Oral History Program Monsignor William H. McDougall Interviewed by Reva Brittain 10 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Monsignor William H. McDougall Interviewed by Reva Brittain 10 August 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: McDougall, Monsignor William H., an oral history by Reva Brittain, 10 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Monsignor William H. McDougall. The interview was conducted on August 10, 1971, by Reva W. Brittain, in the rectory at 331 East South Temple. Monsignor McDougall discusses his opinions and knowledge of the Catholic religion and its presence in Utah. RB: This is an interview with Monsignor Wm. H. McDougall at Salt Lake City for the Utah State Historical Society and the Oral History Societies of Weber State College and California State College at Fullerton. It is in the rectory at 331 East South Temple, by Reva W. Brittain on August 10, 1971, at about 3:15. Now, would you begin first for us by telling of your own family background? WM: My name is Reverend Monsignor Wm. H. McDougall, and I was born in Salt Lake City and raised here, went to school here, became a newspaper man on the Salt Lake Telegram here—a local newspaper—part of the Salt Lake Tribune at that time; then went to the far East as a correspondent for United Press— now called United Press International—Worked in Japan, as a newspapermen in Japan and China, mostly. Then when World War II broke out I escaped from Shanghai to Free China. Was then sent to Java, Indonesia—which fell to the Japanese. Escaped again. At sea was sunk. Lifeboated to Sumatra, an Island in the Indonesian Archipelago. Spent several years— three and a half years— as a prisoner of war. Returned to United States, became a Niemen Fellow at Harvard University in the year 1946-7. Then returned to work in the United Press office in Washington, D.C. In 1949, entered the Seminary to study for the Catholic Priesthood. I was ordained in 1952, in the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City, and have been here since. 1 RB: Were your parents’ early arrivals in Utah... how did they get to Utah? WM: My parents came to Utah a year or so before my birth. My father was a representative of the International Correspondence School and came here from Arizona. He had represented them in various parts of the United States, and he remained here the remainder of his life. He died in 1957. RB: May I ask about your decision to enter the priesthood? You were a mature man—? WM: I was thirty eight years old. RB: When you made the decision, did it come to you slowly? WM: It came very slowly over a long period of years. I grew in love for Jesus Christ and decided to give my like to Him as a priest. RB: Of course your parents were overjoyed. WM: They were happy about it, yes. RB: Then this is your first Assignment? Your first Church? WM: You mean the Cathedral of the Madeleine? RB: Yes. WM: I taught high school for two years at Judge Memorial High School, then came here in 1954 and I've been here since. RB: Since you've been here have there been any special events that have been particularly important to you, or seemed outstanding to you, personally? Historical events? WM: You'll have to define what you mean by historical events. 2 RB: Well...any happenings in the church, outstanding events. WM: A priest’s daily duties have to do mostly with people. His task is to bring the message of Christ to the people, and to bring the people to Christ. He does that by various means. Through worship... what is called the liturgy of the church...the public worship of the church. Through meeting them personally in their homes and in the Rectory, through mingling with them where ever... in their walks of life. He tries to be all things to them. Many things have happened over a period of years... you'll have to be specific about it. RB: Well perhaps if I go on and ask— Are there any projects you would like to see started by the church in Salt Lake City that would profit the purposes of the church? WM: When you ask what I would like to see happen in the Church, or a project, I will have to give you a little background… how a Catholic views the Church and the world. The Church in Utah it part of the Catholic Church of the entire world. What happens in other parts of the world affects us, what we do in some small way affects them. The Catholic sees himself as part of the Body of Christ...the mystical Body of Christ. We see ourselves as cells in this Body. What affects one cell of the Body affects the entire Body, and vice-versa. The Catholic Church as we see it, is {unreadable text} Body, living in and operating in the world....attracting men to the Kingdom of God. Her basic doctrines or teaching are unchangeable, for they are the teachings of Christ. However those teachings are presented to every age in the vernacular of that age...in the way the people think...as best the Church can reach them. They are presented to men of every age and tongue and circumstance. The ways of presenting them vary, and men's responses vary. During the centuries, and especially since the Protestant Reformation, so called; the structure of the exterior form of the Church, her ritual, her buildings, her 3 presentation of doctrines, her ways of doing and saying things grew into a nearly universal pattern around the world. The Latin language became the official language of worship and of communication of the entire Church in the Western World. Other languages...ancient, were ways of communication in some parts of the Eastern World, but the Western World more or less dominated the Church in numbers as the Western World more or less dominated the civilization of the globe in numbers and technology. The twentieth century has seen a rapid change, or a change very complex. The entire globe has been touched by the rapid changes that have taken place in this century. The Church, responding to this change in answers to a call from Pope John XXIII, convened the Second Vatican Council for the specific purpose of you might say, the updating of traditional doctrines of Chris to mankind. You asked me what I would like to see done here, what projects I would like to see. We are doing our best to implement those things updated by Vatican II. The Church is aware of the complex problems that face mankind. She wants to deal with those problems. She wants to indicate how the message of Christ is contemporary. Pope John's renewal of the institutions of the Church, to modernize them so they are...to use an overworked word, more relevant to contemporary society; is the strenuous effort the priests of the world are making, also the priests here in Utah. Not only the priests, but the laity. The laity having a greater part… participation, in the worship of the church, that is the public official worship of the church, and also in the councils of the church. We have Councils of Laity, for example, on various levels in the church. At the grass-roots level we have the Parish Councils. Here in Cathedral Parish we have a parish council of parishioners who help the pastor decided and carry out things that must be done materially and spiritually in the parish to 4 better bring the message of Christ to the people. Pope John, and later his successor Pope Paul, were men of very practical experience, and they felt the tension and turmoil of the world. They know that Christ’s message needs to be presented in new ways. It doesn't however mean that Christ's message has changed. The Church in its history always reflects the particular spirit of the age. For example, in the Renaissance the church was the patron of the arts; in the Middle Ages, the patron of learning; and she tries to bring home to the people of the streets, the people in the parishes, the remedy or the things of the spirit that each age needs. Her message is a spiritual message, not a social gospel, or a material gospel, but a spiritual message. There are differences of opinion. This is a questioning age in the world. An age here in the United States especially, where the people challenge authority, so since the church is made up of people who are citizens of the country, there are many people in the church who question, who challenge authority in this way and that way. The age way of doing things being questioned in the world and also in the church. If you examine history as a historian I think that you will see from the beginning, at least from Christ's day to ours, the Church has been the only institution of man that has been able to respond to the needs of each age. Sometimes that response is involved a lot of stress and turmoil. It's involving stress and turmoil today. The documents of Vatican II set the guidelines for ways of handling stress and turmoil. The people are responding in various ways to these guidelines. In the church there is a spectrum of way out liberal to way out conservative, all calling themselves Catholic. The people within the spectrum clash and express sometimes violent differences of opinion, but out of all this exchange of communication am confident, the priests around me are confident I think that the church 5 will emerge as she has from so many other crises more strong and vigorous than previously. Now you wonder what's going on, well it's true that there are some people leaving the ministry, some priests leaving the priesthood, some nuns leaving the convents. What the numbers are I don't know, nationally. Here in the diocese we have had a few leave. The Pope makes it easier for priests and nuns to leave their ministries. He doesn't want priests who are unhappy, or nuns who are unhappy being kept in harness. Just because they leave the ministry, however, doesn't mean they leave the church. Most of them remain within the church. Some of them voice very critical opinions about things as they see them in the church, yet the majority of the priests and the majority of the sisters are still working under the tensions and the turmoils of the times. There is more sharing in authority. For example, here on the priest's level there is the Priest's Senate. A senate of priests which now advises the bishop on things. There is a parish council as I mentioned before. This is not unique to Utah there are parish councils and priest senates in other parts of the United States and in other parts of the world. To specifically categorize a few points, I would say that the implementation of the Vatican II documents have resulted in a change… some change in the form of public worship. The most spectacular change, I guess, was to do away with Latin and go to the vernacular; in this case English, in France, French; in Spain, Spanish, etc.; the language of the country. The altars were turned around so the priest faced the people. The laity are assuming a greater part in the preparation of their children for reception of the sacraments. One of the great things that is happening to the church, because of increased expenses and decreasing number of nuns, is Catholic schools are under stress and strain. Some of them can't exist financially so they have closed. We have 6 closed some Catholic schools in Utah, a high school in Price, a high school...one high school... girl’s high school, in Salt Lake City, and a grade school in Salt Lake City. This is happening around the United States. We are in a great financial crisis with our schools just as various… {Interruption at the door}. Regarding lay participation in the administration of things, I mentioned various councils. We have a board of education of laity, consisting of laity, sisters and priests: school boards for every school. The third point would be social awareness: is there greater social awareness of the needs of minority groups, for example. The Chicanos...I'm talking about the State of Utah. The Mexican-American culture needs special attention, which it is getting from organizations within the church. We have an early learning center for deprived children over on Fifth West and North Temple, at a place called Hacienda. We are having adult education at the same place, for persons of the deprived areas. In the realm of conscience— conscientious objection to the war, specifically in Vietnam—there is greater latitude. Bishops are coming forward expressing opposition —some of them, to the war in Vietnam and giving Catholics more conscientious objectors, etc., if this is germane to the subject. RB: I think it is. WM: Or the subject of ecumenism, Catholics are working with non-Catholic Churches, Protestant Churches; holding joint services, like during the period of Lent, the forty days before tester. Here in the central city churches of Salt Lake City we had joint services in the various churches. There is an Eleventh Hour News Television Program on one of the local TV stations. In the field of education there is a lot of evaluation, or reevaluation going on. There is more emphasis in the field of religious education, and adult 7 education, and more priests are being sent to the University to study and to specialize in various areas. There is a general stress, or generally a little more emphasis on people than on buildings. The buildings are here, they have to continue standing* We have to devote a lot of money to keeping them standing...to their maintenance; but we are also looking to see if there are more ways we can serve people, perhaps more than we served them in the past, in a social sense I must re-emphasize that the message of the church is spiritual. It's the coming Kingdom of Christ, how to get men to heaven. How we get them there, is through preaching the gospel of Christ. Sometimes to preach the Gospel you have to use means that are not strictly spiritual. You have to use material means, or social means...that's what I mean by the social sense. We see ourselves— that is, we priests see ourselves as we hope Christ… as we hope the Apostles saw themselves as bearing Christ's message to the world, “Repent for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." We see ourselves as having been called by Christ as He called the Apostles, "Come and follow me, and I will make you fishers of men." The way we fish may vary from country to country, and age to age, but essentially we are spiritual fishermen. Now you ask me about some of the historical things about Utah. I'm not a historian, all I can say is that the first white men in this area were Spanish missionaries in 1776. The Franciscan, party of two priests, Fathers Dominguez and Escalante with some laymen. Then the next white men of record in this area were trappers in the… Oh, around the 1820's, then there are records or occasional priests coming through the area. The first land bought for church purposes in Salt Lake City was in 1866, and it became ultimately the seat of the bishop of the diocese, and the first of what might be called the cathedral of the diocese. The cathedral is the bishop seat. It was on Second 8 East near Social Hall Avenue. It was dedicated in 18… the land was bought in 1866 there was an adobe structure on the property, which was used for worship services. Then a church was built there, and dedicated, I think, in 1870. That church ultimately became the headquarters of the first Catholic Bishop of the diocese in Salt Lake City, whose name was Lawrence Scanlon, who in 1890 purchased the land on which this cathedral stands on the corner of South Temple and B Streets. He was instrumental in the building of this edifice, known now as the Cathedral of the Madeleine. Presently in the diocese there are about fifty thousand Catholics—somewhere between fifty thousand and sixty thousand, I'm not sure of the exact number— maybe fifty-five thousand* There are thirty-two parishes* There are approximately a hundred priests, if you count the monks in the Trappist Monastery near Huntsville, Utah. I am not sure of the number of nuns in the diocese. I would have to look up the statistics on how many schools, but there are elementary schools in Ogden, one elementary school in Ogden and one high school in Ogden. In Salt Lake City there are presently three elementary schools; one high school, parochial and joint co-ed. There’s an elementary school in Price, another elementary school in Provo… you’ll have to give me a rain check on the exact number of schools. RB: We’ll look it up. WM: Good. You look it up. What other specific questions now do you have? RB: Well, could you tell us about the membership, what national origins you have, perhaps? WM: Well, I suppose the largest single influx or people would have been Irish who helped build one of the railroads in this area. Then came immigrants from Central Europe who worked in the mines of various mining camps. Bingham, Silver Reef, Park City, Alta and 9 other camps. So that, at various times there were various groups of people came in who were Catholic, by birth, from Europe, Ireland, the main continent of Europe, Italians, French, Spanish Central European...Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia; Germany the Germans. There are people of all nationalities, of any national origins here. Immigration has more or less stopped Catholic-wise as it has otherwise. Person now trace the second and third generations, trace their ancestry back to these various immigrants… immigrant groups. Presently coming into the State are Catholics from the Easter States or from other States who move here because of economic opportunity, work— to work in the defense industry, or the space program, or various commercial enterprises. There all classes, economically speaking, from the affluent to the poor. There are a large number of Spanish speaking people. We see a large number of them. I can't tell precisely how many, but there are a fairly large number of Spanish speaking people, from Mexico, mostly. There are a fair number of students at the University of Utah from various countries of Central and South America. There are professional men like doctors, at the University of Utah; and other professionals from Central and South America, varied countries, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, etc. There are English Catholics, people of English origin; Great Britain, Scotch, Irish... You name it, and we have it, I guess. 10