When I came home [from Louvain] in 1928, I spoke six modern languages and Latin and had spent the last six weeks of my last summer learning the work of what in England was called the Catholic Evidence Guild and in the United States we called street preaching.
I had seen many beautiful cathedrals in nearly every country in Western Europe, but none ever seemed as wonderful as the little frame church where I sang my first Solemn High Mass on June 11, 1928, in St. Francis of Assisi Church, Newkirk, Oklahoma, with Bishop Francis C. Kelley preaching for my first Mass.
When we landed in New York at the Belgian Bureau, there was a letter from Bishop Kelley appointing me his personal secretary and second assistant at St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Oklahoma City. Things didn’t go that simply.
The pastor of my home parish of St. Francis of Assisi in Newkirk had suffered a heart attack some weeks earlier and was recovering with his family in California. The parish had been provided Sunday Mass regularly by a Benedictine priest from Shawnee, Oklahoma, for some weeks. Bishop Kelley appointed me acting pastor of my home parish until the previous pastor could return or a new pastor could be appointed. This gave me a very pleasant month at home and the use of the family Ford.
My only parish duties were to provide occasion for the sacrament of penance on Saturday evenings and the Masses on Sunday mornings. However, my only absence from the parish was to offer Mass the first weekday available at Mt. St. Mary’s Convent in Wichita, Kansas, a distance of seventy miles, where my sister Rosa had just made final vows as a Sister of St. Joseph. The rest of my time was spent at home visiting the family and old friends and offering daily Mass in the parish church.
My first Sunday Mass was a great success, because my sermon was so brief. The pastor of several years was known for his lengthy and sometimes acrid dissertations. All I could think to say was that I was glad to be home, thank the people for their prayers and congratulate them on the truly remarkable increase in the number receiving Holy Communion-about four minutes’ worth. At harvest time that was very agreeable to all.
I had one sick call, a schoolmate who had married a non-Catholic girl outside the Church, was presently quite ill and thought to be in danger of death. I visited him and his spouse several times, persuaded them to renew their marriage vows before me, helped him examine his conscience and gave him the sacrament of penance, and the sacrament of the sick. The man got well, which pleased everyone.
After some weeks Bishop Kelley sent me to a real country parish for some weeks—St. Francis, four miles from Canute (population 432), in Western Oklahoma. He had persuaded the Sisters of Mercy of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to staff the school with three Sisters. Classes were being held through the months of July and August so that the children would be free for picking cotton in September and October.
The pastor had gotten into arguments with the church trustees by refusing to let them see the parish records and had taken the records to the bishop’s house and left them there, saying, “Bishop, I can’t stand it anymore so I just left. Here are the parish books. Do what you want with them.” So the bishop called me to get the books, go to the place, make peace with the congregation, but “Above all,” he said, “don’t let the Sisters go back to Pittsburgh.”
Poor Sisters! I don’t know how they put up with the heat and the dust, but they did, and remained in the parish for three or four years. As a good priest, I wore my Roman collar and a heavy black suit made by a Belgian tailor (my only clerical clothes), visited all the families, had an election of trustees (the same ones were reelected), and did my own housekeeping. Since the parish plant was in the middle of the fields and it never seemed to rain, though there was much wind, I don’t know how I endured it either.
Finally, the bishop got his appointments made and in August, 1928, I finally got to St. Joseph’s Cathedral in Oklahoma City. The pastor, Monsignor G. Depreitere, the nephew of Bishop Meerschaert, was a wonderful man, kindly, hospitable, and always willing to do his share of the work, offering the 6:30 a.m. Mass on weekdays and Sundays, always setting a good table as well as a good example, and generous about the use of the parish car.
The first assistant was Fr. Paul Van Dorpe, S.T.B., whom I met my first evening in Louvain and who spent two more years in the American College, so we were good friends. After two years he was assigned to another parish and the newly-ordained Rev. Victor J. Reed of Tulsa, later to become the fourth bishop of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, was assigned to serve as second assistant at the Cathedral. We spent two years together before I was appointed pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish in Bristow and St. Mary’s Church in Drumright, where I served three years.
The Catholic Evidence Guild
In the spring of 1926 Bishop Francis Clement Kelley paid a visit to the American College and like all visiting bishops was asked by the rector to speak to the students about some subject of his choice. He had just spent a week in London and chose to speak to us about the Catholic Evidence Guild.
This was a group, chiefly of lay men and women, who spoke outdoors in Hyde Park and other places in England, chiefly in London, explaining Catholic doctrine and answering questions. I was greatly stirred by his talk and asked if I might spend some weeks of my summer vacation in London, seeing how it was done, taking part if permitted, and bringing the practice to Oklahoma. The bishop seemed pleased to agree.
I had already made arrangements to spend the summer of 1926 in Italy, and the first six weeks of the summer of 1927 in Spain, to learn those languages, but I spent the last six weeks of the 1927 vacation, from the last week of August until the end of the first week of October, in London. By great good fortune I confided in a friend who served as chaplain in a Louvain hospital. He had been an early Belgian student, ordained for the Diocese of Boise, Idaho, but came back to Louvain after losing a leg in one of the cold winters in Idaho. To him I confided my desire, which he approved. I asked him, “But where can I afford to stay in London for six weeks?”
He said, “I have a Belgian priest friend who runs a small school in London where he teaches young French students to speak English. I’ll write to him to see if he will take you for a dollar a day.” Not only did the priest agree, but he decided to put me in charge of the two dozen boys and their classes for two weeks, paying me a pound a week and guaranteeing me I could have the evenings free to spend with the Catholic Evidence Guild.
It worked wonderfully. I saw London from the second story of a bus and on my first evening was at the foot of the Catholic Evidence Guild “pitch” near Marble Arch in Hyde Park. I met some of the speakers and was invited to their classes on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in a hall on the grounds of Westminster Cathedral (not the same as Westminster Abbey, which had been taken over by the Anglicans when England was separated from the Catholic Church in the time of Henry VIII).
Mrs. Frank Sheed (Maisie Ward) was teaching that evening, and when I introduced myself after her lecture and told of my desire to learn, she said, “Get yourself a talk and Frank will take you to Highbury Lane next Sunday afternoon.” It was the beginning of a lasting friendship. I have always said that Frank and Maisie Sheed had greater influence on making me the kind of priest and bishop I became than any other lay persons, except my parents.
So I put together a ten-minute talk on “The Forgiveness of Sin and Confession” met Mr. Sheed at the appointed place; and we went to Highbury Lane. I shall never forget it. It is about half a block long. When we arrived, one corner was occupied by a man playing a small organ, surrounded by a group of children singing “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.” The next stand had a man advocating “Free Love,” which caused a heckler to shout, “What do you mean free? It costs more than the other kind.” Next, Mr. Sheed put up his pulpit and gave a talk on the Church. The final person in the row of speakers was a man who put up his pitch and announced, “I have no special subject, but whatever the Catholic speakers say, I’ll prove it wrong.”
In fifteen minutes of lecture and ten minutes of answering hecklers, Mr. Sheed had the whole crowd. Suddenly he got down, took me by both shoulders and put me on the stand, saying, “You have the whole crowd now. Get up and give your talk and answer questions and I’ll take over again when I think you’ve had enough.” So I got up and began to talk on “Confession and the Forgiveness of Sin. ”
At one point I had a short lapse of memory and the heckling started. After two or three minutes, I said, “Here, this won’t do. You have me so mixed up I don’t know where I was in my talk. I’ll just have to start over again.” There was a great burst of laughter, and I did just that. This time I finished my ten-minute talk and answered questions until Mr. Sheed pulled on my pants leg. I got down, and he finished in a few minutes and closed the assembly.
The next Sunday Mr. Sheed took me to Hammersmith. In the underground, I confessed to anxiety that I might be responsible for uttering some heresy. Mr. Sheed turned straight towards me and said, “Don’t worry, Father, the Catholic Church has put up with lots of smarter heretics than you can ever be.” The following two Sunday evenings I graduated to the pitch at Marble Arch in Hyde Park, in what television addicts now call “prime time”: 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. When I returned to Louvain for graduate work at the University in 1935-1938, that was the spot and time given me also. Mr. Sheed later told Msgr. Leon McNeill of Wichita, Kansas, a good friend of mine, “We have had lots of American speakers, but Fr. Leven was the best we ever had, in presentation of subject, crowd handling, and answering questions.”
Bringing the Guild to Oklahoma
Within a month after coming to Oklahoma City, I started a convert class at the Cathedral, and continued to have two or three classes yearly during the four years I was stationed there. But my real desire was to get the Evidence Guild started, preaching on the courthouse lawn. It was the beginning of the great depression; and during the warmer months, there were always people there arguing religion and politics and even sleeping on the lawn all night. There would be no trouble getting a crowd.
It was also the year Al Smith, the first Catholic candidate, was running for president. Bishop Kelley feared some might consider a priest preaching outdoors a campaigner for a Catholic president rather than a campaigner for Christ and his Church. The torrent of abuse of the presidential candidate’s religion became virulent, the activities of the Ku Klux Klan increased day by day and night by night. So-called ex-priests and ex-nuns preached from nearly every non-Catholic pulpit. The newspapers were full of anti-popery.
The bishop, counseled by laymen as well as by clerical advisers, thought only harm would come from the effort. This conviction held even the year following Al Smith’s defeat. So I kept busy with the usual young priest’s activities, daily Mass and confessions, teaching in St. Joseph’s grade and high schools, trying to coach girls’ and boys’ basketball and tennis, preaching at four Masses every other Sunday, and taking sick calls and funerals. I was also appointed an approved attorney in the diocesan matrimonial court in September, 1929, serving in that capacity during all my priestly life in the Diocese of Oklahoma.
One of the Protestant Churches invited the bishop to speak and answer questions at an evening service. Bishop Kelley pleaded that he could not fit it into his schedule, and they agreed to accept me as a substitute. I preached on “The Forgiveness of Sin and the Catholic Practice of Confession.” It was great fun. Later the professor of a course in comparative religion at Oklahoma City University, a Methodist institution, asked for a four-hour course on the Roman Catholic Church, where again I substituted for the bishop. It was well received with a lot of participation by the students, and the professor was pleased.
In the fall of 1931 Frank Sheed was lecturing in the States and agreed to come to Oklahoma City. The Catholic Daughters of America, Court Santa Maria #81, put up the money for his minimal fee, scarcely train fare from the last lecture. They also got out a large Catholic crowd, headed by the bishop and priests of the city.
When Mr. Sheed had finished his lecture on the Catholic Evidence Guild in England and had answered many questions, Bishop Kelley summed it up by publicly giving me permission to start. Fr. Victor J. Reed, then a fellow assistant at the Cathedral, agreed to back me up and we made plans to begin in the spring of 1932.
In those pre-Vatican II days the Gospel of the second Sunday after Easter always repeated the words of Our Lord in John 10:15, “Other sheep I have who are not of this fold. Them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one Fold and one Shepherd.” As we planned during the winter months, we decided to start on the next day, which we called “Other Sheep Monday,” and every year from that time on the outdoor apostolate in Oklahoma began on “Other Sheep Monday.” It continued until cold weather came towards the end of September.
That Monday came on April 13 in 1932. It was the first Catholic Evidence lecture in the United States. A benevolent carpenter, father of Charles A. Buswell, later to become bishop of Pueblo, Colorado, made us a little pulpit on one corner of which a crucifix was mounted. About 7:30 p.m. we set it up on the courthouse lawn and I got up, said the “Come, Holy Ghost” and made the first speech and answered questions. The crowd was good and grew quite large. There were many questions, but there was none of the heckling I had noted at the Catholic Evidence Guild’s meetings in London. In fact, in twenty-seven years of street-preaching in the United States, I never encountered any real heckling.
Later during the summer of 1932, Fr. Michael Coleman of Brooklyn, who was a belated vocation for Oklahoma, preached some Saturdays in the towns of his large parish in Western Oklahoma. When the seminarians came home from Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis, Mr. Harold Pierce and Mr. Paul V. Brown preached with us, thus becoming the first laymen in Oklahoma to preach on the street.
They soon went to help Fr. Coleman, who kept up his outdoor preaching for five or six weeks, nearly always on Saturdays when the farmers came to town. They even coaxed me into speaking in four towns with them: Hobart, Carnegie, Cordell, and Mangum. I preached in one on a Saturday morning, in two in the afternoon, and one in the evening.
Fr. Coleman died suddenly in 1933 the night before our street preaching was to begin. I have prayed to him for help before every sermon I have preached since.
The Guild Begins Street Preaching
In October, 1932, I was appointed pastor of St. Joseph’s Parish in Bristow, Creek County, to which was attached St. Mary’s Mission in Drumright, some twenty-five miles of rough, hilly and unpaved roads to the northwest. The parish territory covered about thirty-five hundred square miles with fifteen or twenty small towns and oil-field workers’ camps.
Each congregation consisted of about 125 persons. Both had brick churches. Three Sisters of Divine Providence lived in a house, made of the former frame church in Bristow, and taught eight grades in classrooms made by the former pastor in the basement of the brick church. Two of the Sisters traveled with the pastor each Saturday for Mass and classes of religious instruction in Drumright. There was Sunday Mass in each church at alternate hours of 8:30 a.m. and 10:45 a.m.
It was my first experience in the former Indian Territory and my first experience with the poverty of “hillbilly” country. It was also at the height of the Great Depression. The bank where the parish funds were deposited had gone bankrupt. In Bristow the Sisters had not received their small salary of $30 monthly, and there would be only $75 for the pastor during the three years I spent there. However, from the Mission, where most of the Catholic people were oilfield workers, $70 a month came in regularly. In Bristow, more than half the Catholics were Lebanese, some shop keepers and bootleggers. There was one very poor farm family, a lawyer with a young family, a doctor’s wife and daughter, and a few oil workers of various competencies and small salaries.
The priest was welcome in every home, and somehow we made it through the first winter. Friends from Oklahoma City helped by coming to the Lebanese festivals. The Sisters’ small salaries were paid and the school was kept open for a second and third year and a later pastor even built a new school.
My first stop in coming to Bristow as pastor was at the newspaper office. This pleased the editor so much he gave me a fine introduction to the public through his paper, which covered the territory pretty well. Always afterwards, he favored me in every way he could, even getting me to be the first Catholic priest to open the state legislature with prayer.
Catholics were indeed few but very good, and later six girls and four boys, whose lives I had touched in those years, became nuns and priests.
When “Other Sheep Monday” came in 1933, I had made the rounds of some fifteen or twenty towns in the parish and mission and had decided to begin in the almost abandoned oil town of Slick. Its unpaved Main Street was only about five blocks long. Most of the wooden buildings were empty. In the center of the town there was only a general store, owned and managed by a pair of elderly twins, Jim and Charley Sprott. At first they were surprised to see me and didn’t know what to make of my request to preach under their electric light in front of the store.
So I bought a cold drink, and we visited a while. I pointed out that probably none of the community had ever seen or heard a real Catholic priest before. Probably they would come in from the scattered houses and oil camps around. I explained I wouldn’t attack any other church, but just preach about Jesus and answer questions about the Catholic Church.
If people came to hear me, their store would be advertised and they would probably have some extra business. Finally, they agreed to let me put up a sign outside the store and to let me set up my pulpit under their outdoor electric light when I came the next Monday evening. I knew they would do a lot of advertising by word of mouth.
Monday night came; and when I arrived at the store, a good crowd had gathered. I mounted the pulpit, opened with the Sign of the Cross and the prayer, “Come, Holy Ghost,” gave a twenty minute talk on the Catholic Church, answered questions for half an hour and closed with the Lord’s Prayer in which nearly all joined. When I invited them back for the following Monday night, I knew I’d have a larger crowd.
After the meeting was over the women went into the store or back to the family cars. Most of the men came up to shake hands and ask more questions. Many told me they had never seen or heard a real Catholic priest before and would “sure come back.” This was the beginning of “street preaching” in Oklahoma. On the courthouse lawn in Oklahoma City we called it “The Catholic Evidence Guild,” as they did in England and New York and Detroit and Baltimore and Washington. From then on, it was always “street preaching” for us.
The Sprott brothers became my good friends. Charley said to me one night, “What I like about you most is that you always preach in English.” “Of course I do,” I replied. “What did you expect? I can speak some other languages, too, but who would understand them? And I want people to understand me.” “They don’t all preach in English,” he said. ” I dated a Catholic girl years ago and she took me to one of your Mass meetings. I was a little scared, but she told me I could just sit down the whole time. Well, it was different from anything I ever saw.
“First I stumbled over her when she knelt down before getting into the pew. Then the priest came out of a little door in the front and got up on that platform, dressed up like a clown, and turned his back to us. Once in a while he’d turn around and say something in an unknown language. I asked her what he said and she answered, ‘It’s Latin; you’re not supposed to understand.’ He had two little boys dressed up like little girls, and I guess they were helping him. After a while one of them rang a bell and all the congregation knelt down but me. Then he rang a bell again and they all ducked their heads. Then the boy ran up and grabbed the priest’s tail and rang a bell under that.” I think of Charley whenever I hear people say, “I wish they hadn’t changed the way of saying Mass at Vatican Council II.”
I continued street preaching in Slick every Monday night all summer. Usually I took a school boy along as company until the seminary year closed and the two Oklahoma seminarians from Kenrick Seminary-Paul Brown and Harold Pierce-stayed with me several weeks and gave preliminary talks.
My second talk my first week was in Bristow on Saturday evening. The location was not very advantageous-a side street about half a block off Main Street. But it was under a street light, and about thirty-five non-Catholics came and there were plenty of questions. At the end I invited them to Mass in church the next morning at 10:30. A visiting Catholic from out of town stayed with the listeners to hear their comments after I folded my pulpit and left. One man said to his neighbor, ” If it’s like that young feller says, I think I’d like to go some time.” The other answered, “Yes, but don’t go by yourself. You can’t tell what they might do if they got you in there alone.” I continued there every Saturday evening all that summer.
The next Saturday afternoon, I drove to Depew, a town some fifteen miles southwest of Bristow, just off U. S. Highway 66 to Oklahoma City. I found lots of shoppers and stragglers, so I walked some three or four blocks up one side of Main Street and down the other, stopping each group and announcing, “A Catholic priest will give a talk at the bank corner in fifteen minutes and answer any questions you may want to ask about the Catholic Church. Come on down.”
A good crowd came and there were many questions. Finally, remembering my coming talk that night at Bristow, I had to call an end to the meeting, promising to come back later. Then I shook hands all around, answered a few more quick questions and left. I came back some three or four more Saturday mornings or afternoons that summer.
There was a town in the southern part of the parish called Gypsy Corner. The name intrigued me very much. About the middle of the summer, I drove down there with one of the seminarians. It was really only a central school and what was left of an early oil field settlement with two or three dozen families in the area. The people were very friendly. I was offered the use of the school, but it wouldn’t be so hot outdoors so I declined. I spoke there from Tuesday until Saturday night and had good crowds.
One mother of ten or twelve children came to me about the third night and asked if I couldn’t bring some Catholic nuns to teach Bible school to the children of the community. I promised to try to do that the next summer. During the winter the Reverend Mother Agnes of the Benedictine Sisters at Guthrie promised to supply some teachers for such a missionary enterprise and the Benedictine Fathers at Shawnee offered me the use of an old school bus.
So in 1934, we had a vacation school there for all non-Catholic children for two weeks. One of the seminarians, Paul Brown of Oklahoma City, was the bus driver. The Sisters scrounged catechisms and other materials. We had the children in the daytime and the adults at night. A few even drove the twelve or fifteen miles to Bristow for Sunday Mass when it was celebrated at 10:30 a.m.
I closed the 1933 season with a week in front of a store, in Newby, some eight miles south of Slick. The storekeeper had heard of the preaching in Slick and welcomed me. It helped his business considerably. The final week for 1933 was in Kellyville which we always told Bishop Kelley was named for him, although the only Catholic in the town was the wife of the Methodist minister.
It had been a good summer. Joseph Quinn, the editor of the Southwest Courier, our diocesan newspaper, gave the enterprise almost a weekly story and some news had even reached the other Catholic newspapers of the country. I couldn’t help praying, “I hope it reached God, too.”
The North End of the Parish
For the spring and summer of 1934, I decided to work in the north end of the parish. There were some dozen towns I knew and a few I did not know. So I started in Oilton, announcing a “Catholic Revival” to last one week. The only suitable place was a corner with a street light just a few doors from the Ku Klux Klan Hall, the only one I ever saw during my three years in the parish. They had a Klan cross on the front of their building. I was told it was lighted only when they were having a meeting on Thursday nights. But when my pulpit was set up and my sermon began, their lighted cross was burning.
The next night the same thing happened, so I took the occasion to explain how I had discovered how Catholic most Protestants are without knowing it. I said, “There are many Protestant churches which have no crosses, but the Klan does. Well, all the Catholic churches you ever see are topped with the cross and have been long before there ever was a Ku Klux Klan. I want to compliment the Klan and thank them for honoring the Cross on which our Savior died.” The next night and for the rest of our meetings the Klan cross was never again lighted.
The next week I went about twenty miles further to Terlton where I was told there was a Catholic family who had a general store. I was welcomed with open arms. Both father and mother and all the children were baptized. They had moved down from Coffeyville, Kansas, but said, “We haven’t been to Mass for a year. The children go to the public school and want to go to Sunday School with their Protestant friends.”
I arranged to stay and preach in front of their store every night for a week and later have the Benedictine Sisters of Guthrie have a two-week vacation Bible school in the public school for them and any Protestant children who might wish to come. There were more Protestant children attending than Catholics. At the end of the two weeks, I didn’t receive any converts into the Church, but the Catholic parents and their children received the Sacraments of penance and Holy Eucharist in the Mass in their home.
Years later I met the mother in Tulsa. Her husband had died and all the children were married and had families of their own. She thanked me profusely for the religious influence I had had on the family and insisted, “We had almost given up the Faith, but you brought it back to us and we have all remained faithful.”
Driving up to Terlton took me through a little town called Jennings. One afternoon I came upon a dozen or more men sitting in a circle under a large tree in front of a blacksmith shop along side of the road. I stopped, went up to them, and said, “I may be the first Catholic priest you ever saw. If you would like I’ll preach you a little sermon and answer any questions about the Catholic Church you want to ask.” They agreed, and I did. Finally I had to go on so I went around the circle shaking the hands of all. I noticed one man looking at my head to see if I had horns. Of course, I didn’t; but I had to offer to go swimming with him to prove I didn’t have a tail. I came back later for a week’s evening preaching and had wonderful crowds for such a small town.
Seminarians and priests from other dioceses started dropping in to see what was going on. The first group of priests came from the Diocese of Wichita. I had known them during my third year of high school at St. Benedict’s in Atchison: Frs. Leon McNeill, Thomas Green, Matt Gorges and others. They stayed only two or three nights, but easily became converts and all started street preaching in their home parishes. A Jesuit father from St. Louis came and preached one evening.
The Reverend Edward Lodge Curran, Ph.D., of Brooklyn, President of the International Catholic Truth Society, spent two weeks with me. He was a magnificent speaker, whom I could never imitate; but from one of his lectures, I got the title I later always used for my opening sermon, “God and Myself.” I also got the promise of free pamphlets for distribution after my talks. This was an enormous help as a follow-up to the preaching. Before that I had to rely on the few pamphlets I could afford to buy now and then and what magazines I could save up or beg from some of my priest friends during the winter months, particularly leftover copies of Our Sunday Visitor from parishes.
The Kenrick seminarians persuaded their dogma professor, the Reverend Lester Fallon, C.M., to spend a week with me. He got so enthused he organized “The Motor Missions” and persuaded many other Vincentian seminaries to do the same so that some of the seminaries conducted by the Vincentians made up teams of priests and students each summer, especially in the West and Southwest for a dozen years or more. Fr. Fallon devised a correspondence course based on Bishop John Francis Noll’s Father Smith Instructs Jackson, with questionnaires to be filled out and returned for correction as a follow-up for the street preaching.
Mr. John Frank Martin of Oklahoma City, Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus in Oklahoma, undertook and maintained Sunday afternoon services with the aid of other members in Gypsy Corner. Later, as a member of the National Board of the K. of C., he persuaded the Knights to begin their program of Catholic advertising in secular magazines, using Fr. Fallon’s adaptation of Bishop Noll’s book as a response to inquiries received.
When the U. S. draft for World War II began, tens of thousands of these books were made available to the Catholic chaplains of the U. S. services for the further instruction of Catholic members of the various services and for potential converts.
The Work of the Guild Spreads
Some time in late January or February, 1934, Mrs. Frank Sheed lectured at Rosary College in River Forest, a suburb of Chicago. She spoke on some literary subject and after the lecture was asked to give an interview for the college publication. She agreed on condition the interview would be about the activity which interested her most: The Catholic Evidence Guild. This proved so interesting that Sister Thomas Aquinas, O.P., President of Rosary College, said, “You’ll have to come back next year and lecture to us on that.” Mrs. Sheed answered, “I can’t come back to the States next year. Besides, there is a young priest in Oklahoma whom we trained in London, who has been doing this in Oklahoma the past three years. He’s the best American Guild speaker we ever had. You should try to get him.” Sister Thomas Aquinas wrote me immediately, offering me a $50 fee if I would come to lecture on the subject to the faculty and the students in January or February, 1935.
My first impulse was to ask to be excused, but I first took the letter to Bishop Kelley to get his opinion on the matter. He was delighted and insisted that I should accept. Then he said, “Get out the Catholic Directory and write to some other large high schools and colleges and make a real lecture tour of it.” “Incidentally,” he added, “fifty dollars is a bit high. Why don’t you just ask for twenty-five?”
So I wrote, accepting the date in February at Rosary College. Then I wrote to some schools in Milwaukee; Collegeville, Minnesota; to other schools in Chicago and Detroit. So that I could visit my classmates in Providence, Rhode Island, I wrote there, also, and was engaged for several lectures.
Early in the summer my seminarian, Paul Brown, visited friends in Denver, Colorado. While there, he called on the famous Monsignor Matt Smith, the editor of the Denver Catholic Register and its chain of Catholic papers. The next week a story appeared in Fr. Smith’s front-page editorial, telling about street preaching in Oklahoma at length and the fact that I would be making a lecture tour to the East Coast in late January and February, 1935. Many letters of invitation came in and I finally made thirty-five lectures in fourteen states in twenty-five days and came back with enough money to buy a new car, which I needed badly.
Seminarians and priests dropped in from all over, and we had much company and help that summer. The Benedictine Sisters of Guthrie sent four sisters for two vacation schools for non-Catholic children for a second year. The Dominicans from Rosary College sent two nuns and three students-June 21 to July 25-who assisted in preaching and teaching, all for non-Catholics and a few Catholics. We even turned one town over to them entirely for five evenings of street preaching. They got permission from the town authorities, visited homes, chose the place for the meetings, and made a sign advertising their evening lectures with a sheet of cardboard and their lipsticks. They got a good crowd and closed their summer in glory. A second delegation came from Rosary College the next summer, but I was far away when they came. In early August Bishop Kelley called me, saying he was giving a priests’ retreat in Detroit. One of the retreatants offered to give a new Ford to Oklahoma street preaching if I could come up and get it. Of course, I could and did and drove it home for my last few weeks of street preaching. I turned it over to my successor when I finished that summer of outdoor talks.