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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (April 16, 1987)
PAGE 6 — the Georgia Bulletin, April 16, 1987 Th«= A Church "Worthy Of...The Capital City" (Continued from page 1) Menlo. Purification Church in Sharon had a boys’ school staffed by eight Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. Enroll ment that year was 16 boys. According to the Catholic Directory, the Catholic popula tion of the state was estimated at 19,200. While Bishop O’Hara guided his “northern” Georgia flock from the chancery in Savannah, he was a frequent passenger on the train running between the two cities. From the time the new parish of Christ the King in residential Buckhead just north of Atlanta was established, he was outspoken about his desire to build a sanctuary worthy of the Church and the capital city of Georgia. A year after he established Christ the King his petition to the Vatican to change the name of the diocese to Savannah - Atlanta and to establish a co-cathedral in the capital city was granted. He made the historic announcement of this change at a Mass celebrated May 9, 1937 in Immaculate Conception Church. The yet-to-be-built Christ the King Church would be the co-cathedral, of equal rank with the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Savannah. The planned Gothic cathedral, in the years to come, was to have four bishops as pastors. In 1956 the diocese of Atlan ta was created; the co-cathedral became the cathedral and Bishop Francis E. Hyland was installed as first bishop. Moving south from Philadephia with him was now- Monsignor Michael Regan, currently pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Carrollton, who served as his secretary. Bishop Hyland served until failing health forced his resignation in 1961. He died in 1968. On Feb. 21,1962, a new province was created for Georgia, Florida and the Carolinas, with Atlanta as the province seat. Bishop Paul J. Hallinan, of Charleston, was named first archbishop. Archbishop Hallinan spoke on the special challenge the Church faces in the South in his installation sermon. There is “the daily task of putting into practical effect her clear- cut teaching on racial justice,” he is quoted as saying in an Atlanta Journal and Constitution article. Catholics must “move toward the reality of full racial justice — with prudence, with courage and with determination," he said. Within two years he was to play a major role at the Se cond Vatican Council, where he gained recognition for his work on revising the liturgy. Hepatitis, which he contacted in Rome during his labors at the council, took the life of Archbishop Hallinan in March, 1968. Earlier, his illness prompted the appointment of Monsignor Joseph L. Bernardin as auxiliary bishop and pastor in 1966. Bishop Bernardin was of great assistance to Archbishop Hallinan in preparing for the first synod of the archdiocese in May, 1966. One month after Archbishop Hallinan’s death in 1968, Bishop Bernardin was appointed general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington. D.C. He later served as archbishop of Cincinnati and is now cardinal of the Chicago archdiocese. In July, 1968, Bishop Thomas A. Donnellan of the diocese of Ogdensburg, N.Y., was appointed the second archbishop of Atlanta and has presided as pastor and archbishop since In the mid-30s, Buckhead was a neighborhood of gracious homes set among broad lawns shaded by venerable trees, a good area in which to raise children. Residents included old Bishop Gerald P. O’Hara families and new arrivals from other parts of the country. While the Atlanta population explosion was still decades away, men of vision were looking to the northern sections outside Atlanta as desirable places to live. In 1936, while Bishop O’Hara, Father Joseph E. Moylan, pastor, and the parishioners of the new parish of Christ the King were eager to build a church, the first need was a school. As the bishop told members of the new parish, every parish is obliged to erect, as soon as possible, a parochial school. This was according to the Plenary Councils of Baltimore, the church law for the United States. The property purchased for the new parish was a tract of about four acres on Peachtree Road between Wesley Road and Peachtree Way. On this land was a fine white columned mansion, built in 1916 as the home of the Durant family. Before its purchase by the diocese of Savannah, the home had been used fay the Ku Klux Klan as a national head quarters. At the time the Catholics acquired the property it was being used as an apartment building. The first Mass for the new parish was celebrated by Father Moylan on the porch of the mansion on Aug. 15.1936, the feast of the Assumption. For the next three Sundays, the small congregation worshipped here while a section of the first floor was being converted into a temporary chapel. When completed the chapel accommodated 220 people. The parish registry listed 400 adults and 109 children, 75 of school age. According to a history of the cathedral in The Bulletin of the Georgia Laymen’s Association published Dec. 8, 1956. Mass was said in the chapel until Sept. 12.1937 when Father Moylan began saying Sunday Mass in the basement of the newly-built school. Weekday Masses continued in the tem porary chapel in the mansion. The mansion also served as rectory. Among founding parishioners of Christ the King, Bishop O’Hara had the good fortune to have the whole-hearted cooperation of a small band of prominent Catholic Atlan tans. The Spalding, Haverty, Smith and Kane families were well represented. On Dec. 23, 1936, Bishop O’Hara appointed Clarence Haverty, Father Moylan, Father Finn, parish assistant, Hughes Spalding and B.J. Kane as a committee of five to undertake the management of the construction of the school and church for the new parish. Letters in the possession of Haverty family members at test to the prudence and business acumen of these men. Bishop O’Hara, in a letter to Father Moylan dated Nov. 20. 1936, wrote: “It would be desirable, of course, to erect simultaneously both school and church; and, as you know, I was quite prepared to secure a long term loan at a low interest rate for this purpose. Your parishioners, however, were unwill ing, as I understand it, to burden you with the cares and worries of so large a debt, even though it would be extended over a long period of time. In this they have shown a very praiseworthy consideration of you. “Accordingly, in view of the necessity of making a choice between the church and the school, I have decided to pro ceed at once with the erection of the school, since it is the more urgent. I say this particularly in view of the fact that you have already provided a very beautiful temporary chapel for the other spiritual needs of your parishioners, a chapel that can serve your purpose for an indefinite period. “I am confident that all your parishioners will be satisfied with this arrangement and I feel sure that it will not be long before you will be in a position to erect your church. You have good people and I know they will cooperate with you.” According to a "tentative program” of building for the new parish, a plan “that can be carried out by the present congregation without putting the burden of a heavy debt upon the people and the priests in charge,” the cost of the school was put at $50,000, and the church at $75,000. At that time it was also projected that a priest’s rectory would cost $15,000 and the cost of remodeling the Durant mansion suitable as a residence for the sisters would be $10,000. When, in the fall of 1937. the new school building with eight elementary grades and a large auditorium which would also serve the congregation for Sunday Mass, was ready for its first students, a capable group of sisters, the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart, were on hand to teach. Bishop O’Hara, who had come south from Philadelphia, was familiar with the congregation whose motherhouse was in the Philadelphia suburb of Melrose Park. These five sisters led by Sister Mary Clement joined sisters of three other orders teaching children in the Catholic schools of Atlanta. The Sisters of Mercy were teaching boys and girls at the Academy of the Immaculate Conception; the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet were (Continued on page 7) ARCHDIOCESE — Archbishop Paul J. Hallinan is shown with Msgr. Joseph P. Cassidy, seated at left, second pastor of Christ the King, after the archdiocese was created in February, 1962. GROWTH — Bish op Francis E. Hy land, first bishop of the Diocese of Atlan ta, speaks at the dedi cation of St. Pius X High School on Nov. 2, 1958.
