Part Four Towards Autonomy 1965-1968
First Canadian council: Fathers Steve Dunn (L),
Pierre Myrand, and Paul Cusack.
The situation did not improve. Cusack wrote Provincial Rooney on July 27, 1965: “There are only about two good months in the year, and the people want to spend them at the cottage or on the lakes. Another thing I have discovered, the retreat league here is only on paper.” Furthermore, the local bishop wanted to consolidate the movement with the Jesuits.
Sudbury was a topic under scrutiny at an all important January 8, 1967 meeting called for Passionists stationed in Canada. In all, fourteen attended. On the one hand retreat collaboration was seen as favorable. On the other hand hope was that Sudbury would be home to experimental ministries. By May 1967 these ministries included work in the jail, television ministry, marriage and pre-marriage counseling, retreats and instruction courses, youth work and ministry at a psychiatric hospital. Later, Father Cavanaugh, while in the midst of discerning his own Passionist commitment as he worked there, went to the 1967 Passionist pre-Chapter and stated his opinion that Sudbury should close.
Father Kenny took a slightly different position. “An experiment is not carried out to succeed but to discover.” He saw Sudbury as a Spiritual Centre “developing to the full a preaching apostolate...there is plenty of opportunity and need for preachers in the North.” On January 27, 1968 Father Kenny was named superior of the entire Canadian mission.
Port Burwell, on Lake Erie, in the Catholic diocese of London was the third Passionist foundation in the plan for a Canadian future. In January 1965 Bishop G. Emmett Carter had asked Passionists if they desired to open a foundation in the diocese. The 1965 Provincial Chapter agreed to establish a traditional Passionist retreat house and monastery. On July 16, Father Canisius Hazlett was appointed superior. Father Manning became the retreat director.
The first retreat, scheduled for March 1966, was a success due to many benefactors in the area. Even though the bishop cancelled their debt to the diocese on March 16, 1967, and a Holy Cross Auxiliary was formed, like Sudbury, Holy Cross was beset with organizational problems and the retreatants were not abundant.
Beginning in 1964 a Canadian branch of the Passionist Mission Office was set up to coordinate preaching assignments. From 1965 to 1968 their records showed that there were at least five hundred and seventy assignment requests. Of these the St. Gabriel's community took one hundred and nineteen. Part of the problem was that by November 1966 Fathers Kenny and Luigi Malorzo were the only two regular Passionist missionaries assigned there.
It was at this time that the St. Gabriel's Festa, supported by the Italian community of Toronto, began and a Passionist extension of The Sign Magazine, a Passionist monthly published in the United States, was set up in Rexdale, Ontario, a Toronto suburb, in order to support overseas missions. No money went to Canada.
Arriving in 1961 Father Philip Bebie, a tireless promoter of religious vocations, also put the Passionists of St. Gabriel's on the map. In 1964, about one-third, or forty-four Canadian students were at the United States Passionist priests seminary. Bebie believed personal contact to be more important than newspaper ads. He also said, “Only by presenting our uniqueness could we hope for the kind of vocations we needed.” He began a Vocation Mass at 9AM on Saturday in the parish. At a 1966 Vocation Day thirty religious orders participated. The theme was “Cooperation, not Competition.” In February 1967 he was the convener of National Association of Religious Vocation Directors (VINEA). So popular was the 1967 event that a Religious Vocations Commission, with Bebie as president, was begun in the Archdiocese. However, four months later he was transferred.
St. Gabriel's parish and youth work helped promote the Passionist name as well. In January 1966 a newly constructed parish center was open. By October 1966 Passionist Father Edward Buchheit began pastoral programs which included Days of Recollection and Intercom: an “experience in Christian living, communication and liturgy for young men and women between nineteen and twenty-five years of age,” which was a first of its kind in the Archdiocese of Toronto. Parish activities expanded. The Holy Week liturgies of 1967 and 1968 offered experimental liturgical celebrations. The 1968 Ecumenical Concert on Palm Sunday evening was most innovative.
In 1967 Father Kenny requested, and was refused, permission to have the United States trained Canadian novices be professed in Canada. That same year (even though Sudbury was on thin ice), Father Edward Hennessey received a standing ovation at the Passionist Pre-Chapter when he addressed the membership to grant Canada autonomy. This led to a November 27, 1967 meeting of thirteen Passionists in Canada on the topic. In May 1968 the Passionist Chapter agreed to back the plan. On July 1, 1968 Passionists gathered at Port Burwell to start a three year experiment on Canadian autonomy.
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