Abstract
This article explores relationships between the particular (Lithuanian ethnic group) and universalist creeds (American Creed, Roman Catholic Church). Within this overall context the demise of the Lithuanian branch of the Marian Order is touched upon. Immigration patterns are included to amplify the subject. This article also reflects on problems of historical and archival methodology with its built-in nemesis that objective knowledge is via the subjective experience of the researcher. The footnote citations are designed as an integral reading of the subject at hand.
Reflections on Tension Between the Universal and the Particular
Audra V. Adomenas
Portions of this article were presented as a paper at the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Annual Conference in Phoenix, Arizona in June 2012, and, subsequently, published under the title of “Ethnic Parishes: A Case Study” in the ATLA Summary of Proceedings, in January 2012. This is a revised and expanded article on the same subject matter. The author thanks ATLA for permission to reprint this revised and expanded article.
The title of this article warrants an explanation. It is offered up to the reader to frame the subject matter along lines posited by Harvard University sociologist Orlando Patterson. Patterson frames the discussion by articulating the distinction between universalism and particularism. The distinction between universalism and particularism is not methodological but substantive. It refers to profoundly differing and antagonistic views about mankind and the groups that go to make it up. Since particularism is true of . . . archaic [ancient] peoples, this antithesis arose with the development, rather late in human history, of the idea and ethic of universalism. The universalist ethic had a sacred and a secular origin; it evolved independently both by means of the method of reason and the method of faith.[i]
Ethnic studies specialist Patterson, using language understandable to both specialists and laymen alike, boldly states that issues between an ethnic group and universalist creeds are substantive with “profoundly differing and antagonistic views about mankind.” Further, he posits that universalist thought arose from sacred (read as religious thought) and secular (read as the rise of national consciousness). Patterson’s theory states that there are roots that explain tension between universalism and particularism. The issue is even more complex since the identified roots of particularism are, according to him, only secular. Other research theorists on the same subject note that the rise of a nationality (the particular) is itself like religion – subjective. In other words, there is a spiritual dimension in particular fabulations. Everett Verner Stonequist, in his University of Chicago work, The Marginal Man, makes his own bold observation:
. . . Nationality, like religion, is subjective; statehood is objective. Nationality is psychological; statehood is political. Nationality is a condition of a mind; statehood is a condition in law. Nationality is a spiritual possession; statehood is an enforceable obligation. Nationality is a condition inseparable from all civilized ways of living.[ii]
Patterson’s observations, while amiss of the depth of Stonequist’s observations, elevate the discourse on an ethnic group’s relationship with universalist concepts and institutions. Thus, Patterson is the first of my three sources for the naming of this article. The second source of impetus for my title deals with both the theory and practice as applied to Roman Catholic Lithuanians in their clash with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago. Here, Lithuanian cemetery plot holders were at variance with a universalist hierarchy. Specifically, the work published in Lituanus[iii] by intellectual historian Antanas J. VanReenan deals with this built-in tension. The third source of inspiration is from retired attorney and researcher John J. Chernoski (Černiauskas), published in Lithuanian Heritage.[iv] Chernoski deals with the issues surrounding universalism and particularism in a clear manner without specifically labeling the tensions as such. Thus, the triad of thought, drawn from Patterson, VanReenan and Chernoski animate reflections on the universal and the particular in an American setting.
Reflections on American Identity
The “Mother of Exiles,” or the Statue of Liberty, reminds us of three things for which it stands: liberty, independence, and refuge. Liberty, independence and refuge have long been a lure for tens of millions of immigrants that have been absorbed into American society, a process spanning virtually the entire history of the United States. Americans did not occupy a territory “naturally” their own, and the term “United States” does not denote a common ethnic origin and is not a proper name of a country – such as Japan, Germany or China.[v] [vi]The term “America” and “American” is not exclusive to the United States, but is also applicable to countries from Canada to Chile and Argentina. However,
In spite of . . . belief that America [the United States] is not a nation, it has in truth the deepest right to consider itself such. It is an organic whole, intersensitive through all its parts, colored by one tradition and . . . by one conception of the country’s mission and of the means – liberty, enlightenment and prosperity – by which that mission is to be accomplished.[vii]
In the words of Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, visitor to the United States in the 1830’s : [picture] “. . . a society formed from all the nations of the world,” [viii] not held together by emotional ties to ancient memories, ancient habits, ancient prejudices, ancient heroes, an ancient dynasty , an ancient faith, or ancient attachments to place.[ix] Thus, to be an “American” means not to have come from ‘common stock’ but to have identified with the founding ideals of the Republic.
According to University of Chicago Professor Arthur Mann in his seminal work The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, the Revolutionary generation initiated the unprecedented policy of unrestricted immigration through the Congress Act of 1790. The United States, after attaining sovereignty, was the first country to decide that it would be an immigrant-receiving country. Until repeal by the Johnson-Reed act in 1929, close to 38 million immigrants entered into the United States. There were reasons other than ideological ones to be hospitable: immigrants would help to fill America’s vast, unsettled expanses, immigrant labor would help to exploit boundless natural resources, and immigrant skills and manpower were needed. Also, immigration promised to make the United States more populous, more wealthy and more powerful.
Prominent eighteenth century thinkers reflected on their views on immigration policy. Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia (1782), while being an ardent spokesman for the rights of mankind, expressed doubt on unrestricted immigration. In his words: “Every species of government has its specific principles. Ours perhaps are more peculiar than those of any other in the universe.”[x] According to Arthur Mann, Jefferson thought that because most eighteenth century immigrants would come from absolute monarchies, such persons may find it difficult to internalize the free principles of American government, and worse, perpetuate ‘old world ideals’ to their children. Mann notes that Jefferson felt that it was safer for America to let the population grow by natural increase. He did not favor restricting immigration, but only to let them come without encouragement. However, Jefferson’s thoughts remained thoughts only, and the policy of unrestricted immigration to the U.S. was to continue for another 139 years.[xi]
The opportunities to escape “Old World” shackles such as class, caste, oppression and slavery/indentured servitude were too great of a temptation for the wave after wave of immigrants who came to the U.S. to seek a better life and the pursuit of freedom. In the 1820’s, the U.S. started to count how many immigrants were admitted annually. At the beginning of 1970, the total passed the 45 million mark.[xii] To put that into perspective, barely three centuries after the American Revolution, the U.S. population was 16 times the size it was when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Even after immigration began to be restricted, the U.S. population did not stop increasing by leaps and bounds. In 2012, barely four centuries after the American Revolution, the U.S. population is roughly 314 million, which is 111 times greater than the era of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Interestingly, the 1890 United States census revealed that immigrants permeated almost all regions of America (with the exception of the race-torn Southern states). In 1890, the percentage of foreign born in San Francisco was 78%, Salt Lake City was 65 %, St. Louis was 67%, Duluth was 75%, Chicago was 78% and Milwaukee was 86%.[xiii] One does not typically associate immigration with Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho or Washington, but in the decades after Civil War, the percentage of foreign-born in those states never fell below 35%.[xiv] According to Mann, the 1920 census showed similarly high figures for foreign-born persons across the country. For example, 65% of people in Minnesota were foreign-born, as well as 58% of people in New Jersey.[xv] In 1920, the most homogenous areas were the most inaccessible ones: the Rockies, Appalachians, Ozarks and a small strip along southern parts of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois and into Kansas and Missouri.[xvi]
In his work Lithuanians in Multi-Ethnic Chicago Until World War II, historian David Fainhauz points out that “. . . In the last decades of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth century, 635,000 emigrated from Lithuania. This was approximately 20% of the whole population for three million people who lived in the territory of Lithuania in 1897.”[xvii] Commenting on this phenomenon, Fainhauz observes that “Numerically the emigration from Lithuania was one of the largest in Europe, only from Ireland being proportionately greater.”[xviii] In response to a personal e-mail from this researcher to Dr. John Kavaliunas, Chief, Marketing Services Office, U.S. Census Bureau, Dr. John Kavaliunas writes: “. . . the [United States of America] Census did away with the long-form questionnaire for the 2010 count and moved the more interesting socio-economic questions to a new ongoing inquiry called the American Community Survey. As a result, there is [currently] a gap in the data that sociologists and demographers have relied on in the past. At best, there is a 2010 national estimate of Lithuanian heritage (660,071) which is consistent with previous censuses . . . [there is] no state data. I don’t know what plans are for producing state-level statistics in the future. . . .”[xix]
Let us briefly compare the 2012 United States population with the populations of countries that have been popular European and East European immigrant destinations. Today, Brazil has a population of approximately 193 million, South Africa 50 million, Argentina 40 million, Canada 35 million, Australia 23 million and New Zealand 4 million people. According to Mann, historically, the heaviest intercontinental migrations extend from Napoleonic Wars to the beginning of the Great Depression. Scholars estimate that during that time there were 62 million immigrant arrivals to various countries worldwide. The U.S. received the greatest share of those immigrants: 60 percent. Whether calculated by net or gross gain, the numbers of immigrants who came to the U.S. by 1970 surpassed the combined intake of all other immigrant-taking countries: Canada (11.5%), Argentina (10.1%), Brazil (7.3%), Australia (4.5%), New Zealand (3%) and South Africa (2.2%).[xx] The important changes in U.S. immigration laws of 1965[xxi] will, by 2065, offer enough time span for dispassionate researchers of that future era.
Immigration specialist Arthur Mann notes an eminent historian: “Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history.”[xxii] It is no small wonder that there has been a concern for identity among America’s millions of immigrants. Immigrants’ reasons for leaving and their identity are often deeply tied to one another. For example, Lithuanian immigrants to the U.S. during the “first wave” of immigration (prior to WWI) came for primarily economic reasons. The “second wave,” referred to as émigrés by Antanas J. Van Reenan in Lithuanian Diaspora: Kőnigsberg to Chicago, came for political reasons, thus bringing with them a different mindset of preserving their language and culture in a foreign land while their own homeland was occupied by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia.[xxiii] Both Lithuanian immigrants (those before WWI) and Lithuanian émigrés (post WWII refugees) were – for the most part – Roman Catholic. Both waves, immigrants and émigrés, are mostly within the universalist Roman Catholic church.[xxiv]
Lithuanian Consciousness and the Roman Catholic Church[xxv]
The awakening of Lithuania’s national consciousness in the nineteenth century was closely tied to both the Lithuanian language (linguistic passion) and the Roman Catholic Church, whose priests sought through religious printed books to awaken a Lithuanian consciousness. Some of the important prime movers belonged to “Ateitis,” or “The Futurists,” (founded 1911), an early Roman Catholic action movement which “fused [the] linguistic ideology of nationalism to Roman Catholicism.”[xxvi] Within this historical framework, Ateitis leaders of the World War II and post-World War II era greatly influenced refugee Lithuanians who fled to Western Europe and later to the United States to maintain a diaspora. However, back in Lithuania, the Roman Catholic Church was seen as a Lithuanian church – abroad, this concept clashed with a universalist Roman Catholic church in the United States. This seldom studied phenomenon deserves closer attention within the fabric of Roman Catholicism. However, even in popular culture, seeds of discord can be noted in the Polish saying “to be Polish is to be Catholic” and the Lithuanian saying “to be Lithuanian is to be Catholic.”[xxvii] Within this mindframe, “We” centers on a particularistic (national) group – Poles or Lithuanians – and the “they” refers to those outside the fabric of the ethnic group. However, in an American Roman Catholic setting, only one concept of “We” is cultivated by a church hierarchy that sets the tone for Roman Catholics.[xxviii] The reader may well be served to be cognizant of the above and its implications within the fabric of Roman Catholicism. Rev. William Wolkovich- Valkavičius, in his article “Reflections about Lithuanian Parishes,” recognizes the reality of this “We-they” problem when he notes that if the tension becomes too great:
. . . Groups . . . separat[e] from Rome [become] known as ‘national,’ the obvious example being the Polish National Catholic Church (PNCC). Some fifteen Lithuanian congregations, mostly short-lived, also became independent of Rome and affiliated with the PNCC, forming a branch called the Lithuanian National Catholic Church (LNCC). These separatists even had a bishop of their own, Jonas Gritėnas.[xxix] [xxx] [xxxi]
While a deeper analysis of this phenomenon and its implications is beyond the scope of this article, an awareness of this phenomenon is pertinent when dealing with universal – particular issues.
Marian Fathers: Educators
The preceding discourse is offered up to help frame a discussion on the Lithuanian Marian order in the United States prior to their passing into history.[xxxii] In order to unravel this hard-to-grasp reality, it may be useful to begin, logically, at the beginning, with the foundation blocks of the Lithuanian Marians which do not emanate in Lithuania – but in Poland.
Within such a genesis, one may begin to explore how the fate of the Lithuanian Marians is inter-woven within – not a Lithuanian (particularistic) framework, but a universalist (Roman Catholic) framework. In an East European setting, though most Poles and Lithuanians are Roman Catholics, (a universalist faith), the circle of “We” breaks down along linguistic and ethnic lines, and the “they” becomes transparent along particularistic lines. Thus, Poles, as well as Lithuanians in America, operate in an environment which differs in kind from their respective homelands.
The Founder of the Marians, Father Stanislaus of Jesus Mary Papczyński, son of a blacksmith from the vicinity of Nowy Sacz, a city in southern Poland, founded the Marian Order in 1673 on three main ideals or charisms for his followers: devotion to the Immaculate Conception; prayer for the dead; and assistance to pastors, especially in educating people in the truths of the faith.[xxxiii] The first Marian monastery in Lithuania was founded in 1750, near the village of Pašešupė, (Starapolė).[xxxiv] In the course of doing research on the origins of the Marian Fathers, Rev. William Wolkovich-Valkavičius notes that “To this writer [Wolkovich-Valkavičius], one of the Marian Fathers who studied at their seminary from 1939-1943, admitted that never was a word even whispered about the Polish origin of the Marians because of the reluctance to say a favorable word about a Pole. Only decades later did this astute priest [unnamed by Wolkovich-Valkavičius] uncover the secret.”[xxxv]
The Marian Fathers were repeatedly punished by Tsarist policy for their activist leanings. In 1864, the Tsarist government almost doomed Marian congregations to extinction. Under nineteenth century oppression, the Marian congregation in Lithuania had perished, all but for one member – Father Vincas Senkus (Senkauskas). The future Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis revived this community of Polish origin and himself became a member after pronouncing his temporary vows in Warsaw, Poland in 1909. The revised statutes for the Marians quickly gained papal approval within a year. During the following years, the future Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis opened novitiates in other European countries. According to researcher Rev. Wolkovich-Valkavičius, the Marians revived in Poland in 1915, in Lithuania in 1918, as well as other countries in the 1920’s.[xxxvi]
The origins of the Lithuanian-oriented Marians begin in 1913 when future Blessed Father Jurgis Matulaitis visited the United States where he laid plans for the first Marian foundation in the U.S. Their initial assignment, included ministering to the parish of St. Michael, in Chicago, and the administration of the Catholic Lithuanian-language daily newspaper Draugas (“The Friend”), first published in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in July 1909, and transferred to Chicago, in July 1912, where it continues to be published until this day.[xxxvii] By 1918, the Marians pastored the Chicago suburban Roman Catholic Melrose Park parish and Chicago’s Aušros Vartai. In the Chicago suburb of Hinsdale, they opened a novitiate in 1922 and a college in 1926, of which the latter section shifted eastward to Thompson, Connecticut in 1930. In 1934, the Hinsdale site became the Marian Seminary. In 1926, the Marians began to spread to other areas by somewhat reluctantly assuming a parish in Kenosha, Wisconsin, another in Milwaukee, in 1945, and one in Niagara Falls, New York in 1953. In terms of authority, the Marians continued to belong to the Province in Lithuania until 1926, whereby they began taking steps towards their own independent province (achieved in 1930). In 1948, members with Polish roots separated to form their own province. American-based Lithuanian Marians, reaching out to fellow Lithuanians in the diaspora, continued to minister in Chicago and elsewhere. By 1957, the Lithuanian Marians reached their zenith as their Chicago-based Province numbered 96 members.[xxxviii]
The Marians, based in the home country, did not fare as well. After twenty-two years of independence (1918-1940), Lithuania fell under Soviet occupation (1940), followed by Nazi Germany occupation (1941). By 1944, this occupation was again replaced by Soviet forces and remained so for the next half century until the re-emergence of an independent Lithuania in 1990. During the long Soviet occupation, the Roman Catholic Church and its institutions were largely suppressed. Within this process, the Soviet government liquidated many Lithuanian monasteries, including the closing of the largest Marian Monastery located in Marijampolė and renaming the city itself to Kapsukas, in honor of a key figure in the Communist Party. A small part of the Marian Order remained in the West, a reminder that the Church in Lithuania was forcibly silent during Soviet rule. These priests ministered to the needs of native speakers in cities with large numbers of Lithuanians, such as in Chicago. Circumstances dictated that Marians focus on parish work thereby keeping them closely aligned to their original purpose in the apostolate of the press.[xxxix]
The decline in vocations which began in the 1950’s impacted the Marian Order in America. By 1955, the Marian seminary in the Chicago suburb of Hinsdale was phased out. During their history in the U.S., Lithuanian Marians suffered a loss of priests when more than a few succeeded in transferring to the diocesan clergy after they had become accustomed to parish work. Like many other congregations, the Lithuanian Marians had a shortage of aspirants and approached the millennium with a very small, aging population within the order[xl]. Their decline is recorded in a book published in 2012 on the history of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. In its English-language summary, the author writes that “ . . . the Lithuanian Marian Fathers have ended their existence as a specific entity.”[xli] In a 2012 letter addressed to this researcher, Sister Theresa Papsis, SSC,[xlii] states that the Marian Fathers had lived in Chicago until 2006. As of the Fall of 2012, both the Chicago, Illinois Province and the Thompson, Connecticut Province merged to form the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of Mercy Province, located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. This new Province totals 49 members, [xliii]and does not have any formal associations with Lithuanians or the Lithuanian language. The new Province does not have any formal associations with Lithuanians or the Lithuanian language, and is headed by Provincial Very Rev. Kazimierz Chwalek, MIC.[xliv]
Lithuanian Archives Project (LAP)
The Lithuanian Archives Project (LAP) began in August 2009 as an effort to preserve the partial library holdings of the former Chicago Lithuanian Marian Order since this material is closely related to Lithuanian history in the diaspora. [xlv]This impetus led to the founding of LAP, which was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in the State of Illinois, in April 2012.
LAP is not a library. Its goals are to: (1) Facilitate preservation / digital conversion projects; (2) find archival collections a permanent home; (3) publish bibliographies and/or finding aids to help make materials accessible; (4) ensure perpetual access to these collections by scholars and the general public in order to preserve the Lithuanian culture in America. LAP was recipient of the 2011 American Theological Library Association (ATLA) Publications Grant. As of September 2012, LAP has partnered with the archives department of Dominican University Masters in Library Science program in providing opportunities for MLIS students, enrolled in the archives practicum, to work with raw archival materials. Today LAP encompasses two other collections of significance to the Lithuanian ethnic experience in the United States.
LAP facilitates the preservation and digital transfer of “The Sophie Barcus Radio Program.” In the age of radio “The Sophie Barcus Radio Program” served as the eyes, ears and heart of Lithuanian-Americans in Chicago and the midwest. Starting in 1932, the program ran consecutively for 54 years. From 1949 onward, the radio show also helped post-WWII émigrés to adjust and forge new lives in America. LAP is working to ensure that these audio recordings are preserved and transferred to digital formats. The primary magnetic tape collection spans 48 linear feet and bridges the two waves of Lithuanians — pre-World War I and post-World War II. The collection also contains a sizable photograph archives. A bibliography of the collection creates an access point to the cultural, historical and genealogical significance of this collection.
A third project of LAP involves digitizing the audio and film collection of Captain Povilas Juodvalkis, Lithuanian Army (retired). Captain Juodvalkis, a political dissident and journalist, has had many doors open to his questions and his camera. A bulk of this collection centers on the activities of the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union (LŠS). The Riflemen’s Union (LŠS) is a civilian paramilitary organization with youth activities that run parallel to boy and girl scout training as well as training for future entry into the regular armed forces and national guard. The union also has chapters for veterans in diaspora centers such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Toronto, Sydney, London, and other locations. LŠS was founded in 1919 directly subordinate to the Commander of the Armed Forces. During the years of independence (1919-1940) its membership rose to 62,000 members in 72 riflemen’s chapters. The civic side of its activity included 125 choirs, 105 music orchestras, 350 libraries and 4 theaters. In 1940 the U.S.S.R. killed or exiled to Siberia 80% of the LŠS members. Thousands formed the backbone of a partisan war against the Red Army, from 1944, and into the early 1950’s. In 1954, the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union was reformed in Chicago as the center of a world-wide diaspora. It was reformed in Lithuania, in 1989, as a challenge to occupying Soviet forces. In 1991, the LŠS guarded the Lithuanian Parliament which was surrounded by Soviet Armed Forces. Other key communications installations in Lithuania were guarded by Lithuanian patriots to prevent entry by the Red Army. Members of the Union were killed guarding strategic objects as well as on the country’s borders. LAP’s film and video archives contain unique footage of war veteran Capt. Povilas Juodvalkis, who survived Lithuania’s occupation by Nazi and Soviet forces. Footage and audio includes personal interviews with civilian, partisan, and military prime movers. The nearly 100 year old Chicagoan also entrusted LAP with his recorded film and audio footage of KGB interrogations. Capt. Juodvalkis served as a LŠS member in every period of its evolution, from the 1930’s to the present. Being almost seven feet tall, he is known as the “giant with gigantic accomplishments” by members of the LŠS.[xlvi]
Highest Priority of LAP
The highest priority of LAP is to facilitate greater access, preservation and digitization for archives relevant to the Lithuania and to the Lithuanian diaspora[xlvii] and the academic community at large. In spite of both Lithuanians and Lithuanian-Americans sharing in a corpus mysticum – emotional ties to Lithuania as the land of their forefathers – the Lithuanian-American is also part of an American corpus mysticum[xlviii] beyond the first generation. Beyond the first generation, the hyphen serves to connect into an American mind-frame. Thus, one may posit a fundamental tenet that the Lithuanian-American researcher, on the level of social communication, differs from a researcher whose life experience does not include total immersion into America from birth – a natural given to the second generation of émigré or immigrant progeny such as the profile of this researcher. While Lithuanian-Americans and Lithuanians are able to converse and write in Lithuanian,[xlix] they are “separated by the same language”[l] – that is, both speak Lithuanian, both the Lithuanian from Lithuania moves within
. . . an invisible configurations of values of do’s and don’ts, of rules for . . .[thinking] . . . and culture . . . is a screen or sieve, a configuration of . . . [thought processes] which channel men’s reaction both to internal and external stimulus.[li]
This dynamic of a different life experience is a factor in research emphasis and methodology. Consequently, archives materials of the Lithuanian-American community in the diaspora have a pulse beat of their own – in spite of a shared Lithuanian language – and Lithuanian-American researchers – by virtue of connecting hyphen – have one foot in American culture and one foot in Lithuanian culture.[lii] This dynamic is absent if one is not a second generation or beyond diaspora Lithuanian. In a word, Lithuania’s pulse beat differs, an important point that cannot be ignored since every society must be understood on its own terms.
Closing Remarks
One of the ambiguities of research is that the researcher tries to get as close to his subject as possible while maintaining enough distance of space and time to afford the researcher/archivist a sense of context. My father’s mentor at the University of Chicago, Leonard Krieger,[liii] [liv] maintained[lv] that Krieger’s master, Hajo Holborn[lvi] at Yale University, stressed that the central problems of a historical [archival] methodology . . . hinge upon the fact that an objective knowledge of the past can only be attained through the subjective experience of the scholar.[lvii] Interestingly enough, Prof. Egidijus Aleksandravičius of Vytautas Magnus University, in Kaunas, also grapples with this problem “Tik Dievas gali būti objektyvus, o istorikas privalo būti sąžiningas . . . .”[lviii] Translated into English, the quote reads “Only God can be objective, the historian is obligated to be honest.” The above reality of research and its built-in shortcomings are of personal import since the interests of LAP are not only academic interests but also of personal import. In conclusion, every society or sub-society, must be understood on its own terms,[lix] specifically, the Lithuanian-American sub-society in American society, Lithuanian Roman Catholic institutions within the universalist Roman Catholic Church,[lx] and the sub-society of diaspora Lithuanian-Americans and society at-large in Lithuania proper. LAP is sensitive to the above noted in the spirit that the first step towards resolution of a problem is to – first verbalize the problem at hand. Thus, this article and its reflections have the end-goal of helping to foster a community of communication via diaspora archival holdings and their counterparts in Lithuania. Since the rebirth of Lithuania as an independent state is a relatively new phenomenon, English language readers may be well-served by a close reading of Lithuanian Independence: The Re-establishment of the Rule of Law,[lxi] a compendium of key documents translated into English on the establishment of Lithuania as an independent state. Since issues between the universal and the particular are always at hand, it may be worth noting (in closing) that the book is dedicated “To the brave men and women – the signatories to the Redeclaration of Independence of the Republic of Lithuania – who risked and risk their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, as did our [American] Founding Fathers in 1776.”[lxii] This may be worth including since the American Founding Fathers created the United States of America fired by a universalist creed in 1776[lxiii] – a bedrock that has echoed across time and space. Paradoxically, the American Creed is inclusive and, as such, leaves ample room for particularistic ethnic groups and religions. James E. Billington, Librarian of the United States Congress captures the spirit and the meaning of this creed across space and time as he posits: “. . . almost all of our founders [felt] that pluralism meant a plurality of authentic convictions in and about religion, not a monism . . .”[lxiv] Thus, the American Creed is at once universal and particular with its openness to a myriad of religions and ethnic particulars on its soil. As such, the American Creed is ecumenical both in spirit and law.
The other universal touched upon in this article – the Roman Catholic Church – is open to an ecumenical spirit. On the level of church law,[lxv] it remains at tension within the “one and the many” dynamic. In this case, Lithuanian voices, ill at ease with the closing of their churches and institutions within the various archdiocese across the United States, in spite of peaceful protests and prayer by parishioners of Lithuanian descent and their supporters. The election of Pope Francis and his plain talk offers hope. In April, 2013 during the fourth Lithuanian Catholic Pastoral Conference held at the Ateitis Conference Center, in the Chicago suburb of Lemont, issued a joint communiqué submitted under the auspices of the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Federation of America. This communiqué was then delivered – via diplomatic channels—straight to the Vatican. The communiqué, in part, minced no words stating that Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church closings “. . . are not in keeping with the intentions of the [Lithuanian] community, its inherent rights, and the sacred heritage to which it [the Lithuanian community] is entitled.”[lxvi] Diaspora Lithuanians go to the heart of the non-violent struggle with the universal Catholic Church in America by asking for return of “. . . the code of 1917 . . . [which] provided special protection for national parishes . . . under Canon 216, Paragraph 4 . . . .”[lxvii] Since there is no closure or conclusion surrounding the issue at hand and tensions continue, it is not possible to end this work with “a conclusion” but rather with closing remarks.
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Greene, Victor. For God and Country: The Rise of Polish and Lithuanian Ethnic Consciousness in America. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1975.
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Papsis, Sister Theresa, Sisters of St. Casimir SSC, Motherhouse of St. Casimir Sisters, Chicago, IL, personal Letter to Audra Adomenas, postmarked September 4, 2012, in author’s personal library.
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Wolkovich-Valkavičius, William. Lithuanian Religious Life in America: A Compendium of 150 Roman Catholic Parishes and Institutions, Volume 1: Eastern United States. Norwood, Massachusetts: Lithuanian Religious Life in America, 1991.
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Endnotes
[i] Orlando Patterson, Ethnic Chauvinism: The Reactionary Impulse (New York: Stein and Day Publishers, 1977), p. 199. Patterson served as a consultant to President Gerald Ford on matters of ethnicity while holding a professorship in sociology at Harvard University. For an in-depth analysis of social engineering between a universal creed (the American Creed) and a particular along racial lines in American society see David W. Southern, Gunnar Myrdal and Black-White Relations: The Use and Abuse of An American Dilemma 1944-1969 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1987). Southern’s book offers a complete analysis of American racial thought that allowed the peaceful bridging of thought on the racial divide in American society.
[ii] Everett Verner Stonequist, “The Marginal Man: A Study in the Subjective Aspects of Cultural Conflict” (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of Chicago, 1930), p. 65-66. For an amplification and extended discussion using E.V. Stonequist, A.E. Zimmern, F. Meinecke, J.J. Rousseau, J.J. Herder and others, see the section “Nationality as a Condition of Mind” p. 1-9 in VanReenan’s book Lithuanian Diaspora: Konigsberg to Chicago.
[iii] Antanas J. VanReenan, “The Lithuanian Cemetery and the Archdiocese of Chicago: A Documented Clash Between the Universal and the Particular,” Lituanus 44 (2) Summer, 1998.
[iv] John J. Chernoski(Černiauskas), “The Rise and Decline of Lithuanian Catholic Churches in America.” Lithuanian Heritage March/April, (2011).
[v] In other words, it draws its strength from a universalist creed.
[vi] The term “United States” does not denote a country, but a body of states in one Union. The term America is properly used for an entire hemisphere rather than any one country.
[vii] Thoughts of Emily Greene Balch, a specialist in East European immigration as quoted in the book edited by Arthur Mann, Immigrants in American Life: Selected Readings (Geneva, Illinois: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1974), p. 178.
[viii] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979, p. 48. For an in-depth reflection, see the book by Alexis de Tocqueville entitled Democracy in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), originally published in 1835.
[ix] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 48. Also see John E. Schwarz, Common Credo (New York: Liveright Publishing Company, 2013), see section “Historical Background of the Declaration of Independence,” p. 31-34.
[x] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 74.
[xi] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 74.
[xii] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 79.
[xiii] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 77.
[xiv] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 77.
[xv] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 77.
[xvi] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 77-78.
[xvii] David Fainhauz, Lithuanians in Multi-Ethnic Chicago Until World War II (Chicago: Lithuanian Library Press, Inc. and Loyola University Press, 1977), p. 4.
[xviii] David Fainhauz, Lithuanians in Multi-Ethnic Chicago Until World War II, p.3. Fainhauz presents several sources for his statistical data. For this, see p. 19 in the book by Fainhauz.
[xix] Dr. John Kavaliunas, Chief, Marketing Services Office, U.S. Census Bureau, personal e-mail to Audra Adomenas, dated February 1, 2014. The 2010 American Community Survey Data on Ancestry can be found at: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_B04006&prodType=table.
[xx] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 76
[xxi] In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson stood at the Statue of Liberty in New York and signed the Immigration and Naturalization Act called the Hart-Cellar Act, a major reform of U.S. immigration law. For President Johnson’s remarks, see http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/651003.asp
[xxii] Arthur Mann, The One and the Many: Reflections on the American Identity, p. 72. Arthur Mann is quoting Oscar Handlin from Handlin’s book The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations that made the American People (Boston, 1951), p. 3.
[xxiii] This held true from 1940-1990 until the re-emergence of a Lithuanian state in 1990.
[xxiv] For an in-depth discussion on the level of theory and practice, see Van Reenan, Antanas J., “The Lithuanian Cemetery and the Archdiocese of Chicago: A Documented Clash Between the Universal and the Particular.” Lituanus 44 (2) Summer 1998.
[xxv] Researchers and archivists whose specialty fields are outside the parameters of the study of religion, a suggested entry point would be the classic work by Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1959). For a classic entry-level point, see the book by Will Herberg entitled Protestant –Catholic – Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company Inc., 1960). Comparisons serve to enlighten on the central focus of my inquiry. Philip Gleason, Notre Dame University historians’ book Keeping the Faith: American Catholicism Past and Present (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press), 1987 also serves as an entry point into the areas footnoted. Philip Gleason’s bibliography in this book and his other books also serve the same purpose.
[xxvi] Antanas J. VanReenan, Lithuanian Diaspora, p. 113-115.
[xxvii] John J. Chernoski (Černiauskas), “The Rise and Decline of Lithuanian Catholic Churches in America.” Lithuanian Heritage March/April, (2011), p. 17. William Valkavičius-Wolkovich explores a major split in Roman Catholic unity that led to the formation of independent Polish and Lithuanian National Catholic Churches in America, see p. 156-175 in Vol. II of Lithuanian Religious Life in America.
[xxviii] Again, for an in-depth discussion on the level of theory and practice, see Antanas J. VanReenan, “The Lithuanian Cemetery and the Archdiocese of Chicago: A Documented Clash Between the Universal and the Particular.” Lituanus 44 (2) Summer 1998.
[xxix] William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, “Reflections about Lithuanian Parishes,” Lituanus, 50 (Winter 2004).
[xxx] For a chronological history of the Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church in America, see John J. Chernoski(Černiauskas), “The Rise and Decline of Lithuanian Catholic Churches in America.” Lithuanian Heritage March/April, (2011). For those interested in a magnus opum on the subject, see William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Lithuanian Religious Life in America: A Compendium of 150 Roman Catholic Parishes and Institutions, Vols. 1-3. Norwood: Lithuanian Religious Life in America, 1991. A suggested entry point on the subject at hand see the section entitled “First Settlements” p. 44-52 in Van Reenan’s Lithuanian Diaspora.
[xxxi] E-mail to author from researcher John J. Chernoski (Černiauskas) dated Nov. 19, 2013, “The PNCC is alive,albeit rather small http://www.pncc.org/. There is a ‘Lithuanian National Catholic Church’ – one church, Providence of God in Scranton and it is part of the PNCC organization. The PNCC broke away from Rome back in the early 1900’s. So did some Lithuanians, forming the Lithuanian National Catholic Church. However; the LNCC didn’t last too long and they merged into the PNCC.”
[xxxii] A sizeable portion of the abandoned library holdings of the former Chicago Lithuanian Marians was salvaged from the fate of City of Chicago dumpsters in August 2009. According to Sister of St. Casimir correspondent Sister Theresa Papsis, SSC of Chicago, the Lithuanian Marians lived in Chicago until 2006. (Letter from Sister Theresa Papsis dated September 4, 2012).
[xxxiii] Rev Tadeusz Rogalewski, MIC. Founder of the Marians: Father Stanislaus Papczyński . Translated by Ewa St.Jean. Stockbridge, Mass.: Marian Press, 1997, p. 9-11.
[xxxiv] In order to not digress from the subject at hand, for readers interested in the history of the Marians in Lithuania, see the entry “Marians” on p. 470-472 in Encyclopedia Lituanica, Vol. III (1973), ed. by Simas Sužiedelis and Vincas Rastenis.
[xxxv] William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Lithuanian Religious Life in America (Vol. III), p. 196-197. Also see Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Volume I of Lithuanian Religious Life in America, article entitled “Marians and Marianapolis” on p. 470-475.
[xxxvi] William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Lithuanian Religious Life in America (Vol. III), p. 194-195.
[xxxvii] In November 2013, this Lithuanian-language newspaper also began publishing a monthly English-language edition under the name Draugas News: Lithuanian World-Wide News, located at 4545 W. 63rd St., Chicago. For subscriptions and further information see draugasnews@gmail.com.
[xxxviii] William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Lithuanian Religious Life in America, Volume 3: The Midwest and Beyond, p. 195.
[xxxix] William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Lithuanian Religious Life in America, Volume 3: The Midwest and Beyond, p. 195. According to researcher Wolkovich-Valkavičius in Lithuanian Religious Life in America, Volume 3: The Midwest and Beyond, on p. 195, this tradition was anchored in what had been started in previous years within such publications as Draugas, Tikyba ir Dora (1914 – 1919), the monthly devotional Laivas (from 1920, changed to Kristaus Karaliaus Laivas in 1932), Studentų žodis (from 1933), and an illustrated monthly – The Marian – from 1948. Selections from The Marian appeared as The First Marian Reader and contained short articles of a generally high caliber, mainly in the Lithuanian language.
[xl] William Wolkovich-Valkavičius, Lithuanian Religious Life in America, Volume 3: The Midwest and Beyond, p. 195.
[xli] English language translator Sister Ignė Mariošiutė conveys this hard-to believe fact in Regina Laukaitytė’s book entitled Marijos Nekaltojo Prasidėjimo Vargdienių Seserų Vienuolijos Šaka Amerikoje. (Putnam, Connecticut: Marijos Nekaltojo Prasidėjimo Vargdienių Seserų Vienuolijos ŠiaurėsAmerikos Skyrius, 2012), p. 270.
[xlii] SSC stands for Sisters of St. Casimir
[xliii] Sister Theresa Papsis, Sisters of St. Casimir SSC, Motherhouse of St. Casimir Sisters, Chicago, IL, personal Letter to Audra Adomenas, postmarked Sept. 4, 2012. Within the contents of her letter, Sister Papsis noted that as of October 24, 2006, there were only 6 living elderly Lithuanian Marians left from the Chicago-Thompson Connecticut Province. The letter lists them by name as all of them were in nursing home situations. In the same mailing, Sister Papsis included the obituary of Fr. Viktoras Rimšelis (1915-2012) as prepared by Very Rev. Kazimierz Chwalek, MIC Provincial, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In a follow-up letter to the author, the Saint Casimir Sister Theresa Papsis elaborated further on the fate of the Lithuanian Marians in the United States. In Sister Papsis’ letter postmarked Dec. 2, 2013, she states only two Lithuanian Marian fathers remain in retirement homes. In the same letter, she refers to the closing down of the Sisters of St. Casimir Motherhouse at 2601 W. Marquette Road, Chicago, IL, noting that the entire library and museum previously located at the Motherhouse has now been shipped to Lithuania. “Our entire Lith. [Lithuanian] library is now in Kaunas at “Vytauto Didziojo Univ.” [Vytautas Magnus University], the Lith. Museum of art and cases went to the National Museum of Vilnius.” This researcher received a subsequent letter from Sr. Theresa Papsis, SSC postmarked January 10, 2014. The letter carried the obituary of Rev. Jonas Duoba, MIC. Rev. Duoba died January 2, 2014 in Putnam, Connecticut, with funeral services held in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
[xliv] However this may be, the non-Lithuanian Marian Order in Stockbridge owns the Lithuanian and English editions of the Chicago-based newspaper Draugas as well as the building that houses the Draugas newspaper in Chicago. This does not affect the day-to-day operations of Draugas since all levels of the staff operate with the level of fluency in the Lithuanian language equal to that of their counterparts in the republic of Lithuania.
[xlv] Author’s email dated Nov. 2, 2013 entitled “Mutual Interests” sent to Very Rev. Kazimierz Chwalek, MIC, Provincial, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, Vicar General Joseph Roesch, MIC, Rome, Italy, and Provincial Councilor Brother Brian Manian, MIC, cc to well-known and respected Chicago Lithuanian community retired Stroger Hospital Executive Mr. Joseph Kulys.
[xlvi] Captain Povilas Juodvalkis graciously submitted to a series of interviews with this researcher at his Chicago home in the Brighton Park area of Chicago during the years 2010 – 2013. LAP has video film footage of the aforementioned in its archives. The LAP Juodvalkis video archives consist of hundreds of videos that await viewing. LAP will create access points to the collection through creating a finding aids of its contents prior to digitization of the collection. To my knowledge, there is no counterpart to his collection in Lithuania. A large body of the recorded events center around the Lithuanian Riflemen’s Union in Lithuania and in the diaspora.
[xlvii] Both Lithuania and the Lithuanian diaspora are part and parcel of a Lithuanian “We” concept of peoplehood. For example, “mes lietuviai,” (“we Lithuanians”) clearly designates a feeling of “We” with a clear understanding that those outside this “We” are “jie” (“They”). This holds true in a myriad of social settings in human society.
[xlviii] Andrew Greeley, “Why Can’t They Be Like Us? / Facts and Fallacies about Ethnic Differences and Group Conflicts in America” (New York: Institute of Human Relations Press, 1969), p.21.
[xlix] This researcher is indebted to all Lithuanian-language teachers from preschool to university in Chicago and Lemont, Illinois. On the university level, this researcher is especially indebted to Professor Violeta Kelertas, under whom I studied Lithuanian literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) during the early 2000’s in the time period when Prof. Kelertas served as Chair of the Lithuanian Studies Program. Prof. Kelertas is presently Prof. Emerita at UIC and is also a Kellogg Fellow at the University of Washington. Being Chicago-born, the aforementioned experience enriched my command of Lithuanian language through Lithuanian literature.
[l] The term is borrowed from George Bernard Shaw’s original observations on inherent differences among English-language speaking peoples. However, G.B. Shaw’s observations may equally be applicable to speakers within the Lithuanian speaking world. Here, the “separation by the same language” dynamic may be said to be operative since Lithuanian speakers evolve different mind frames due to living under different conditions in different societies. An entry point into the transformation of English identity may be offered up through the volume Englishness, edited by Robert Colls and Philip Dodd, New York: Croom Helm, 1987.
[li] Karl W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Technology Press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley and Sons: New York, 1953), p. 62.
[lii] For a discussion of this, see Everett Verner Stonequist, “The Marginal Man.”
[liii] Leonard Krieger, Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton University, founder of the intellectual history program at the University of Chicago. I have facilitated the digital transfer of audio recordings of Professor Leonard Krieger’s seminars that he delivered to graduate students at the University of Chicago in the intellectual history program in the 1980’s within the department of history. Copies of the above were donated by Antanas J. VanReenan to the history department of the University of Chicago since they are the only voice recordings of Leonard Krieger in existence. Among his published books are: Ranke: The Meaning of History (Leopold Ranke is widely regarded as the founder of modern scientific history), The German Idea of Freedom (covering the period from the Reformation to the Empire in 1871), as well as other seminal published works. Prof. Krieger spent 23 years of his academic career at the University of Chicago. He was the first scholar given the rank of University Professor by the University of Chicago (New York Times, October 13, 1990).
[liv] “In broadest terms, researchers and archivists, when classifying works, may take into account that historical studies can be divided into two schools: the quantifiers and explorers of consciousness. The quantifiers are the heirs of Descartes and Newtown; the explorers of consciousness descend from Kant and Hegel. The new historical sociology and demography belong to the first school; the new psychology and intellectual history belong to the second. One views humankind as a measurable social animal, the other as spirit or mind. The term “intellectual history” originated with one of the field’s founders, Wilhelm Dilthey. In German, a worldview is a weltanschauung, described by Dilthey as a conception of reality that solves the mystery, or riddle of life. Dilthey’s doctrine of worldviews originates in the idealist worldview of modern German philosophy, which holds that reality is fundamentally mental or spiritual. In Dilthey’s view, three types of worldview have existed alongside each other through time. The first, naturalism, which apprehends reality as a physical system accessible to sense experience. The second, the idealism of freedom, takes a subjective view of reality, discovering in man a will independent of nature and grounded in a transcendental spiritual realm. The third type of worldview, called objective idealism by Dilthey, shrinks from the dualism implicit in the second. It proclaims the unity and divinity of all being. Despite efforts at synthesis, the three basic types of weltanschauung have been at odds with each other across time and space and remain rivals in our own time.” (Private handwritten notes of Antanas J. VanReenan, undated, circa 1982-1986). During that time period, Leonard Krieger was my father’s mentor at the University of Chicago.
[lv] Antanas J. Van Reenan
[lvi] Hajo Holborn was a renowned German-American historian who specialized in modern German history. His daughter, Hannah Holborn Grey, served as president of the University of Chicago for 15 years. President Grey personally played a role in attracting Leonard Krieger to the University of Chicago.
[lvii] Fritz Stern, ed., The Varieties of History: From Voltaire to the Present (New York: Random House, 1973), p. 25. Fritz Stern was a noted German-American historiographer specializing in the 18th to the 20th centuries. He was a close friend of Leonard Krieger.
[lviii] Egidijus Aleksandravičius, “Karklo diegas: lietuvių pasaulio istorija” Draugas, rugsejo 7, 2013. Republished from his book Karko diegas: lietuviu pasaulio istorija” published by Versus Aureus in 2013.
[lix] As a concrete example of the above, in a letter sent to this author dated December 2, 2013, Sister Theresa Papsis stated “that our entire Lithuanian library is now in Kaunas at Vytauto Didziojo Universitetas [Vytautas Magnus University] the Lithuanian museum of art and cases went to the National Museum of Vilnius.” Both the library holdings and museum were formerly located at the Motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Casimir at 2601 W. Marquette Road, Chicago, Illinois. This action complicates historical and archival research on institutions that were founded in the United States with a heavy emphasis on activities beyond Lithuania.
[lx] The term “universalist Roman Catholic Church” within this article uses the term in its restrictive form, bearing in mind that all Christian faiths are – in a wider sense – part of “one holy universal Catholic Church.” Here, read the term “universal Catholic Churh” to include “ . . . churches of the historic Protestant . . . Orthodox . . . , and Catholic . . . [since] all believe in ‘one holy, universal Catholic [Christian] Church. Thus, the term ‘universal’ includes a variety of ‘particulars’ in its wider application,” from Wesley Granberg-Michaelson’s book entitled From Times Square to Timbuktu (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishers, 2013), p. 38-43. In Granberg-Michaelson’s book, the chapter entitled “That They May Be One” centered on the prayer of Jesus in the seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John is pertinent to this discussion. Since Granberg-Michaelson may be little known within the wider reading audience, he served as a distinguished visiting scholar at the John W. Kluge Center in 2012. The center is designed to bring scholars on religion from around the world to use the archival holdings of the U.S. Library of Congress housed in the Jefferson Building of the Library. The Thomas Jefferson Library Building of the Library of Congress stands across the street from the U.S. Capitol, next to the Supreme Court of the United States.
[lxi] Paul S. Zumbakis, ed., Lithuanian Independence: The Re-establishment of the Rule of Law, (Chicago: Ethnic Community Services, 1990).
[lxii] Paul S. Zumbakis, ed., Lithuanian Independence: The Re-establishment of the Rule of Law, p. VI
[lxiii] Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal identified this universalist creed as the “American creed – a quasi-religious orientation in which the Many particulars are One (universal).” The term appears in Latin on U.S. currency as “E pluribus unum” words encased on the Great Seal of the United States. Of note is the fact that the Great Seal of the United States with its concept of a harmonious relationship between universalism and particularism embodied in the Latin “E pluribus unum” also appears in the original film footage recording Captain Steponas Darius (a Lithuanian-American) pilot’s hat as he waves goodbye at the take-off in the cockpit of the Lituanica airplane in 1933. Thus, a visual demonstration of the power of a creed that allows equal ‘breathing space’ for both “-isms” – the universal and the particular. It may be equally surmised – on the basis of his labors on behalf of Lithuania – that S. Paul Zumbakis, a Chicago-based attorney, is part of the same “we” in both “-isms” (belief systems). In the case of the universalist Roman Catholic Church – the relationship appears to be “at tension” – as demonstrated by a spate of Roman Catholic Church closures across America. Within this context, the demise of the Lithuanian Marian Order as well as the total phase-out of the Sisters of St. Casimir and their library and museum holdings point to the “at-tension” dynamic. This observation should not be misconstrued as a digression but as points of reference on tensions between the universal and particular. Outside of the framework of a clash between the universal and the particular in its ethnic form, there is a Lithuanian cemetery in suburban Chicago which is not “at-tension” with a universalist concept. Namely, the Lithuanian National Catholic Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, founded by Lithuanians in 1910 and continues with the same name. This cemetery should not be confused with St. Casimir Roman Catholic Cemetery – now designated as a cemetery within the cemetery system of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Chicago which no longer bears the name “Lithuanian” in its cemetery name.
[lxiv] Appears in foreword, written by James E. Billington, of the book by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, From Times Square to Timbuktu (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2013), p. x.
[lxv] For example, the term “Lithuanian” was removed from all the name plates of St. Casimir Lithuanian Cemetery in Chicago in the Spring of 1997. Non-violent struggle pursued in the wake of this action initiated by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Massive meetings followed, with over 2,200 protesters gathered at the Ford City Shopping Center Exhibition Hall. Protest leaders in this decades-long dispute had earlier been denied access to the Pope on the grounds that the dispute was classified not as a religious conflict but rather a local archdiocesan administrative matter which does not merit the attention of the Holy Father. For a discussion on this cemetery’s role as the spiritual manifestation of Lithuanian Christian culture in the diaspora, see the Lituanus article by Antanas J. VanReenan, “The Lithuanian Cemetery and the Archdiocese of Chicago: A Documented Clash Between the Universal and the Particular,” 44(2), Summer 1998. This Lituanus article contains a lengthy bibliography not available elsewhere on the subject. The official position of the Church – from both sides – is examined at length. Church closings continue across the United States in such small cities such as Worcester, Massachusetts and large urban centers such as New York City and elsewhere abound. For a compendium of Lithuanian Roman Catholic Church closings across the USA up to 2011, see article in Lithuanian Heritage Magazine March/April 2011: 14-19 entitled “The Rise and Fall of Lithuanian Catholic Churches in America” by John J. Chernoski (Černiauskas).
[lxvi] “Pastoral Issues: The Future Status of Our Parishes,” Lead editorial. December 2013. Draugas News: Lithuanian World Wide News in English 1(2), p. 2. This lead editorial in English is worth reading in its totality since it mentions that Canon law was revised and promulgated in 1983 which replaced the preexisting code of 1917. Hence, my sticking to the word “at tension” instead of “conclusion” at the end of this article. Readers interested in the subject may wish to download the stark photo of a closed church, barred from entry; the peaceful protest pictures crosses surrounding the door with a Lithuanian flag pinned to the closed church door and the words “Save Our Heritage” surround this scene.
[lxvii] “Pastoral Issues: The Future Status of Our Parishes,” Lead editorial. December 2013. Draugas News: Lithuanian World Wide News in English 1(2), p. 2.