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Parish History
Photo Album
The Apse Windows
The Bell Tower
The Organ
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History of the Church of The
Immaculate Conception
The Age of Churches
Page 5 of 6
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The new rectory, completed in 1908. |
World War II produced jobs and high
salaries on the home front, and the parishioners shared their prosperity with the church.
Support of the war effort was evident in the conspicuously displayed American flag and a
service flag in the sanctuary which showed 203 parishioners serving in the military.
Following the war, Towson continued to grow, and Father O'Neill
required the aid of two assistants and several visiting priests to accommodate the
congregation on Sundays. Overcrowding in the high school became so acute that in October,
1946, a Father O'Neill Testimonial Fund was organized under the presidency of W. W.
Lannahan to raise $100,000 to build a free-standing high school. Father O'Neill was not
well at this time and noted in the Campaign-o-Graph, the fund bulletin, "During the
past year I have been of little use to the parish, but I do not consider myself entirely
defeated. I still have visions."
11 He died on October 14, 1947, following a heart attack.12 The completion
of the new school fell to Fr. O'Neill's successor, the Right Reverend Joseph M.
Nelligan.
In 1952, the keynote address delivered when the cornerstone was laid was given by a son of
the parish, the Reverend John U. Lyness, who had been ordained only four years before. The
school opened in 1953 and boasted an auditorium and a separate gymnasium with a floor free
of the steel supporting posts that had obstructed the old gym of 1922. Monsignor Nelligan
declared at the opening ceremonies that the parish debt was the largest in North America,
but he wasn't going to worry about it and neither should the parishioners. Within eight
years the $1.25 million debt had been liquidated. By 1965, the high school attained a
Superior Rating from the Middle States Association, an accrediting agency.
The grammar school was not able to expand into the top story of the
1921 building. In 1960, a three-story addition in a modern architectural style was added.
At Towson Catholic High School's 50th Anniversary Mass on March 27,
1977, the Reverend Edward J. Lynch, a alumnus, praised the women who had contributed so
much to the school:
... We mentioned the first principal, Sister Ceciliana; she was
succeeded by Sister Corintha in 1932. Just seven months later ... Sister Corintha died and
was succeeded by Sister Zacharia. It seemed that the faculty of Towson Catholic in those
years seldom changed. Sister Leonita was at the school for 17 years, Sister Julius for 27
years, and Sister Josefita's first hitch was for 33 years, and 4 years later, she came
back for about 6 more ... Sister Julius became principal in 1947 and was principal during
that period of growth from the third floor to the new high school. Sister Camillia, Sister
Donald Ignatius, and Sister Rita Gertrude rounded out the 50's and brought T.C. into the
age of Vatican II. Then in 1967, Sister Lucetta bounced into the picture until 1972 when
Sister Helen St. Paul became principal.
A dramatic change took place in 1974. Men's liberation. The first male
principal of Towson Catholic was Father Timothy Joyce ... His successor was Father Paul
Lauzon who came in August, 1976, and is the current principal.
13 In August, 1982, the
Reverend E. Neil Magnus became principal of the high school and with Sister Mary
Teresiana, who had been principal of the elementary school since 1981, continue the
tradition of providing a superior Catholic education for all their pupils.
Prior to assuming responsibility as pastor of Immaculate Conception
parish, the Right Reverend Joseph M. Nelligan, a native of Towson ordained in 1926, served
at Saint Gabriel's Church, Washington; in 1936 was chancellor of the Archdiocese of
Baltimore and Washington, and, as rector of the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed
Virgin Mary, supervised the renovation there from 1943 - 1947.
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Towson Catholic High School,
opened in 1953 |
Chapter Three
Despite the costs of building a new high school, expanding the convent,
and completing the necessary church repairs, money was rarely mentioned from the pulpit by
the new pastor. Monsignor Nelligan was usually able to report a surplus, a savings fund
for the future, or some "coup" of borrowing money for less cost than the old
money was earning at interest. The parish numbered 4,000 when the Nelligan years began and
reached 9,000 at one point. 1 The
prosperity of the 1950's and the generosity of the parishioners enabled the pastor to make
the necessary physical repairs, as well as installing air-conditioning in the church.
In 1959, when Pope John XXIII convened a church council, few could
envision the effects on Catholics throughout the world. The first change was the
substitution of English for Latin in the Mass, and the priest facing the congregation
throughout the service. The new method of celebrating Mass encouraged increased
parishioner involvement, and through the permanent deaconate and participation by lay
lectors and cantors, more parishioners actively assisted in the liturgy. Monsignor
Nelligan, who had been appointed to the Archdiocesan Commission on Ecumenism in 1962, was
bringing the joyous message of Vatican II to Immaculate Conception parish.
By 1962, architects were busily drawing plans for an extensive
reconstruction of the church to meet the requirements of the new liturgy. 2 By this time,
repair work to the roof was needed, the tile floors were worn, and Gustave Baumstark's
stained glass windows were in decay, many of their figures faded and faceless. In June,
1964, Monsignor Nelligan announced a bold program of renovation. The church would be
closed all summer while the firm of Gaudreau-Architects managed a unified program of
maintenance, change, and artistic innovation.
3 The architect's control was total,
and the results were breathtaking when the church was reopened on September 19, 1964.4
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The new stained glass placed in
the church during the renovation of the Annunciation |
The apse windows, which had contained the four evangelists, had
been filled in with masonry, thus focusing attention to the simplicity of the plain marble
altar in the sanctuary, sheltered by a bronze baldachin or canopy. The new tabernacle was
at the far rear, outlined by an oak frame and rich velvet hangings. The new windows,
rendered by the Rambusch Studio of New York, in brilliant blues and reds, illustrated
scenes from the life of Our Lady. The statues at the side altars, combining medieval and
modern sculpture, were mounted flat upon the walls under pointed arches. The old embossed
metal ceilings and infill, which in a 13th Century cathedral would have been stone
groining, were retained but were sprayed in two tones of grey. The chairs and pulpit were
flat and spare in the Bauhaus manner, and the altar railing so slender it hardly seemed to
separate the priest from the congregation. The pews, though plain, were elegant examples
of the woodworker's art. Two chapels no longer opened off the side aisles; instead, four
confessionals built from these stones lined the aisleways. The baptistry was located at
the end of the main aisle, and a glass partition between the vestibule, or narthex, and
the nave provided a striking view leading from the baptismal font to the altar and the
crucifix hanging by almost invisible wires, all the symbols of Christianity aligned in a
single vista. 5
The jagged stones at the northwest corner that had waited for a bell
tower since 1904 were now gone. In the spring of 1965, a copper, lead-coated Gothic spire
or fleche was added to the ridge line of the roof. The spire, prefabricated at Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, included eight gargoyles and terminated in a "rayed cross," the
design of the Gaudreau firm. 6
Another splendid improvement was the installation of a Moller organ,
made in Hagerstown and donated by John T. Waldhauser, Jr., and Mrs. Edward H. (Bessie)
Burke, dedicated on June 13, 1971, in a service that combined the choirs of Immaculate
Conception Church with that of Towson United Methodist Church . 7
In the spirit of Vatican II, parishioners from Immaculate Conception
parish formed cordial links with members of neighboring churches. In Towson Under God,
published in 1976, our Nation's Bicentennial Year, the Reverend Kingsley Smith, Rector of
Trinity Church, exhorted the Catholics in these words:
Still, Catholics in Towson must face the challenges of the 1970's which
have brought into question many of the old certainties. There are traditionalists who
grieve at the loss of familiar customs and styles of worship ... There are charismatics
who yearn for strong emotional experience; ... There are modernists who are looking for a
substantial intellectual basis for faith through enrollment at the Towson School of
Theology which met ... under the aegis of five Towson churches, or in courses at the
Ecumenical Institute of St. Mary's Seminary, at the classes of the Confraternity of
Christian Doctrine, or in local colleges. There are social activists who are bringing a
Catholic witness to movements for peace, racial justice, political reform and the rights
of women. Finally, there are those who, through intermarriage or other involvement in the
wider community, look for ways to express their Catholicism ecumenically by cooperating
with their fellow Christians without compromising their convictions.
In short, the Roman Catholic Church is, like every other religious
organization, heavily influenced by the society in which it exists. It must find new ways
in which it can be in the world but not of it. It needs to use its teaching authority to
proclaim the Gospel, to provide shelter and hope without being merely a retreat from life.
The long pilgrimage of the church in America, especially in Maryland, has been an
interplay between authority and toleration. This should be a firm foundation for dealing
creatively with the challenges of the future- 8
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