By Ralph Frasca, Ph.D.

 

To understand the history of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, it is first necessary to appreciate the long battle Catholics have fought for acceptance in North Carolina.

Two centuries ago, North Carolina Catholics were scarce.  There were fewer than 150 Catholic adults among the state’s 650,000 residents in 1821.[1]  Those who resided in the Tar Heel State were banned from holding public office.  Although the 1776 Constitution of North Carolina promised that “all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences,” the same Constitution specified that no one who denies “the truth of the Protestant religion” is “capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State.”  The Constitution made clear that Catholics were disqualified from government service because they “hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State.”[2]  

As immigration from predominantly Catholic nations like Ireland and Germany plus the tendency toward large families swelled the ranks of American Catholics in the nineteenth century, the Protestant majority feared and despised the Catholic influence.  Complaining of “Popery,” one New York newspaper noted that wherever “it bears the exclusive sway, we find the people proportionably ignorant, degraded, and vicious.”[3]  Protestants adhered to the Puritan-Calvinist mindset that the Catholic Church was historically and politically linked to repressive European monarchies and that Catholics professed allegiance to the pope as a foreign ruler, rather than to the U.S. government.  Seemingly unable to think independently, American Catholics could not be trusted to participate in a democracy, many Protestants believed.  As one American newspaper explained in 1848, “any ill-bred, ignorant fellow here, by simply entering a monastery and putting on a gown and a shovel hat, is called Father by every body.”  As a result, “the people, like unthinking children, are thus kept in an eternal state of tutelage to a class of men who are frequently of the lowest and most sordid character.”[4]  

Anti-Catholicism flourished during the second quarter of the nineteenth century, around the time when Union County was formed and Monroe was incorporated as the county seat.  The “Know-Nothing” political party emerged with an anti-Catholic, anti-Irish, anti-immigrant platform.  Arsonists burned Catholic churches, mobs attacked priests, and the anti-Catholic press told lurid fabricated tales of nuns as sex slaves and priests as baby-killing predators.[5]

In his famous book Democracy in America, French author Alexis de Tocqueville sought to allay antebellum nineteenth-century fears that Catholicism and democracy were incompatible in the United States.  “I think one is wrong in regarding the Catholic religion as a natural enemy of democracy,” he wrote in 1838.  “Catholicism seems one of those most favorable to equality of conditions.  For Catholics religious society is composed of two elements: priest and people.  The priest is raised above the faithful; all below him are equal.  In matters of dogma the Catholic faith places all intellects on the same level; the learned man and the ignorant, the genius and the common herd, must all subscribe to the same details of belief; rich and poor must follow the same observances, and it imposes the same austerities upon the strong and weak.”  Consequently, “applying the same standard to every human being, it mingles all classes of society at the foot of the same altar, just as they are mingled in the sight of God.” Because of this mixture, Catholics “form the most republican and democratic of all classes in the United States,” he wrote.[6] 

Protestants in the antebellum nineteenth century were unconvinced, though.  Prominent Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher, father of minister Henry Ward Beecher and author Harriet Beecher Stowe, publicly warned of secret Catholic conspiracies to take over the U.S. government and prevent the spread of democracy to the West.  Beecher claimed that growing numbers of American Catholics acting under papal control “might decide our elections, perplex our policy, inflame and divide the nation, break the bond of our union, and throw down our free institutions.”[7]

It was against this backdrop that the Catholic Church emerged in North Carolina during the second quarter of the nineteenth century.  The Beaufort County town of Washington was the home of North Carolina’s first Catholic Church, erected in 1828.   At the time, the Carolinas and Georgia were under the auspices of the Diocese of Charleston.  North Carolina became an apostolic vicariate in 1868 led by Bishop (later Cardinal) James Gibbons, who credited Divine Providence.  “I am more than ever convinced that the erection of the Vicariate of North Carolina was a special direction of the Holy Ghost,” Gibbons said.[8]

North Carolina gained its own diocese when Pope Pius XI created the Diocese of Raleigh in 1924.  Pope Paul VI subsequently devised the Diocese of Charlotte in 1972, carving it from the Raleigh diocese and assigning to it Union County and 45 other western counties. “Rejoice with me at this great news,” Raleigh Bishop Vincent Waters wrote to diocesan Catholics late in 1971.  “Be glad and realize how very good this will be for our great Southern State of North Carolina to know that a new diocese will be born very soon.”[9]

Before creation of the Diocese of Charlotte, Monroe’s few Catholics were under the auspices of the Raleigh diocese.  There were no Catholic churches in Union County when the United States entered World War II in 1941, immediately following the Japanese bombing of Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor.  However, the Catholic presence in the county was about to change dramatically due to the war. 

Our Lady of Lourdes Parish traces its origin to Camp Sutton, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers training site established on the east side of Monroe in March 1942.  About 16,000 soldiers in 49 units trained at the base during World War II.  Camp Sutton also included a P.O.W. stockade, housing hundreds of German prisoners.   The camp encompassed 2,296 acres on both sides of what is now Route 74, bisected by Richardson’s Creek and railroad tracks.  Before the camp’s construction, there were only three known Catholics in Monroe – Patrick Dooley, Margaret Dooley and Polly Miller.  However, Camp Sutton brought thousands of Catholic soldiers from all parts of the country.  To minister to their spiritual needs, the Rev. Dennis Keating was assigned as army chaplain.[10]  Longtime Our Lady of Lourdes parishioner Dorothy King, a convert from several Protestant denominations, recalled the large contingent of soldiers at the first Solemn High Mass in Union County, celebrated Christmas 1942 and held at the Monroe High School auditorium.  “For people in the South to see 500 soldiers singing a Mass in Latin was really very overwhelming,” she said.[11]

The influx of Catholic soldiers from outside of the Carolinas had a dramatic effect on the local populace.  “So many of the soldiers were from the North and Midwest and were Catholic,” veteran OLL parishioner Cindy Gutmann recalled. “Many of the ladies in Monroe met their future husbands who were stationed there at Camp Sutton.”  Gutmann’s U.S. Army father met her mother in Monroe, married and Cindy was born in 1942.  “Most of the local wives converted to Catholicism after marrying Catholic men, and the church really began to grow!”[12]

Sensing war-aided growth of Catholicism in the predominantly Southern Baptist town, the Society of the Priests of Mercy sent two priests later that year to establish a Catholic church in Monroe.  The Rev. James Hudson and the Rev. Patrick Hanley founded Our Lady of Lourdes Parish on May 10, 1942.  Father Hudson celebrated the first public Mass May 31, 1942 in the Center Theatre on Main Street.  About 500 Catholic soldiers and their families, plus the two Dooleys and Mrs. Miller, attended.  The parish’s first home was in a Maurice Street residence renovated to accommodate a chapel, an office and a living area for the priests.  “Before our church was built, Mass was held in the priest’s home and also at the Center Theatre in downtown Monroe on Main Street,” Gutmann remembered.  By November 1942, Father Hudson purchased land to construct Our Lady of Lourdes at the corner of East Franklin and Deese streets.  Construction of the church began in 1945 and it was dedicated by Bishop Vincent Waters April 24, 1946.[13] 

“We had a pump organ in the back of the church,” King recalled.  “We had two Fathers of Mercy – one said Mass and one played the organ.  At that time we had about 13 or 14 members of the parish, so we thought we were pretty lucky to have a priest to say Mass and a priest to play the organ.”  King, her husband and seven children served in numerous capacities in the fledgling parish during its early years.  “In those days we did everything,” she said.  “We taught Sunday school and washed the linens and fed the priests.  We arranged the flowers, we mowed the grass, we did everything that needed to be done, because there was no money to pay anyone to do it.”[14]

As Our Lady of Lourdes faced the challenges of being a pioneer church in 1940s Monroe, which King described as “a sleepy town, very Protestant,” the enterprising Fathers of Mercy priests were busy trying to extend the Catholic outreach in this missionary territory.  Father Hudson and Hanley’s successor, the Rev. Thomas McAvoy, established a mission church on Monroe’s west side, intended to serve the black community and inspire conversions.  “In order to make the Mission known and felt, various sociological means had to be taken,” Father McAvoy noted.  These included weekly rummage sales, door-to-door visits, priestly participation in the U.S.O. Club for black soldiers at Camp Sutton, and guest sermons at black Protestant churches.  Through these methods, St. Joseph’s Catholic Church mission in Monroe developed a congregation.  It began in the OLL rectory on Maurice Street, but by 1948 the mission church had its own building at 703 Winchester Avenue, funded by the Catholic Business Women’s Guild of New York.  By 1948, Father McAvoy could boast that at St. Joseph’s 43 “men, women and children have been made children of God and heirs of Heaven through Baptism” and 11 weddings had taken place.[15] 

“I do remember St. Joseph’s,” Gutmann noted.  “We would attend there when we could not make it to Mass at OLL.  And many of their members would attend our church too.  We always felt welcomed there and, I think, they did at OLL too.”[16]

Inspired by his success at St. Joseph’s, Father McAvoy also sought to establish a mission church in Wadesboro, which he intended to call “The Mission of the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Lady.”  He urged St. Joseph’s and Our Lady of Lourdes parishioners to contribute money, prayers and used clothing for the purpose.  “Help Mary to spread her Son’s Holy Religion among the poor Colored people in Wadesboro,” Father McAvoy exhorted.  The mission church was eventually built, bearing the name Sacred Heart instead of Father McAvoy’s preferred name.  It began as a mission church of OLL, but is now a mission of St. James Church in Hamlet.[17]  

Throughout the 1950s, The Guild continued to finance St. Joseph’s as well as its pastor.  The Society of the Priests of Mercy appointed one pastor for St. Joseph’s and one for OLL until 1960, when the religious order withdrew from Monroe.  Afterward, diocesan priests and the Oblates of Mary Immaculate assumed the pastorate of both churches until St. Joseph’s closed in the 1970s. The Oblates of Mary Immaculate withdrew from OLL in 1988, succeeded by the Holy Ghost Fathers.[18] 

 In the late twentieth century, the Southern Baptist stronghold of Monroe became more heterogenous, as Catholics relocated to Union County seeking jobs in manufacturing industries.  In 1981 there were 154 families in OLL, and by 1992 the number had doubled.  It became increasingly difficult to accommodate all the parishioners in the 120-seat church at the northeast corner of Deese and East Franklin streets, where Union County’s Catholics had worshipped since 1945.  “They had to put chairs down the sides of the aisles,” longtime parishioner Frank Matera said.  “It became apparent that they needed more room.” Parish leadership devised expansion plans and commenced fundraising in 2000. “Ten or 12 years ago, there were 300 registered families,” parish council chairman Austin Doherty said in 2004.  “Now there are about 1200,” including about 840 Hispanic families.[19] 

On Divine Mercy Sunday in 2004, the parish dedicated its new church building, a nearly 12,000-square-foot worship space across Deese Street from the original church.  The new church building was designed to seat 719, a six-fold increase over its predecessor.  “It is with a sense of overflowing joy and profound gratitude to God that we celebrate this Mass of dedication of the new church of Our Lady of Lourdes parish,” Charlotte Bishop Peter Jugis said in his homily.[20]

Since 2012, the Rev. Benjamin Roberts has been OLL’s pastor.  Ordained in 2009 at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia, he subsequently earned a D.Min. in Preaching from the Aquinas Institute of Theology, wrote a book on preaching as an expression of spousal love, and used broadcasting, podcasting and online media to write and speak about topics ranging from suffering to mental illness to priestly sexual misconduct.  “This parish has become my home,” he said.  “I think one of the greatest graces of pastoral stability is that I get to watch people grow up.”  He noted that in 2021 “many of the children who received First Holy Communion were the babies I baptized during my first year as pastor.”[21]

During Father Benjamin’s pastorate, he has shepherded his flock through the Chinese coronavirus that terrorized the world, bravely administering the sacrament of reconciliation in person during the virus’ darkest days in 2020 while bishops and priests throughout the nation locked church doors and shunned the faithful.  “Father saw the need to have the Mass as much as possible” during the virus, Matera said, “so we used the grotto.  It was never intended to be used for Mass, but Father Ben figured out a way.”[22]

In July of that year, a fire that originated in the church’s electrical system destroyed the parish office and badly damaged the former church and rectory.[23]  “It was devastating,” Deacon Dave Powers said.  “I had been serving daily Mass there.”  For Father Benjamin, the loss was deeply personal.  “I lost almost every tangible record of my ministry here,” he noted.  “Many things can never be replaced.” However, his priestly ministry is not measured in records and keepsakes.  “It is about handing on the faith we have received, preaching the gospel, and celebrating the sacraments,” he added.  “In a real sense, the people of the parish are the living record of my ministry.”[24] 

The people of the parish numbered 1,508 registered families and 5,309 people as of June 2021, with about 500 children in the Faith Formation program, Powers said.  He estimated that more than 85 percent of the congregation is Hispanic.[25]  This percentage has been growing steadily during the past two decades.  Laura Flores, 34, a Mexican native and parishioner since 1993, recalled that her family was one of the earliest Hispanic families to join the parish.  “We would have a Spanish-speaking priest come once a month to give Mass for the small Hispanic community we had at the time,” she said.  “Eventually the community grew and a Spanish-speaking priest was assigned here.”[26]  

By the start of the new millennium, the small Hispanic community had grown dramatically.  While serving as OLL’s pastor, shortly before becoming bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte, the Rev. Peter Jugis estimated that Hispanics comprised about 60 percent of the parish.   “Say maybe five years ago the ratio might (have been) 60 percent Americans and 40 percent Hispanics,” then-Father Jugis said in 2003. “I’ve only been here two years at this parish, but from what people have been telling me, there has been a tremendous immigration from Latin America in the last five years to Union County, which has swelled our numbers of Latin American Catholics.”[27]

This influx has sparked rapid growth at OLL, exposing Anglos and Hispanics to each other’s religious heritage.  “The Hispanic community brings a cultural passion and many devotional traditions to our experience and celebration of faith,” Father Benjamin observed.  Kathleen Prevost, a convert to Catholicism who joined the church with her family of six in 2010, agreed.  “We have loved being part of the parish and raising our children in this multicultural place with people from many different walks of life and economic backgrounds – truly the Church Universal,” she said.[28]

Hispanics also enjoy the multi-cultural nature of OLL.  “Its high points are many, but one great point is how all-inclusive OLL is with cultures and language,” parishioner Gabby Carvajal said.  Carvajal, a 22-year-old native of Mexico who is OLL’s altar server coordinator, added that Hispanic adults “want to be able to converse with their children about religion.”  Bilingual masses facilitate that conversation “because the parents are listening in Spanish and the children are listening in English.”[29]

Language is not the only distinction between the Hispanic majority and the rest of the congregation.  “I know the Hispanic community has a different understanding about our faith and what Catholicism is,” parishioner and Mexican native Laura Flores said.  “I have seen people believe something that was a custom in their hometowns to be something the Catholic Church teaches,” like selecting godparents based on their financial support of the child to be baptized or confirmed, rather than whether they “are good outstanding Catholic individuals.” Flores and Carvajal both noted that Hispanics seem more committed than Anglo Catholics to celebrating 15^th birthdays (called quinceaneras), feast days of saints, and the Dec. 12 Our Lady of Guadalupe apparition of Mary.[30]  

Despite linguistic and cultural differences, Hispanics are pleased with OLL’s commitment to unity and fulfillment of its mission to bring the Gospel into the lives of its parishioners.  “I believe that Hispanics take great pride in being a part of something,” Carvajal said.  Once her parents made time to attend Mass regularly, “we enjoyed the parish and made it part of our routine as a family.”  Flores, 34, a wife and mother of three, said that “being a member of this parish has saved me on numerous occasions.”  She credits OLL and its priests with preserving her marriage, growing her faith and strengthening her commitment to Catholic doctrine.[31]     

 Although the parish faces an uncertain future in a rapidly changing world, it is blessed with assets. “There is a strong faith in its members, a devotion to the Blessed Mother, and a pastor who manages different cultures and does it masterfully,” Powers said.[32]  According to Flores, the coronavirus and the responses of Catholic bishops have challenged the faith commitments of the more than 5,000 OLL parishioners.  “I know the pandemic has shown us where we stand in our faith,” she said.  “I am hopeful everyone has taken their time to reflect where they stand and continue to spread the Word of God through our actions and kindness.”[33]     

Carvajal is one of those who is determined to remain firm in the faith, no matter how grim the future may become.  A parishioner since 2008, OLL and the Catholic Church will remain vital parts of her life for many years to come, Carvajal said.  “I intend to stay a parishioner, get married here, baptize my (future) children here, and have them grow up in the parish if it is God’s intention.”[34]

 

Ralph Frasca is professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Art at Wingate University.  He has written three books and dozens of scholarly articles on the history of American journalism and the history of the American Catholic press.  He and his family are Our Lady of Lourdes parishioners.

 

 NOTES

 

[1] Stephen C. Worsley, “Catholics in Antebellum North Carolina,” The North Carolina Historical Review 60 (October 1983), 399. 

[2] Constitution of North Carolina, Dec. 18, 1776, at https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/nc07.asp

[3] [New York] The Downfall of Babylon, February 14, 1835.  

[4] The American Star, March 9, 1848.  For anti-Catholicism generally, see Kyle E. Haden, OFM, “Anti-Catholicism in U.S. History: A Proposal for a New Methodology,” American Catholic Studies 124 (Winter 2013): 27-45; Mark J. Massa, SJ, Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice? (New York: Crossroad, 2003).

[5] See, e.g., Tyler Anbinder, Nativism and Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk (Manchester, England: Milner, 1836); John R. Mulkern, The Know-Nothing Party in Massachusetts (Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England, 1990); Rebecca Reed, Six Months in a Convent (Boston: Russell, Odiorne and Metcalf, 1835); Nancy L. Schultz, Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2002); Rodney Stark, Bearing False Witness: Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2016).

[6] Alexis de Tocqueville, “Influence of Democracy on Religion,” Democracy in America (New York: Dearborn, 1838). 

[7] Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West (Cincinnati: Truman and Smith, 1835). 

[8] Quoted in Sister Miriam Miller, A History of the Early Years of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte (Charlotte: Laney-Smith, 1984), 13.

[9] Bishop Vincent S. Waters, Nov. 30, 1971, quoted in ibid., 23.

[10] Anita Price Davis, North Carolina and World War II: A Documentary Portrait (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2015), 67; “Camp Sutton Soldiers Heard Mass in Monroe Theater,” [Raleigh] The North Carolina Catholic, no date, Diocese of Charlotte Archives.

[11] Dorothy King, interview by Jennifer Wall, undated 2003, Oral History archives of the Department of Communication, Wingate University.

[12] Cynthia Haefling Gutmann, email to author, June 8, 2021.

[13] Ibid.; “Camp Sutton Soldiers;” Ora Lee Duncan reminiscences, 1985, Diocese of Charlotte Archives; “The Story of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish,” 1992, Diocese of Charlotte Archives.

[14] King, interview.

[15] Ibid.; The Rev. Thomas McAvoy, “Saint Joseph’s Colored Mission,” 1948, Diocese of Charlotte Archives, 4.  The building that housed St. Joseph’s is now home of the “Glorious Tabernacle Ministry” church.

[16] Gutmann, email to author.

[17] “St. Joseph’s Colored Mission,” 5.

[18] Ibid. 4; “Archival Anecdota,” [Charlotte] The Catholic News & Herald, Feb. 6, 2009, 12. 

[19] Frank Matera, interview by author, June 5, 2021; “The Story of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish,” 2; The Catholic News & Herald, April 23, 2004, 1. 

[20] The Catholic News & Herald, April 23, 2004, 17.

[21] The Rev. Benjamin Roberts, email to author, June 10, 2021.

[22] Matera, interview.

[23] https://catholicnewsherald.com/90-news/local/6064-fire-destroys-monroe-church-office

[24] The Rev. Mr. W. David Powers, interview by author, June 9, 2021; Roberts, email to author.

[25] Powers, interview.

[26] Laura Flores, email to author, June 22, 2021.

[27] Father (now Bishop) Peter Jugis, interview by Jon Svanda, June 23, 2003, Oral History archives of the Department of Communication, Wingate University.

[28] Roberts, email to author; Kathleen Prevost, email to author, June 8, 2021.

[29] Gabby Carvajal, email to author, June 22, 2021.

[30] Ibid.; Flores, email to author. 

[31] Carvajal, email to author; Flores, email to author.

[32] Powers, interview.

[33] Flores, email to author.

[34] Carvajal, email to author.