The Passionist Research Center (continued)
In 1970 Fr. Paul Boyle, C.P. called me to Rome to be a Secretary for the Passionist General Chapter. While there, I began visiting Churches. I had the feeling of deja vu as I saw mosaics, statues, paintings, and sculpture which I had seen only in pictures or slides. This stirred something inside of me and I knew what I had to do next.
On my return to the States, I went to our Passionist Prayer House in Hinsdale, Illinois. I asked Fr. Frank Keenan, C.P. if he knew where any of my slides were. He said, "I think Father Simon Herbers has some across the hall." We went across the hall, and Father Simon had a box of the slides next to him. He used some of them for Meditations in his ministry. He reached down, picked up the box and handed it to me.
Some months later at St. Paul of the Cross Monastery in Detroit, MI I asked Fr. Randal Joyce, C.P. if he knew where any more slides were. He took me to the basement, opened a cardboard box, and there were the rest of the slides and ten years of my notes.
The preservation of the slides and notes were due to the foresight of Fr. Kenneth O'Malley, C.P., present Director of the Library at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. The slides had been stored at one time in the Passionist Preparatory Seminary Library at Warrenton, Missouri. When the library was sold, Fr. Ken insisted that the slides be kept separate since he was sure that someone would find a good use for them again. I owe him a great debt of gratitude. I never would have had the heart to begin the work all over again.
Since 1970 I have collected and studied more material. I have visited and worked in most of the large Art Museums in the United States. Museums such as the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland are happy to have people come to do research. In most of the rooms there are books available that comment on the art found there.
A notable collection of modern religious art is at the Vatican Museum in Rome. In 1973 Pope Paul VI wanted to show the world that the Church is once again a patron of the arts. He asked artists to submit their work for purchase or as gifts. He planned to fill the eight rooms of the Borgia apartments which had been empty since the Borgias departed from Rome. The rooms were filled with the material submitted, and a whole new museum had to be constructed. Over five-hundred art objects are in the Vatican Museum of Modern Religious Art. Over one third of them are images of Christ suffering, dead and risen.
To continue my education, I made a research trip to Europe in 1980. With six months planning and a Euro-rail pass, I traveled four thousand five hundred miles in three weeks. I saw the Rembrandt paintings in Amsterdam, Holland; Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France; the Prado in Madrid and El Greco's paintings in Toledo, Spain; the Cathedral in Milan and the mosaics in Ravenna, Italy: the western outpost of the Byzantine Empire.
Later, I spent three weeks in Germany with the Herman Neumann family near Cologne, Germany. I would spend the day in Cologne visiting the museum or one of the many religious there. Herman would come home from work at four o'clock and ask me where I wanted to go for the evening. He picked up his camera and came along with me taking pictures of churches and museum works of art. He then was able to get one week free and drove me around Germany to Aachen, Tier, Bamberg, Maria Laach, Bonn and up and down the Rhine. Upon my return home I had four hundred new slides, books, pamphlets and wonderful memories!
Feed