Bishop Buddy Scrapbook 1936-37 (1)

· Fric1ay, Feoruary 5, 1937

OUTllER1 .._ Editorial Page A Concerted Voice Of Welcome " ever in the hi tory of the city have such tribute and tokens of affection been bestowed on a t. Joseph pastor a~ have been paid to Bishop Buddy," the Catholic Tribune of St. Jo eph, Io., wrote in their farewell to Sa11 Diego's new leader. Mirroring t. Joseph's grief in loosing Bishop Buddy, San Diego is equally glad to receive him as its own..Not only the Catholic people, for whom it is natural to receive Bishop Buddy with open arms, but the non-Catholics as well have been happy in welcoming to their fair city this new leader from the middle west. San Diego daily paper rivaled each other in present- ing the news and pictorial happenings of the week in re- • gard to Bishop Buddy. They went a step further and CRO

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When Junipero Serra elected the ~ite of ~li.ssion San Diego de Alcala and built there the first of that chain o Mi ions in California which was to become one of the greate t pha e of the development of hristianity in the hi tory of the \Vorld, he wa. imply extf>nding the trail which started at San Salvador with Columbus, traver::sed Me. ico to Guadalajara and ended finally at :an Fi·an- cisco. But the furtherance of Catholicity whieh al~o .'tarted with Columbus and \\'hich was continued by Serra has not stopped, nor probably will it ever stop. "When we see," Macaulay wrote again, "through what vicissitudes the Catholic Church has gone in the past, it is difficult to imagine how she can ever perish in the future. "She has seen the rise of all the governments of Eur- ope, and who shall say that she \\ ill not see the fall of them?"

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The last step in this furtherance came Weclnesday generously loaned San Diego's Catholic paper the use of when Bishop Buddy was solemnly installed at St. Joseph's those cuts for this week's issue. The weekly paper too, church. To Catholics the occasion was epochal, as mw,t htwe .hcen generous in their praise and welcome whilE be to them any establishment of a new bishopric as the I -th- tl 1 -- · 1· 1 1 • d ki· 1 a t~ rint Chul'ch grows. To non-Catholics it was of almost equal e_mon 1 ~, penoc ica s are a rea Yas ng e ve P impodance because it noted and })roved the grc)\,ving im- var10us articles. . . . I St ·i · 1 t f tl 1 d d B. h portance of the city and of the great an

San Diego has always been proud of her history. The plan of civilizing and Christianizing the Indians of the Pacific Coast, which we know as the MisRion system, has provided a chapter in American annals which is not/ equalled for beauty and significance by any other thing in the early history of the United States on either coast. In , it there was no fanaticism, no cruelty, no selfish ag- grandizment until the wealth which the Mission had created excited the cupidity of the civil government. Un- like the beginnings of civilization on the Atlantic Coast, I we had in California none of the hatreds, the religious antagonisms, the witch-burnings and the blue laws of Puritanism. On the contrary, the Mission system was designed to build up, to nurture the Indian and not to destroy him, to make the land more fruitful for him- and all these things were done until civil po-wers grabbed and wrecked, almost overnight, the great successes of the padres. The coming of the Americans and the inclusion of California in the possessions of the United States did not stay the destruction of the Mission", but it did remove the avaricious Spanish and Mexican governors and sol- diers from power, and then, as southern California began I to grow, the Church grew with it. Today Bishop Buddy has his cathedral church in a city of 180,000 people, and I he will rule over 13 large and prosperous _p.ari:hes in San Diego itself, 24 in the county and n in the dioce. e. i

lation of the Rt. Rev. Charles Francis Buddy, D.D., form- I erly of St. Joseph, Mo., as the first San Diego bishop, this city having been made the center of a new Catholic diocese a few months ago. The history of San Diego has been entwined with that of the Catholic Church from the beginning. In fact, the discoveries in the New World which followed the landing of Columbus at San Salvador were the labors of men who were as anxious for the furtherance of the Catholic Church as they were for the furtherance of the interest of their countries. Thus the missionary alway accompanied the discoverer-if, indeed, he was not some- times both discoverer and missionary. This was particularly the case in ·what is now west- ern Mexico and the western United States. Mo"t of the great expanse of territory \Vhich \Ve now know as Sonora, Lower California, Arizona, New Mexico and California was brought to the attention of the civilized world by Catholic missionaries who penetrated far afield for the salvation of souls while the conqueror or the governor was looking for the golden cities of Cibola-,-rhich, need- less to say, he never found.

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