A Son of Mary Until the End
by
Thomas A. Droleskey
The unprecedented series of events that have shaken Holy Mother Church in her human elements in the past forty years turned the lives of many older Catholics upside down. Everything that they had held dear and had been taught came from God Himself was under assault by bishops and priests and consecrated religious men and women. Priests themselves were not immune from a sense of bewilderment, wondering how to respond to the situation and still serve the souls for whom Our Lord had shed every single drop of His Most Precious Blood. Only a handful of priests and lay people had the grace to know that the only way to deal with the Modernist revolution was to resist this head on.
Although the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, for example, saw the urgency of resisting the novelties of the Second Vatican Council, which is why he formed the Society of Saint Pius X in 1970, even he offered the 1965 Ordo Missae for nine years, until 1974, before choosing, at the request of his seminarians, to offer Mass according to the Missale Romanum that had been promulgated by Pope John XXIII in 1961 (yes, it's called the 1962 Missal; but it was actually promulgated in 1961). The situation for parish priests who maintained the Faith of our fathers at the time of the revolution's initial onslaughts was very difficult, their options not at all clear.
It is very easy for people, including us slackers who took a long time to the return to the fullness of the Tradition of our youth, to look back in retrospect to say what they would have done if they were in a particular priest's place. Things were not at all clear, especially as the word "obedience" was bandied about by the same people who were proving themselves to be abjectly disobedient to Our Lord and His Deposit of Faith, as to how the novelties were to be resisted or their effects mitigated. You know, each of us would like to think that we would not have cried out "Give us Barabbas!" on Good Friday. The truth is, however, that each one of our sins, whether venial or mortal, convicts us of having chosen ourselves over Our Lord. Thus, we deceive ourselves if we think that we can project back onto the past our present knowledge of events and think we would act as handful of the early counter-revolutionaries did after the Second Vatican Council
As we know, some priests simply surrendered to the revolution, permitting themselves to become coopted by creature comforts and the desire for human respect. Others resisted for a time before surrendering to the novelties, becoming ardent defenders of them. Still others, however, not truly understanding the depths to which the novelties would take the Church in her human elements (to the point today where a curial cardinal, Renato Martino, believes that it is correct to teach the Koran to Mohammedan students in Italy's state-run schools), just refused to believe documented reports about how the theological and liturgical novelties were opposed to the entire sensus fidei, burying their heads in the sand. And then there were the priests who did the best they could under the circumstances to hold back the tidal wave of novelty in order to sanctify and to save souls.
Monsignor John Sweeny, the pastor of Our Lady of Peace Church in Santa Clara, California, for thirty-three years, was one such priest. His death at the age of eighty-one on Tuesday, March 7, 2006, is a cause of genuine personal sadness for those of us who knew him well and who profited from his efforts to retain as much of the Faith as he could given the unprecedented circumstances in which he found himself for most of his fifty-seven years, two months and ten days of his priesthood.
A devoted son of Our Lady, Monsignor Sweeny is well known for having erected a stainless steel statue of the Mother of God, plainly visible to drivers on US-101 in the Silicon Valley where Our Lady of Peace is situated on the east side of Santa Clara. No one knows how many drivers' thoughts were drawn to Our Lady as a result of that statue. No one knows how many Hail Marys were said or Rosaries prayed as a result of a driver catching a glimpse of the statue of Our Lady of Peace. No one knows how many drivers stopped their cars to pray at the base at the statue. No one knows how many drivers might have stopped into Our Lady of Peace to spend some time before Our Lord's Real Presence or to make the first confession they had made in decades.
Art Brew, who wrote for The Wanderer for many years and who was a very close personal friend of Monsignor Sweeny's, recounted the following in the San Francisco Faith about monsignor's plans for the shrine back in 1976:
The statue that was meant to be a beginning of a monumental shrine honoring the Blessed Mother was commissioned by Monsignor Sweeny in September of 1976. There was little money available for such a venture at the and whenever he was asked how much money he would need he replied, "All I need are rosaries." Rosaries were said on many continents, and soon generous donations flowed in. In 1983, the 32-foot statue of Our Lady, fashioned by Charles Parks of Delaware, was dedicated and the Shrine of Our Lady of Peace was established. Similar statutes are now being erected in Florida, Ohio, and Iowa. The statue near the front entrance to the church towers over two of the busiest intersections in the Silicon Valley and is seen by thousands of commuters every day, as well as the hundreds of faithful who kneel in adoration before it. Monsignor Sweeny is often seen kneeling in prayer before this statue, sometimes even late at night. It is seldom that a group of parishioners are not there to join him.
Indeed, I first met Monsignor Sweeny when he was speaking at a dinner in Sioux City, Iowa, in December of 1992, which was being held to raise funds for a larger statue to be erected on the grounds of what is known locally as Trinity Heights. He was good enough to permit me to speak to his parish two and one-half years later, in July of 1995. Although I was promoting the restoration of the Mass of Tradition in that speaking tour, under the "indult," I must admit (I had much to learn), I was not blind to the zeal for souls exhibited by Monsignor Sweeny. Indeed, I was very impressed by his zeal for souls, and his gentle, fatherly manner. What was especially impressive was the amount of time Monsignor Sweeny and his brother priests, most of whom were quite elderly and had suffered much for their resisting the revolution as best they could, spent in the confessional. One priest, Father Raymond Devlin, S.J., who had been a missionary to China before the Communist take-over in 1949, told me in January of 2001 that he had heard 1200 confessions that month (he kept count on a clicker). Father Devlin said that he had heard 18,000 confessions in calendar year 2000.
Monsignor Sweeny himself should be remembered for this one quote alone:
I will do anything I can to help people get out of sin and get to Heaven.
An indefatigable worker who drew his strength from his Eucharistic piety and deep devotion to the Mother of God, Monsignor Sweeny understood the necessity of restoring the Traditional Latin Mass. He had a complete stock of Michael Davies's books about the Mass on the bookshelves in the old rectory where I stayed when giving lecture programs in 2001 and 2002. Monsignor offered the Mass of our fathers once a month, eschewing, though, all entreaties from brother priests and even a former parishioner who was later ordained to the priesthood to offer the Mass more frequently. His devotion to the Immemorial Mass of Tradition was well enough known, however, to earn him the hatred of many of the revolutionaries and the love of his parishioners. The San Jose Mercury News had the following headline over the news story announcing his death: "Beloved Priest of the Latin Mass Dies."
Monsignor Sweeny was able to keep some Novus Ordo innovations (standing for the reception of Holy Communion, altar girls, extraordinary ministers) out of his parish throughout the course of his long pastorate, which is why his parish became a haven for hundreds upon hundreds of people, some of whom drove up to eighty and ninety miles to flee from the truly revolutionary spirit of the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the Dioceses of Oakland and San Jose. Some of those who had sought out Our Lady of Peace in the early days drifted away once the Society of Saint Pius X established itself in Los Gatos. Others fled to various traditional chapels in the San Jose area once Monsignor Sweeny was forced into retirement at the age of seventy-eight in 2002. Thus, Our Lady of Peace became a bridge for at least some people to find their way out of the ethos of the Novus Ordo Missae to the fullness of Tradition without compromise. We have seen many of these people in Los Gatos or in other traditional chapels in the San Jose area in the past several years.
I got to know the good people of Our Lady of Peace very well when giving the aforementioned lecture programs. The first, "Living in the Shadow of the Cross," ran from January to April, 2001 on Tuesday evenings. Large numbers of people showed up fairly regularly. Monsignor Sweeny would drop by now and again, as he did a year later when I was giving my "To Be Catholic from the Womb to the Tomb" lecture program prior to Lucy Mary Norma's birth. He understood why we went, at 6:00 a.m., to go to the Mass of the ages offered by Father Raymond Dunn in the chapel in his house in Palo Alto, California. There were times when he simply shrugged his shoulders when we discussed the state of the Church, not wanting to say anything that might, as he saw it, jeopardize his work for souls. The enormity of the problems facing the Church seemed to stagger him at times. As is the case with so many of Irish descent, Monsignor would sometimes exhibit a certain sense of denial about the problems, especially when it came to the problematic statements and actions of Pope John Paul II. He was also not too keen about facing some of the liturgical problems spawned by the Novus Ordo Missae, even in his own parish, thinking that they could be fixed somehow.
Make no mistake about it, however: Monsignor John Sweeny, who was born on April 3, 1924, was a fighter for the Catholic Faith. He fought for the Faith not only on his knees. He fought for the Faith in the pulpit and he fought for it on the streets, praying regularly in front of killing centers and giving his strong voice unequivocally to the cause of the restoration of full legal protection to the innocent preborn. He became very good friends with that stalwart defender of the primacy of God's laws over civil law, Father Paul Marx, O.S.B., who has suffered much himself from foes and former friends alike. Many thousands of people met Monsignor Sweeny as a result of conferences that were held in the Santa Clara area because of the proximity of Our Lady of Peace Church.
Monsignor Sweeny defended the Catholic Faith in the presence of his own Ordinary, Bishop Patrick McGrath. There was an occasion a few years ago when he stood up at a priests' retreat being conducted by a priest who put into question the absolute prohibition found in the Divine positive law and the natural law of all forms of contraception to defend vigorously the truths Our Lord has entrusted solely to His true Church. He had a special love for the young, wanting to see to it that they were educated in the truths of the Faith, supporting home-schooling with all of the might that Our Lady could give him.
Although he always had a glint, a twinkle, if you will, in his eyes, some of that glint was lost after his brother, Father Louis Sweeny, died about six years ago. Monsignor Sweeny was very close to his brother. I could see in our conversations that he felt the loss of his brother, who was ordained with him on the same day, Ember Saturday in Advent, December 18, 1948, affected him deeply. Continuing to go about his pastoral duties, though, to the time he was forced to leave against his will in 2002, Monsignor John Sweeny just never gave up caring for souls. He never stopped praying to Our Lady, especially through her Most Holy Rosary.
While it is no secret that I exhort priests to stop offering the Novus Ordo Missae and to embrace the fullness of the Faith without compromise, one would sin against Charity if he did not recognize the difficulties faced by priests in our difficult days. This is especially true for men of Monsignor Sweeny's age, men who were ordained in the Mass of Tradition and then had it all taken away in a flash. We are fools if we think we know what we would have done in their situation. Their situation was different than that facing younger priests today. We know more today about the inherent harm of the Novus Ordo Missae. More scholarship has been done to prove the falsity of the claims upon which it was constructed. More evidence is amassed, sadly, day after day of the harm wrought by conciliarism. There is thus a greater responsibility--and a greater urgency--for priests in these days to flee from the Novus Ordo, following the courageous examples of Fathers Stephen Zigrang, Lawrence Smith, Paul Sretenovic, and Stephen Sommervile, among others.
The priests of Monsignor Sweeny's era did not have the "benefits," such as they are, of the recent scholarship and the unstoppable devolution of the Novus Ordo and its synthetic religion. They did the best they could, noting the fact that there were some who had the grace to see the problems and to act accordingly. This is not to begrudge, however, those priests who manned the barricades from within as they endeavored to serve souls. Only a handful, including the now retired Father Daniel Johnson in southern California, have acquitted themselves as zealous for souls as Monsignor John Sweeny.
Sharon and I spoke at length with Monsignor Sweeny on a Saturday evening in early February of 2002. It was during that conversation that we discussed the state of the Church and the problems extant in his own backyard in the context of his then pending forced retirement. During that conversation, though, Monsignor Sweeny brought out a number of letters from people around the world that included their Rosary pledges for the building of the statue of Our Lady of Peace. He received thousands of these pledges. Putting aside all of his other tireless work for souls, imagine, ladies and gentlemen, the good for souls that Monsignor Sweeny did just by getting people to say the Rosary.
We must imitate the late Monsignor John Sweeny's love for Our Lady, especially by our fidelity in praying her Most Holy Rosary with care and reflection. Consider this vignette as told by Saint Louis Marie de Montfort himself:
Our Lady blesses not only those who preach her Rosary, but She highly rewards all those who get others to say it by their example.
Alphonsus, King of Leon and Galicia, very much wanted all his servants to honor the Blessed Virgin by saying the Rosary. So he used to hang a large Rosary on his belt and always wore it, but unfortunately never said it himself. Nevertheless his wearing it encouraged his courtiers to say the Rosary very devoutly.
One day the King fell seriously ill and when he was given up for dead he found himself, in a vision, before the judgment seat of Our Lord. Many devils were there accusing him of all the sins he had committed and Our Lord as Sovereign Judge was just about to condemn him to hell when Our Lady appeared to intercede for him. She called for a pair of scales and had his sins placed in one of the balances whereas She put the Rosary that he had always worn on the other scale, together with all of the Rosaries that had been said because of his example. It was found that the Rosaries weighed more than his sins.
Monsignor John Sweeny was an apostle of Our Lady. He never stained her Divine Son's Holy Priesthood. Indeed, he kept the dignity of his Priestly Ordination throughout the course of time, right from December 18, 1948, to March 7, 2006. He won for himself a great deal of merit simply by promoting devotion to Our Lady. How many of us will be able to say the same when we die?
Although Monsignor Sweeny was a true pastor of souls, we do not presume his entry in to Heaven. Saint John Bosco asked his own mother, the hard-working Mama Marguerite Bosco, who had appeared to him in one of his visionary dreams, if she had gone straight to Heaven after she died. She said, "No." That should give each of us pause, folks. If Mama Marguerite Bosco did not go straight up we should be shaking in our boots! Thus, we do not presume the state of Monsignor Sweeny's soul. We pray for the repose of his immortal soul and we have Masses said for his good, priestly soul. I have remembered his brother's soul in my prayers every day since I learned of his death. I will be keeping Monsignor John Sweeny's soul in prayers until I die. He was a son of Mary until the end.
I want to take this opportunity to extend our deepest personal condolences to Monsignor Sweeny's surviving brother, Richard, and to his sister-in-law, Norma, and to all of his many nieces and nephews. I also want to assure our many friends from our lecturing days at Our Lady of Peace Church of our prayers for them during this time of great sadness and loss.
I want also to express our condolences--and an assurance of our prayers--to the family of Mrs. Maria Beck, who died on the same day as Monsignor Sweeny. Mrs. Beck was a parishioner at Our Lady of Peace for a long time. She and her husband Clark, who survives her, were very close friends with Monsignor and very generous contributors to the parish. It was our privilege to be graced by having known Mrs. Beck. Her soul is her our prayers as well. The Becks have done much to help Holy Mother Church. They did much to support Monsignor Sweeny, especially when he was being forced out of his pastorate four years ago.
Let me tell you, this was a most difficult reflection to write. I did not realize how difficult it would be until I started to write it. Let's just put it to you this way: some facial tissues were needed now and again as this was written. It is our hope and prayer that Monsignor John Sweeny, who imaged Our Lord as an alter Christus for so long, will know the blessed reward of an unending Easter Sunday of glory in Paradise. There are doubtlessly many souls who were able to get there ahead of him because of his administering the sacraments that were entrusted to his priestly soul on December 18, 1948.
Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine.
Ex lux perpetua luceat ei.
Requiescat in pace. Amen.
