Did the Dean really know?

BEACON PHOTO | JOE GIGLI

DEAN MCNULTY STATUE OUTSIDE THE CATHEDRAL OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST, PATERSON

We were just in the midst of a Paterson liturgical extravaganza: Wednesday, June 24 was the diocesan patronal feast, the Solemnity of the Birth of St. John the Baptist; the following day was the liturgical commemoration of the rededication of the diocesan Cathedral; and yesterday, July 1, was the Episcopal Ordination and Installation of Paterson’s eighth bishop, the Most Rev. Kevin J. Sweeney! All this and COVID-19 too!

But for those who are real Paterson Diocesan aficionados, the series actually begins as I write this piece on June 18, the 98th anniversary of the death of the Very Rev. William McNulty — or as he is more popularly known, Dean McNulty. He is so universally referred to as “Dean McNulty,” that I have seen several modern references to him which presume that “Dean” was his Christian name, rather than his ecclesiastical title.

McNulty (1829–1922) holds the record for the longest pastorate in N.J. Catholic history. He came to St. John’s in Paterson as pastor in 1863 in the middle of the American Civil War and remained the pastor until his death in June 1922, several years after the end of World War I. His building record in Paterson and its environs is extensive, capped by St. John the Baptist Cathedral, which he led the parish in building as a parish church “on Main and Grand” in 1865-70. It is something of a tribute to the Dean’s expansive vision that St. John’s is still the largest church in the diocese 150 years after its completion.

When Bishop Sweeney was seated in his Cathedra for the first time on July 1, the new bishop was confronted by three large stained glass windows across the nave from the throne. On the left is St. Patrick (389–461) the evangelizing bishop who established the Church in Ireland. In the center, St. Richard of Chichester (1197–1253), whose concern for liturgy in his English diocese prompted him to make sure his clergy understood the words they were saying, said them slowly and clearly. One of his prayers is the origin of the lyrics for the song, “Day by Day,” in the musical, “Godspell.” And on the right, St. Charles Borromeo (1538–1584) the Bishop of Milan, who sought to effectively reform himself, his clergy and his diocese in the wake of the Council of Trent. Having dealt with Dean McNulty historically over the years, I cannot help but think that those three windows hold the clue to what the Dean really thought, in his heart of hearts, about the future of Paterson and its parish church.

St. John’s was opened for worship and dedicated on July 31, 1870. Over the next 20 years between its dedication and its original consecration on June 29, 1890, money was raised for the “finishing touches,” including the tower, minarets, main altar and stained glass windows. The windows were fabricated in Innsbruck, Austria and were installed gradually as donors came forward, beginning with the two windows of St. Dominic and St. John the Baptist facing Main Street. It appears that the donor was free to select the theme of each window, which in most cases reflected the patron saint of the donor.

Dean McNulty took a lot of “heat” for St. John’s. Its size was enormous for 19h-century Catholic New Jersey. (The current Sacred Heart Cathedral Basilica in Newark took decades to build, with the groundbreaking in 1899 and the completion in 1954). Newark’s third Bishop, Winand Wigger, referred to St. John’s as “a barn,” and complained about the difficulties of preaching in it before the days of electrical sound systems. Some people felt that the size of the church reflected McNulty’s ambitions both for the church and for himself. On Jan. 21, 1886 a note appeared in a letter to the editor of a Paterson paper, “to the effect that some of the clergy of the city were candidates for the new Diocese of Paterson.” When the rumors were later picked up by a Newark paper, McNulty felt constrained to write to Bishop Wigger to state that the rumors “have no origin in this city.” But Father Michael Donnelly (1887–1941) who later served as vice rector and liturgy professor at Immaculate Conception Seminary had grown up in St. John’s Parish, and had often accompanied Dean McNulty on his pastoral trips in Passaic and Bergen counties. Donnelly was fond of recounting in class the musings he had heard from the Dean as a teenager about building the pulpit of St. John’s outside the sanctuary in order to better provide for the eventual installation of a Cathedra when St. John’s should become a cathedral.

Whatever the case, I am convinced that those three windows tell the story of what the Dean actually thought. As I mentioned, the donors of the windows got to choose the subject, often their patron saint. Thus, Patrick Lynch donated the St. Patrick window, Richard Morgan donated the St. Richard window, and the St. Charles window is in memory of Charles O’Neill, whose daughter was one of the original five novices of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth. But then Dean got to choose the location of the windows. Why ever would he put the windows of three saintly bishops right next to each other on the Grand Street side of the church near the front. Why not scatter the bishops around? The St. Charles window actually has a “companion window” of St. Agnes in memory of Agnes O’Neill, the wife of Charles O’Neill. That window is next to the St. Charles window, but it does not interrupt the flow of “the three bishops.”

I can only think that Dean McNulty always felt (knew?) that someday there would be a Bishop’s Throne facing those windows, and he wanted to give the future Bishops of Paterson a gift of three holy bishops for them to meditate on during long-winded sermons and lengthy ceremonies. And when the sun is shining brightly, you almost have no choice but to marvel at the beauty of those three windows. So, yesterday, when Bishop Sweeney was “enthroned” and sat in his cathedra for the first time, he, like his predecessors, had the option of reflecting on the holy evangelizer, St. Patrick, the holy liturgist, St. Richard, and the holy reformer, St. Charles. And Dean McNulty, who always knew that someday Bishop Sweeney would be sitting there, was smiling down from heaven.