EXTRA MATERIAL
Chapter Twenty-nine - 1954-1955
A Dynamo at Death’s Door Writes about St. Nicholas
Miscellaneous
In Spring 1954 Lord wrote a letter to Marian Prendergast while incarcerated at St. John’s Hospital,
referring to lots of unfinished work, close to completion. Lord wanted her to sort through the material and decide what needed finishing. As for his music, he thought that few of the manuscripts had permanent value so Marian could keep or pass on what was valuable. Luckily, copies of most of his music survived.1
Lord kept working during his hospital stay (probably six weeks). He kept writing, continued all his correspondence, and wrote his Along the Way
syndicated column. He had written one a week since 1933: some 1050 columns! For over twenty years countless Catholics across the country read them. For many readers, his column was the first thing they read.2
In 1954 Life magazine surveyed 7,500 Jesuits in America. They voted Daniel Lord their most effective priest.3
The Genesians of Montreal did a 33 1/3 MEMRECORD
record of Daniel Lord speaking. The Genesians, founded in 1944, are a community theater group named after St. Genesius. The record is an interview with Lord: Side 1 I Just Can’t Love My Neighbor!
and Side 2 So I’m Dying of Cancer!
It may have originally been a radio broadcast. [The recording can be found on YouTube as So I’m Dying of Cancer.
]
Spring of 1954
Lord was not slowing down.4 In spring he gave the keynote speech at a Christian Humanism conference on the fine arts at Loretto Heights College in Denver and then gave six more talks over the next seven days. He gave a talk to 8,000 CYOers in the municipal auditorium in Milwaukee. An article about his illness from the Detroit News wound up in the Congressional record on 1 April 1954.
In April Lord gave the graduation retreat at Notre Dame University. Next he went to Detroit to finish up details of the Light up the Land
movie and reshoot some scenes. Then he went to Toronto to work on the show and to try the new radioactive cobalt radiation treatment
for his cancer. In planning for the show they arranged for the arriving trains to come right to the Coliseum in Toronto.
He gave a Tre Ore Devotion (Three Hours) on Good Friday in Boston. By Easter Sunday, April 18, Lord was with the Carmelite sisters in St Louis.
He also needed another bladder treatment. Lord attended a Sodality conference in Dodge City. On the Wabash train between Kansas City and St. Louis he wrote a short piece The Verdict Was Cancer.
It would be published in July as My Good Angel of Death.
Pamphlets of 1954 and 1955
1954
The Church Can’t Order Me
Guideposts to God
His Strong and Loving Heart
Hospital Sisters
The Lady Was Immaculate
The Magnificent Catholic College
Christmas Is for Grown-ups which would be Lord’s last Christmas pamphlet.
1955
The Loving Heart of a Mother
That Wonderful Sunday Mass
These Lucky Catholics
In The Church Can’t Order Me!
Lord responds to the position of someone who says, I take my orders from God. The Church can’t give me orders.
Lord argues that Jesus founded a church to interpret and apply his general principles. He did not write any himself. Then Lord points out that the Catholic Church only insists on six basic rules
1. Mass on every Sunday and Holy Days of Obligation.
2. Fast and abstinence on the days appointed.
3. Confession at least once a year.
4. Holy Communion during the Eastertide.
5. Support given to the Church and its operation, and to its pastors.
6. Marriage to Catholics, before two witnesses, not with pomp and solemnity during the forbidden times, and not to near relatives.5
Guideposts to God is another pamphlet where Lord teaches Catholics about their faith. He starts by explaining National Sacramentals
such as the flag and the eagle. Then he covers Sacramentals for Love
such as the engagement ring; and Natural Sacramentals
such as birthday cakes and Easter eggs. After explaining the difference between the sacraments and sacramentals, Lord describes: the cross, holy water, the rosary, medals, and scapulars.6
His Strong and Loving Heart is the second to last appearance of Dick and Sue Bradley. In this pamphlet they are helping Father Hall sort through his old records to be donated for the parish sale. Sue finds an old record of Danny Kaye Let’s Not Talk About Love.
Fr. Halls suggests Let’s talk about love.
Fr. Hall launches into a discussion of the love of God shown in the Old Testament and the love of Jesus in the New Testament. Father Hall discusses the image of the Sacred Heart as a symbol of the love of Jesus.
Hall and the twins talk about ‘heart’ as a metaphor in such common expressions as I’m brokenhearted,
He sure threw his heart into it,
and I have no heart for that at all.
7 The pamphlet ends with Father Hall asking if Dick and Sue will listen to any of the records. There are not interested in such songs of love. ‘All love seems second-rate,’ said the priest, ‘even the most wonderful, compared to the love of God, the love of Christ, the love of the Sacred Heart.’
8
Hospital Sisters
Lord wrote Hospital Sisters: Your Friend in Need, Your Friend in Deed, as a tribute to the Sisters of Mercy at St. John’s Hospital.9
Lord wrote The Lady Was Immaculate for the 100th anniversary of the promulgation of doctrine of the Immaculate Conception and for 1954 as the Marian Year.
In The Magnificent Catholic College Lord is once again The Great American Catholic Salesman
as he argues persuasively about the importance of college education and the importance of going to a Catholic college. He notes that religion at secular colleges is not so much attacked as it is put in a deep freeze.10
Lord’s three last pamphlets That Wonderful Sunday Mass, The Loving Heart of a Mother, and These Lucky Catholics would be published in 1955 after his death.
The Loving Heart of Mary: The Immaculate Heart of Mary is the last appearance of Dick and Sue Bradley and Father Hall. This pamphlet is the twin of the pamphlet His Strong and Loving Heart about the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Hall discusses all the references to Mary in the gospels. He explains that after the Ascension of Jesus, Mary went to live with John. Hall suggests that Mary shared with John what she and Jesus had talked about over the years. John used these stories to create his gospel which is different from the other three. (Modern biblical scholarship typically rejects this explanation, arguing that the gospel was written long after John had died and reflects the theology about Jesus that had developed in the early Christian community.)
In These Lucky Catholics Lord recalls in great detail the growth of his religious faith from his early childhood years to his decision to become a priest. By great good fortune I was born a Catholic.
11
NOTES
- 1 See Lord Letter from St. John’s Hospital to Conway and Egan on the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes (February 11, 1954.)
- 2 A complete set of copies exists in the Jesuit Archives in St. Louis.
- 3 Gavin, 24, citing Letter from James C. Lipscomb of Life magazine, January 29, 1954.
- 4 The exact dates and sequence of these activities are not known.
- 5 Lord, “The Church Can’t Order Me!”(QW, 1954), 15.
- 6 Lord, Guideposts to God (QW, 1954).
- 7 Lord, His Strong and Loving Heart (QW, 1954), 20.
- 8 Ibid., 32.
- 9 Lord, Hospital Sisters (QW, 1954).
- 10 Lord, The Magnificent Catholic College (QW, 1954).
- 11 Lord, These Lucky Catholics (QW, 1954), 1. This pamphlet is not listed in Gavin, 206.
Copyright 2021 Stephen Werner