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Thirty Years of Street Preaching: Vincentian Motor Missions, 1934–1965

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Douglas J. Slawson
Douglas J. Slawson
Affiliation:
Mr. Slawson teaches religion and history at both the University of San Diego and the University of San Diego High School. He resides in Pacific Beach, California.
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Extract

Known in the United States as the Vincentian Fathers, the Congregation of the Mission is a religious community founded during the early seventeenth century by the French priest Vincent de Paul for the purpose of revitalizing religious life in rural areas through the preaching of parish missions. Such missions began with a sermon on repentance that urged people to make a general confession of all their past sins. The priests continued with a protracted catechesis that lasted for several weeks to several months. In time, Vincent de Paul realized the futility of pumping new life into a parish only to leave it in the hands of an inept or lax pastor. So the Vincentians began establishing seminaries to educate and prepare good priests. Thus parish missions and the training of clergy became the two cardinal tasks of that community.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 60 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1993

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21. “Motor Missions,” De Andrein 3 (Oct. 1937): 3.Google Scholar

22. Ibid.; Good News: From the Street Preachers (1938), DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions.

23. “Motor Missions,” De Andrein 3 (Oct. 1937): 3; Fallon, “It was in Bristow,” DRMA, Motor Mission files; Gieselman, Lefevre, and North, , Motor Mission Manual, p. vi.Google Scholar

24. “Motor Missions,” De Andrein 3 (Oct.1937): 3; Good News: From the Street Preachers (1938) , DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions (the quotation is from here); Schmiedeler, , “Motor Missions,” pp. 582–583Google Scholar; McKenna, , “Motor Missions,” p. 107.Google Scholar

25. Gieselman, Lefevre, and North, , Motor Mission Manual, pp. 23–24.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., pp. xii, 29–30; Good News: From the Street Preachers (1938), DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions.

27. Gieselman, Lefevre, and North, , Motor Mission Manual, pp. 31–34.Google Scholar

28. “Motor Mission News,” De Andrein 7 (May 1937): 4Google Scholar; McKenna, , “Motor Missions,” pp. 123–124.Google Scholar In addition to the chapel trailer, Vincentian missioners acquired, in 1941, from the archdiocese of Saint Louis the Blessed Phillipine Duchesne Chapel Car, a converted delivery truck with a rear platform and a portable altar.

29. Good News: From the Street Preachers (1938) , DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions; McIntyre, , “Our Pulpit Is the Street,” p. 234Google Scholar; Catholic Motor Mission Report, Van Buren, Mo., 1943, DRMA, Motor Mission files: Van Buren; Catholic Motor Mission Report, Hawk Point, Mo., 1945, DRMA, Motor Mission files: Hawk Point; Schmiedeler, , “Motor Missions,” p. 583.Google Scholar All quotations are from the reports on the Van Buren and Hawk Point missions. Missioners recorded verbatim all questions in the box.

30. Good News: From the Street Preachers (1938) , DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions; Stephen Ganel to Vincentian students at summer camp, Feast of Blessed Justin [de Jacobis], [31 July 1946], DRMA, Motor Mission files (the quotation is from here).

31. Good News: From the Street Preachers (1938), DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions (the first quotation is from here) ; Fisher, , “In Omnem Terram,” p. 3Google Scholar (the second quotation is from here); Schmiedeler, , “Motor Missions,” pp. 583–585.Google Scholar

32. Fischer, , “In Omnem Terram,” p. 3Google Scholar (the first two quotations are from here); Catholic Motor Mission Report, Hawk Point, Mo., 1946, DRMA, Motor Mission files: Hawk Point (the final quotation is from here); Schmiedeler, , “Motor Missions,” pp. 583–584.Google Scholar

33. Good News: From the Street Preachers, (1938) , DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions; “Motor Missions This Summer,” De Andrein 10 (Nov. 1939): 4Google Scholar; Fischer, , “In Omnem Terram,” p. 3Google Scholar (the quotation is from here); Schmiedeler, , “Motor Missions,” p. 583Google Scholar, and “Churches-on-Wheels,” pp. 365–366.Google Scholar

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35. “Motor Missions This Summer,” De Andrein 10(Nov. 1939): 4.Google Scholar

36. McKenna, , “Motor Missions,” pp. 115–116.Google Scholar

37. Edward Riley, CM., to Robert Brennan, C.M., 2 Aug. 1943, DRMA, Motor Mission files; Catholic Motor Mission Report, Van Buren, Mo., 1943, DRMA, Motor Mission files: Van Buren.

38. “Correspondence Courses,” De Andrein 7 (Apr. 1937): 1, 3Google Scholar; “Postal Religion Has Grown Up,” ibid. 11 (Feb. 1941): 1, 3; “Twenty Thousand Letters,” ibid. 18 (Mar. 1948): 1–2; Lester, J.Fallon, C. M., “Converts by Mail,” HomiLetic and Pastoral Review 40 (1940): 733–740Google Scholar; Rybolt, , “Works of Devotion, Evangelization and Service,” pp. 421–424.Google Scholar

39. Lefevre, , Gieselman, , and North, , Motor Mission Manual, pp. i–iiGoogle Scholar (the first quotation is from here); “Convert America by Street Preaching,” De Andrein 12 (Nov. 1941): 3Google Scholar (the second quotation is from here); Rev. R. B. Schuler to Joseph Lilly, C.M., 21 Sept. 1941, DRMA, Provincial Papers: Home Missions.

40. Fischer, , “In Omnem Terram,” p. 6.Google Scholar

41. On the Home Missioners, see Kauffman, Mission to Rural America.

42. [Motor Mission] Statistics, 1934–1942 (a document that actually covers the period through 1949), DRMA, Motor Mission files; “Motor Missions Visit New Territory, De Andrein 15 (Oct. 1944): 4Google Scholar; “Panem Frangere Parvulis,” ibid. 16 (Oct. 1945): 5–6; “Motor Missions for Texas: Father Patrick O'Brien Explains Present Difficulties and Hopes for Future,” ibid. 13 (June 1943): 6; McKenna, , “Motor Missions,” pp. 124–128.Google Scholar

43. O'Brien, John A., The White Harvest: A Symposium on Methods of Making Converts (New York, 1928)Google Scholar, Winning Converts: A Symposium on Methods of Convert Making for Priests and Lay People (New York, 1948)Google Scholar, and “Recent Developments in Convert Work,” American Ecclesiastical Review 119 (07 1948): 1–11Google Scholar; Dolan, Jay, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, N.Y., 1985), pp. 349–352.Google Scholar

44. [Motor Mission] Statistics, 1934–1942, DRMA, Motor Mission files; “The Thirteenth Year of Street Preaching,” De Andrein 19 (Oct. 1948): 4Google Scholar; “Into the Highways and Byways!!!” ibid. 20 (Oct. 1949): 4; “Alabama Confreres Conduct Motor Missions,” Heri Hodie 23 (Sept. 1951): 1 and 4Google Scholar (this magazine was the Eastern Province counterpart of the De Andrein); “Saint Mary's Mission Celebrates fiftieth Anniversary,” ibid. 33 (Dec. 1960): 4.

45. Minutes of the Provincial Council, 20 Feb. and 9 Apr. 1952, Office of the Midwest Province of Vincentians, Saint Louis, Mo.; Oscar Miller, C.M., Summary of Report for the Summer Season [of Motor Missions] of 1957, DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions. The reasons for North's removal were supplied by his friend, Reverend Edward Danagher, who was stationed in the same house at the time (interview, Los Angeles, 7 Dec. 1991). For a similar power struggle involving Stakelum and the director of another Vincentian apostolate, see Slawson, , “To Bring Glad Tidings to the Poor,” pp. 216–217.Google Scholar

46. Report on Towns Where Motor Missions Have Been Given in the New Diocese of Springfield—Cape Girardeau, [1935–1956], DRMA, Motor Mission files; Report on Towns where Motor Missions Have Been Given in the Archdiocese of Saint Louis (Boundaries of 1955), [1935–1956], DRMA, Motor Mission files.

47. Miller, Summary of Report for the Summer Season of 1957, 20 Apr. 1958, DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions (the quotation is from here); interview with Oscar Miller, New Orleans, 16 Oct. 1984. It is interesting to note that Leven, too, attributed the end of his street-preaching career to television and air conditioning (Go Tell It in the Streets, p. 60).

48. Danagher to the author, 22 Oct. 1992.

49. Miller, Summary of Report for the Summer Season of 1957, 20 Apr. 1958, DRMA Provincial files: Motor Missions.

50. Interview with Miller, New Orleans, 16 Oct. 1984; Fischer to Miller, 29 Jan. 1964, DRMA, Motor Mission files; Report [on Motor Missions] for the Summer of 1964, 7 June to 22 Aug., DRMA, Provincial files: Motor Missions.

51. Leonard Chambers to Miller, 1 May 1965, DRMA, Motor Mission files; Miller to Chambers, 6 May 1965, copy, DRMA, Motor Mission files; Miller to Bishop Ignatius Strecker, 6 May 1965, copy, DRMA, Motor Mission files; Miller to Vincent Kaiser, C.M., 11 May 1965, copy, DRMA, Motor Mission files; interview with Miller, New Orleans, 16 Oct. 1984.