Stephen L. M. Heiner

I never had the honor of meeting Father Carl. But, as I did the interviews necessary to compile a proper tribute to him, a pattern began to emerge. Everyone kept saying the same thing–that he was a truly happy and holy priest who worked tirelessly for the Faith. And it is eminently appropriate for this magazine which he helped found to pay tribute to him.

Fr. Carl Pulvermacher came from a family of nine children. He would, like three of his brothers, enter the Capuchin Order, where he would remain as a priest for 56 years, the last 26 of them spent working with the Society of St. Pius X.

In the 1960's, Father worked in Montana as a pastor to six different Indian reservations. He had a pilot's license and often told many stories about traveling from one reservation to another. These were but his early years.

In the early 1970's, Father was forced to choose between the Mass of All Time and the Novus Ordo that was being foisted on Catholics worldwide. Like many of his contemporaries, it is said that he said the Tridentine Mass privately while saying the New Mass publicly. In an attempt to bring him up to speed with the "new springtime" of the Church, Father was providentially transferred to Australia, where he met Archbishop Lefebvre. It was probably in his time spent with the Archbishop that Fr. Carl gained the steel necessary to resist his superiors, for when they confronted him (at the end of 1975) with the choice of saying the New Mass or leaving, he chose the better part, and left.
This is the time when Father's history with the Society began, and why this magazine even exists today.

The story started in Dickinson, Texas, where, with Fr. Hector Bolduc, Fr. Carl served as one of a handful priests for the entire United States. Surely his days of making mission runs to his Indian parishes had prepared him for the travel, but he was probably not prepared for the thirst of souls for the vivifying immemorial Mass.

At this time (1976) Father would trade off with Fr. Bolduc for seven- to ten-day Mass circuits: Dickinson on Sunday, San Antonio on Monday, Dallas on Tuesday, New Orleans on Wednesday, Kansas City on Thursday, and so on. It was in a moment of rest from one of these mission runs that Carlita Brown, who saw Father seven days a week for 15 years, recalls a moment sitting around the table where the "What's next?" question among the Fathers led to the answer, "Let's start a magazine!" Mind you, they had just finished painting the rectory of Queen of Angels in Dickinson, where they had spent many months of hard work.

Al Matties, an early parishioner and Angelus Press assistant, recounts that the property in Dickinson had come into the hands of the Society through quite a bit of work. The property had to be bought by a third party so the Diocese would not be aware of the planned "crime" of celebrating the true Mass. When the Society did obtain the property they found it in need of much rebuilding. Indeed, the church in question, which was called "True Cross" and had an accompanying large crucifix as part of the building, was judged to be "too Catholic" looking, and such anomalies were to be discarded in the "new opening" of the Church to the world in the 1970's.

The church stood on the spot where the original church structure (named St. Joseph's) was built. It had no pews, chipped floor tiles, no altar railing, and no altar. In fact, they found an altarstone in the garage buried under some other so-considered "junk." Many faithful came to work at the church at all hours of the day during the week in order to get the parish into serviceable condition. In the meantime confessions were heard in the pantry.
It was in the midst of this tireless effort of the faithful that Fr. Carl's indefatigable spirit turned to The Angelus magazine. If you were to visit Angelus Press's current location on Forest Avenue in Kansas City, you would find a modern structure with offices, computers, a warehouse, and air conditioning–all a far cry from the office environment of the early Angelus Press volunteers.

But in these heady early days, The Angelus was serviced by a printing press that Fr. Carl kicked or fiddled with every 20 minutes to keep it running. Thankfully, Fr. Carl was handy. In fact, handy is really an understatement. Father was a genius for mechanical things. He could take apart a wristwatch and put it back together. Ever a priest, he didn't only have trust and confidence in his own mechanical abilities....

The printing press back then had a camera that was used in order to prepare works for typesetting. One day, the camera just would not work. Fr. Carl worked and worked, trying to get it to function, but to no avail. Remembering that God picks up where we leave off, Father went into the rectory, took some holy water, sprinkled it on the camera, said some prayers, and lo and behold, the camera worked.

As I said, the modern Angelus Press building bears no resemblance to what the early Angelus employees worked in. Apologia Pro Marcel Lefebvre Volume I, Michael Davies's seminal work defending the Archbishop from the libelous insults he received from the Conciliar Church authorities, was 256 stacks of paper almost six feet high. There were no funds for a collator (a device that assembles pages together in order in preparation for binding into a book), so parishioners would literally pick up sheets in order, and when they got to around page 30, they would make a stack for another parishioner who would collate those 30 pages. That's how the first 5,000 copies of the Apologia got printed. Fr. Carl ran the press almost continually, and parishioners contributed what little free time they had to manually collate and bind this book.

When he wasn't cranking out pages of books for literally hours on end, Father was helping to typeset the articles and add his own column, "Ask Me," which was the forerunner of today's "Questions and Answers" section with Fr. Peter Scott. Father was known for short and simple answers, though he was almost always late getting his column in. One time the entire magazine was printed save his column, and when one of the workers went in to press him to finish it, he replied cheerfully: "These questions are all too hard, ask me something else next month!"

Fr. Carl loved working in the print shop. Often the little children would come in to try and help out. Father suffered these little ones to come unto him, and often gave them little tasks to do like stacking paper or sweeping up–just enough to keep them occupied and around.
Father was known for being tireless, and even better, to never complain. One of the times he was seen with an enormous grin on his face was upon the relating of a story from Fr. Bolduc. Father had just come back from Econe, where he had met with the Archbishop on some important business regarding the work in the United States. In the middle of the meeting the mail was delivered by the secretary, and enclosed was the newest copy of The Angelus. The Archbishop stopped the meeting, flipped to Fr. Carl'™s "Ask Me," and read it all the way through. When he was finished, he resumed the meeting. When Fr. Carl heard this, he was very happy, and it was often noticed that he and the Archbishop shared a very close kinship.
Indeed, there is a handwritten letter from the Archbishop to Fr. Carl which was written about eight months before His Grace passed away. The English translation reads:

The years go by and the end draws near. How I long to quit this world where only disorder reigns. How we long to see each other at last, face to face. How I long to be ubi justitia habitat.

These words would so well also sum up Fr. Carl's sentiments at the end of his life.
Father served as "Managing Editor" (meaning, he did a little and a lot of everything) of The Angelus until it moved to Kansas City in 1990. There it came under the management of Fr. Daniel Cooper, Fr. James Doran, and in 1992, the current editor. In the early days in Dickinson the crew would always sit down for a moment and say, "I can't believe we did another one."

Speaking of Kansas City, the faithful there were very anxious for the sacraments, having been deprived of true priests and the true Mass for so long. Soon Mass alone became Mass and Benediction. Then Mass, Benediction, and Rosary. Then those things in addition to visiting the sick in the homes and in the hospitals.

One day after going with some of the faithful to plant St. Benedict medals around Kansas City to protect it from natural disasters, Fr. Carl said to Fr. Bolduc: "You've got Kansas City next week. Watch out for the "spiritual bandits." Here again we see Father's sense of humor–never complaining about the work the faithful asked him to do, but making light of it–no doubt to lighten the mood between those many hundreds of thousands of miles of travel.

In the midst of all this parish work and dedication to the work of propagating the magazine and good books, sometimes it can be forgotten that he was a religious who had taken a vow of poverty. But he never forgot that. Many people throughout the years had sent him checks for thousands of dollars. Fr. Daniel Cooper found them in Father's room in Dickinson years later, and when he called Father in Florida to ask what to do with them, he said: "Throw them away."

On one occasion, parishioners mistook the Fathers' practicality as austerity. On the mission runs it was important to never have checked luggage because if the luggage didn't arrive, Mass couldn't be offered. Furthermore, it was a blessing when carry-ons fit well into the overhead compartments. Thus these bags became very worn, but the Fathers didn't want new ones because those bags were the perfect shape and size for their needs. The good-hearted parishioners, thinking the Fathers very in love with holy poverty, proceeded to give both Fr. Bolduc and Fr. Carl literally 15 pieces of luggage each. Surprised, both of them didn't know what to do with them and gave quite a few away. They ended up keeping the old ones because they were the perfect shape and served their purpose.

But while he did not accept money (but accepted luggage), he often did accept the offers of dinner from his parishioners. Father noticed his growing belly, and one day he showed up with a flashing light on his habit under which read, "Please don't feed the Father."

When asked what to do in the present crisis, Father once responded: "Learn your faith and hold on to it. For priests and brothers: be faithful to your recitation of the Divine Office; ...where Mass is not available, keep Sunday holy as best as you can...hold on to your Rosary and be faithful to your devotion to Mary."

That isn't the only quote that parishioners remember. Irene Slovak told me of a "spirit of Martha" moment where she was bustling about here and there and still felt something lacking; she told Father that she still needed something "more" spiritually. He replied to her: "It is enough to live as a Catholic." And indeed, in these troubled times it is enough of a call to sanctity to simply live those words. The Church of the 1970's and 1980's was not any easier to live in than today's Church, and his words resonate more than ever.

Father counseled many parishioners, and often was heard to remark (with a twinkle in his eye): "Oh, thank God I never got married–you women are so difficult!" But he also said in response to the difficulties that mothers often face (with the same twinkle), "All mothers will go to heaven."

A parishioner recounted that once she had gone to the second Mass of a Sunday just to hear a particular sermon of Father's again, in which he had essentially stated that when Our Lord was crucified, He could look out at all of us throughout time and know whether we would have been at the foot of the Cross. She said that that simple meditation has always stayed with her (and well might it stay with us).

Another parishioner once asked Father how it was possible that the Church was doing what she was doing. He replied that, "When the bishops as a whole exonerated the Jews for the death of Christ, they themselves took on the blindness of the Jews."

And nowhere was the death and suffering of Our Lord more deeply commemorated than at Good Friday Stations of the Cross at Dickinson in the late 1970's. Fr. Carl had been suffering from kidney stones, yet he still did every station, each genuflection causing tears to come to his eyes. By the late stations, they were rolling down his cheeks. As he finished the stations he went out the back door into an ambulance and went directly to the hospital. None of the parishioners present that day ever forgot that.

Yet the scene was to be repeated later in his life. In his final sickness he returned to Dickinson from Florida. He was unable to say Mass due to a broken shoulder, though he wanted to be well enough to say a private Mass on Easter Sunday, which he did. However, his last public act in Dickinson was to lead the faithful in the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday. In Irene Slovak's words:

How very special it was to see Fr. Carl come to the altar in his habit to lead us in the Way of the Cross. His voice was weak and slow, but it brought back the memory of another Good Friday when he valiantly led the prayers that walked us through Our Lord's last public act of His life. Somehow it seemed fitting that Fr. Carl should approach his own end in this way. For some of us, Good Friday and the Way of the Cross will always be connected to special memories of Fr. Carl.

Sue Broussard shared with me that "his vocation was his whole life, never more, never less–he genuinely lived his vocation." It reminded me of a sermon Bishop Williamson once gave on the occasion of the profession of vows for a new brother of the SSPX in which he used nearly those exact words–that God simply asks us to live our vocation, nothing more, nothing less.

Father went to Florida in February of this year, knowing that he was in his final months. His love of poverty and total detachment from the world at this point manifested itself in the fact that he had only brought himself, a rosary, and a briefcase.
Father had four home nurses and related that, as he was shuttled around for tests and chemotherapy and more test and injections, he felt a lot like Our Lord going from Annas and Caiaphas to Pilate to Herod. He was pleased to make up in his members the sufferings that were lacking to the Body of Christ.

Many would ask Father to pray for them, but he could only respond that he could not pray (indeed, he was unable to say his Mass or Breviary since the time he had broken his collarbone and become increasingly sick in February) but would offer his sufferings for them.

On April 24, the Feast of St. Mark, he went into cardiac arrest. He was revived on route to the emergency room. Fr. Gregory Post gave him Extreme Unction, and Father spent his last five weeks in the intensive care unit.

Those last five weeks were the fitting end for this missionary servant of God. He lay on his bed, virtually crucified. He had a respirator that fed into his lungs, assisting his breathing, a tube that went up his nostril down to his duodenum to assist with fluids and nutrition, and no less than five different tubes feeding into his chest for different medical reasons.

One of his caregivers, about a week before he died, said: "Father, this year you may get to celebrate Ascension Thursday with Our Lord Himself." Father blinked his eyes together hard and shed a few tears. He fervently desired such a thing.

And it was granted to him. He died holding a rosary in his right hand, a cross with a relic of the True Cross in his left, a brown scapular around his neck, and his gaze resting upon a stand-up crucifix. The "Quam dilecta" [Ps. 83: "How lovely are thy tabernacles, O Lord...." See sidebar.–Ed.] was being read to him. Surely we wish for such a death, and it was the only appropriate way for such a servant to depart this existence. In hearing this we recall the Archbishop's words in the letter to Fr. Carl: "How I long to be ubi justitia habitat (where the just ones dwell)." The name of the hospital where Fr. Carl died is called "Triumph." And well it was–a holy triumph.

I had started the interviews for this article before I went to cover Ordinations in Winona, and though I never had the pleasure of meeting Father, my impression from those who knew him resonated with some words from the Rite of Ordination of Priests:

May they, by gravity of demeanor and strictness of life, prove themselves to be elders, trained according to the principles which Paul set down for Titus and Timothy. May they keep Thy law before their minds day and night, believe what they read, teach what they believe, and practice what they teach. May they show forth in their person justice, constancy, mercy, fortitude, and all other virtues, be leaders by their example, inspire strength by exhortation, and preserve the gift of their ministry pure and undefiled; may they change by a holy benediction bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Thy Son for the worship of Thy people. And having kept their conscience pure and true their faith in never failing charity, may they rise on the day of God's just and final judgment, full of the Holy Ghost, as perfect men, in the full measure of the age of Christ. Amen.

Mr. Stephen L. M. Heiner runs a tutoring and test preparation company in Kansas City, Missouri, where he attends the Latin Mass at St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church. The author wishes to thank Irene Slovak, Carlita Brown, Al Matties, and Sue Broussard, early Queen of Angels parishioners and volunteers for The Angelus, who (along with some other sources who wish to remain anonymous) shared their reminiscences, and all those who helped Father throughout the years. He also thanks Mr. Kenneth Fisher for his SperoNews article which was the source for some information about Fr. Carl Pulvermacher. Photographs of the Requiem Mass and burial ©Katie O'Neill Photography.