or, more rarely, to a Law School. The staple subjects were Latin, Greek and English with healthy doses of modern languages, mathematics, science, philosophy, and history. It combined high school and college, though each institution offered a commercial course, usually shorter, which catered to the more practical demands of the American scene. Many students dropped out along the way.
Anti-Catholicism Felt
But even this slow growth was a miracle of Providence. The middle decades of the 19th century were the worst possible time for Catholic schools for three reasons. First, there was a very unfriendly climate towards Catholics throughout the USA in the 1840's and 50's which saw the rise of nativism and the Know-Nothing party. Maria Monk and ex-priests found fame and fortune lecturing on the evils of the Catholic church and the Jesuits in particular. We have to remember that religion was not nearly so popular in America then as it became in the 20th century. Vigilantes from surrounding towns threatened to drive the Jesuits from Grand Coteau on their arrival. In 1852 and 18 53 there were huge anti-Catholic outbursts in New Orleans. Handbills were passed out protesting that Fr. Muldoon, the pastor of St. Patrick's, and the Jesuits should no longer be permitted to rule the city. It was fierce, opposition from Protestants and unbelievers that led to the demise of the Jesuit college in Baton Rouge.
In the second place yellow fever epidemics periodically devastated the population of the Gulf South or wherever mosquitoes flourished. In 1853 New Orleans was one of America's largest cities with a population of 150,000. It was also unquestionably the unhealthiest. In that year 5% of the population died of the disease and as many as 30,000 fled the city. The town of Carrollton grew up as a place of refuge from the ravages of the dreaded disease. St. Charles College and Spring Hill had healthier climates, but the ravages of yellow fever cut into the population they drew from. A lay professor wrote from Spring Hill back to Ireland in 1853 that the mission should appeal to those with an eye for color. There was scarlet fever, yellow fever and blue cholera.
In the third place there was the Civil War and Reconstruction. Two, of the three colleges were in occupied territory for much of the war and that made the m difficult of access from other parts of the South and from Latin America whence they drew students. Again this was of graver import to Grand Coteau and Mobile than it was to New Orleans, since the two former were predominantly boarding schools. Still the economic hardships that followed the war made education an unattainable luxury for many Catholic families.
Colleges Mission Centers
All three colleges, of course, were much more than mere educational institutions. All had parishes attached and were centers of missionary activity. Jesuits issued forth from the colleges to serve as chaplains in convents, hospitals and jails. They preached missions and gave retreats all over the South and served communities without priests throughout the Gulf region. A dozen parishes in Acadiana trace their origins to the labors of the Grand Coteau Jesuits, notably Fr. John Francis Abbadie, the first minister of St. Charles College, who labored in Assumption parish, Convent and Baton Rouge and died at the age of 86.
Many Jesuits were heroic in serving the victims of yellow fever. For example, in 1873 an epidemic of yellow fever hit Shreveport and struck down four priests and two sisters. The bishop of Natchitoches, a separate diocese since 1853, appealed for help and Fr. James Duffo, a veteran of many New Orleans epidemics, volunteered to go there. He worked in North Louisiana until the epidemic died out. Duffo was the spiritual director of a young New Orleans businessman, James Gibbons, who decided to become a priest and later became Cardinal of Baltimore.
After 1892 growth in the Province leveled off as did increases in apostolic responsibilities. In 1907 the New Orleans mission was given the status of a province, the third in America, and the first native born mission superior, Fr. John F. O'Connor, became the first provincial.
The most promising Jesuits in those days were put.into the pulpit. The prestige position in the mission and young province was the Mission Band. Fr. Albert Biever was the founder and first president of Loyola, but he considered his years on the mission band the summit of his career. They had more of a sense of urgency about converting the South, which was then much more rural and less metropolitan than it is today.
Visitor Brings Changes
It was the custom of the Jesuit General Superior since the time of St. Ignatius to send out visitors from time to time with plenary powers to make sure that the far flung regions of the Society were living up to their vocations and serving the Church in the best possible way. Fr. Norbert De Boynes had served as provincial of Paris and had completed a visit to the East Coast American Jesuits in 1920. In February of 1921 he arrived in New Orleans. He found a healthy province of 305 members. After almost a year in the South he expressed his admiration for the hard work and apostolic zeal for the province which covered a million square miles with 26 million people of whom 60% had no church affiliation and only 1.6 million were Catholic. But he was worried about problems of over-extension and overwork. He saw the need to take a new tack. Men should be prepared more carefully for school and pastoral work. That meant higher studies and advanced degrees. That meant in turn a cutback in apostolic commitments. He wanted the apostolate of the Southern Jesuits to take a more intellectual turn. "Why," he asked, could not Loyola University be the center and focus of this intellectual Catholic activity . . . ?"
Many Jesuits saw in these words the influence of Fr. Edward, Cummings, a native of Alsace who had served as president of Spring Hill College (1913-1919) and Loyola (1919-1924), which since 1912 had enjoyed University status. Edward Cummings was appointed provincial in 1935 and Loyola surely flourished under his rule both as rector and provincial. In 1918 it had but 14 Jesuits. Ten years later it had 26. And in the 1920's we see, the first few Jesuits destined to study for higher degrees in secular subjects.
When Loyola was started in 1904 it was a college like the one on Baronne St., but it grew very slowly. The decision was made in 1911 to specialize the lower grades on Baronne St. and higher education on St. Charles Avenue. Even so Loyola's full time enrollment never reached above a hundred until the 1920's. The old Jesuit 6-year system was breaking up and Jesuits had to deal with accrediting agencies and state departments of education. As for Jesuit High, as it came to be called in the 20's, it sold its property on Baronne and Common and moved into temporary quarters in 1925 and to its present location at Banks and Carrollton the following year.
