Chaplain Hilferty

Was it unexpectedly shrewd Archdiocesan administration or divine providence that sent Father Hilferty to Saint Francis de Sales in 1977 for his first assignment as a pastor?

He was modest about his qualifications. He would tell parishioners that this belated first pastor assignment, at age 49, was not due to a late vocation – he was ordained back in 1952 — but because he enlisted as a Navy Chaplain in 1957 and stayed in the military for twenty years “until somebody noticed and sent me home.” But that unique experience made him peculiarly suited to the needs of the changing parish when a Ninth Pastor was required. And he was already familiar with the place, since his father and grandfather had both been buried from SFDS.

What was significant about Father Hilferty’s work as a Navy Chaplain? An initial trawl through newspaper databases finds him presiding periodically at weddings and giving speeches at local high schools, usually near the Naval Base in Newport, RI – work that seems routine. However, these moments turn out to have been the calm breaks between active postings. A deeper dive finds clues that he steered through some interesting times: between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the July 1962 Sunday Supplement for the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo noted that “After a year at Guantanamo Bay Lt. Thomas J. Hilferty is leaving for Naval Air Station, Washington, D.C. The much-traveled Father has served in the east and west – Japan to Gitmo…” And in June 1965, as the Vietnam war expanded, the Chief of Naval Operations and the Chief of Chaplains appointed Lieutenant Commander Thomas Hilferty as Navy Chaplain in Saigon.

Chaplain Hilferty’s initial posting to the Saigon military base first connected him with the Vietnamese community. According to the History of the Chaplain Corps, in addition to supervising religious services and counseling personnel on the base, an important function of the military chaplains was distributing humanitarian aid to civilians in South Vietnam. Chaplain Hilferty was also assigned to a Community Relations Committee, responsible for “formulating solutions to problems which arose out of the concentration of U.S. personnel in the Saigon-Cholon area.”

Housing issues would become his theme song. He soon saw how the large number of arriving Americans needing accommodations caused significant issues for the incumbent Vietnamese: American personnel were initially sequestered in secure but crowded compounds on the base, but as the military buildup began, “with few exceptions, every large hotel and apartment house, as well as many of the larger villas, was used for U.S. personnel. This deprived the Vietnamese nationals of many rooms and apartments and increased the housing problem caused by the influx into Saigon-Cholon of workers and refugees.” Additionally, many American servicemen preferred to rent their own properties outside the official housing compound to “live more privately, comfortably, and even luxuriously, and induced landlords to prefer Americans with their buying power to Vietnamese nationals who generally could not compete financially. The Vietnamese had to settle for substandard housing while American had two quarters: the authorized one and the one on the economy.” Chaplain Hilferty observed that “this situation is offensive to many Vietnamese who are not in the real estate business.” Understanding the issues on both sides, and learning to delicately negotiate workable solutions, foreshadowed his future efforts on this side of the ocean to resettle waves of Vietnamese refugees arriving in West Philadelphia, needing to be welcomed into scarce local accommodations.

When the humanitarian assistance program phased out on the Saigon base, as the war ramped up, Chaplain Hilferty was reassigned to become “the only navy chaplain ashore in II, III, and IV Tactical Zones in Vietnam.” A lonely job, this moved him through the jungle on swiftboats, right into the action. The History of the Chaplain Corps reports that “Captain Hilferty traveled up and down the coastline and along the rivers establishing contact with small, widely scattered units to which American personnel were attached…His efforts to provide religious coverage for personnel of sixteen widely scattered bases represented the beginning of what was to become the Saigon-based chaplains’ circuit riding ministry.” As the solitary chaplain, his efforts were ecumenical, ministering to everyone in need. Eventually, a protestant chaplain was assigned to help and they alternated routes: one going north; the other south; then reversed.

Getting places was half the fun. Chaplain Hilferty’s eventual replacement on the circuit would later report “Ordinary travel by road is almost non-existent due to the ever-present possibility of ambush by the Viet Cong…Fortunately, air travel came to my rescue…This padre became a familiar and welcome sight to the crewmen of AIR COFAT (Naval air support). As one of the pilots once said, ‘Padre, it’s always good to see you aboard. We feel like you’re a third engine. Start praying.’ Unscheduled hops on Army choppers, Air Force planes, and water transport were part of the routine. To make a one-day visit to a detachment usually involved at least a full day spent in traveling to and from the unit.” Chaplains had to cultivate patience and flexibility, and remain unflappable in any situation. This would be an asset for Father Hilferty, when he arrived at SFDS, where memories of a rectory home invasion and gunpoint robbery in 1972 had left behind a deep residue of anxiety. Father Hilferty was unimpressed by tales of neighbourhood toughs, and, like the recent popular meme, his example to the parish was ever to keep calm and carry on.

His successor in Vietnam wrote about the physical and psychological drain on chaplains who “had to experience death many times over,” administering last rites to mangled corpses and comforting the terrified, mortally injured, and bereaved. Their ministry was raw and the needs they addressed were immediate and traumatic. This was much different from the squabbling at SFDS over the modern Venturi altar and the new rituals of Vatican II, which had taken up so much parish energy. Under Father Hilferty, the parish refocused to embrace the incoming Vietnamese – and all the other refugees and immigrants from faraway places who came to the parish and school at the time, fleeing horrors and arriving destitute. Sisters Constance and Jeannette nurtured war-traumatized children and evolved an award-winning school. Father Hilferty encouraged parish cooperation with representatives of other non-Catholic religious institutions in the neighborhood as they worked together to open a credit union to solve a local banking crisis, and looked for ways to deal with other pressing local issues.

Father Hilferty was appointed Director of the Black Diaconate for the Archdiocese in 1978, while at SFDS. In 1989, Monsignor Hilferty moved on from SFDS to become the regional Vicar of Philadelphia-South, at St. Carthage. After several other assignments, he became Pastor, then Pastor Emeritus of Queen of Peace Church, Ardsley, Pa. He died in 2008.

1973-1974 Oil Crisis

Reverend Francis Fitzmaurice

          The 1970s were not kind to our parish. Families left for the suburbs as part of a national trend, and the controversial Venturi modernization of the sanctuary – needed for the equally controversial New Mass of Vatican II – became a source of division among those that remained.  Monsignor Mitchell was unwell. Then world events piled on one more challenge. The Philadelphia Inquirer interviewed Parish Administrator Father Fitzmaurice, (who would officially be named 8th pastor in 1976) in March 1974, during the October 1973- March 1974 Oil Embargo (Arab states ban on oil trade) – shining a cautionary light into long-reaching shadows of global politics:

          “Escalation of fuel oil prices is making life tougher for inner city pastors and congregations…At Saint Francis de Sales, 47th St and Springfield Ave. in West Philadelphia, oil prices have more than doubled in the last year and are still climbing. As a result, classrooms in this school have become cooler, hallways in the rectory have become darker, and crowds at mass sometimes shiver as they listen to the homily (not because of its content!). Although no programs have been cut back yet, the pastor and parishioners are engaged in a ‘backbreaking struggle to make ends meet,’ the pastor, the Rev. Francis J.Fitzmaurice admitted…”

          The paper reported “Some pastors turned bitter, castigating oil company executives and the government in their resentment over the shortage of oil, which they contend was a conspiracy to drive prices up. They said it was ‘theft.’ Many of them got together to form CHOPP – Clergy and Householders Opposed to Petroleum Profiteering – last month to get a  rollback of oil prices to November 1973 levels. Monsignor Frederick J Moors, pastor of Saint Cecilia’s at 535 Rhawn St, said the clergyman were angry because the ‘basic issue is a moral one.’ It is wrong for oil companies to make ‘excessive profits’ from the sale of ‘necessities like oil…Besides, it impedes the charitable work of the church.’”

          “But for clergymen like Father Fitzmaurice, the soft spoken priest in his mid 50s who became pastor at Saint Francis last September, oil prices are just another worry on a list of insolvable difficulties associated with changing neighborhoods — declining church attendance and contributions, rising crime statistics, fear, deficits. A rollback of oil prices would have been welcome, he admitted, but it wouldn’t have put the budget in the black. The deficit last year, Father Fitzmaurice said, was $65,000 and to balance the budget, $48,000 had to come out of parish savings. If the deficit continues this year, there is not enough left in the treasury to cover it. Last winter, the parish spent $14,024 for 100,834 gallons of oil to heat the church, school, rectory and convent. This winter, the church has so far spent $16,647, and it has used only 58,524 gallons of fuel. By April, it may have to come up with another $4000 for heat, the priest said. Even before the winter began, the tuition for the Parish School increased and the pastor said he had gone begging, asking friends and parishioners to give more. It is a great strain, he said.”

          “The parish, formed in 1890, was once affluent, with Catholics from 5,000 households contributing more than the church needed to balance the budget. But the makeup of the parish has slowly changed. Now there are fewer than 1,300 families left in the parish and the school built for 1,500 children, has only 619, the lowest number in 50 years, Father Fitzmaurice said.”

          The Inquirer noted “The problems, compounded by fuel costs at Saint Francis, could be told over and over throughout the city” and not just for Catholics: “For example, eleven of the 22 churches in the Center City, Lutheran parish, are supported by mission funds from the Lutheran Church in America. The LCA reduced that support by $40,000…this year…” And Catholic News Service reported interfaith CHOPP groups of churches and synagogues forming across the country, uniting in concern over crippling energy costs.

          President Nixon would resign just a few months later due to Watergate. President Ford would take on a thankless task of trying to stabilize the country – in an age that Charles Dickens might have characterized “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times…in short, the period was so far like the present period…” And our parish? Philadelphia loves an underdog. At the end of the Vietnam War, an influx of refugees galvanized a new sense of purpose and we pulled through.

Mystery Box

A dusty box of metal pieces in the back of the rectory basement tells a tale of long ago.

You probably don’t recognize the Addressograph Multigraph (AM) company name, even though The New York Times reported that “its embossed metal address plates were once as common as business cards in millions of offices.”

Once upon a time, every organization that mailed things in bulk, used Addressograph or similar specialized equipment to print envelopes and address labels. AM also produced the chunky devices used to process credit card purchases and roll out their carbon copy receipts in stores and businesses worldwide.

What’s the connection with our parish?

For many years, the ledgers show steady monthly payments to the Cleveland Ohio company for the equipment used to address parish mailings. This was an important administrative function for a busy large parish, using heavy machines housed with the equally-important weekly-collection coin counting mechanisms in the Rectory basement (remember coins!). First, an Addressograph device stamped out a permanent raised-letter metal address plate for each parish family (the same technology used to create military dog tags). Color-coded tabs added to each plate indicated membership in different parish organizations. A group of plates could then be selected, slotted into a cartridge, and fed into a machine which pushed them, one by one, against an inked ribbon, to impress the addresses onto envelopes or pages that passed through the rollers – similar in principle to an old-fashioned typewriter’s operation. Lots of parish activities meant lots of outgoing mail.

Like our parish membership, AM’s business reached its peak in the expansive, optimistic, moon-landing 1960s, when anything seemed possible. When the Post Office introduced Zip Codes in 1963, efficiency improved, and mass mailing became ever more popular. Business opportunities seemed endless. Then came the uncertainties of Watergate, President Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation, the energy crisis, and an economic recession. AM’s mood turned conservative, focused on maintaining existing business, and new product development stalled – though elsewhere, technology continued to evolve. Suddenly noticing that it was behind, The New York Times reported that in 1979, AM “stumbled in a desperate effort to migrate from the mechanical to the electronic age,” and went bankrupt: “a classic case of the failure of a major office-products concern to cope with new technology...” Its employees painfully moved into other businesses, learned other trades, and started over in new careers – sometimes in other countries.

Meanwhile, our parish faced its own challenges, as city demographics changed. Parish membership dropped alarmingly through the 1970s, as longtime parishioners moved out to the suburbs.  Stacks of unused obsolete address plates piled up in a forgotten corner as the parish adapted to its new slim size and budget, while at the same time trying to embrace Vatican II renewal. The Vietnamese refugee ministry offered a new focus with the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Information delivery sped up for a new era:  the stately monthly calendar became a weekly handout in church, eventually to be supplemented by websites and Facebook. The once-vital U.S. Postal Service became known as “snail mail.” We eventually became the combined parish of St. Francis de Sales United by the Most Blessed Sacrament.

What would the world have been like if things had stayed the same? Typewriters. Dictaphones. Mimeograph machines. Heard of those? Remember them? They’ve all been replaced and the companies that manufactured them either adapted to new conditions, developed new ideas, and revitalized — or became extinct – while the wheel of history rolled on. A cautionary tale for Parish life!

Coin counters in the Rectory basement circa 1962