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St. Patrick's Example for Boston's Pioneer Catholics Msgr. George G. Higgins March 15, 1999  Thomas H. O'Connor, professor emeritus of history at Boston College, recently published an excellent book, ``Boston Catholics: A History of the Church and Its People'' (Northeastern University Press, Boston). It is fascinating and inspiring. I use the word ``inspiring'' advisedly, for a bonus of church-history books of this type is that they make good spiritual reading. That is to say, they recall the heroic zeal of our long-forgotten forbears. The struggles and sacrifices of many of our New England forebears were almost beyond imagining. I found it humbling to refresh my vague memory of their rugged lifestyle and to contrast that with our own more comfortable existence.  I have had this same experience many times in sampling the plethora of scholarly works on the frontier history of the church in the United States -- north, south, east and west. The best available summary of these books is the Encyclopedia of American Catholic History, edited by Michael Glazier and Thomas Shelley, and published last year by the Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minn.  By coincidence, just as I finished reading O'Connor's ``Boston Catholics,'' I had to pull together some notes on St. Patrick's life. Because so many Boston Catholics were of Irish descent, I was intrigued to discover that St. Patrick, 1,500 years ago, set the example for them in dealing with some of their most bitter experiences in a new, largely hostile environment.  O'Connor's retelling of the religious prejudice and hatred directed at Boston's pioneer Catholics by eminent Puritan divines and rabid rank-and-file nativists makes for chilling reading. But like St. Patrick, Boston's early bishops -- Cheverus, of French descent; Fenwick, a descendent of the original Maryland Catholic settlement; and Fitzpatrick, a native-born Bostonian -- showed heroic forbearance in helping their embattled parishioners face this challenge with charity and patience.  We are told that when people mocked St. Patrick, he instinctively turned the other cheek. ``It was not because of malice on their part,'' he was wont to say, ``but on account of my want of education.'' In citing St. Patrick's example of forbearance, I do not suggest that Boston's early Catholics, in dealing with religious enemies, compromised or watered down their faith's content. They steadfastly held to the truth at any cost. But in the words of St. Paul's terse injunction to the Ephesians, they practiced the truth in charity. A contemporary Irish historian points out that another secret of Patrick's ``outstanding success as a missionary was his masterly solution of that which evangelizing pioneers call the `adaptation' problem. Like St. Paul, he became `all things to all men for the sake of Christ.' Everything in the native culture that could lawfully be preserved, he preserved.... He was entirely sympathetic toward everything in native letters and institutions which did not positively conflict with Christianity.'' As St. Patrick's spiritual heirs, Boston Catholics were called upon to communicate to a civilized nation the hope and the justice and, above all, the charity which are the essence of the Christian message. They were not called upon to judge their own nation and culture, but to help save it from within, not by sterile argumentation or snarling polemics, much less by force of numbers or political tactics, but by the sheer force of Christian charity and their own disinterested involvement in the world's everyday work. It's no secret, of course, that we Catholics sometimes are accused of shirking this commitment or disdaining this involvement. That could never be said of O'Connor's Boston Catholics.  Against almost insuperable odds they adapted quickly to their new American culture -- so radically different from the one left behind in Ireland and other European nations -- and became outstanding leaders of the culture of their own time and place.   Papal Social Encyclicals   Other Catholic Social Teachings General Articles of Interest  Catholic Worker Connection Msgr. George Higgins  Home Page E-Mail: Fr. Sinclair Oubre