Newspaper Page Text
THE BULLETIN OF THE CATHOLIC LAYMEN’S ASSOCIATION OF GEORGIA
5
REMINISCENCES ON CARDINAL GIBBONS
BY THE BISHOP OF SAVANNAH.
The Bulletin has asked me to say a word about the
late Cardinal Gibbons, whom I knew intimately for
more than fifty years. I met him first at the time of
his consecration in the Baltimore Cathedral on Au
gust 16, 1868. He and Bishop Becker were both
consecrated at that time by Archbishop Spalding.
Bishop Gibbons had been selected by Pius IX for the
newly created Vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina,
and after his consecration went to Wilmington, N. C.,
where he made his home. In October, 1869, Bishop
Gibbons, in company with Archbishop Spalding and
Bishops McGill, Wood, Domenec, Fitzgerald and
O Gorman went to Rome to attend the Vatican Coun
cil, and as I was on the same ship going to Rome for
my ecclesiastical studies at the American College, I
had many opportunities then and in Rome of seeing
him. He did not speak at the Council. He was one
of the youngest bishops then, and his death removes
the sole survivor of that Council. My recollections,
based on many talks with him there, is that he was a
mild inopportunist.
He came back home in the summer of 1870, after
the meetings of the Council had been prorogued by
Pius IX on account of the heat. As is well known,
the Piedmontese invasion of the Eternal City caused
the suspension of the Council, which has never since
been reconvened.
Bishop Gibbons, with characteristic energy, went
back to his Vicariate to take up again his missionary
labors until the death of Bishop McGill, of Richmond,
left a vacancy in that See, which was filled by the
transfer of Bishop Gibbons to Richmond in 1872.
As Richmond was my home, I saw a great deal of
him during my annual visits to my mother. It was
during his stay in Richmond that he gathered to
gether some of his sermons delivered in North Caro
lina and published them under the title, “The Faith
of Our Fathers.” The phenomenal success of this
little work was as much a surprise to him as to every
one, and the fact, so often repeated to him, of its
equally great success as a convert maker, was a great
source of happiness to him.
In 1877 he went to Baltimore as Coadjutor to the
Archbishop of Baltimore, James Roosevelt Bayley, and
at his death became Archbishop of Baltimore.
He was a loyal Baltimorean and loved the city and
its institutions. He included in this love and loyalty
the Cathedral. I well remember when the extension
of the sanctuary was under way his look of almost
horror when I mildly suggested that it would be a
good thing to tear down the ugly throne and replace
it with a better one. He seemed amazed at the re
mark and replied, “I consider the throne very beau
tiful, and I do not think it could be improved.”
He convened and presided over the Third Plenary
Council of Baltimore and a short time after its closing
was created a Cardinal Priest of the Church, with
the title of St. Mary’s Across the Tiber.
He was not an orator in the usually accepted sig
nificance of that word, but a forcible, clear and at
times eloquent speaker. He made no pretense to be
a great speaker, and I well remember as I was one
day walking out Cathedral Street with him he said
to me, “I sometimes wish I were such a speaker as
Newman or Manning, because my monthly sermons
in the Cathedral are published by the Associated
Press, and I could do so much for God and the
Church.”
He was a great lover and ardent reader of Holy
Scripture, and his sermons were illustrated with
copious and very felicitous extracts from God’s Word.
Despite his high position, he was gentle, affable
and always most approachable.
Cardinal Gibbons took little interest in politics as
such, but his love and devotion to the Republic and
its Constitution were intense. He considered the
Federal Constitution as the wisest and best human
document ever issued, and was always and every
where ready by voice and pen to support and defend
it. Naturally, as a Catholic Bishop, he was a staunch
supporter of civil authority. The United States never
had a more loyal citizen nor a more vigorous de
fender than Cardinal Gibbons.
While he was Bishop of Richmond, a visitor from
New Jersey who had never been in Richmond, was at
his house and the Bishop wanted to show him the
city. I happened to be visiting my mother at the
time, and so the Bishop and his guest drove by for me
as Richmond was my home and I was to be their
guide. On stopping to get a view of a factory which
had been used for a prison during the War Between
the States, and known as Libby Prison, Bishop Gib
bons remarked, “My heart was with the South dur
ing the war, but my head with the North.” I merely
replied, “No medical operation is necessary in my
case to ascertain my position, as I was head and heart
for the Lost Cause.”
I do not believe that there was ever a Catholic
Bishop who was so universally loved and respected
as Cardinal Gibbons, and I recall the almost universal
condemnation of a fanatical Prohibitionist preacher
who attacked him some years since in a low, vulgar
manner. So far as I know, the only other example
was afforded by a notorious editor in Georgia from
whom any praise would have been considered a gross
insult.
It is just fifty-three years since I saw him conse
crated Bishop, and thirty-six years ago I was in the
Cathedral when he received the’ Red Cap of a Car
dinal. He changed the purple robe of a Bishop for
the Red Robe of a Cardinal as eighteen years before
he had changed the Black Robe of a Priest for the
Episcopal Purple. But the change was only an ex
terior one. He wa^ as simple and gentle as he had
ever been. His heart in many things was the heart of
a child.