historic catholic sites along lower ohio and middle mississippi rivers crews 2000

8/3/2019 Historic Catholic Sites Along Lower Ohio and Middle Mississippi Rivers Crews 2000

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Holy Valleys and Holy Lands: Selected Historic Catholic Sites along the Lower Ohio and Middle

Mississippi RiversAuthor(s): Clyde F. CrewsReviewed work(s):Source: U.S. Catholic Historian, Vol. 18, No. 4, Religious Geography: The Significance ofRegions and the Power of Places, Part Two (Fall, 2000), pp. 50-63Published by: Catholic University of America PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25154744 .

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Holy Valleys and Holy Lands: SelectedHistoric Catholic Sites Along theLower OhioandMiddle Mississippi RiversClyde F. Crews

"Tellme the landscape inwhich you live, and Iwill tell you who you are..." Ortegay Gasset, quoted inBelden Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred (NY: Paulist, p. vii 1988)

For twenty-five years now, I have been researching, teaching and writinghistory. Before that, there were five years of graduate work inNew YorkCity (Fordham) and a semester's stint of study at the British Museum inLondon. During all that time I have almost always tried to keep my self and myemotions out of my written work. Even when Iwas asked to write an entry forthis special topical issue, I sought to produce an essay and travelogue that wasfull of facts and a minimum of personal opinions. But before I let this essayloose to fly on its own, Iwould like tomake a certain admission.The words that follow have a certain personal passion under-riding orencoded into them. Two years ago, just before I observed my twenty-fifth

anniversary of ordination as a priest, I set out on a regional journey, revisitingsome of the places that helped to shape me into who and what I am. Many ofthe sites noted below were on that itinerary. I came to realize more profoundlyon these travels something I had more vaguely known before. I don't mean tosay, of course, that places like New York and London did not leave their markon me. But the simple fact was that I could not discover the person I had cometo be without a Bardstown, Gethsemani, Loretto, St. Meinrad (where I did pastoral studies) or a Cathedral of the Assumption standing there as deep sub-strata, living stones of my life. In these spiritual centers I had found both opennessand commitment, tradition and creativity, devotion and the concern for socialjustice.These places, powerful in themselves, nurtured remarkable people of faithand they in their turn (knowingly and unknowingly) have nurtured me. Maythe pages that follow ? dispassionate though they may seem to be ? lead a

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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 51few readers at least to know something of the intensity of faith, hope and charity towhich these sites can help to give such steady rise.Centuries before the Europeans set foot upon the land, Native Americanshad reverenced sacred sites along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Visitorstoday can find ready evidence of the Mound Builders at Cahokia near St.

Louis; atWickliffe in far western Kentucky; at Angel Mounds near Evansville,Indiana, and at Serpent Mound in southwestern Ohio. Along these streams thatthey almost certainly regarded as sacred rivers, Indians had laboriously constructed ceremonial earthen "mountains" that punctuate the landscape to this

day.Also along the contours of these same rivers, today's pilgrims will find

strong and vibrant evidence of a Catholic culture that began to implant itself ina permanent fashion in the middle Mississippi and lower Ohio River Valleys inthe late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Most notably, these historic settlements took institutional form in cathedrals in Cincinnati to the eastern end ofthe lower Ohio Valley and in St. Louis on the Mississippi to the west. Withthese as "book-ends," we will concentrate on selected sites of the lands inbetween, focusing on north central Kentucky and southern Indiana.

Metropolitan CincinnatiLogic would seem to have dictated that the ancient faith in English-speakingcolonial America would have established its roots along the eastern seaboardand then moved progressively and relentlessly westward. History doesn't nec

essarily, though, follow such geographical logic. Actually, AmericanCatholicism would in fact move west and to a certain extent spread back eastward.

That was the case, in any event, with southern Ohio. Outside some fleetingsacramental ministries around Gallipolis, the first permanent Catholic community did not come into being until the first decade of the nineteenth century.The first permanent Catholic chapel in Ohio was opened in Somerset, inDecember, 1818. The area was served by the Dominican priest EdwardFenwick (1768-1832) based away in the west in Kentucky. It would be thesame Fenwick who would be named the first Bishop of Cincinnati on June 21,

1821 when Rome separated Ohio from the Diocese of Bardstown and established Cincinnati as its see city.Described by his fellow wilderness bishop Benedict Joseph Flaget as "amissionary full of zeal and humility," Fenwick traveled seemingly ceaselessly inhis new task. He went to Europe to gather other missioners and funds for hiswork. And he traveled throughout his vast diocese, with special attention to theOttawas and other native populations. His lot was one of frequent physical dis


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52 U S. Catholic Historiancomfort and penury and sometimes decidedly anti-Catholic opposition. SisterLoretta Petit reports in her concise biography of Fenwick the turmoil connectedwith the

buildingof the first cathedral at Cincinnati:

The pro-Cathedral was drawn by oxen to its new site amid shouts of derision and hatred.On the following Sunday during the Holy Sacrifice, the building began to sway. . .Mr.Scott crept under the building and supported it until props were replaced.1

Visitors to the city of Cincinnati today will find an extraordinarily strongand secure successor church to that early ecclesial endeavor. Located at Eighthand Plum Streets downtown, across from City Hall on one side and the famousIsaac M. Wise Temple on the other, stands the Cathedral of St. Peter in Chains.Fenwick's successor as bishop, John B. Purcell called upon Henry Walter, thearchitect who designed the Ohio State Capitol, to render a new cathedral inGreek Revival style.Opened on November 2, 1845, the building still conveys a sense of solemni

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Cathedral at Covington.

ty and majesty. It servedas the cathedral until1938 and its function andstatus as the bishop'schurch was restored in1957 and has remainedimpressively so eversince. The Archdioceseof Cincinnati today numbers some half millionCatholics within itsboundaries, and approxi

mately 85 parishes servethe city of Cincinnati andits suburban area.Across the Ohio River

from Cincinnati lies thecity and diocese ofCovington, Kentucky.The diocese, separatedfrom that of Louisville in1853, boasts one of the

most remarkable Gothiccathedrals in the nation.The Cathedral Basilica ofthe Assumption, situated


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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 53at Twelfth and Madison Streets downtown, was dedicated (though not yet completed) on January 27,1901.

Covington Bishop Camillus Maes (1846-1915) who conceived the idea ofthe vast structure in the relatively small town was Belgian-born and a publishedhistorian. As architect he selected Leon Coquard who incorporated into hisnorthern Kentucky masterpiece elements of French Gothic from Chartres,Paris, Reims and St. Denis. To enter the Covington Cathedral today is to betransported in some sort to medieval France (ironic in this city with such astrong German heritage). Most striking of all to this observer are the windows.Over eighty in number, they dazzle not only by their size, color and intricacy,but by their subject matter as well. What could delight a church historian somuch as to stand transfixed before the vast glass canvas of the Council of

Ephesus on the north wall? A recent study of the Covington basilica by RobertT. Krebs is quite apt in its title: the Celestial City.Nearby in Covington, on West Sixth Street, stands another commandingurban structure,

Muttergottes (Mother ofGod) Church, opened in

1871, easily recognizedby its portico and narrowtowers. The Joyful mysteries of the Rosary arecelebrated in murals byJohann Schmitt and theGlorious Mysteries in thestained glass windows.

Metropolitan St.LouisAt the time that

America's first westerndiocese was established atBardstown, Kentucky,travelers passing fromCincinnati to St. Louis

would have needed weeksperhaps to make theirarduous journey. Thesteamboat which was torevolutionize travel times

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OW Cathedral, St. Louis, Missouri.


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54 U.S. Catholic Historian

in this region had not quite made its impact as yet. Today, motorists can traverse the same terrain in about six hours, using Interstate 71 south to Louisvilleand then Interstate 64 west until the city with the great Arch appears along theMississippi's shore. Those same travelers would pass through not the one

mega-diocese of Bardstown (that once had several states in its jurisdiction) butthrough today's dioceses of Covington; Evansville, Indiana, and Belleville,Illinois; as well as the archdioceses of Louisville and Indianapolis.

St. Louis and its environs have a Catholic history as rich as it is complex.Jesuit Jacques Marquette made his appearance in the area in 1674, followed byfellow Jesuit, Claude Allouez. Settlements were made at Kaskaskia and

Cahokia on the east bank of the Mississippi. (These are near today's wellknown Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows near Belleville). On the west bankarose sites still held reverent in Catholic historical memory; St. Genevieve,Florissant, Perryville (where the earliest seminary in the region was founded),and St. Charles where St. Rose Philippine Duchesne began her Americanlabors in 1818 and where she now lies buried.

The Archdiocese of St. Louis today counts a Catholic population of over550,000, about a fourth of the area's total inhabitants. The city of St. Louis(visited in January, 1999 by Pope John Paul II) contains some 67 parisheswithan additional hundred in St. Louis County. The city also boasts both a "new" aswell as an "old" Cathedral. The former, on Lindell Boulevard, is a structure

Romanesque in style, well famed for its stunning mosaics that produce aByzantine mystical sense and presence rarely attained in Roman Catholicarchitecture. The driving episcopal force behind the extraordinary andimmense structure was Archbishop (later Cardinal) John Glennon (1862-1946)who presided over its consecration in June 1926. Jesuit historian WilliamBarnaby Faherty noted that the attendant festivities stood for contemporaries aswitness to the Catholic Church's "exalted eminence." Faherty also cites one ofhis predecessor historians as denoting the consecration "one grand sunburst ofspiritual exaltation."2Under the soaring St. Louis Arch on the riverfront looms a solitary, statelypresence, the Old Cathedral, consecrated on October 26, 1834. Classical andchaste on its exterior, the church exudes a charm and warmth once the visitorhas entered its portals. It stands quiet witness to an era of pioneer faith, for hereworship

was ledby such ecclesial giants of the

wilderness as Benedict Flaget,Simon Brute and Joseph Rosati. It had been Rosati (1789-1843), the firstBishop of St. Louis (after it had been separated from "Lower Louisiana" andNew Orleans by action of Pope Leo XII on July 14, 1826)who had brought theCathedral project from conception to reality. Rosati, a Vincentian, was yetanother of those zealous and tireless bishops who graced the frontier at precisely the right moment with their imagination, insight and energies. We shall be

meeting others.


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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 55The Kentucky Holy Land

Late in 1816, the young Father Rosati brought a band of European seminarians destined for St. Louis to St. Thomas Seminary in the woods of Kentucky,about four miles south of Bardstown. There they would remain for the winterto study English before advancing on to the valley of the Mississippi. It wasfully fitting that this sturdy band of future St. Louis clerical leaders should be"incubated" in the Bluegrass State, for there Rome had established the nation'sfirst inland diocese.

Bardstown had been constituted a diocese by Pope Pius VII on April 8,1808, the same day as the establishment of the dioceses of New York,Philadelphia and Boston. Resourceful wilderness Catholics - mostly of

Maryland/British stock ? had entered Kentucky individually as early as 1775;by 1785 they began to arrive in "leagues" and to establish settlements alongcreek-ways. Although they petitioned Bishop John Carroll for a priest, thesepioneers in effect set up the first congregations by their own lay spiritualefforts. Within two years, priests began to arrive, but none would have a longtenure until the arrival of the redoubtable Stephen Badin (1768-1853), the firstpriest ordained in the United States.With the appointment of Benedict Joseph Flaget (1763-1850) as the firstBishop of Bardstown, a nova-like burst of creative energies began to appear inthe land. It was during this golden generation that the once remote Kentuckychurch became the center for the growth and development of Catholicismthroughout much of theMidwest and upper South. Three significant communities of religious women were formed to carry out the work of education, socialservice and health care. These were the Sisters of Loretto inMarion County(1812); the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth in Nelson County (1812); and theDominican Sisters inWashington County (1822). In addition, the Trappistmonks from France would found their primal American house south ofBardstown in 1848, shortly before Flaget's demise.Jesuit Fathers were welcomed as educators and the Sisters of the GoodShepherd as workers among troubled young women. In this same era, severalcolleges and academies were established, serving the entire population,Catholic and otherwise. St. Thomas Seminary had actually had its first classeson a flatboat floating down the Ohio, and took lasting root on land at the sitenoted earlier in 1812. Flaget's great Cathedral in the wilderness opened inBardstown in 1819, and a diocesan newspaper, The Catholic Advocate waspublishing by 1836. Eight of Flaget's priests from this era would go on to serveas bishops across America.

Today, 150 years after Flaget's death, a drive through the "Kentucky HolyLand" of Nelson, Marion and Washington Counties (about an hour south ofLouisville) remains a moving experience of sacred sites still very much alive


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56 U.S. Catholic Historianand vibrant. There is a palpability here both in terms of spiritual experience andhistorical sensibility. We could not begin to do any justice to this land in soshort a compass as these pages. And while these locations are within easy distance of one another, and all could be reached in a single day's drive, they taketime to savor and absorb. One could visit, for example, St. Joseph's ProtoCathedral in Bardstown (not described here because a separate article byBrother Thomas Spalding discusses Bardstown sites) and within fifteen minutes be approaching the original log house at St. Thomas Farm where Flagetand his seminarians dwelt. The simple, appealing church here dates to 1816and served Flaget as his cathedral before the edifice at Bardstown was completed in 1819. From old St. Thomas

one could easily reach in less than halfan

hour the Abbey of Gethsemani (where Thomas Merton spent the 27 years ofhis religious life) or any of the three area motherhouses. These four religioushouses to this day represent the administrative headquarters for nearly 750 menand women under religious vows. And though their numbers may be reducedfrom a generation ago, these large "plantation grounds" are quite lively andcreative religious centers at the start of this new century.

Two remarkable churches in the Bardstown vicinity should be mentionedhere, even if briefly. Holy Cross, the primal parish

of the Bardstown diocese,dates to 1785 (the church building was dedicated in 1823) and continues tothrive in its parochial life. It is surrounded by a picturesque and historic cemetery. And St. Rose of Lima near Springfield (built 1855 with older sections)makes for a remarkable sight with its octagonal tower situated high atop its hill.

As aDominican parish, it serves to remind the visitor that on these grounds theDominican Fathers made their first American foundation in 1805. They alsostaffed an early college here attended by no less than a very young Jefferson

Davis.To visit any of the three motherhouses is in some sort to take an imaginative

journey to some European clime. Towers, turrets and cupolas rise up to greetthe pilgrim visitor, and formal, immaculately clipped cemeteries invite theruminative walker. Row after cross-marked row of the piously deceased, carefully named and dated, remind today's wanderer of the hundreds on hundredsof women who lived faithful lives of holiness and service, and undoubtedlykindliness and wit as well.

Here is a world where the formal parlor with divans, devotional statues, andpolished hardwood floors have not yet disappeared. Once in a great while afully habited nun ? seemingly all veil and habit ? walks by. Here also is a

work-a-day center in which the women of vowed community come to gripswith the most cutting-edge social questions of the new century. Each motherhouse features at its heart a striking church. At Nazareth, for example, stands aFrench Gothic structure dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul, consecrated July 19,1854. Measuring 168 feet in length, the church internally features triforium


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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 57balconies, gracefulcolumns, dark woodpanels and dazzlingtraditional stainedglass that first sawlight inMunich. Outfront of the church,on kindly guard,stands the statue ofthe remarkablefoundress of thecommunity,Catherine Spalding(1793-1858).

At Loretto onefinds a church constructed during theCivil War and brilliantly restructured inthe last generation bycontemporary architect Frank Kacmarcikalong lines that suggest strength, simplicity and solidarity.Also at Loretto is astatue of one of thefounders of the com

munity, FatherCharles Nerinckx,arms folded, lookingevery bit likeBeethoven. There is

Father Nerinckx statue at Loretto.

also a statue depicting the American proto-priest Stephen Badin who long livedon these grounds. Nearby are a cabin once used by Badin and a log chapel ofNerinckx.

Among the Dominican Sisters near Springfield inWashington County, onediscovers not only the stately buildings one has come to expect. Here one findsan especially lush rolling terrain, emerald green in season. There is the additional attraction here of the energies of the young. For here is situated theappealing campus of St. Catharine Junior College.It is still awesome to arrive at the Abbey of Gethsemani and see as you walk


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58 U. S. Catholic Historian

M^^M/m^ %Q&^As


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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 59buried in the earth. Back on the old federal highway, you drive past a sufficiency of distillery warehouses, back through Bardstown, out the Bernheim ForestRoad and then the interstate takes you directly into Louisville.Here in the urban capital of the Commonwealth (the diocesan seat wastransferred here from Bardstown in 1841), the Catholic presence is unmistakable. Close to 25% of population of the city and suburban Jefferson Countyidentifies itself with Catholicism. The city and its suburbs boast some seventyfour parishes, nine high schools and academies, two Catholic universities and alike number of Catholic hospitals. In fairly sizeable numbers you will find sisters working here from the motherhouse communities as well as Benedictine,Carmelite, and Good Shepherd nuns, Mercy and Ursuline Sisters, and LittleSisters of the Poor. Among men's orders are to be found Carmelites,Dominicans, Franciscans, Passionists, Resurrectionists and Xaverians. Forbeing this far south, it is a surprisingly Catholic-oriented city, with the onlyreligious tradition of comparable size locally being the Southern Baptist. Withametropolitan population slightly over one million, Louisville sits nearly midway between theKentucky Holy Land andwhat might be called theHoly Hillsof southern Indiana.

But before taking a virtual visit to Indiana, a stop is in order in downtownLouisville at the hallowed Cathedral of the Assumption. Though a predecessorparish church and cathedral stood on this same land since 1830, the AmericanGothic structure of today was dedicated October 3, 1852. Here in the under

Cathedral of the Assumption, Louisville, Kentucky.


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60 U.S. Catholic Historiancroft lies entombed the saintly first Bishop of theWest, Benedict Joseph Flaget(1763-1850). An exile from the French Revolution, a visitor to George

Washington and friend of Henry Clay, Flaget was, for his day, aman of strongecumenical friendships. He was also a prelate of deep but complex faith whowould at times confide feelings of utter spiritual dryness and inadequacy. Allthe more heroic does he appear then when we learn of his reputation both forpastoral and institutional accomplishment as well as for extraordinary kindness.

The Louisville Cathedral has recently undergone a stunning restoration thatplaces its appearance (with due allowances for contemporary liturgical usage)close to that of the 1880s. Over the last generation, the parish population hassoared from 200 to over 1,600. The parish, working together with an imaginative Cathedral Heritage Foundation which has a wide community and interfaith base, has become a watch-word in Louisville for excellence in Catholic

worship, education and community service, especially to the street people ofdowntown. It also features a widely nationally recognized annual Festival ofFaiths for the city as well as regular performing arts events and spiritual development programs. The Cathedral is also looked to as a center for worship of

many faiths on "state occasions" such as Thanksgiving, inaugurations, and attimes of community celebration or sorrow. Visitors of the last generation haveincluded Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, the Dalai Lama, Martin Marty,Muhammad Ali, Kathleen Norris, Karl Rahner and Elie Wiesel.A hallmark of the restored Cathedral has been the azure blue ceiling besetwith stars. The interior of the structure could be described, without too great a

stretch, as Gothic, intimate and radiant. For those who know the history of theplace, presences abound:

+ of the slaves who once worshipped in a gallery that is now the organ loft (over 100entries in the Cathedral's baptismal registers note slave baptisms);

+ of the mourners who gathered to pray for the fallen of both the North and the South ina Civil War memorial service of February, 1862;

+ of Catherine Spalding, of the Sisters of Charity who helped to found on these groundsa school, an orphanage and a primitive hospital;

+ of earlier famous visitors as reported by old parishioners ? Dorothy Day, Babe Ruth,Francis Cardinal Spellman, and, by his own report, Thomas Merton.

The Louisville Cathedral sits on Fifth Street downtown ? across the street,incidentally, from a building that housed three generations of a family of dentists who had the delightful surname of Canine. The great church stands onlyfour blocks away from the mighty Ohio River. Cross that stream on one of the


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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 61three highway bridges at Louisville and you have crossed into the Archdioceseof Indianapolis, though that noble city itself is some 110 miles to the north.

The Holy Hills of IndianaThe next destination in this imaginary tour takes us into the heartland of

southern Indiana and to the historic Benedictine Archabbey of St. Meinradfounded in 1854 by monks of the Swiss Abbey of Einsiedeln. The drive ofslightly over one hour from Louisville leads through some handsome, hilly terrain, quite distinct from the flatlands of central Indiana one hundred miles tothe north. A very short detour off Interstate 64 would take us to the Franciscan

Monastery of Mt. St. Francis in Floyd County with itsMary Anderson Centerdedicated to the encouragement of artistic, creative and spiritual life. Yet another short deflection from die main highway leads along State Road 37 to theShrine of Our Lady of Consolation at Leopold. The statue of the Madonnainside St. Augustine Church there is a modest but moving one, and is said tohave been placed by three area residents who made a private vow to do sowhile held captive in the Civil War prison of Andersonville. The gravestones inthe idyllic church yard at Leopold give steady evidence of the Belgian roots ofthe town.

At St. Meinrad, often called "The Hill" by its students, the Benedictinemonks and their colleagues staff a School of Theology offering degrees for

Archabbey Church, St. Meinrad, Indiana.


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62 U.S. Catholic Historianthose studying for the priesthood and also for lay ministry and spiritual enrichment. Abbey Press is based on The Hill also, producing religious objects aswell as publications, and bringing its share of revenue to the Archabbey. (At

Gethsemani the making of cheese, fruitcakes and bourbon fudge serves a similar function.)The Archabbey buildings and grounds are extensive as well as impressive.Once more, the visitor feels more like a pilgrim who has happened on somedistant European scene. And once more, as at Gethsemani and many other ofthe sacred sites of these pages, rooms and hospitality can be provided for a few

days for visitors at very reasonable fees.Dominating all else here is the Archabbey Church, opened in 1907 accord

ing to the design of Brother Adrian Wewer, O.F.M.,and basically Romanesquein its style. The church has just undergone a massive and highly effectiverestoration and will invite the seeker within by its luminosity as much as by itsart and architecture. Stained glass windows crafted inMunich and installedhere in 1908 focus on the Beatitudes while over the apse amassive representation of Christ (painted by Dom Gregory deWitt in 1943) holds forth a bookproclaiming "Ego Sum Vita." The "Black Madonna" shrine in the church is agift from the mother abbey in Switzerland. A more recent collection ofvignettes of great women of Jewish and Christian tradition is offered in the artwork of Jeanne Dueber, a Sister of Loretto. About a mile from the archabbeygrounds (and seemingly all uphill) is the little shrine of Our Lady of St. MonteCassino, built in the late nineteenth century, and still the site of seasonalMarian devotions.

About fifteen minute's drive to the northwest of Meinrad stands yet anotherholy hill of southern Indiana. But because we have crossed out of Spencer andinto Dubois County, we have also traveled out of the Archdiocese ofIndianapolis and into the Diocese of Evansville. Here, in the little town ofFerdinand, we come upon one of the genuinely hidden religious architecturaltreasures of mid-America. The Benedictine Sisters (who first came here fromSt. Walburga Convent in Covington in 1867) saw to the construction of a vastRomanesque church to crown their convent hill. Built to the plan of architectVictor Klutho between 1915 and 1922, the structure stands 170 feet long, 55feet across and 137 feet in height from crypt to dome top. Twenty-sixBenedictine saints will be found in the stained glass, while the woodwork wasfashioned by a German firm from Oberammergau. Here the mood is inviting,stately, and mystical. It is a stunning place to enter, rest and pray. A smallmuseum room stands nearby across the cloister hall. Not one but two cemeteries stand close by the church, their cross-marker names reminiscent of theGerman heritage of the community.Drive another eight miles or so due north from Ferdinand, and you arrive atJasper. Here be prepared to gaze upon one of the largest churches you have


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Holy Valleys andHoly Lands 63ever seen in small-town America. The Romanesque Revival edifice was completed in 1880 and features on the grounds a statue of Father Joseph Kundek,who founded the town of Ferdinand and was responsible for much of the immigration of German Catholics to the area in the mid-nineteenth century.Visitors to Hoosier sacred sites have yet more driving to do as they headwest to the Wabash Valley. There they will find the restored village of NewHarmony, near Evansville, an early nineteenth century site of two Utopian communities. A contemporary structure not to be missed at New Harmony is PhilipJohnson's Roofless Church, enhanced by the artwork of Jacques Lipchitz.

From Evansville, a drive north along U.S. 41 brings the pilgrim toVincennes, the first diocesan seat of Indiana from 1834 to 1898, when the seewas removed to Indianapolis. The Old Cathedral (a.k.a. St. Francis XavierCatholic Basilica) opened in 1841. In the crypt lie buried the early Indianabishops, including the diocese's founding bishop, Simon Brute (1779-1839).Brute was yet another missionary from France, a former physician, anotherintellectual brought to the frontier by the mission call. When one recalls thefaith, integrity and zeal of these primal bishops of the Midwest (e.g. Brute,Fenwick, Flaget and Rosati) one can wonder how vastly different and religiously diminished these American lands would be today if less worthy, more

worldly clerical leaders had been present at the age of settlement. Yet anotherdrive north will bring the visitor to the motherhouse of the Sisters ofProvidence and the St. Mary of the Woods College, just outside Terre Haute.The Renaissance Revival Church of the Immaculate Conception, designed byIndianapolis architect Diederick Bohlen, is not to be missed. Inside and out it isanother case of a seeming transport to foreign lands. Here too is to be found theshrine of Mother Theodore Guerin, beatified in 1998.

Along the ancient rivers and valleys of middle America, we have glimpsedall too briefly sites sacred toAmerican Catholic history. But we have seen also,I hope, that today's visitors may well be more than mere tourists. They are infact pilgrims, for these are lands inwhich holiness can be palpable. Here history still lives. Here are places where balanced spirituality, wit, creativity andcommunity service are vibrantly alive. These holy lands, hills and valleys ?with their immense range of historical structures, sites and communities ?continue to enliven and enhance the bodies, minds, and spirits of a people.

Notes1. Loretta Petit, Friar in the Wilderness: Edward Dominic Fenwick (Chicago: Opus, 1994), 19.

2. William Barnaby Faherty, Dream by the River: Two Centuries of Saint Louis Catholicism 1766-1980.(St. Louis: River City Publishers, 1981), 165.

historic catholic sites along lower ohio and middle mississippi rivers crews 2000

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