by Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem.

In 2000, Fr. Marchosky came to Veneta, Oregon, to help the SSPX in what would become a full-fledged priory. He assisted however he could until he was forced due to poor health to be taken in by several families in the area. This is his story.

The great, and therefore insufficiently appreciated, Midwestern Catholic fiction writer J. F. Powers once said:

I write about priests for reasons of irony and comedy and philosophy. They officially are committed to both worlds in a way that most people officially are not. This makes for stronger beer... So I just start with a priest, with a man with one foot in each world.

A literary critic also said of the clerical world of which Powers wrote from the 40's to the 80's of the last century: "Vatican II undid that world."

Well, the vicissitudes of Church history may have undone the storyteller's world, but they did not prevail over the firm rock and robust foundation of the Catholic faith and formation of the late Fr. Harry Hassan Marchosky (born Panama City, December 8, 1923; died Veneta, Oregon, December 11, 2007). So too, he never lost his sense of "irony and comedy and philosophy" as a priest worthy of any of the efforts of the literati. The present priestly writer hopes that in these few short paragraphs the reader will lay hold of something of this dear and unforgettable servant of the Catholic altar, and so be moved to pray for his soul marked forever with the character of the Great High Priest, and to thank the Good God for having given the Church Militant so accessible a mediator and so valiant a soldier.

I knew of Fr. Marchosky from my teenage years as one of the priests in the Los Angeles area who celebrated the traditional Mass. I did not come to know him personally until I myself had been ordained a priest of St. Michael's Abbey of the Norbertine Fathers in Orange County. Father lived less than a mile down the road from us at his brother Reuben's little ranch with its hacienda and citrus groves. Father in fact lived in a "trailer" (actually a converted container car) on the property down the hill from the big house. Every morning he came to say Holy Mass at the abbey; often enough he walked the distance. Little by little I came to know him with his wide and enthusiastic desires for everything that was true and good and beautiful in the realms of nature and of grace.

Father was born in a Jewish family which had settled in Panama. His mother was born in Jerusalem when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire, his father was from Russian Poland. He thus had that style of expressing himself which was intense, dramatic, heartfelt, at once sunny and brooding, Levantine and Osteuropäisch, with a strong dose of Hispanidad and francophilia in the mix. Only the best possessions of the heart were good enough for Harry. Off he went to Chicago as a young man to study business and accounting. There he ran into the newly burgeoning "Great Books" movement out of the University of Chicago. This led to a conversion to philosophy, and especially to the philosophy of Aristotle, and most consequentially to his conversion to the Catholic Faith. This led him to set his business plans aside. He went off, having first mastered Latin and French in addition to his native Spanish and English, to the Université Laval in Quebec City to study Aristotle's philosophy as best interpreted, that is, by the disciples of St. Thomas Aquinas, and in particular by Charles de Konninck, the greatest exponent of classical Thomistic natural and social philosophy of the last century, and the great logician Monsignor Dionne. It was this intellectual patrimony which gained Father a place on several philosophical faculties throughout his life, including Thomas Aquinas College, and my own abbey. With his Ph.L. under his belt, he entered the major seminary of Quebec, a splendid edifice on the St. Lawrence River right by the Chateau Frontenac, with a chapel appointed with what must be the largest assemblage of holy relics in the world. In 1952 he was ordained priest along with about 70 others, in what were truly the glory days of Catholic Quebec, then noted for its fruitful families and numerous vocations.

Amazingly, he said his own mother never knew he had become a priest, always marveling that with all his education he should end up a taxi-driver in the US! He had told her that he "did a lot of driving" and wore a uniform, so this was her conclusion. How he would laugh recounting this, and then he would tell you with tears how she accepted baptism on her death bed and woke up in heaven surprised to find out that she had a priest son just like the Queen of Heaven, the gloria Jerusalem, the laetitia Israel. Her other son Reuben became a doctor and also later a Catholic. "What more could a Jewish mother want?" Father would exclaim.

Father had a Thomistic formation with a decidedly French traditionalist flavor and so he began to read, even in the 50's Madiran's Itinéraires, and he became acquainted with the works of Cardinal Pie, Louis Veuillot, the Olivetan Père Emmanuel, the Charlier brothers and with Dom de Monleon's lovely scriptural exegesis. Thus the ferment around the time of the Second Vatican Council found him with a perspective which was truly unusual for a North American priest. He was one of the few traditionalists ante litteram who from the beginning shared the anxieties of those the ever-sanguine Blessed John XXIII had called the "prophets of doom," not realizing that he was himself prophesying in part the fulfillment of their fears. Father knew all the intellectual élite of those the left calls les intégristes: Madiran, Salleron, Père Calmel, Jacques d'Arnoux, l'Abbé Raymond Dulac, Gustave Thibon, Archbishop Lefebvre's peritus at the Council l'Abbé Berto, Dom Gérard Calvet, and of course, on the pastoral rather than the intellectual side, Archbishop Lefebvre himself and his work at Ecône.

All of this gave to Father a forma mentis [mind set–Ed.] which enriched the anglophone traditionalists he knew and served in the States and in the United Kingdom. His complete set of Itinéraires went back to the first issue, and one could find all of the works of these thinkers on his wildly disorganized, but fascinating to browse, bookshelves. He would willingly lend them out with a detachment most rare for a clerical bibliophile. Let's be honest, he would say and admit that the Francophone traditionalist world is the brains of the loyal opposition to the postconciliar Zeitgeist. As far as Father was concerned, English language writers, even the ones he knew, loved, and encouraged, like the elder Matt and Michael Davies, could never hold a candle to the writers of what he called "the other sacred language." He made an exception for the great John Senior whose friend he was, but liked to point out that he had the rare distinction of being translated into French by those same very exigent French traditionalists. He named the French "the Jews of the Gentiles," that is the Catholic tradition with "most favored nation status," whose defection is the most disastrous and whose return would be the most advantageous for the Church Universal. About these things good men may disagree, but the well-traveled Father knew it was good for Americans to be taken down a notch once in a while.

This was the Fr. Marchosky whom I knew and from whom I received a great many things that were good for my mind and heart. Father loved to entertain other priests. He would make his specialty coq au vin or Petrali sole meunière ("It was on sale!" he would exclaim) preceded by a lox, onion and caper appetizer ("The way my father used to make it," he would point out), offering his own special martini made with gin and vodka (in tumblers on which were written in apothecary font "hemlock," "strychnine," "arsenic," and "belladonna." "Pick your poison," he would say with a mischievous grin), and we might sit down to eat, if we were lucky, by 10pm. The attentive reader will note how even in the preparation of this Franco-Judaeo-Anglo-Polish meal served up at an Hispanic hour everything told of the unique blend of Father's life and character. Of course the conversation at table was dizzyingly mobile, with laughter and tears, jokes and oratory, accounts of clerical and lay absurdity and heroism, and, of course, song, usually snippets of opera, even of Porgy and Bess, but most of all prayer and love, love for all that was best in heaven and on earth.

It was this conviction about what was best which led Fr. Marchosky to hold fast to the classical Roman Mass and Office. He never used the new books, yet for him such a resolution was not based on a dramatic crisis or moment of decision or confrontation; he simply continued to do as he had been ordained to do. It is true that he was most firm in this, and it cost him a great deal in worldly terms, but he never was surly or quick to judge his fellow priests who did not share his insight. He just held fast to the traditions he had received, to use the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. He was happy to die after the world had heard from the Vicar of Christ himself that this sacred patrimony of worship had never been abrogated. He had stood foursquare on that conviction his whole priestly life. And he was vindicated.

Father stood on his right to celebrate only the ancient rite. "We live in terrible times," he would say with the simplicity of the perplexed faithful. "It's hard to know just what to do. Our Lady will help get us through this mess." He led by humble example, not the wordy boorishness and, in the end, very modern journalistic media bombast of some partisans of Tradition (but not, one is grateful to say, of The Angelus). In this the SSPX, whose hospitality Fr. Marchosky enjoyed at the end of his life, and in whose parish cemetery he awaits the resurrection, gives a like example, by not turning away any Catholic priest who inquires about the missal of St. Pius V, and indeed reaching out to them without treating them as though they were not legitimate ministers of the Church. Father did not claim ordinary jurisdiction or magisterial discretion. He was a Catholic priest who worshipped God in a way he knew was pleasing to Him.

As for that, when Bishop McFarland of Orange in California interviewed Father before giving him the assignment to celebrate the traditional Mass each Sunday at San Juan Capistrano Mission, he was amazed to hear that Father had never celebrated the New Mass or attended it even in the vernacular. The bishop, who was noted for his careful financial administration (on his silver jubilee a letter from the Holy Father praised his peritia in rebus financiariis administrandis–expertise in his administration of financial matters, something of which Father could never be accused–so much for Semitic stereotypes) and for his undiplomatic directness, exclaimed "You've never said the New Mass? How do you survive?" Father shot back, "Handouts, Excellency, handouts." Needless to say he got the job and loved to relate this exchange, and always enjoyed the respect of the bishop. Father was poor, poorer than a Capuchin. He had nothing but his books and a few clothes, and he never had more than that.

He was rich in right doctrine. I recall a conference he gave the confreres of my abbey for a day of recollection back in the 90's. It was an exposé of St. Thomas's commendation of the epistles of St. Paul under the text from Acts, Chapter 9, on the words of Our Lord to Ananias concerning the newly converted apostle: "This man is to me a vessel of election, to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel." With what unction and simple fervor he parsed out his beloved St. Thomas's interpretation of these words! When he spoke of the words "my name" and of the power and frequency with which St. Paul made use of the Holy Name of Jesus, his eyes filled with tears and his voice broke, a sight and sound more instructive than a hundred lectures.

He was confident of the power of the Church's prayer. I recall that when, in the early 90's we were having record rains and disastrous mud slides in Southern California, he was really menaced in his little shack of a container car, surrounded only by earth and threatened by a hill. He added the votive orations for good weather to his Mass, and I can hear him practically shouting so the Lord could hear him in the postcommunion "ut inundantiam coerceas imbrium et hilaritatem vultus tui nobis impertiri digneris" which is "that Thou wouldest restrain the inundation of the rains and deign to grant us the cheer of Thy face." When the rains ceased he would point out the hilaritas of his situation, and the power of those prayers.

Blindness caused by macular degeneration was his great cross, borne for almost ten years. I obtained for him an altar missal for blind priests, with the Masses of Our Lady and of the Dead in giant print, a Missale Caecutientium, which a Catholic bookseller sent for free. Little by little though, it became impossible for him to celebrate Holy Mass; this was his life's greatest cross. He was prepared for it, though, by his inability to read the breviary. This frustrated him, since it could truly be said that the nocturns of Matins were his only and preferred spiritual reading. He began to pray the rosary constantly in place of his Office. He told me that this was the effect of God's loving providence, bringing him closer to Our Lady. In those years he would say decade upon decade day in and day out. We would bring him to Blessed Junipero Serra's mission, and he would assist and preach and distribute Holy Communion while one of us celebrated the Mass.

His love for Our Lady and the priestly duty of praying the Church's prayer each day are a good place to bring my little, but heartfelt memoir to a close. Father was born on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and died during its now suppressed liturgical octave. He always lamented the suppression of this octave, which took effect already in 1955 during the reign of Pope Pius XII, and the consequent loss to priestly piety of the patristic lessons proper to it. So he read them anyway, as an act of devotion. One rainy day in December he called me on the telephone and said, "I have something I just have to read to you. Listen to this." He then began to read out in full in Latin, with expression and great attention to the nuances of phrase, the homily of St. Tharasius of Constantinople on the third nocturn gospel reading at Matins on the 12th of December, the fifth day within the octave of the Immaculate Conception, the day which would be within a little more than a decade his first full day in the world to come. I think that his guardian angel brought his unforgettably edifying telephone call forward in his defense before the accusations of the evil one at the Particular Judgment, and that he was able to offer Our Lady right there the words of the great iconodule patriarch. I offer them to my reader now, alas, only in my partial translation, albeit the first in English, our less-than-sacred tongue! I do so in the hope that I may gain your gratitude and also similar treatment by all concerned at the hour of my death:

What praises will we heap upon thee, O Mary?...O thou the expiation of accursed Adam, thou the payment of the debt of Eve, thou the most pure offering, the choice first fruits, the spotless sacrifice of Abel, O thou the source of Enoch's grace and passing into safety, thou ark of Noe...thou shining splendor of the kingly priesthood of Melchisedek, O thou the firm confidence and devout faith in future offspring of Abraham, O thou the new sacrifice and rational holocaust of Isaac, thou the cause of Jacob's ascent by the ladder and the most noble expression of his enduring fecundity among the twelve tribes. Thou hast appeared to Juda, thou art the purity of Joseph, thou art the divinely composed book of Moses...the flowering rod of Aaron, the daughter of David adorned with gilded fringes and costly vesture. Thou art the mirror of the prophets, and the outcome of the things foretold by them....Hail, delight of the Father....Hail, home of the Son....Hail, ineffable dwelling of the Holy Spirit; Hail, holier than the cherubim; Hail, more glorious than the seraphim; Hail, more spacious than the heavens; Hail, more brilliant than the sun; Hail, shinier than the moon; Hail, manifold brightness of the stars; Hail, blithe cloud sprinkling heavenly rain; Hail, sacred breeze who drive off the spirit of malice; Hail, noble chant of the prophets; Hail, sound of the apostles heard throughout the whole earth; Hail, excellent confession of the martyrs; Hail, finest preaching of the patriarchs; Hail, supreme ornament of all the saints; Hail, cause of salvation for all who are doomed to die; Hail, Queen, the maker of peace; Hail, spotless splendor of mothers; Hail, mediatrix of all who dwell under the sun; Hail, restoration of the whole world; Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee Who was before thee and is from thee, and dwells with us. To Him be praise with the Father and the most holy and life-giving Spirit, now and forever for endless ages of ages. Amen.

Well, so there it is. Unlike the priests in the stories of J. F. Powers, Fr. Harry Marchosky was not a fictional character; he was a priest who was as real and earnest as life itself. Yet he was a priest who was full of that "stronger beer" of "irony, comedy, and philosophy" and–what is infinitely more–of the strong drink of divine charity and zeal for the truth, and so too of the chalice of suffering. May our Masses and works of mercy obtain for him the new wine of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Fr. Hugh Barbour, O.Praem, is Prior of St. Michael's Abbey of the Norbertine Fathers, Orange County, California. He teaches philosophy to the seminarians at the abbey and holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy (Angelicum) and a License in Patristics (Augustinianum-Lateran) in addition to a B.A. in Classics (UNC-Chapel Hill). Pictures graciously provided by Jim and Patricia Haddock, with whom Father Marchosky spent the last few years of his life.