The Latin Mass: Back Where It Belongs

History of St. Thomas the Apostle Church, Wilmington, North Carolina

That is why learning some of its history is in order.

The building of St. Thomas the Apostle is a miracle. In 1845, the total number of Catholics in Wilmington was 39. Only one of these was native to Wilmington. No one had much money nor any influence. Non-Catholic prejudice was so intense that in 1845 when the first missionary pastor arrived, Fr. Thomas Murphy (1803-63), no one would sell him land for a church.

Two Catholic converts and the husband of a Catholic–Catherine Ann McKay, Bernard Baxter, and Dr. William A. Berry–thought of a clever solution. They raised $797, the asking price for a deep lot on Dock Street, obtained the deed, and then transferred it to Fr. Murphy.

No one knows who designed the church, but there are similarly-styled Gothic Revival buildings in Wilmington. Fr. Murphy was impressed by St. James Episcopal Church (at 1 South Third St.) and St. Thomas seems to be a virtual copy of it, but without a central tower facing the street. The similarity is explained by the fact that builders J. C. and R. B. Wood erected both churches. In place of a tower, St. Thomas has a massive central gable and three lancet-arched (pointed) windows. The Chronicle announced on October 29, 1845, that the brick church would be built. Its cornerstone was laid in 1846. The finished church was dedicated and consecrated by Bishop J.R O'Neill of Savannah, Georgia, on July 28, 1847. It was stuccoed in 1858. The simple stained glass seems to be from the early 1900's, with dedications to benefactress Mother Katherine Drexel (now canonized a saint), Fr. Thomas Price ("The Tarheel Apostle"), and St. Anthony of Padua. Changes in the interior of the church in 1933 and great damage by a fire in November 1966 make it difficult to determine early or important interior components.

Bishop John England of the diocese of Charleston, South Carolina, who established the Catholic Church in North Carolina, visited Wilmington regularly from 1821-43. It was he that appointed Fr. Thomas Murphy to be the first full-time priest in Wilmington. Fr. Murphy supervised the construction of the church and shepherded the young congregation through the difficult years of the War of Northern Aggression. During the yellow fever epidemic of 1862, he remained in Wilmington to minister to its victims. He contracted the disease and died, 17 years the pastor of St. Thomas. He is buried in the basement. His gravestone can be seen downstairs today in the area refurbished as a small museum open to the public.

This museum also displays the life-sized images of the Blessed Mother and St. Joseph, several metal processional crosses, and two of the original Stations of the Cross which survived the 1966 fire. Some early pictures and Altar Missals are exhibited. In the church museum can be seen the original cast iron baptismal font. In September 1849, Fr. Murphy baptized Maria Cenna Jones in it. She was a slave and the first black to be baptized a Catholic in North Carolina.

Fr. James A. Corcoran (1820-89) succeeded Fr. Murphy as pastor at St. Thomas. Born in Charleston, South Carolina, he was sent to the College of Propaganda in Rome at age 14 and ordained a priest eight years later in 1842. He was the first native South Carolinian to be ordained a Catholic priest. He was a language specialist and an expert on Martin Luther. In 1869 he was the only American among 100 theologians called to Rome to staff the preparatory commission for the First Vatican Council (1870). This was the first ecumenical council convened by the Catholic Church since the renowned Council of Trent in 1563 almost 300 years earlier. It was the Council of Trent that universalized the ancient Roman rite of the Latin Mass which will be celebrated June 29 at St. Thomas. He was assigned to a doctrinal commission dealing with the issue of papal infallibility, which he firmly held, and is responsible for authoring the "Spalding Formula" defending it. Returning from Vatican I, he was given the theological chair at a new seminary at Overbrook, near Philadelphia, where he remained until he died. His sympathies were with the South in the War Between the States. In the middle of this Struggle, he was assigned pastor of St. Thomas the Apostle, where he nearly died in the cholera epidemic then afflicting the area.

In 1868, three years after the War of Northern Aggression had ended, Bishop James Gibbons arrived in Wilmington to organize the newly created vicariate Apostolic of North Carolina and used St. Thomas the Apostle as his pro-cathedral (i.e., a temporary see, awaiting developments). He also attended the First Vatican Council. At age 36, he was the youngest bishop there. This was surely an unusual and high-level representation for such a small church. On November 1, 1868, Bishop Gibbons was installed at St. Thomas as vicar apostolic of North Carolina. He busied himself with the affairs of his diocese–traveling, writing, and concentrating on St. Thomas the Apostle Church.

Extra land adjacent to the church had been purchased before His Excellency's arrival, and he began searching for a teaching order to provide Catholic schooling. In August 1869 he turned to the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy in Charleston, South Carolina, and on September 20, three nuns arrived in Wilmington, the first establishment for the Order in North Carolina. In October they opened the Academy of the Incarnation for Girls and by January 3, 1871, had begun a parochial school under the patronage of St. Peter. They were the first teaching sisters in the state, and these schools were the first two parochial schools in North Carolina. The area became so identified with the St. Thomas Church and the schools here that for years Wilmingtonians called the neighborhood "Catholic Hill" or "Piety Hill."

While Bishop Gibbons was in Rome at the First Vatican Council, the 24 x 40-foot extension of the church to the rear of the older structure was completed. It was intended as the bishop's residence and Bishop Gibbons moved in immediately after his return from Rome.

In October 1871, St. Thomas's School opened in the basement of the church with 20 boys. Another event that month was the reception of the first young lady of Wilmington and the entire diocese as a candidate for the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. Bishop Gibbons preached the ceremony. On August 29, 1872, Gibbons was appointed Bishop of Richmond, Virginia, but was not relieved of his duties as vicar apostolic of North Carolina. On October 6, 1872, he preached his last regular sermon as bishop at St. Thomas the Apostle. He noted in this sermon that while there were 39 Catholics in Wilmington when Fr. Murphy arrived in 1845, there were 400 in the city now. In the four years since His Excellency had arrived in North Carolina, the number of priests in the vicariate had increased to eight, and two parochial schools had been established, and a good number of churches and missions. He had established the Benedictines in North Carolina and ordained 12 priests in the Old North State. The total number of Catholics throughout North Carolina had doubled to 1400.

Bishop Gibbons moved from Wilmington to Richmond, then to Baltimore, Maryland. In May 1886, he received notification that he had been elevated to Cardinal. He returned again to St. Thomas and on July 16, 1888, preached in the small pro-cathedral as James Cardinal Gibbons. He visited St. Thomas only one more time, in 1912, when he returned to Wilmington to dedicate St. Mary's (on 5th Street, three blocks from St. Thomas the Apostle). By this time, St. Thomas the Apostle was associated with the cardinal's rise to national and international renown.

No small part of Bishop Gibbons's fame stemmed from his book, Faith of Our Fathers, which has gone through over 100 editions, a bestseller in the millions. The idea for the book grew out of his work with non-Catholics and converts in North Carolina. The first chapter was written in the quarters to the rear of the St. Thomas sanctuary while he was visiting in Wilmington in 1876. An honest analysis of the book, however, reveals it to be fraught with a forced delicacy bordering on compromise. One resource says that Faith of Our Fathers "sowed the first seeds of the ecumenical religious movement."

The little church of St. Thomas also produced Fr. Thomas Frederick Price. Wilmington native and one of the ten children born to Alfred Lanier and Clarissa Bond Price. Both parents were Catholic converts. Alfred Price was publisher of the Wilmington Daily Journal. Fred Price (1860-1919) was the first native North Carolinian ordained to the Catholic priesthood. Two of his sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Margaret became Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. (Margaret died soon after making religious vows. Sr. Mary Catherine was still living in 1923, residing at Belmont Abbey near Charlotte, North Carolina.) Fr. Thomas Price was baptized in the font displayed in the St. Thomas Church museum. He received his First Communion at the hand of Bishop Gibbons and served the altar for him. He was ordained here at St. Thomas the Apostle on June 20, 1886, with two other candidates, Charles Burns and John McHugh, by Bishop Northrup of Charleston, South Carolina. In 1888, he was assigned charge of St. Paul's in New Bern, North Carolina, with 17 attached missions in the central and eastern parts of the state. In 1889, he built St. Mary's, his first church, since bought in 1983 by the Society of Saint Pius X, dedicated by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. and since then served by its priests with the celebration of the Latin Mass. After 12 years, Fr. Price asked to be relieved of his pastoral duties from Abbot Leo Haid (of Belmont Abbey, six miles from Mt. Holly, North Carolina, where the Society of Saint Pius X has its western Latin Mass church, St. Anthony of Padua) to become a full-time missioner for all of North Carolina. At this juncture, Fr. Price climbed Mt. Mitchell, the highest point east of the Rocky Mountains (6684¹), to celebrate the Latin Mass there for the conversion of the people of North Carolina. He bought a 390-acre plantation in Raleigh, North Carolina, and built a complex there he called "Nazareth," which included an orphanage, trade school, convent, and seminary. In 1895, he began publishing Truth, a magazine of Catholic apologetics for non-Catholics which he edited and published for 13 years. In 1905, he started another monthly called The Orphan Boy to invite support for his apostolates.

In 1904, he met Fr. Anthony Walsh of New York who shared his missionary zeal. By 1911, Fr. Price was prepared to relinquish his missionary efforts in North Carolina to apply them internationally, especially in the Far East, and became co-founder with Fr. Walsh of the Maryknoll Fathers, an order established with the help of Cardinal Gibbons, Fr. Price's friend from his boyhood. The Maryknoll Fathers, formed in 1911, became the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America. The Maryknoll Seminary opened at Ossining, New York, in September 1912. Fr. Thomas Price died seven years later, a member of the first band of Maryknollers to enter China. He was first buried in Hong Kong, then reinterred at Ossining, New York, on the grounds of Maryknoll. His heart, however, was brought by special permission of the convent to Nevers, France, where, because of his affections for Bernadette of Lourdes (as St. Francis had for "Lady Poverty" or Dante for Beatrice), it was placed in the chapel crypt beside the body of Bernadette, otherwise known as Sr. Mary Bernard.

Another boy whose family's faith was nurtured at St. Thomas the Apostle was William Bishop. William Howard Bishop was later ordained a priest and founded the American Home Missions–the Glenmary Fathers.

St. Thomas the Apostle was also witness to the funeral of the renowned Catholic, Mrs. Rose O'Neal Greenhow (Oct. 2, 1864), famous spy-woman for the Confederate States of America.

Born in Maryland in 1817, her family moved to Washington, D.C., where she grew up into the highest social circles. She married Dr. Robert Greenhow by whom she bore four girls. Presidents, senators, military officers, and anonymous others became part of an espionage ring she organized in 1861 to help the Confederacy, convinced as she was by her close friend, John C. Calhoun, of the rightness of its Cause.

A widow when the War broke out, Mrs. Greenhow provided Gen. P. T. Beauregard the information on Federal troop movements resulting in the Confederate victory at First Bull Run (Manassas) at the outset of the War for which she won the admiration of Pres. Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America. She was later imprisoned for her efforts, first in her own home and then Old Capitol Prison in Washington. Despite this, she still continued to get messages to the Confederate States by such means as cryptic notes delivered inside a woman's hair-bun. After this second prison term, she was deported to Richmond, Virginia, where cheering crowds greeted her and her children.

Pres. Jefferson Davis sent her on a year-long tour of Europe (1863-64) to gather diplomatic intelligence for the CSA and propagandize its Cause. Her book about her experiences in Washington, My Imprisonment, made her an international celebrity well enough known to be received by Napoleon III, Queen Victoria, and Cardinal Wiseman during this trip where she found great sympathy for the South, especially among the aristocracy. She stayed there until being recalled, apparently bearing dispatches urgent to the Confederate States. Sailing on the British (!) blockade runner Condor she reached the mouth of the Cape Fear River just outside Wilmington, when a Federal ship gave chase and forced Condor to run aground. Fearing capture, she persuaded the captain to send her and two companions ashore in a rowboat, but stormy seas capsized the vessel. Rose O'Neal Greenhow drowned, dragged down by the weight of $2,000 in gold she had received in royalties for her book. Her body was found and identified a few days later and buried out of St. Thomas the Apostle with full Confederate military honors in the Oakdale Cemetery in Wilmington. Her gravestone can be found in this cemetery which is located a mile northeast of St. Thomas the Apostle.

St. Thomas was sold to Mrs. Preston L. Bridgers in 1905 for $10,000. Money from this sale was used to construct a bigger church, St. Mary's Catholic Church, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1911, Mother Katherine Drexel, Mother Superior of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters (having the money of the Philadelphia banking family into which she was born), purchased the building and Abbot Leo Haid assigned St. Thomas the Apostle to be the parish church for black Catholics. In 1913 the Franciscan Sisters of Baltimore came to teach. (Their convent building was bought in 1988 and remodeled into a bed-and-breakfast.) Three years later, in 1916, the Fathers of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart (the Josephites) arrived to run the church and school. In 1952, a new elementary school was built adjacent to St. Thomas and the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary of New York sent a contingent to administer over a kindergarten and nursery school. (This school building is currently being remodeled as a bed-and-breakfast which is scheduled to open Summer 2003.) In November 1966, a fire destroyed the interior of St. Thomas the Apostle, leaving it without much of a floor, and four feet of burned timbers, stagnating water, and mud in the basement. This incident, combined with the decision that all American Catholic congregations should integrate, ended the life of St. Thomas the Apostle as a Catholic church and members of the St. Thomas parish merged with those of St. Mary's. Plans were made to demolish the historic structure. Due to the efforts of concerned citizens, however, the building was not razed but put on the National Register of Historic Places.

In 1979, the church was officially deconsecrated and the Historic St. Thomas Preservation Society, Inc. formed with the goal of rehabilitating the historic structure so that its space could serve the needs of the citizens of Wilmington. Since its incorporation, the Historic St. Thomas Preservation Society has obtained the deed. It continues to raise funds and win grants to improve the structure and secure it from further deterioration. Mrs. Betty Ann Sanders, a Catholic and leading member of the Preservation Society, who is also on the Board of Directors for the Univ. of North Carolina at Wilmington, has graciously donated our use of the building for the Sung High Mass on Sunday, June 29, 2003, Feast of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul. The Latin Mass will be back where it belongs.

The Sung Latin High Mass at St. Thomas the Apostle will begin at Noon. Sunday, June 29, with confessions starting at 10:30am. An outdoor procession with the Blessed Sacrament will follow Mass and close with Benediction. A catered lunch will be offered on the church's well-equipped and modernized premises to end the day's events.

To receive an information packed of travel directions, information on accommodations and camping, and maps, contact Angelus Press (816) 753-3150. For immediate answers, contact Ray Jobin for general questions (910) 371 -0181; Miss Angela Merryman for accommodations (910) 458-4724; for Carolina Beach State Park camping (910) 458-8206; to reserve catered lunches, call in the number of your party to Mrs. Pant Jobin (910) 371-0181.

N.B.: A discounted block of hotel rooms is available at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott on Market St.. two miles from St. Thomas the Apostle Church (800) 228-2800. Ask for the "St. Anthony's Discount."