Pope Pius X’s 18 June 1911 appointment of an apostolic exarch (bishop) for Byzantine Catholics in Thrace, Macedonia and part of Asia Minor[1] infuriated the Greek Orthodox. This is no doubt because they recognized it for what it was: an open attempt on the part of the Holy See to “organize a Greek Catholic community, with native missionaries, for the conversion of the Greeks.”[2]
Latin Catholics in Greece and Turkey had had their own hierarchies from the time of the Crusades, but they were not perceived as a threat to the Orthodox because they were foreigners, or the descendants of foreigners. However, the Byzantine Catholics, who called themselves Greek Catholics, were to the Orthodox an opprobrium, “subversives,” “wolves in sheep’s clothing” — plainly and simply, a Vatican-crafted Trojan horse. They numbered not more than 3,000 and most of them were farmers and small businessmen in eastern Thrace. Nevertheless, the Orthodox considered these Byzantine Catholics an insult to the nation and an embarrassment to the Phanar (the section of Constantinople that became the chief Greek quarter after the Turkish conquest).
To the Greeks, Orthodoxy and patriotism were practically synonymous. Moreover, despite their “defection” from Orthodoxy, they continued to use the Byzantine rite, which meant that in their worship and customs they were almost indistinguishable from the Orthodox and, therefore, all the more dangerous as missionaries from Rome.” To make matters worse, the person selected as exarch, Isaiah Papadopoulos, had himself been born an Orthodox, and to Greek Catholics he was a living symbol of the persecuted Church. One year earlier, while administering the sacraments, he had nearly lost his life at Orthodox hands[3]
Fifty-nine years old, and of such genuine piety that his colleagues in Constantinople, and later in Rome, called him “the saint”, Bishop Papadopoulos was born in Pyrgos (in the Peloponnesus) in 1854.[4] His Orthodox parents disowned him when, influenced by the union movement Father John Marango had started among the Orthodox in Constantinople,[5] he became a Catholic at the age of 25. Ordained a priest five years later, Father Papadopoulos organized Byzantine Catholic missions in Malgara, near Gallipoli, and in Daudeli and Lisgar in eastern Thrace. In 1907, the apostolic delegate in Constantinople, Archbishop Giovanni Tacci, under whom he would later work in Rome, appointed Papadopoulos his vicar general[6] for Byzantine Catholics and their superior in Turkey and Greece.
His close brush with death came the following February in Peramos, where he had gone quietly to baptize the child of Catholic parents. The Orthodox villagers, incensed that the “traitor” had dared come into their midst, stoned the house where he was staying, broke into it, dragged him by the heels down a flight of stairs, beat him unconscious, then waited for him to regain consciousness before pulling out his hair and beard. When he lost consciousness a second time they took him outside, drenched him with gasoline, and carried him to the sea for drowning. Only the armed intervention of other villagers saved him.[7]
In 1917, Bishop Papadopoulos was summoned to Rome to serve as the first assessor of the new Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church, established in May of that year to oversee the interests of all Eastern Catholics.[8] The creation of this separate congregation toward the end of World War I was most opportune.[9] The war had destroyed the old, theocratic regimes in which Orthodox priests, many of them as uneducated as their parishioners, were not much more than servants of the state. The changed conditions resulting from the war seemed to Rome to offer new possibilities for reunion.
Prior to World War I, while Bishop Papadopoulos was still in Constantinople, tens of thousands of refugees from the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) flooded into the city in need of food, clothing and housing. To obtain funds to help care for these poor people, Bishop Papadopoulos selected Father George Calavassy, a talented young priest with an abundance of enterprise and drive.[10]
George Calavassy was born to Catholic parents in 1881 at Ano-Siros, on the island of Siros, in the Cyclades Islands — the “isola del Papa,” or “island of the pope,” as the Jesuit and Capuchin missionaries of the 16th and 17th centuries called this Catholic enclave.[11] His father, Nicholas, had founded a weekly Catholic newspaper (the first in Greece since the revolution of 1821) called Anatoli. Appearing at times in Greek, at times in Greek and French, it was intended to counteract the anti-Catholic bias of the dailies in Athens and Constantinople. He was encouraged in this by Siros’ Latin bishop[12] and by Pope Leo XIII, and carried on the work for 15 years until his death, at which time the teenage George undertook to publish and edit the paper.
In 1897, George entered the Greek college of St. Athanasius in Rome to study for the priesthood. Nine years later he was ordained and sent to Thrace, where he energetically continued the reunion work of Father John Marango and Bishop Isaiah Papadopoulos.[13]
As an apologist for Catholicism, Father Calavassy at times embarrassed his own. Years later, the apostolic delegate in Turkey and Greece, Archbishop Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII), would note how “uncomfortable” Father Calavassy’s actions made both the Latin Catholics and the Orthodox. “The way he expresses himself makes his success very dubious,” wrote the delegate.[14] “More and more he inflames the angry spirit of our poor separated brethren, which pleases neither them nor us.”[15] In Thrace, where he had charge of two missions, Father Calavassy’s activities led to a bitter and long-standing feud with the Orthodox patriarch, who feared that the presence of the small Catholic community, with its Greek priests and Byzantine rite, might spark a populist movement and challenge Orthodoxy as the national religion.[16]
Long before that, however, Father Calavassy had developed his own plan for reunion, and in 1914, with the approval of his bishop and endorsements from Pope Pius X and the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Propaganda Fide), he went to Europe to raise money to implement his plan. The war broke out while he was in Belgium, and money was needed for the refugees in Constantinople. With Rome’s approval, Bishop Papadopoulos sent him to the United States,[17] where he learned English and gave several conferences.
When his attention was drawn to a series of articles on the reunion movement in The Lamp, he at once requested an appointment with the editor and founder of the Society of the Atonement, Father Paul Wattson.[18]
Because the meeting with Father Paul led to a friendship that had an important influence on later events, some background information on this remarkable man is of interest here.
Father Paul did not have to be told about bigotry of Eastern Catholics, due to his experience with sectarian frictions. Born of Episcopalian parents, and baptized Lewis, he had learned as a boy that his father, Joseph Newton Wattson, had been asked to leave the Episcopalian General Theological Seminary in New York in 1843, because of false rumors that he was a Jesuit in disguise. Lewis could remember that at the age of 10 he had gone with his father to hear a sermon by Father Clarence Walworth, a former Episcopalian priest who had become a Catholic and founded, with Father Isaac Hecker, the Paulist Fathers, whose purpose was to reunite American Protestants with Rome. After the sermon the father turned to the son and said: “What we need in the Episcopal Church is a preaching Order like the Paulists.” According to Lewis, at that point an inner voice said to him: “That is what you will do some day: found a preaching Order like the Paulists.”[19]
Lewis became an Episcopalian priest, and in July 1893, when he opened the Bible at random to ascertain from Heaven the name of his future order, his finger fell on the passage in the Epistle to the Romans that spoke of Christ’s atonement (Romans 5:11). The voice told him he would found a religious order, but only after seven years.[20]
The prediction proved correct. In 1900, while still an Episcopalian, Father Wattson gave up the name Lewis in favor of Paul and established the Society of the Atonement, to promote the corporate reunion of the Anglican Communion with the Roman Catholic Church. In the tradition of the Oxford Movement Anglicans like John Keble, Richard Hurrell Proude, Edward Pusey and John Henry Newman, Father Paul claimed that the legitimate successors to the “true” Church established by Christ were the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican communions, and that these three groups must unite under Christ’s Vicar on Earth, the pope, in order to evangelize the world[21]
The following year, when he was invited by an Episcopalian priest friend to preach to a “low church” congregation on Long Island, Father Paul likened the Anglican Church to the lame man in the Acts of the Apostles who begged for alms at the Temple Gate (Acts 3:1-10). As Peter, the Vicar of Christ and the visible head of His Church on Earth, made the beggar whole, said Father Paul, so, too, the healing within Christendom will take place only around Christ’s present vicar, the pope of Rome. His conclusion was even more irritating to his audience: “If we but fix our eye on Him, and ask the favor of corporate admission into the Temple of Christian Unity, from which Henry and Elizabeth Tudor expelled the English people, the Anglo-Saxon race will become the mightiest missionary power in Christendom.”[22]
The congregation erupted. An archdeacon had to move forward to shout an offertory verse as an irate parishioner demanded Wattson’s ecclesiastical censure. Following this, several old friends refused to speak to him, and he was not invited to preach again.[23] It seems ironic that the offending sermon preached on this occasion, “That All May Be One,” was featured in every issue of The Lamp[citation needed]
Three years later, on 21 December 1904, Father Paul again heard the voice, this time directing him to “gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” It was Heaven’s way of telling him, he decided, to organize Catholics (by whom he meant Episcopalians, or Anglicans, as well as Roman Catholics) in a kind of “union” where they could be taught to save for the missions the pennies and nickels they would otherwise spend foolishly. To bring about this union, the voice told him, he would have to wait yet another seven years.[24]
On 30 October 1909, Father Paul and his community, the Society of the Atonement, were corporately received into the Catholic Church, with the help of the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Diomede Falconio, a naturalized American who was also a Franciscan and a reader of The Lamp.[25] Two years later, by means of The Lamp, Father Paul began recruiting members for his Union That Nothing Be Lost (U.N.B.L.), “a missionary and charitable organization within the Society of the Atonement and having for its two-fold object corporal works of mercy and the salvation of souls.”[26]
Hence, at Graymoor the young Father Calavassy found in Father Paul a brother priest and a recent convert who held unconventional views but could offer much help. Although an Episcopalian, Father Paul believed in the infallibility of the pope and the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary; although a Catholic, he upheld privately, contrary to Leo XIII’s encyclical,[27] the validity of Anglican orders and the legitimacy of the Anglican Church. To some he appeared eccentric. He sometimes preached at noon in a Franciscan habit on the steps of the city hall in Manhattan. In the spirit of St. Francis of Assisi, he took a private vow never to touch money, a vow that occasioned comic, sometimes embarrassing predicaments. He hated to lose, even in recreation, and the friars would frequently let him win at games so that he would not pout. Still, he was a holy man, ascetic and prayerful, and his vow not to touch money did not interfere with his raising it.[28]
Father Calavassy visited Graymoor three times, and each meeting with Father Paul was a happy encounter of East and West. “I have been sent by the Holy Father,” Father Calavassy told Father Paul, “as a missionary of Reunion,” and soon thereafter the convert from Anglicanism would be telling his readers, “Father Calavassy’s appeal to The Lamp to espouse this cause with special zeal, because of our devotion to Church Unity and Missions, imposes upon us the force of a sacred obligation.”[29]
Although Father Calavassy returned to Constantinople two years later, he maintained correspondence with Father Paul. What each could do to help the other was very plain indeed. For Father Calavassy, The Lamp was a source of support for his work in Constantinople, including his reunion efforts with the Orthodox. For Father Paul, Father Calavassy’s influence with Bishop Papadopoulos, especially after the latter became the assessor of the Oriental Congregation, could help the fledgling Society of the Atonement and its many praiseworthy works. On 17 June 1918, for example, Father Calavassy assured Father Paul that it would not be difficult to obtain the pope’s blessing for the U.N.B.L.
When Father Calavassy succeeded Isaiah Papadopoulos as exarch in Constantinople (15 July 1920), Father Paul expressed in The Lamp hope that the new bishop would “not forget the Greek-Oriental Branch of the U.N.B.L., nor its official organ — The Lamp — now that he has been elevated to the Episcopate.”[30] The words had a special meaning: Father Paul’s fundraising was in jeopardy.
At their meeting in Washington the previous September, the bishops had established, with Archbishop Henry Moeller of Cincinnati as its chairman, the American Board of Catholic Missions (A.B.C.M.), so that “at every level, national, diocesan, and parochial, all our American missionary aid activity … be coordinated and unified … directed and controlled … by the American Hierarchy.”[31] Up to that time, religious communities like the Society for the Atonement had had almost total liberty in appealing for funds. Now, however, Father Paul’s position was threatened. If the A.B.C.M. regulated all mission-aid appeals, Father Paul’s efforts could conceivably be smothered.
Even worse, The Lamp itself would be hindered if the bishops adopted two of the recommendations in the report their “Special Advisory Committee” had submitted. These read as follows:
(XIII) We recommend that Ordinaries be requested to not approve of the circulation, through agents, of magazines that overlap one another in the missionary field, or that are not devoted to some definite Church interest. The Board could be at the disposal of the bishops to give information in this regard, and[32]
(XVII) We recommend that no Catholic publication shall take up the work of collecting for missions without permission of the Board, which permission should only be granted when it is agreed that all monies received be sent, or reported to, that Board, as its directors may decide.[33]
The bishops were in earnest, and they now had only to implement a report at hand which covered concisely every phase of American mission aid activity. The principal architect of the report was Monsignor Francis Clement Kelley, who in 1905 had founded the Catholic Church Extension Society for the missions in rural America. The report was not for publication, and it is possible that Father Paul never saw it in its entirety.
However, the document was read and studied in Constantinople while it was “still secret so far as America was concerned,”[34] probably even before the bishops saw it. On 11 September 1919, addressing him familiarly as “Dear Father George,” Monsignor Kelley sent Father Calavassy a copy of the report, reassuring him, as he had Bishop Papadopoulos three days earlier,[35] that the Extension Society would undertake to support the “Oriental Missions” even though a change in the Extension Society charter was legally required. “It is naturally expected that I shall be a member of the American Board of Catholic Missions … even though I am still left as President of Church Extension,” Monsignor Kelley added. “Under present conditions, the work for the Oriental Missions is a problem on my hands. God will help me to solve it. …”[36]
Certainly, Monsignor Kelley’s words would have been deeply disturbing to Father Paul, since Graymoor was not the only place in America Father Calavassy had visited in search of help. Monsignor Kelley, as expected, was named to the A.B.C.M. board;[37] Father Paul was not. As a result, Graymoor was left to worry that, sooner or later, the A.B.C.M. would suppress the U.N.B.L.
On 14 January 1921, Father Paul asked Calavassy, by that time a bishop, to intercede in Rome. As assessor of the Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Church, Father Paul suggested, Bishop Papadopoulos might obtain for Graymoor the necessary authorization to send Mass stipends (the donations offered by Catholics and others when requesting that Mass be said for a particular intention) directly to Constantinople. It would help a great deal also, he added, if the Holy Father could be encouraged to offer Mass for the success of the forthcoming Chair of Unity Octave. Bishop Calavassy may indeed have influenced events, for five months later Father Paul happily informed him that, through Bishop Papadopoulos, he had been authorized officially to send Mass stipends to Bishop Calavassy in Constantinople as suggested.[38]
The following spring Father Paul heard that Monsignor Kelley was scheduled to replace Archbishop Moeller as head of the A.B.C.M., and he informed Bishop Calavassy that if this happened the selection could be credited to Dennis Cardinal Dougherty of Philadelphia, Monsignor Kelley’s very close friend.[39] Since Cardinal Dougherty was a consultor of the Oriental Congregation, however, might not Bishop Papadopoulos use influence to have the U.N.B.L. recognized as the official agency in America for the Greek and Near East missions, with Father Paul himself an ex officio member of the A.B.C.M. board? Significantly, Father Paul commented, “If I were on the Board I could do more for you.”[40]
The message was clear. Bishop Calavassy’s needs were multiplying with each new wave of refugees from famine-plagued Russia and parts of the old Ottoman Empire, and the opportunity to reunite these people with Rome seemed about to be wasted due to a simple lack of funds. Besides, American Protestants were proselytizing actively. The largest of their agencies, Near East Relief (NER), which claimed to be non-sectarian, had won the endorsement of even the Holy See. In granting its approval, the Holy See had understood, of course, that funds received would be used by NER on the basis of “need, not creed,” but in years later Bishop Calavassy said he had received nothing from the NER, and he resented the fact that the NER was administered by Protestants. Father Paul, in reply, said he would voice the complaint to friends of his in the NER.[41] Father Paul agreed also to be Bishop Calavassy’s transfer agent in America for all donations, and he said he would appeal regularly in The Lamp for the Constantinople Daily Bread League, which he had established for the support of the exarch’s small seminary.[42]
Bishop Calavassy was grateful, but Father Paul’s assistance proved insufficient, and was in constant danger of peremptory termination by the A.B.C.M. The exarch decided to return to America to solicit funds in person and to leave behind, if possible, an organization of his own.[43]
However, the relief situation in Constantinople was chaotic. In October 1920 more than 75,000 Russian refugees, with General Peter Nicholaievitch Wrangel and his army, fled from the Bolsheviks to Constantinople. British and American soldiers and the American Red Cross had joined forces to provide emergency relief. Bishop Calavassy dared not be away for an extended period during this critical time, and a substitute who could go to America was needed.
The man he found, Monsignor Richard Barry-Doyle, had already been recognized for his work with Russian refugees.[44] For his services to Russian Jews, to whom he gave aid and for whom in many cases he arranged passage out of Turkey, the then-Father Barry-Doyle had been publicly thanked by the grand rabbi of Turkey.[45] He was made a domestic prelate by the Holy See in 1920, with the title of monsignor,[46] and was recommended to Bishop Calavassy by the apostolic delegate in Turkey, Archbishop Angelo Maria Dolci.[47] To Bishop Calavassy, Monsignor Barry-Doyle must have seemed a godsend; for in addition to all these assets, he was available.
Most of the biographical details about this interesting man can be gleaned only from newspaper clippings of the period, and Monsignor Barry-Doyle himself appears to have been the source of many of these details. In telling his own life story, he sometimes contradicted himself, and his contributions can never be faulted for being too modest. For example: that he was made a domestic prelate by the Holy See is perfectly accurate; however, that he was given the title of monsignor in response to an unusual, if not unprecedented, request from the Protestant government of Great Britain to the Holy See in recognition of his services to British soldiers who had been blinded during the war has yet to be verified. That he had been active in England in a movement to reunite Anglicans with Rome, as he told a Canadian reporter in 1923, may have been true. However, the implication that his efforts had resulted in the conversion of 16,000 Anglicans, including three bishops, is certainly open to doubt; the three bishops have not been identified.[48] His addition of “Barry” to his family name of Doyle in order to commemorate a kinsman, Commodore John Barry, one of the founders of the American Navy,[49] may well have had a basis in fact; on the other hand, it may simply reflect the coincidence that his mother was named Jane Barry. At times he claimed that the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was a cousin, and at other times an adopted half-brother. Obviously, both could not be correct. (Research undertaken in England appears to establish that the Monsignor’s father and Sir Arthur’s grandfather were brothers, which would make the two dignitaries first cousins once removed.) He also claimed as an uncle Lord North of Roxham Abbey, Banbury.
According to the newspaper coverage of his lectures in the United States, he had served on every major battlefront: Belgium, France, Italy and Mesopotamia. He took part in the suicidal landing at Gallipoli, spent seven months in the Sinai Desert, was listed officially as “killed” in the disastrous battle of Gaza, and rode with General Allenby into the captured city of Jerusalem on 9 December, 1917. In 1918, while serving on the Hindenburg line sector, he was gas-poisoned and severely shell-shocked. Following a brief hospitalization he returned to the trenches of France until August 1918, when he was wounded and taken to a London hospital. While the world celebrated Armistice Day, Father Richard Barry-Doyle hovered between life and death.[50]
According to official military records, many of his assertions conformed with his dates of service and might conceivably have been true, but the coloration was lurid — “listed officially as killed,” “rode with General Allenby,” and so on — and the medical history does not stand up to scrutiny. Whether “gas-poisoned and severely shell-shocked” or not — and here one questions how such a patient could be released after “a brief hospitalization” — he did not return to France after his medical evacuation in August 1918, but returned to duty 4 November 1918 at a military hospital in Norwith, England. Moreover, he was transferred to Aldershot 20 November 1918, so his “hovering between life and death” on 11 November, when the world was celebrating the Armistice, was at least on full active duty.
Monsignor Barry-Doyle was baptized Richard Doyle in Eardowns, Lady’s Island parish, County Wexford, about 1871.[citation needed] Since no biography exists, what is known of his life thereafter is based on a patchwork of news clippings[51] published during his lecture tours in the United States between 1923 and 1925 and from personal research in Ireland and England in the summer of 1976.
When Monsignor Barry-Doyle first met Bishop Calavassy, he was no stranger to America. As a teenager, he had lived for several years with his mother and two sisters in Waterbury, Connecticut, where he worked as a clerk in a dry goods store. The family returned to Ireland because of his poor health, he said, and he studied for the priesthood, first at St. Peter’s College, Wexford, then at St. John’s College, Waterford.[52] He was ordained for the Diocese of Ferns, in Waterford, as Richard Doyle in June 1894.[citation needed] The 1901 Irish Catholic Directory and Almanac first mentioned Richard Doyle as a curate in Newtonberry, a village near Wexford.[53] The 1904 Directory had him transferred to Adamstown, also as Richard Doyle, where he was stationed until 1908.[54] After that year, his name disappeared from the Irish Directory altogether; we now know that in 1908 he left Ireland and went to England. To resign a curacy in Ireland was most extraordinary.[55] Father Barry-Doyle did so, he said, because he had a small personal income and preferred to labor outside his native diocese.[56] A lame excuse, he later said; the truth was that it would have killed him if he had to go back to Ireland to work.[citation needed]
With only “oral” history to draw upon, one learned in Wexford in the summer of 1976 that the Adamstown curate was remembered by people who had known him as youngsters as a person with a “theatrical flair,” who gave lectures to parishioners on American and English authors and entertained selected friends expensively and often.[57] To Monsignor John Codd, 90, a priest of the Wexford diocese ordained in 1910 he was “the type of man in whose company people wanted to be seen; and rumor had it, when he left Adamstown, that he had left behind many unpaid bills.”[58] He was, all the same, “very well liked by all in the parish and a good priest at his duties.” He left the parish secretly overnight, during Holy Week,[59] presumably for England.
Six years later, at the outbreak of World War I, Father Barry-Doyle appeared again, as rector of a parish in Yorkshire, “the section where Charlotte Bronte lived and of which she wrote.”[60] He gave the following as his reason for leaving this benefice for the battlefield:
I had a very beautiful rose garden. The cultivation of roses was one of my greater joys. Then the thunderbolt of the war fell out of a clear sky on that August afternoon; I was inspired with a desire to follow the colors. I resolved to take part in the affair that I might help the soldiers who were facing death. From that day the old-fashioned rectory, the rose garden, the people of the diocese, became a part of my past.[61]
According to official military records, Father Barry-Doyle applied to join the Army as a chaplain on 24 August 1916, which would be a full two years and two full rose-growing seasons after “the thunderbolt of the war fell out of a clear sky on that August afternoon.” Following war service and his recovery from wounds, he was selected for duty with the Black Sea force. Father Barry-Doyle himself said that he had turned down a parish benefice in London to stay with his Dublin Fusiliers, who — again according to newspaper accounts during his American lecture tour — knew him as the “Fighting Padre” and the “Soldiers’ Idol,” and who had been assigned to Constantinople to aid the war victims.
He was in Smyrna, he said, when that city was burned to the ground, and he anguished with the pitiful victims of the Treaty of Lausanne (1923), when more than one million Greeks were deported back to Greece from Asia Minor. Later, for his American audiences, he would describe what he had seen:
Here misery and want stalked the streets in the skin and bones of thousands of refugee children … I have seen their little bodies lying in the Thracian wayside where they had died of hunger and typhus … I have seen the children on the streets of Constantinople and Athens eating the heads of fish thrown out from houses … I have seen the death carts roll through the streets, piled high with bodies of little boys and girls, who were taken to be buried on one common grave outside the city, without a mother’s tears, nor flowers, nor any of the symbols of mourning, nor any mark to show their final resting place.[62]
On 1 April 1922, Monsignor Barry-Doyle was demobilized from the army, and returned to England. Soon thereafter, he went to Constantinople to establish, at the behest of friends living there, a parish for English-speaking Catholics. However, because of changes in the city caused by the war and its aftermath, the project proved unfeasible. It was then he agreed to go to America to raise money for Bishop Calavassy’s needs, and to find, if possible, a permanent way to help “those homeless, parentless waifs, whose cries, he knew, would forever sound in his ears.”[63]
Theatrics aside, two characteristics shaped the driving force of Richard Barry-Doyle. One: he was a devotional man, in the sense that Gerhard Lenski used the term;[64] more pragmatic than dogmatic, but nonetheless devout in his internalization of the Church’s teachings and authority. Monsignor Barry-Doyle prayed often to God and His saints for help in all his undertakings. In particular, he cultivated a strong devotion to St. Therese of Lisieux. She was his model of spiritual childhood, and to his soldiers he proposed her as their spiritual friend and protectress. Once, he secured a relic of the saint from the convent of Lisieux and offered it to a soldier sentenced to the firing squad. He gave this account of what followed.
Suddenly a wonderful light — not of the sun nor the moon, not of any light I have ever experienced — a wonderful golden light shone into the miserable cell, and at the same time there came an indescribably delicious perfume of incense and flowers. I felt, I knew, something strange had happened and that I was on holy ground. The condemned man rose to his feet, his head radiant, and exclaimed, “Father, don’t worry. The Little Flower is with me.”[65]
From the press accounts of his successful lecture tours from Montreal to Miami, a campaign he placed under the auspices of his patron saint, this sense of the presence and power of God seemed to be everywhere in evidence. At times, besides, it seems to have given him an unconcern for conventional behavior, something he found also in “the great unconventional priest of Nazareth.”[66]
A second characteristic, not unrelated to the first, was Monsignor Barry-Doyle’s tolerance.[67] This is not to say that he was beyond hurling large-scale condemnations; he excoriated the Turks for their burning of Smyrna, and he castigated the West for selling out to the “oil-rich” East at Lausanne[68] However, he harbored few personal prejudices, an attitude he attributed to an event that occurred during the battle of Gaza. Surrounded by more than 800 wounded and dying men, who had nothing to drink because the Turks had shelled the water-carrying Camel Corps, Monsignor Barry-Doyle later admitted he had felt an immense craze to bayonet the men who had butchered his comrades. When water did arrive and he began distributing it to his men, one soldier, a man from Dublin, whose right arm hung by a piece of skin, said to him, “Father, there are four or five poor Turkish devils over there, give them a drop of water, for although they are enemies, sure they are human beings like ourselves”[69] Monsignor Barry-Doyle never forgot the “lad from Dublin, ” nor did he forget the young Turkish corporal whom he cradled in his arms, whose lips he moistened with water and who, prior to dying, kissed his hand and muttered, “Allah, Allah!”[70]
This lack of prejudice manifested in his concern for Jewish refugees, in his open defense of the faith of Islam (he did not think it necessary for the Cross to supplant the Crescent),[71] in his easy rapport with Protestant laity and clergy and in the strong defense of his cousin Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “right” to reject Catholicism and to lecture in the United States on spiritualism.[72] Almsgiving and proselytizing alone will not bring peace, he warned his American, partly non-Catholic, audiences. Schools had to be built where native teachers could instill in youngsters the fundamental ethic of all the great religions, love built on mutual respect and justice.[73]
To a wholly Catholic audience of bishops, priests and laity, however, his approach was much less liberal; Monsignor Barry-Doyle told them that the Orthodox were ready to return to Rome.
According to the newspapers of the lecture-tour period, Monsignor Barry-Doyle was the second Britisher ever to be elected to the Sacred Constantinian Order of St. George, the oldest military order in Christendom, which at that time boasted fewer than 200 members, including 4 kings, 11 princes, and 9 cardinals. The King of the Belgians distinguished him with the coveted Medal of Albert, the Russian government made him a knight commander of the Order of St. George, the Greek government conferred on him the Order of the Redeemer and the British government promoted him to the rank of colonel.[74]
It would be unfair to leave this complex, admirable, theatrical, devout and sometimes pitiable character without some attempt at an assessment of his real worth. In the absence of any biography or any critical study, and in the presence of a number of self-generated biographical details that do not stand too much scrutiny, such an assessment is difficult, but it will be attempted here.
The monsignor’s father, Richard Doyle, who died at about 95, had one brother, John Doyle, an eminent caricaturist and political cartoonist. John had three sons, one of whom became the father of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose creation of Sherlock Holmes assured him of literary immortality. Another son became the keeper of the National Gallery of Ireland from 1869 until his death in 1892. The third, who, like the monsignor, was named Richard, became a celebrated illustrator for the widely-read humor magazine Punch, and who, although classified in artistic circles as only a skillful amateur, illustrated some of the works of Dickens and Thackeray.
By contrast to the career records set by John and by his three sons, the monsignor’s father, Richard, despite his long life, “unfortunately does not seem to have made much of a mark in the world, whereas his brother’s children did.”
It would not be at all strange if this Richard Doyle’s only son, Richard, did not feel both defensive about his father’s lack of success and aggressive about his own intention to make a mark in the world. These two drives might explain youthful feelings discernible in his decision to add “Barry” to his surname; at one stroke of the hyphen he secured an illustrious American naval hero as an ancestor and removed what must have been an irritant: being regularly confused with Punch’s Richard Doyle, creator of “Pips’ Diary.”
Also, it is here boldly postulated that the monsignor’s choice of a priestly vocation reflected not only real spirituality and devotion but also the realization that the Church in the Ireland of his day was a prime vehicle for a bright, ambitious young man to get ahead. It is further postulated that this second impetus, in combination with a natural predilection for a grander style of living than would be the lot of an Irish curate, motivated the monsignor to leave Ireland for England.
Once he arrived in England, the war would prove a great influence on Father Barry-Doyle. It can be argued that his waiting for two years to enlist as a chaplain was a matter of expediency. It must also be argued that a young romantic — the key word in his case — like Father Barry-Doyle would not be immune, in those two years, to the romantic appeal getting into uniform had for many youthful Britons in the early days of the war — a feeling expressed by young soldier-poets like Alan Seeger and Rupert Brooke. Getting into the war became for Father Barry-Doyle a necessity, and, for a priest, this meant getting into the war as a chaplain.
Hereafter the fascination with continuing military life in wartime that many young men, and even men no longer young, came to experience seems to have taken over Father Barry-Doyle as well. The fact that he served in Egypt and Palestine is important; it brings to mind the fascination that the war, particularly in the Near East, had for the group of Britons whose careers still seem engrossing, like Ronald Storrs, H. St. John B. Philby, and a list of others, headed by the well-publicized Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”).
When the war ended, Father Barry-Doyle, like many others, probably found the prospect of returning to a dull civilian life unattractive. It is significant that he was in England at the time of the Armistice, with the drabness of war-weary England around him. One can envision him volunteering when talk of a Black Sea force surrounded him at Aldershot, not only so that he could remain in the uniform he so admired, but do so in the romantic (to him) Near East.
Thus is expounded his “selection” for additional service. His own explanation that he wanted to continue serving with the Dublin Fusiliers, by whom he was beloved, is as transparent as his assertion that doing so meant turning down a parish benefice in London, not in a provincial setting.
It is fair to assume that once back in the Near East, facing inevitable and final demobilization, the monsignor looked around for further interesting and dramatic service. He may even have arranged, somehow, to be recommended by the apostolic delegate for the job so urgently required by Bishop Calavassy.
It must now be recalled that Monsignor Barry-Doyle’s critics and opponents usually complained only about his haughtiness, or his lifestyle, or his British ways, or his theatrical manner and mode of dress. His energy, oratorical gifts, success in dealing with the public and devotion to his assigned tasks were not challenged. His failings undoubtedly proved a handicap to him and to the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), but — and here is the conclusion reached by this amateur dabbler in personality analysis — this handicap did not outweigh Monsignor Barry-Doyle’s solid contribution to the effort.
The life story Monsignor Barry-Doyle made up for himself may sometimes have been more vivid than the facts warranted, but in dealing with the public, the basic source of the support he was seeking, rather than with the clergy, the colorful figure that emerged may in fact have benefited CNEWA; 3000 people do not go to Carnegie Hall to listen to a mouse.
Ultimately, the key element in Monsignor Barry-Doyle’s personality may well have been his native “Irishness,” leading him to invent in part some ancestors, relatives, connections, and accomplishments. The comment of Peter Finley Dunne’s “Mister Dooley” comes to mind: It is a poor Irishman at all that can’t claim at least one king for an ancestor.
Monsignor Barry-Doyle arrived in New York on 29 October 1922. People in the Near East were suffering, and the crucial relief commodity was money. To obtain it, the Children’s Crusader, as the monsignor would come to be known, had only a few letters of introduction to some of Bishop Calavassy’s friends, and his own wits.
Notes
(Click numbers to return to text.)
[1] Father Calavassy to Cardinal Gibbons, AAB, 118 U 10. See also, Sacred Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Oriente Cattolico: Cenni storici e statistiche, (4th ed. Vatican City Press, 1974), pp. 201-203. The Greek exarchate encompassed the same canonical boundaries as those of the apostolic delegation in Turkey; see Pope Pius X’s Brief, Auctus in aliqua, 11 June 1911, in which Pius nominated Isaiah Papadopoulos its first exarch, with the title, Bishop of Grazianopoli.
[2] Father Calavassy to Cardinal Gibbons, AAB, 118 u 10. The reasons, theological and pragmatic, are made vividly clear in the letters exchanged between 22 May 1927 and 29 September 1929 by Chrysostom Papadopoulos, Orthodox Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, and Georges Calavassy, Catholic Bishop of Byzantine-Rite Catholics in Constantinople and Greece. The correspondence has been published in “sHieronomoine Pierre, L’Union de L’Orient avec Rome,” Orientalia Christiana, XVIII (April, 1930).
[3] Charles V. LaFontaine, “The Role of Father Paul of Graymoor in the Foundation of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 86 (March — December 1975), 58.
[4] La Sacra Congregazione per le Chiese Orientali nel Cinquantesimo della Fondazione (Rome: Vatican City Press, 1969), pp. 177-183.
[5] Father John Marango (1827-1885) in 1856 tried to found a religious congregation of Catholics of both the Latin and Byzantine rites, which would be dedicated solely to the return of the Greek Orthodox to Catholic unity. A Latin-rite priest from the Greek island of Siros, Father Marango encountered many problems in Constantinople, but he did manage to convert a few Orthodox. Eventually the Orthodox in Constantinople pressured the government to suspend his publications, thereby causing him to fall into debt. This, in turn, led to the decision of the Congregation of the Propaganda Fide to close his religious institution for women, allowing the institution for men to remain, but denying it the status of a religious congregation. Father Marango helped Papadopoulos become a Catholic and the Catholic community in Siros produced Papadopoulos’ successor, George Calavassy. See Oriente Cattolico, pp. 200-203.
[6] For the repression of the rights of Turkish Christians, see Raymond Etteldorf, The Catholic Church in the Middle East (New York: Macmillan Company, 1959), pp. 157-162. See also James L. Barton, Story of Near East Relief: 1915-1930 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930), pp. 58-69. Greeks and Syrians, as well as Armenians, were victims of Turkey’s “nationalizing purges.”
[7] G. Rosso, “Monsignor Isaia Papadopoulos e il suo apostolato per L’Oriente Cristiano,” L’Osservatore Romano, 22 January, 1939, p. 2ff.. Archbishop Sardi, the apostolic delegate in Turkey, described Papadopoulos as one who “non respira che la gloria di Dio e la conversione delle anime; non mi meraviglierei di verdergli operare prodigi.”
[8] Oriente Cattolico, p. 202.
[9] In his Motu Proprio, “Dei Providentis,” Pope Benedict XV acknowledged the bad impression created by placing the office “pro negotiis Ritus Orientalis” under the jurisdiction of the Propaganda Fide (Acta Apostolicae Sedis, 1917, pp. 529-531). The work of reconciliation was advanced 7 December 1965, when Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoris I, by mutual accord, lifted the two excommunications “dal mezzo della Chiesa e dalla memoria.” See Oriente Cattolica, p. 199.
[10] Father Calavassy explained the nature of his visit in a letter to Father Paul which appeared in the latter’s monthly magazine, The Lamp, XVI (May, 1918), 283: “I have been sent to the States by the Holy Father as a missionary of Reunion, namely to elicit in this country interest in this important work and collect funds for an essential phase of that work … I make bold to beg for some of the crumbs of the bread of charity for the saintly Bishop Papadopoulos and his suffering missionaries and their converts from schism in Thrace and Turkey.”
[11] This is the same island where Father Marango was born.
[12] The exact figure referenced here is unclear. With George Calavassy’s birth in 1881, and taking over Anatoli in his teens, following his father’s 15-year tenure, the bishop in question may have served at any time from 1879-1900. This narrows it to three possibilities: the most likely was Bishop Teofilo Massucci, holding the office from 1880-1894. Less likely are his predecessor, Bishop Giuseppe Maria Alberti, and his successor, Archbishop Teodoro Antonio Polito. One must not also rule out the possibility of Nicholas Calavassy receiving encouragement from multiple bishops.
[13] Bishop Calavassy’s renown as a fighter appeared in the newspaper DeResidentiebode, 6 March 1936: “(Mons. Calavassy) e ben noto come un ‘lottatore’ per la reunione delle chiese.” The biographical data on Calavassy is taken from an article by P. Zographos, “Notre Episcopat, Mgr. Georges Calavassy”, Studion, I (1923) 173-178. See also Oriente Cattolico, pp. 202-203; also, “Chronique religieuse,” in Irenikon, XXX (1957), 423-424.
[14] Archbishop Angelo Roncalli to Guiseppe Cesarini, 25 March 1936, Archives of the Oriental Congregation, Rome (hereafter AOC). The following passages from the future pope’s letter to the assessor of the Oriental Congregation are revealing: “Io ho grande stima ed affezione per quel degno e valoroso prelato. Ma non posso chuidere le orechie ne non vedere il disagio che le sue manifestazioni creano un po a tutti, certamente contro le sue rette intenzioni … Dico questo riservatamente. La prego, Eccellenza, di non scoprirmi, neanche per queste informazioni, presso Mons. Calavassy che io penso di poter aiutare mantenendo un po il mio sistema, che e di tenermelo buono e di dirgli tutto, tutto ma un po per volta, cosiche capisca e non si offenda.”
[15] Archbishop Roncalli to Cesarini, 31 March 1936 (AOC).
[16] P. Zographos, “Notre Episcopat,” p. 174.
[17] Ibid.
[18] The Lamp, XVI (May, 1918), 283.
[19] Charles Angell and Charles V. LaFontaine, Prophet of Reunion: The Life of Paul of Graymoor (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), pp. 15-19.
[20] Ibid., pp. 27-28.
[20] Ibid., pp. 47-49.
[22] Ibid., pp. 4-7.
[23] Ibid., p. 7.
[24] Ibid., pp. 69-70 for the founding of The Lamp, and pp. 132-136 for the inspiration to create the UNBL.
[25] Ibid., p. 87. Father Paul first approached Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, who told him to be patient and follow the guidance of the Spirit. It was the cardinal’s secretary, however, who suggested he contact the apostolic delegate. As a condition of entrance into the Catholic Church, Father Paul was required by Rome to submit to reordination, and his friars to rebaptism — a humiliating experience for those who believed in the validity of Anglican orders.
[26] The Lamp, IV (July, 1906), 30. Members were expected to practice self-denial, lead a life of simplicity, frugality, and economy, practice the corporal works of mercy, and to pray, give, and work “to bring men into union with Christ, through the ministry and sacraments of the Catholic Church, that no soul perish.”
[27] There can be little doubt that this refers to the 1896 encyclical, Apistolicae Curae, in which Pope Leo XIII declared all Anglican ordinations to be “absolutely null and utterly void.” According to the document, after examination, “the new rite for conferring Holy Orders … introduced under Edward VI” possessed “inherent defect[s]” of form and expressed intention that rendered doubtful its Sacramental validity.
[28] Angell and LaFontaine, Prophet of Reunion, p. 189 (on his fits of anger); pp. 185 and 187 (on his dislike for losing); p. 89 (on his view of Anglican Orders).
[29] The Lamp, XVI (June, 1918), 353.
[30] Father Calavassy to Father Paul, 17 June 1918, Father Paul Research Center, Garrison, New York (hereafter F.P.R.C.). See also The Lamp, XVIII (October, 1920), 274. In another letter from Father Paul to George Calavassy, 15 July 1920, Father Paul congratulated the new bishop and recommended to him the services of the U.N.B.L. and the observance of the Chair of Unity Octave in his diocese.
[31] “Report of the Mission Section of a Special Advisory Committee to the Catholic Activities Committee of the American Hierarchy, Preamble” (n.d.), Archives of the Greek Catholic Exarchate, Athens, Greece (hereafter AGCE) 3, XVII, D3.
[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Monsignor Kelley to Bishop Papadopoulos, 11 September 1919.
[35] Monsignor Kelley to Bishop Papadopoulos, 8 September 1919.
[36] Monsignor Francis C. Kelley, The Bishop Jots It Down (New York and London: Harper Brothers, 1939), pp. 217- 224.
[37] Ibid. Kelley also carried on correspondence with Bishop Papadopoulos in an attempt to convince him that nothing of significance would happen in the missions until they were freed from control of the French. Kelley assured Papadopoulos that the American Mission Board would safeguard the interests of the Oriental Congregation. See Kelley to Papadopoulos, 8 September 1919, and 30 September 1920 (AOC).
[38] Father Paul to Bishop Calavassy, 14 January 1921, (AGCE) Dla/343. In this same letter Father Paul wrote that he has instructed Brother Fidelis, his treasurer, to see to it that the number of Mass intentions, which Bishop Calavassy said he needed, be transmitted to him each month, “even though others may have to go short.” In a letter 11 May 1921, Father Paul informed Bishop Calavassy that Bishop Papadopoulos had secured the authorization to send Mass intentions to all parts of the world; see Father Paul to Bishop Calavassy (AGCE) Dla/406.
[39] When Cardinal Doughterty was a bishop in the Philippines, through the Extension Society Monsignor Kelley assisted him generously, and Cardinal Dougherty “never forgot a favor.” See Joseph J. Quinn, Foreward, XII, Monsignor Kelley, The Bishop Jots It Down.
[40] Father Paul to Bishop Calavassy, 21 April 1922 (AGCE) Dla/638. Monsignor Kelley was actually elected secretary of the A.B.C.M.
[41] Father Paul to Bishop Calavassy, 27 November 1922 (AGCE) Dla/783. NER officials would strongly resent Bishop Calavassy’s accusation that Greek Catholics had been excluded from NER funding.
[42] Bishop Calavassy to Father Paul Wattson, 4 May 1922 (AGCE) Dla/650.
[43] Bishop Calavassy’s financial obligations were already considerable. In keeping with his plan to establish a systematic, native, missionary effort to convert the 150,000,000 “unresponsible [sic] victims of the unfortunate Greek schism”, he had built in Constantinople, with funds from America, a school for boys, a school for girls, and a small church, and had bought a bishop’s house, and a temporary convent for his Congregation of Missionary Sisters, which he had founded. Commenting on this progress to a prospective American benefactor, Bishop Calavassy wrote: “The schismatical religious authorities, afraid of this systematic work, organized a strong persecution against us and excommunicated all the Orthodox who would come to us, but unfortunately without any result. In fact, notwithstanding the persecution, we already count one thousand five hundred conversions, our boys’ college started with sixty boys, counted one hundred eighty on his [sic] second year, and this year, the third year of his [sic] existence, counts three hundred twenty boys, v.z. as many as it could contain. The school for girls counts, since its first year of existence, one hundred fifty girls. The church, consecrated only a few months ago, is already too small.” See Bishop Calavassy to Edward O’Hern, 2 July 1922 (A.G.C.E.) Dla.680.
[44] C. LaFontaine, “Role of Father Paul,” p. 15.
[45] Catholic News (New York), 12 April 1924. The article was by Louis H. Wetmore, an early supporter of Monsignor Barry-Doyle’s cause.
[46] Waterbury (Conn.) Republican, 3 October 1924. Barry-Doyle was named a domestic prelate 22 November 1920. See Annuario Pontificio (Rome, 1924), p. 549. However, the Chaplaincy Archives of the Ministry of Defense, London, “cannot verify that he was made a Monsignor … at the request of His Majesty’s government.” See 28 October 1976 letter from Msgr. T.F. Fehily, Principal R.C. Chaplain (Army) to Archbishop Joseph T. Ryan (ACNEWA).
[47] Anthony Vakondios, “The Catholic Near East Welfare Association,” 1976, unpublished, (ACNEWA), p. 4. According to Vakondios, Monsignor Barry-Doyle was introduced to Bishop Calavassy in September, 1922.
[48] Many years later Monsignor Barry-Doyle told a reporter in French-speaking Canada, where Catholics were in the majority, that he had worked in England for the conversion of Anglicans. “Mgr. Doyle [sic] nous parle du mouvement catholique en Angleterre, ou ces jours derniers 16,000 anglicans et trois eveques ont offert leur obedience au papa … Il a travailla a la conversion des anglicans en Angleterre.” Montreal La Presse, 30 July 1923.
[49] Waterbury (Conn.) Republican, 3 October 1924.
[50] Catholic Transcript (Hartford), 23 November 1924. During the lecture tours, Monsignor Barry-Doyle may have been inclined to exaggerate. The Armistice was signed 18 November 1918. The following official account of Barry-Doyle’s military career was provided by Monsignor T. F. Fehily, Principal R.C. Chaplain and Vicar General (Army) of Her Majesty’s Forces 5 March 1976, to Msgr. Arthur Rivers, (St. Patrick’s Church, Soho, London): “Applied to join the Army as a Chaplain on the 24 August 1916. Appointed Chaplain to the Roman Catholics at Purfleet Camp, Essex on the 29th August 1916. Selected for duty with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force on the 28th October 1916. Served in Egypt and Palestine from October 1916 to May 1918. Disembarked at Marseilles in France on the 7th May 1918 with the 74th Division. Medically evacuated from France to Palace Green Hospital in August 1918. Reported back on duty on the 4 November 1918 at Thorpe War Hospital, Norwich. Duty in Aldershot from 20 November 1918 to May 1919. Selected for duty with the Black Sea Force and embarked on the 18th June 1919. Demobilised locally in Constantinople on the lst April 1922.” On 11 October 1976, Monsignor Fehily reported also to Monsignor Rivers that Barry-Doyle’s mother, Mrs. Mary Doyle, lived with her daughter, Mrs. James Doran, at 214 Ely Avenue, Long Island City, New York, on 30 October 1916, and on 29 May 1919 Mrs. Doyle lived at 325 Fay Avenue, South Elizabeth, New Jersey (ACNEWA).
[51] CNEWA. The clippings, dating from 2 March 1923 until 31 May 1925, are preserved in a scrapbook maintained probably by Mr. Joseph Moore.
[52] Waterbury (Conn.) Republican, 3 October 1924
[53] 1901 Irish Catholic Directory and Almanac (Dublin: James Duffy, 1901).
[54] 1904 Irish Catholic Directory and Almanac with Complete Directory in English. (Dublin: James Duffy, 1904).
[55] Interview with Monsignor Patrick Corish, professor of church history, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland, 27 June 1976.
[56] Monsignor Barry-Doyle to Bishop Calavassy, 19 April 1923 (AGCE) D2/1011.
[57] Interview with the Rev. John Gahan, St. Peter’s College, Wexford, Ireland, 26 June 1976. Father Gahan also pointed out that an English garrison was stationed during this period not far from Adamstown, which would allow for the probability that Barry-Doyle was acquainted with people in the British Army long before he entered as a chaplain.
[58] Interview with Monsignor John Cobb, at Hospital in Wexford, 26 June 1976.
[59] Interview with Mr. Walter Kent and Mrs. Annie Kent at Tramore, County Waterford, 10 August 1976. Mr. Kent, 85, said he remembered Father Barry-Doyle in Adamstown as a “good priest who had no problem with either drink or women,” who served “various wines for various foods” at the “large parties” he gave for his friends, “virtually all of whom were Protestants.” He said also that one of Father Barry-Doyle’s very close friends was “the local squire, Hall-Dare, a Protestant.”
[60] Bridgeport (Conn.) Sunday Post, 23 November 1924.
[61] Ibid.
[62] Bridgeport Sunday Post, 23 November 1924.
[63] In his letter of recommendation to Monsignor Barry-Doyle, Bishop Calavassy expressly set forth his double purpose, indicating that from the start he (Calavassy) had in mind the founding of a permanent fundraising agency. See Bishop Calavassy to Barry-Doyle, 4 October 1922 (AGCE) D2/6.
[64] Gerhard Lemski, The Religious Factor: A Sociological Study of Religion’s Impact on Policits, Economics, and Family Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1961) pp. 50-55, 288-297. Lenski’s conclusion, surprising to many, was that the truly devotional man scores lower on the prejudice curve than the “doctrinally orthodox,” who accept the authority of the Church, but internalize it less.
[65] Bridgeport Sunday Post, 23 November 1924.
[66] Boston Herald, 1 June 1924. In a powerful lecture before a capacity audience in Symphony Hall, Boston, Monsignor Barry-Doyle equated the unconventional behavior of Jesus with his ability to break down deep-rooted social prejudices.
[67] For the relationship between devotionalism and intolerance, see Lenski, op. cit.. This finding has been confirmed by other sociologists, although interpretations of the data may vary. See T. W. Adorno, et. al., The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper & Row, 1950) especially pp. 728-738. Also Will Herberg, Protestant- Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, 1960) pp. 59-75.
[68] Hartford Catholic Transcript, 23 October 1924.
[69] Waterbuty Sunday Republican, 12 October 1924.
[70] Ibid.
[71] Regarding Islam, Monsignor Barry-Doyle was quoted in the New York Sun, 2 March 1923, as follows: “There are those, of course, who believe that the Cross should be restored to Constantinople in place of the Crescent. Maybe, but not necessarily with the total destruction of the Crescent. Both religions can be used, I feel, as a common footing for betterment of human nature.”
[72] Under the heading “Catholic, Spiritualist Live Side by Side in Harmony,” the Syracuse Journal, 19 February 1925, carried this quotation from Monsignor Barry-Doyle regarding Arthur Conan Doyle: “There is only love between us. … Let there be no doubt that in his beliefs, my brother is sincere. There is no kinder hearted man living in the world. My life with him is as happy as can be. … He is putting the rest of his life to spiritualism, and I respect him.” Monsignor Barry-Doyle frequently stayed with his “brother” in New Jersey.
[73] This theme dominated every lecture he gave. See the above mentioned news clippings, passim.
[74] Hartford Catholic Transcript, 23 November 1924.