Victory and Victories

Father Baker's shrine of Our Lady

of Victory in Lackawanna NY,

named after a famous Paris church,

In the last posting I told the story of Monsigor Nelson “Father” Baker and his charitable institutions and the Basilica of Our Lady of Victory in Lackawanna NY.  In the telling of the story I mentioned that Nelson Baker as a seminarian had visited the Paris Church of Notre Dame des Victoires and the visit had changed his life.  Let me do an entry on this famous Paris Church.  I am embarrassed to say that as often as I have been to Paris, and that is quite often, I have never thought to visit this sanctuary.  I will have to go the next time I am the "La Ville-Lumière"  I love that city and in particular its churches.   

     Compared to some of my favorite churches—Saint Étienne du Mont, Saint Eustache, Saint Gervais, Saint Merri, Saint Julien-le-Pauvre, Saint Séverin, O gosh, I could go on and on—Notre Dame des Victoires is a fairly new church.  In 1619 the discalced Augustinians, a Reformed Order of Friars known as the Petits Pères, built their monastery not far from the Palais-Cardinal, the home of Cardinal Richelieu (now known as the Palais Royal).  Actually the Augustinians moved in just ahead of the Cardinal who began constructing his palace just about the time the Augustinians were starting the construction of their Church in 1629.  King Louis XIII came in person to lay the cornerstone of the new church which he was building as a votive offering to Our Lady in thanksgiving for the defeat of the Huguenots in the Siege of La Rochelle.  (La Rochelle had long been a Calvinist city and the site of several conflicts during the French Wars of Religion going back to the time of the Saint Bartholomew Day’s Massacre.)  The title, Notre Dame des Victoires, Our Lady of Victories, was to wipe the eye (an anachronistic phrase, translated in modern American English as “to stick it to”) of the Protestants.  This section of the city was fast growing in popularity among the fashionable—after all Richelieu was in the neighborhood and the Louvre-Tuileries palace complex (the Paris residence of the King) was but a short walk. It was only a few years before the church was too small to meet the needs of the congregation and a larger church was begun in 1656, though only completed some seventy years later.          During the French Revolution the Augustinians were scattered and the church itself secularized.  Napoleon returned it to sacred worship but the nineteenth century was not  at first a good time for churches.  Many of the French did not return to the practice of their religion after the Revolution.  A modern air of liberalism combined with general French cynicism made religion, and Catholicism in particular, seem to be terribly un-chic, so benighted and medieval.  With the restoration of the monarchy after the fall of Napoleon many in the Church were confident in a restoration of the ancien regime with all the privileges of church and clergy but the French weren’t ready for that.  There was a need for re-evangelization.  And it centered, in Paris at least, on the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires.  In the very worst of the dark night of French Catholicism, when the faith was most dead and Charles X was trying to restore autocracy, a spiritual renewal started.  Paris had an extraordinary Archbishop in Hyacinthe-Louis de Quélen who was famous for resisting the King’s political ambitions and for care for the poor.  Meanwhile the pastor of Notre Dame des Victoires Father Desgennettes, claimed to have had a vision of Our Lady.  Nothing has ever been made of this vision and I don’t think the Church ever ruled on its authenticity, but it sparked a revival among the Catholics of Paris and the church became the center of great devotion.  The Church was associated with the brothers, Alphonse and Théodore Ratisonne, converts from a prominent family of Jewish bankers from Strasbourg, who went on missionary work in the Holy Land, founding the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion.  Another distinguished convert from Judaism associated with the church of Our Lady of Victories, is François-Marie-Paul Libermann who went on to reestablish the Spiritans, known then as the Holy Ghost Fathers.  Alphonse Ratisbonne and Libermann both abandoned Judaism for agnosticism before converting to Catholicism whereas Théodore had passed directly from one covenant to the other.  Yet another figure associated with this Church is Théophane Vénard, a member of the Paris Foreign Mission Society martyred in Tonkin, Vietnam in 1861 and canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988.  After his conversion to Catholicism in 1845, Blessed John Henry Newman made a pilgrimage to this Church in Thanksgiving.  As an Anglican priest, he had prayed there for guidance years before.  In 1887—several years after Nelson Baker’s prayers there, Thérèse Martin, a young girl from Lisieux in Normandy stopped in this church to pray for her vocation—she wished permission to enter Carmel despite her being underage (she was not yet fifteen).  Unknown in her lifetime, she became the most popular Catholic saint of the twentieth century:  Thérèse of Lisieux, aka Thérèse of the Child Jesus, the Little Flower.  These are the greater and better known pilgrims but over 10,000 ex votos (plaques, usually of silver, acknowledging some prayer answered) as well as civil and military decorations, pieces of jewelry, and objects d’art have been left as a tribute to Our Lady of Victories. 

        When Father Baker built his ex voto, his basilica in Lackawanna New York, he changed the title a bit to Our Lady of Victory.  Lackawanna today is a blue collar and working class city.  Most of Western New York has suffered economic depression for decades since the collapse of the steel industry in the 70’s.  Locals there probably know little about the French church that inspired their local hero, Father Baker, but the people of Lackawanna, Buffalo, West Seneca, Cheektowaga, Hamburg and all of Western New York are proud of his beautiful church and pray for the canonization of this priest who as a pilgrim had prayed at Notre Dame des Victoires. 

Real Traditionalism

Our Lady of Victory Basilica, Lackawanna NY

Two or three entries back I posted a picture of “Father Baker”—a priest from Lackawanna New York with an interesting history—and I received several inquiries asking for more information about him.  I should have done an entry or two on him long before this as he is quite well known in Western New York but not much beyond and as his cause for sainthood has been introduced it might be good to know about him.   Besides which he was an interesting man. 

     Nelson Baker was a native of Buffalo, New York, where his German Lutheran Father and Irish Catholic Mother raised a family of four boys.  The Family name was Bekker or Bakker until it was Americanized as Baker.   Nelson was born in 1842 and was baptized Lutheran as an infant, but growing up decided to follow the religion of his mother.  His father was a grocer and seller of dry-goods and his son developed a keen business sense working with his father until enlisting as a solider in the Union Army during the War Between the States.  He fought at Gettysburg.  After the war he and a friend opened a feed and grain store but he was starting to think about the priesthood and studied Latin with the Jesuits at Saint Michael’s Church in downtown Buffalo.    In 1869 he entered Our Lady of the Angels Seminary run by the Vincentian Fathers outside Niagara Falls NY.  He made a pilgrimage to Rome with other seminarians in 1874 and on his way stopped in Paris.  There he visited the Church of Notre Dame des Victoires.  This church was a powerhouse of spiritual renewal in nineteenth century France—hmm, seems like we could use a few of these today and maybe one or two here in America.  Baker found his experience in that church profoundly moving and developed a devotion to Our Lady of Victories that would not only last him a lifetime but shape his life.

      Baker was ordained on the feast of Saint Joseph, March 19, 1876 in Saint Joseph’s Cathedral in Buffalo and assigned to the parish of Saint Patrick in Limestone Hill (now Lackawanna) just outside of Buffalo where he was to assist the pastor, Father Thomas Hines. Baker had known Hines before he (Baker) had gone to seminary and in fact Father Hines was a mentor to Baker’s priestly vocation.  Father Hines was responsible not only for the parish but for Saint Joseph’s orphanage and Saint John’s Protectory. (A Protectory is a sort of reform-school for children “at risk” or guilty of petty crimes.)  Five years later, in 1881 Nelson was given another assignment but returned to Saint Patrick’s in 1882 as superintendent of the orphanage and protectory.  The institutions were deeply in debt. Father Hines was a compassionate man but no man of affairs, whereas Father Baker had plenty of business experience and was well known in the commercial community.  Father Baker gathered what resources he could to repay the debts but they were insufficient.  He went to his creditors and offered them a deal.  If they would accept partial payment immediately and give him time to pay the balance, he would continue to do business with them in the future.  If they wanted full payment immediately, he would satisfy the debt but never more use their services.  The wise accepted his offer and his continued patronage would handsomely reward their business interests as the institutions grew and grew.  Father Baker then did something very innovative for the time and wrote postmasters across the United States asking for the addresses of devout Catholics.  (He was a smart businessman and knew not to ask pastors for the addresses of parishioners from whom he might solicit funds.  Even today it is the only the foolish or the saintly pastor who shares his benefactors with charities.)  Father Baker then wrote thousands of letters asking people to join “The Association of Our Lady of Victory” by contributing 25 cents a year for the support of these charitable institutions.  (In modern purchasing power this would be just over 5.00USD today.)  This was one of the first direct-mailing efforts at fundraising for charitable causes.  The newsletter for the Association morphed into a magazine called The Victorian which was published up until the 1970’s.   

      Meanwhile the needs of people in the Western New York grew.  In addition to the orphanage for boys and the protectory,  Baker started a vocational school.  And then a hospital.  And then a home for unwed mothers and their children.  Right there in the center of Lackawanna a village of charity was growing up with the red-brick and white-limestone trimmed buildings spread out eastwards down both sides of Ridge Road.  A diocesan community of Religious Brothers of the Holy Infancy had been serving at the orphanage and protectorate since the time of Father Hines and they were now joined by the Sisters of Saint Joseph.  It was quite an empire of good works.

      The bills for such an operation were enormous and despite the generosity of so many members of the Association of Our Lady of Victory, Father Baker was always scrambling both to raise funds and to conserve expenses without making the poor he served feel the pinches of poverty.  One evening as he worried over the gas bill he decided to ask for a miracle.  With a bit of publicity and bravado, he announced a public novena to Our Lady of Victories was to be held.  In the opening ceremonies with cross and candles and incense he buried a miraculous medal.  At the end of the novena he called in experts to drill where he had buried the medal.  They assured him that the geological formation was all wrong—the limestone rich area precluded the presence of natural gas.  They drilled, no gas.  Baker told them to drill deeper.  600 feet, no gas.  Drill deeper. At almost 1200 feet they found gas.  The well was long a source of income for the institutions and it still supplies the various charitable institutions today.  

      Monsignor Baker (he was honored with the various degrees of Monsignor, culminating in the Protonotary Apostolic ad instar participantium—then the highest grade of Monsignor available outside the Roman Curia) would to anything he could to help the poor.  We always hear the criticism from bitter Catholics or cynical non-Catholics that if you give enough money you can get anything from the Catholic Church.  It is a nasty slur but it was pretty much true in Baker’s case—if you were giving the donations to one of the many works of charity.  Local stories abound of Monsignor performing weddings in hotel ballrooms or graveside services for Protestants in Catholic cemeteries when it meant help for his orphans, his unwed mothers, his at-risk kids.  Like the disciples picking grain on the Sabbath,  Father Baker had things in perspective and knew that there were higher values than man-made religious laws.  

       In 1921 having met the needs of the poor, Father Baker set out to honor his patroness by replacing the parish Church of Saint Patrick with a grand basilica dedicated to Our Lady of Victories.  He asked for donations and donations poured in.  The Basilica cost over 3 million dollars (almost 40 million in 2012 dollars and frankly I am surprised it could be built for under a hundred million today). Marbles were imported from all over the world.  Artists and stone carvers came from Europe and around the United States. No expense was spared and every penny paid by the time it was completed for Christmas Mass in 1925.

      Father Baker died on July 29^th 1936.  He was buried with his parents in Holy Cross cemetery, literally in the shadow of the dome of his basilica.  When his cause for sainthood was introduced in the 1990’s, his remains were removed to the basilica where they lay today in a sarcophagus in the chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes. 

       Father Nelson Baker was a priest in the days of the Latin Mass and nuns enveloped in serge and veils.  He never had a girl serve his mass.  He built a Basilica that would make a rococo santuario in Rome look tawdry.  He got along well with Protestants—his father had been Lutheran after all—but still he was an old-school Monsignor’s Monsignor of the old school.   I don’t know how he would have dealt with Vatican II and the changes.  But he was the best of the old guard—like John Chrysostom and Gregory the Great and Anselm of Canterbury, he had a passion for the poor.  He was not one who judged but only served. And he knew that the law was there to empower priests to service not to serve the power of the priest.  A professor from Dunwoodie (The New York Archdiocesan seminary) recently told me that all the students there talk about is wanting to be bishops and what they would do if they were the bishop and how a bishop should dress.  They should be like Father Baker.  He never was a bishop.  Despite the various papal honors, everyone called him “Father Baker.”  He was a priest and wanted to be a priest.  We need more priests who want to be priests and have the heart of a shepherd not a princeling.