N O R B E R T I N E S @ 9 0 0

First a Kitchen Table

Building a New World

‘No New Blood’

Pennings’s Letter

Order of Canons Regular of Prémontré | Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey

The story of the Norbertine order in the United States starts with a stern-looking immigrant priest named Bernard Pennings teaching students Latin around a kitchen table in Wis-consin. Pennings came to the United States when a Wisconsin bishop wrote to Berne Abbey, in Holland, asking for help with non-English-speaking students.

In 1957, Cardinal James McIntyre – an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1948 to 1970 – in-vited the priests to teach at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California, and the men moved west and started a home: St. Michael’s Priory, now St. Michael’s Abbey, in California.

In 1983 Abbot Benjamin Mackin pro-posed to the canonry chapter that it look outward for other opportunities to serve the church. The first result was the foundation of Santa Maria de la Vid Priory, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In September 1990 came the foundation of the Priory of St. Moses the Black, in Jackson, Mississippi.

Excerpt from a letter home to his fam-ily written by Bernard Pennings dur-ing a visit to New York on November 16, 1893.

C O M I N G T O A M E R I C A

F E B R U A R Y 2 0 2 1

FIRST A KITCHEN TABLE, THEN A COMMUNITY

The story of the Norbertine order in the United States starts with a stern-looking immigrant priest

named Bernard Pennings teaching students Latin around a kitchen table in Wisconsin.

Pennings came to the United States when a Wisconsin bishop wrote

to Berne Abbey, in Holland, asking for help with non-English-speaking students; Pennings and two other Walloon-speaking priests arrived at the Diocese of Green Bay in 1893 and began ministering to Belgian immigrants.

Pennings, a frugal man who liked a good cigar, wasn’t the first Norbertine

in America; holding that distinction were men such as the Reverend Adalbert Inama of Austria’s Wilten Abbey, a missionary priest who died in 1879, and the Austrian the Rev. Maximilian Gaertner, who arrived in Wisconsin in 1846 and remained until 1858. But Pennings’ was the only U.S. mission that endured. He established high schools, founded the priory in De Pere, Wisconsin, that would become St. Norbert Abbey – the first Norbertine Abbey in the "new world" – and, in 1925, became the abbey’s first abbot. Pennings also founded Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Bayview

The ongoing journey started by three Norbertine priests who came to the United States from Europe in 1893.

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Norbertines @ 900

Abbey, in Middletown, Deleware. And he established St. Norbert College, the only Norbertine institution of higher education in the world, which in turn founded Daylesford Abbey, in Paoli, Pennsylvania.

“He believed in education, not only for the students of St. Norbert College but also for the young Norbertines whom he sent off one-by-one to complete their doctorates – not only in theology but also in other subject areas,” says Rosemary Sands, director of the Center for Norbertine Studies at St. Norbert College.

And yet, this year, as Norbertines around the world celebrate the order’s 900th anniversary

with an ongoing jubilee that began on the first Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2020, and culminates on Christmas Day 2021, Pennings’ legacy in this country remains a well-kept secret. The Norbertine order is better-known in Europe; Norbert of Xanten founded it, in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s relatively low profile in the United States is at least partly because Norbertine vows are stationary to one house, not missionary. “Localitas” and “stabilitas,” which are about committing to one place for life and being of service to the local bishop and community, are important Norbertine principles, says Father Andrew Ciferni of Daylesford. “We didn’t have this

First a Kitchen Table

Gries Hall on the St. Norbert College campus is named after Father Eugene Gries, O Praem.

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strong monastic life to offer like the Benedictines and weren’t a purely active community like the Jesuits or Redemptorists. We were neither fish nor fowl. We were new on the scene, there was a lot of competition, and we weren’t well-known historically.”

The Norbertines had a much bigger footprint in Europe, especially Central and Northern Europe, Sands says. Until the French Revolution, there were 92 Norbertine abbeys in France, she says. In comparison, the United States has only four abbeys and a single priory.

“Throughout the world, Norbertines make a commitment to serve the needs of the local community in which they have settled,” Sands says. Pennings founded St. Norbert College in 1898, with the aim of training young men for the

priesthood. With localitas in mind, Pennings realized that what the Green Bay community needed was a place for all young men to be educated, and not just those planning to become priests. The curriculum was expanded to include business courses, and the student body grew exponentially. The college offered both high-school and college courses, Sands says.

Pennings’s legacy in the United States, says Ciferni, is informed by what he saw before emigrating: private preparatory schools for seminaries that cropped up in the wake of the 1545–1563 Council of Trent – the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Pennings attended one such school, in his hometown of Gemert. He saw the schools as seedbeds for vocations, Ciferni says.

First a Kitchen Table

St. Norbert Abbey in De Pere, Wisconsin

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First a Kitchen Table

In 1886, Berne Abbey decided to start its own Latin school, and Norbertines for the first time got into mission work. Pennings volunteered to go the United States. In 1898, he started teaching Latin – the beginning of a minor seminary for men to become priests. That same year, he founded St. Norbert College, adding a fully developed business curriculum by 1902.

In 1932, Pennings sent a handful of Norbertines to open Archmere Academy, a college preparatory school for boys in Claymont, Deleware., which now counts among its alumni U.S. President Joe Biden and his children. Two years later, in 1934, the Norbertines were asked to open an archdiocesan high school for boys in South Philadelphia. First called Southeast Catholic, the school later was renamed St. John Neumann High School.

In 1941, the bishop of the Green Bay diocese asked the Norbertines to be founding educators at the new Central Catholic High School in downtown Green Bay, Wisconsin. In due course, because of size limitations, the Norbertines decided to build a new school on the west side of Green Bay, and called it Our Lady of Prémontré. That school opened in 1955. In 1959, St. Norbert High School moved to a new location and was renamed Abbot Pennings High School.

Abbot Pennings High School

Abbot Pennings with Students

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Daylesford Abbey in Paoli, Pennsylvania

Responding to the vocations coming especially from these two schools, the community started a novitiate-seminary in 1954 at the Cassatt Estate at Daylesford. In 1956, the community was further invited to open and staff the newly founded St. Norbert Parish, in Paoli, Pennsylvania. In 1963, the Norbertine community moved from the Cassatt Estate to Pinebrook, its present site, an 88-acre farm in Paoli. The abbey church and residence buildings were completed in 1966. The abbey church was blessed on August 15, 1967 and dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption.

In 1990, the two Green Bay Norbertine high schools merged with the only Catholic high school for girls (not a Norbertine school) to form a new school, Notre Dame de la Baie Academy. Notre Dame still counts on Norbertine involvement as staff, faculty, or board of trustee members.

Not only was the Norbertine order involved in educating students, they also saw the need to educate parochial school teachers, who at that time were primarily nuns. In 1934 a summer school for sisters was established on the St. Norbert College campus.

“There is a desire within the Norbertine community to plant deep roots in the local community and to grow with and among our neighbors,” says Father James Neilson of St. Norbert Abbey.

“To this end, we find our essential identity woven into the fabric of the local community from one generation to the next. We are all very grateful to be living in one accord with our families, friends and neighbors in our beloved hometown of De Pere.”

First a Kitchen Table

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BUILDING A NEW WORLDNORBERTINES IN CALIFORNIA

Appropriating darkness as cover, a small group of Norbertine priests slipped out of their abbey at midnight and set out on

a daring escape in July 1950, fleeing Communist persecution in Hungary.

Arriving in the United States that same year, the priests settled at a Norbertine abbey in De Pere, Wis., and went to work in parishes and schools. Then, in 1957, Cardinal James McIntyre – an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church and the Archbishop of Los Angeles from 1948 to 1970 – invited the priests to teach at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, California,

and the men moved west and started a home: St. Michael’s Priory, now St. Michael’s Abbey, in Orange County. They taught at a high school and served in local parishes. They opened St. Michael's Minor Seminary and Novitiate in Silverado Canyon, which would become St. Michael’s Prep School for boys.

Theirs was, and still is, an education apostolate. Today St. Michael’s is a community, one of Norbertine canons including about 50 priests and as many seminarians. The priests teach in grade schools and high schools while also serving as chaplains to colleges, hospitals, and

Saint Michael's Abbey Solemn Professions

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prisons. They preach retreats for clergy and even have under their direction a parish church, St. John the Baptist, in Costa Mesa. They also assist at nearly 30 other area parishes.

The Congregation of Norbertine Sisters, meanwhile, traces its U.S. origins to 2011 but its founding to 1902, in the Czech Republic. Ten years ago, three sisters from the community’s General House in Slovakia accepted an invitation from the St. Michael’s to start a new community in Wilmington, California. By 2019, their community had grown to 10 and expanded to a second convent in Costa Mesa.

St. Michael’s has a sister community for Norbertine canonesses north of Los Angeles. The convent – the Bethlehem Priory of St. Joseph, in the mountains just outside the city of Tehachapi – is the only enclosed community of Norbertine sisters in the United States.

St. Michael’s school closed on June 30, 2020, upon graduating the largest class in school history. The school is expected to remain closed as the St. Michael’s community relocates to a new, $120 million building in Silverado that’s to be constructed in two phases. Phase one will include a new abbey. Phase two will include a new St. Michael's Preparatory School, with its own dormitory, classroom space, gym and sports facilities.

In September 2020, St. Michael’s Abbey began the Archangel Institute, a faith-formation program for boys from 14 to 18 years old. The institute offers weekly high school-level religion courses, monthly days of recollection, spiritual outreach to parents, and an annual father-and-son retreat.

Norbertines in California

Tehachapi Choir

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‘NO NEW BLOOD’ NORBERTINES IN MISSISSIPPI

In 1983, when Abbot Benjamin Mackin of De Pere, Wisonsin, proposed to the canonry chapter that it look outward for other opportunities to serve the church and use its resources for the poor, the first result was the foundation of Santa Maria de la Vid Priory, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Then, in September 1990, came the foundation of the Priory of St. Moses the Black, in Jackson, Mississippi – named for an ascetic monk and priest in Egypt in the fourth century C.E. The 15 Norbertines who were involved first resided at Jackson’s St. Mary Parish. On September 9, 1990, about two hundred people gathered at St. Mary Parish Church for evening prayer, during which the Priory of St. Moses the Black was officially inaugurated. Mackin, was the celebrant and Father Gene Gries, prior of the new foundation, was the homilist.

After the ceremony, the assembly gathered in the parish cafeteria for a reception, and about 40 guests joined the community for dinner later in the new priory. This marked the official beginning of a new foundation from the St. Norbert Abbey, the fourth in its history.

In November 2004, the priests moved into a new priory blessed by Bishop Joseph Latino. But 15 years later, when “after new blood stepped forward to replace us,” laments Father Jeremy Tobin, the priests closed St. Moses the Black and moved back to St. Norbert Abbey.

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EXCERPT FROM A LETTER HOME TO HIS FAMILY WRITTEN BY

BERNARD PENNINGSWritten during a visit to New York

November 16, 1893:

“The general impression we have gotten so far is way beyond our expectations.I don't think they were exaggerating when we heard strange tales aboutAmerica in Holland. It is beautiful here, colossal, and it is unbelievably busy.“No one troubles anyone else, everybody goes his own way; or rather every-one takes the tram and rides. The most dignified gentlemen and ladies sit nextto a working man carrying a saw and a plane; always and everywhere the fareis five cents (that is, 12½ guilder cents) whether you travel for five minutesor two hours.“This evening we rode a train through the city, from one end to the other.It was unbelievably crowded. Between 5 and 7 there is a long tram leavingevery minute in opposite directions and every coach, each with a capacity of100 or more passengers, was so crowded, that many people had to stand. Whowould believe it; but that also costs only 5 cents. [On the street] the trafficof wagons and carts is so great that two rows are constantly forming in a kindof procession. It is possible to cross the street only when the policeman haltsthe procession of wagons from time to time. No drayman will venture to keepon riding then.“Without intending it, I have gone into details, don't forget that right herewe are at the busiest spot in America. How totally different our own regionswill look. It just would not have been right to travel farther without havingseen something at least. About our region later.“Most cordial greetings Mother, Jana, Johan,“also to family and friends“Affectionately yours,

“H. Pennings”

(From Letters Written in Good Faith: The Early Years of the Dutch Norbertines in Wisconsin by WalterLagerwey, Alt Publishing Co.; 1st edition (1996))

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