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September 2019

"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we look at our founder, Fr. Leonard Sargent, and have dug out the legal enactment of his new monastery, "Hall Manor," in Portsmouth, dating from April of 1919.

In conjunction with the monastery’s centenary year, “The Current” is highlighting some of the Abbey’s history, beginning with our founder, Fr. Leonard Sargent. Here are excerpts from his obituary published by The Newport Mercury on October 20, 1944: “Roman Catholic Official Was Once Episcopalian Clergyman; Led In Missionary Work With Negroes: …Father Sargent was born August 19, 1857, in Boston, son of John Augustus and Mary (Higgens) Sargent. After graduating from Harvard in 1879, he taught in private preparatory schools, later attending the General Theological Seminary in New York, becoming an ordained Episcopal clergyman. …In 1887 he went to Oxford, remaining with the Cowley Fathers, whom he hoped to interest in a community mission for Negroes in the South. Before returning to America, he helped in churchwork around the London docks. Later, he did community work on the New York East Side and he was engaged in missions for the colored people in the rural parts of Tennessee. When he became a convert to the Catholic Church in 1908, he made his profession of faith at Downside Abbey in England. … he entered the Benedictine Abbey at Downside in 1914, and made his vows there October 15, 1916, just 25 years before his death. Again returning to America, he raised funds for the foundation of a monastery of the English Benedictine Congregation. He located in Portsmouth, which eventually became the site of the Portsmouth Priory, now under Fort Augustus Abbey in Scotland. ...Until his last illness, he attended most of the daily services in the chapel. Before he died, he received the apostolic blessing and plenary indulgence. All of his fellow monks were at his bedside when he received extreme unction, and all gathering Sunday morning for the commendation of his soul. The Priory church bell was tolled 87 times, the years of his age.”

ACTS AND RESOLVES PASSED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS AT THE JANUARY SESSION, A. D. 1919, PP 285-287
 
AN ACT TO INCORPORATE CERTAIN PERSONS AS A SOCIETY BY THE NAME OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT, IN PORTSMOUTH, RHODE ISLAND.
 
It is enacted by the General Assembly as follows:
 
SECTION 1. Be it enacted that Henry Leonard Sargent, O. S. B., Raymond Benedict Brosnahan, O. S. B., and Hart Philip Fye, O. S. B., together with their associates and such others as may hereafter become members of this corporation, be, and they and their successors forever are hereby created a body corporate and politic, with perpetual succession by the name of the Order of St. Benedict in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, and said body corporate and politic is hereby created for the purpose of establishing and supporting a religious house with charitable and educational objects in accordance with the Rule of St. Benedict and the Constitutions of the Benedictines of the English Congregation of the Order of St. Benedict of the Roman Catholic Church.
 
S. 118.  Approved April 24, 1919.
 
S. 112 A. Approved April 24, 1919.
 
SEC. 2. The said Order of St. Benedict in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, may receive and take by purchase, grant, devise, bequest or donation, any real or personal estate and hold the same for the purposes named herein; and may manage and dispose of the same as the said corporation in its judgment may deem expedient: Provided, that the whole amount of the real and personal estate held and possessed by said corporation shall not exceed in value at any one time, one hundred thousand dollars.
 
SEC. 3. All the estate both real and personal of said corporation wheresoever located, whatever its condition or whenever acquired shall be exempt from all state taxes: Provided, that real estate owned by the corporation and not used for the corporate purposes shall not be so exempt.
 
SEC. 4. The said body corporate and politic shall have full power and authority to have and use a common seal, and the same to break, alter or renew at pleasure; and by the name of the Order of St. Benedict, in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, to make contracts, to sue and be sued and plead and implead in any of the Courts of any jurisdiction in this State.
 
SEC. 5. And the said body corporate and politic shall have full power and authority at any of its meetings to elect such officers of the said corporation as may be found necessary and to enact and pass such rules, regulations and by-laws for the government of said corporation or of their officers and management of their affairs as said corporation may deem necessary; provided, the same be not repugnant to this act of incorporation, the laws of this State or of the United States.
 
SEC. 6. This act shall take effect upon its passage. 

October 2019

"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we look at one of our early members, Father John Hugh Diman, and the influence on him of the newly canonized John Henry Newman.

The following article flows from a reading of John Hugh Diman’s “Newman and the Oxford Movement,” published by The Portsmouth Institute in Newman and the Intellectual Tradition: The Portsmouth Review (2010). That volume also contains the related, “The Catholic Newman” by Reverend Dom Damian Kearney O.S.B. The Portsmouth Institute will further explore themes in Newman this winter. We thank Mr. Jamie MacGuire for his work on the Institute and the initial publication of Diman’s text.
 
This Sunday, October 13, brings the canonization of John Henry Newman. As the monastery marks its centennial, we look at one of its founding figures, John Hugh Diman, representative of those greatly influenced by this saint. Diman, as well as Leonard Sargent, and a number of other members of the Portsmouth monastic community, had been adult converts to Catholicism. Diman’s article on Newman undeniably captures some of the spirit of his own decision to turn to Rome, as well as the journey of several of his confreres.
            In fact, at the time of his paper in 1933, Diman was marking another centennial, that of the beginning of the Oxford Movement which, following Newman, he traced back to 1833 and a sermon of Keble on National Apostasy, preached at Oxford. This Movement came to center on Newman, who Diman ranks as, “the greatest religious figure in the English-speaking world of the 19th century.” Does not Diman speak of their shared faith experience, in pointing to those who have “found their true home in the Catholic Church”? He speaks even to our own time, when recounting that, “In 1833, and the years for some time before that date, religion in England had fallen to a very low ebb,” suffering under, “a pall of lethargy and indifference.” Diman links the early 19^th century to his mid-twentieth, and dare we see also our own early 21^st? He sees the opposition of “radical and revolutionary tendencies” to “established interests,” both in state and in church, in an age in which, “secularism and skepticism were undermining many of the old ways.”
            Diman argues that while the Oxford Movement is often seen as a Catholic one, many of its members saw it as Anglican reform, and remained firmly within that communion. It saw itself as, “a valiant and determined attempt to save the people of England, and English religion generally, from all the forces of the day that were inimical to them, whether open unbelief, indifference, hostile legislation, radical social changes, or anything else that threatened to undermine them, and had to an alarming degree succeeded in doing so; …the Church of England, unlike the protestant bodies around it, had never done anything to deny its apostolic origin or to break the historical succession that bound it to the primitive church; …they were to keep to the front the uncompromising assertion of the claim of the church to be in England the realization of the apostolic and Catholic church of primitive days…” Newman himself resisted Rome for some time, seeking a middle path, “a half way position between Rome and popular Protestantism and thus to be able to bring about ultimate reconciliation between these two extremes.”
            His anti-Roman resolve gradually weakened, and saw its last moments with the publication of Tract 90, which argues in effect that various criticisms on Roman doctrine and practice were “strawman” arguments, attacking positions the Church did not hold. This indirect defense of Rome was condemned by anti-Roman Anglicans. “The general condemnation of Tract 90 had the effect of opening Newman’s eyes to the true situation. So far as his connection with the Oxford Movement goes, the story now is about told. We have traced in the merest outline the history of his inner convictions from the early days in which he was sure that the Pope was anti-Christ through the years in which he was leading with full assurance and success the Movement that is known by the name of the university which gave it birth. …After the publication of Tract 90, he gradually reached the stage in the development of his own thoughts in which he came to see with increasing clearness and conviction that the great communion which he had been in the habit of calling the Roman Church was not only not anti-Christ and was not a corrupt branch of the true church, but was on the contrary the one church in the world that was wholly apostolic and Catholic, the true home for all souls whose destiny was the Heavenly City and the Beatific Vision. Whatever stains and blemishes had gathered around it in its long warfare on earth, were due to the weaknesses and faults of the poor sinful humanity that its mission was to gather into its own fold and to redeem.”
               The debt owed to Newman in John Hugh Diman’s own journey is not to be underestimated. He speaks of Newman’s unique virtue: “…he was a genius of a high order and that is in itself rare. He was early recognized as a supreme master of the English language. No one could question this as to his prose, but even in his poetry, his Dream of Gerontius, and his “Lead Kindly Light,” to mention only two of his poems, have taken a secure place in English literature. Besides this, his natural gifts had been trained and embellished by the best education that Oxford could give. Most of all he had a depth and power of spiritual influence that could not fail in a religious movement to win for him an ascendency which in increasing measure came to be felt by all. In addition to all these qualifications, there was one other that singularly fitted him for command at this particular juncture, and it was the one that a little later became, in the eyes of his followers, the most essential of all. He was known to be absolutely sound in the Tractarian faith. This faith, to state it baldly, was catholicity without the pope…” Further, Newman’s Oxford Movement, “has been of great benefit to us in two ways. It has been the recruiting camp of a steady stream of individuals who have had their early education in this way and have become later converts to the Catholic Church. In another way perhaps, its influence has been greater and even more helpful. It has accelerated and has often been itself perhaps the main cause in changing, in many places, the whole mentality of Protestantism towards the liturgy, the ceremonies and the externals generally of the Catholic religion. It is owing to this influence, to a very appreciable degree at least, that the church is better understood and the prejudices against it have so largely diminished.”
            So, we begin to capture some of the motivation John Hugh Diman himself found in his faith journey, and find ourselves led to this day’s canonization. In summarizing Newman’s influence, Diman speaks of the Catholic faith and the “a desire to enter into the beauty, the peace and the joy of which that faith is the secret.” He sees Newman as the greatest figure in the “great Movement” which for him was, “the most steady, the most energetic, and the most persuasive expression of this longing, of this desire. For this reason, the men and women who are still leading or being led by it should have our sympathy and our prayers. One should have no other wish for them than that they may surely find the goal that they are so earnestly seeking.”
 
Read Diman’s complete article.

See more on the Abbey Church here.

See also: "Art and Architecture at Portsmouth Abbey" (article written by JOHN WALKER, former Director, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C, and originally published in the 50th anniversary yearbook for Portsmouth Abbey School.)

December 2019

"The Current" features a monthly look at some of the history of the Abbey, inspired by the Abbey's celebration of its 100th year. This month we call your attention to several subtle but significant works of art in the Abbey church.

Dorothy Day writes in her book The Long Loneliness, “Whenever I visited Ade I came away with a renewed zest for life.” Such a statement, and from such a source. Day continues, lauding Ade’s “sense of the sacramentality of life, the goodness of things, a sense that is translated in all her works whether it was illustrating a Missal, making stained-glass windows or sewing, cooking or gardening.” In fact, it was Bethune who credited Day with helping to direct her artistic eye to themes in the Missal, connecting them to everyday life. In an interview with former faculty member David McCarthy, she relates how Day told her a story of Catherine of Sienna: “She would have liked to go to church to pray, but she had to cook for her father’s workers. So, she decided to make the kitchen her temple… Dorothy would say, ‘Do you think you can make a picture of that?” Bethune indeed turned such stories into images, often executed in woodcut. She would clothe the saints in modern dress, “so readers picking up The Catholic Worker would see themselves.”

The reinstallation of the Advent and Christmas banner in the church, Bethune’s creation and gift, leads to a reflection on this talented artist, whose work includes sculpting, painting, mosaic work, wood carving, jewelry and metal work. Born in 1914 into an aristocratic Belgian family, Bethune made her way to the United States in 1928, residing in Newport from 1936. She came to teach art at Portsmouth Priory School in 1935, in her early twenties, for a one-year position that was extended to five years, with the approval of headmaster Fr. Hugh Diman. She had been directed to the position by John Howard Benson of the Rhode Island School of Design, himself long affiliated with the monastery, a former teacher in the School, and creator of the high altar in the church. Benson had been introduced to her work through her images in The Catholic Worker. She enjoyed her teaching, reflecting fondly upon her “buffaloes,” the young boys she taught who trampled like a herd on their way up the stairs of the old Barn to her art class.
 

Portsmouth Abbey still has several of her works, including the Advent banner, seven banners featuring the Corporal Works of Mercy, and woodcuts on the themes of the "Holy Family at Work" and "Jesus the Carpenter," both from 1937, when she was in her early twenties and teaching at the School. Ade remained active in the oblate community here until her death in 2002. She is buried in the monastery cemetery.

Bethune's Rose Window at RPI (above)
The Corporal Works of Mercy - three of seven banners, as exhibited recently in the School library (left)

Ade Bethune heard of the Catholic Worker for the first time at a Wednesday evening get-together of four art school friends: Gertrude and Agnes McLoughlin from Niagara Falls, Ontario, Ann Weaver from Selma, Alabama, and Lalah Durham from South Carolina.
 
The time was fall, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression. One of Ade's student companions had heard of two women who were giving hospitality to the poor, if need be, sleeping themselves on newspapers on the floor.
This sounded worth investigating. So Ade found her way to 436 East Fifteenth Street, near Second Avenue, a small storefront, where she saw a few guests sitting with cups of coffee. Old clothes were ready to be given away. A young woman, Dorothy Weston, gave her copies of The Catholic Worker paper, which had begun circulation the previous May Day. Ade was a nineteen-year-old art student at Cooper Union in New York. The strikes and labor unions discussed in the paper did not mean much to her, but she did understand about hospitality. That struck a chord; she wanted to be involved.
 
She admired the bold black and white drawings of the Communist publication, The New Masses. By contrast, The Catholic Worker looked shabby. So Ade set to work at once and sent several pictures to the editor with the following undated letter addressed to Dorothy Day and her helper, Dorothy Weston:
 
Dear Dorothies-There is but one thing I can make: that is pictures. So I send you a few already-I hope you can use them for The Catholic Worker. But this bothers me about them. Doesn't it cost you an awful lot of money to get the plates made? Can you find out if I couldn't possibly engrave or etch them directly upon wood or whatever the metal is they use? Please let me know in case you find out. I mean to do you more of the "Corporal Works of Mercy" but I thought I'd start with "Harboring the Harborless" as winter is yet far from finished. I also mean to do your Patron St. Joseph for his feast in March. And whenever you are in need of a picture please ask me. All right? With all my best for the Work. 114 E. 90 A de Bethune N---Y---C
 
Next, Ade gathered up two shopping bags of clothes for the poor and paid her second visit to the Catholic Worker. She was wearing a trench coat and beret. Dorothy Day thought she was carrying her belongings and looking for shelter. A tall woman, with a face as though it had been carved by an axe, told me very kindly, "I'm so sorry; we don't have any more room." I was so shy that I stuttered, "I'm the girl who made the pictures for you; and I brought these clothes for you." "Oh," she said, "You are? Fine." She took the two shopping bags and sat me on a pile of newspapers. Then she took out a missal and said, "All right, we're going to use your Saint Joseph for March, but we'll need a picture for April. Saint Catherine of Siena's feast comes in April. She was the twenty-first child in her family and was cook for the big household, including the dye workers of her father's business. Catherine decided to make the kitchen her cloister, her place of prayer.
 
Stoughton, Judith. Proud Donkey of Schaerbeek: Ade Bethune, Catholic Worker Artist. (St. Cloud, MN, North Star Press, 1988), p. 37
 

"The Holy Family at Work" and "Jesus the Carpenter"
Ade Bethune, 1937; 
Portsmouth Abbey School Art Building
(Images: Kevin Calisto)

For the first six months that we published The Catholic Worker, we longed for an artist who could illustrate Peter's ideas.

An answer to our prayers came in the form of a young girl just out of high school who signed her work, A. de Bethune. Her woodcuts were of worker-saints, St. Peter the fisherman, St. Paul writing in prisons, walking the roads and indoctrinating St. Timothy, St. Crispin the shoemaker, St. Conrad and a host of minor saints, if any saints could be called minor who gave their lives for the faith, whose hearts burned with so single-hearted a fire.

"A picture," Ade reminded us, "was worth ten thousand words." Through a misunderstanding as to her name, we signed her pictures Ade Bethune and so she was called by all of us. She was Belgian and it was only some years later that we knew her title, which her mother continued to use, Baronne de Bethune. The aristocrat and the peasant Peter got on famously. "Our word is tradition," he said happily, and wrote a little essay, "Shouting a Word."

Mrs. Bethune and her daughter illustrated for Peter many ideas besides noblesse oblige. He liked to illustrate his ideas by calling attention to people who exemplified them. The Bethune family performed all the works of mercy out of slender resources, earned by the labor of their hands. They had come to this country at the close of World War I. They exemplified voluntary poverty and manual labor and the love of neighbors to the highest degree.

When Ade built up her studio in Newport where the family moved soon after we met them, she took in apprentices, young girls from different parts of the country who could not have afforded to pay tuition or to support themselves. Two of her apprentices married and went to live on Catholic Worker farms, and are now mothers of large families. My own daughter went to her when she was sixteen and stayed a year, learning the household arts. For to Ade, as to Eric Gill and Peter Maurin, the holy man was the whole man, the man of integrity, who not only tried to change the world, but to live in it as it was.

Whenever I visited Ade I came away with a renewed zest for life. She has such a sense of the sacramentality of life, the goodness of things, a sense that is translated in all her works whether it was illustrating a missal, making stained-glass windows or sewing, cooking or gardening. To do things perfectly was always her aim. Another first principle she always taught was to aim high. "If you are going to put a cross bar on an H," she said, "you have to aim higher than your sense of sight tells you."

From: Dorothy Day. The Long Loneliness. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952. p.190-1.

FROM: http://old.catholicworker.org/bethune.htm