By Harry Murphy

“I’ve been to other Catholic services, but none like that,” said Gov. Lester Maddox. “It was great…that choir.”

Standing at the corner of Hunter Street and Central Avenue, an historic corner in Atlanta’s history, the governor made his comments Saturday night between greetings to participants in the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception’s 100^th Anniversary celebration.

Gov. Maddox, whose views oft times comes into conflict with the Church’s social teachings, perhaps typified the mood of the evening solemn, but happy.

It started out solemn with the beginning of a concelebrated Mass led by the flag-bearing Knights of Columbus, became a little jovial with comments from Pastor Arthur Murray, became serious once again with a homily by former pastor, Msgr. Patrick O’Connor, and ended with a jovial note at the concluding dinner and dance.

The old and the new blended together as men and women in antebellum costumes-who presented the only problem of the evening as they tried to enter pews in hooped skirts-mixed with dignitaries in tuxedoes and business suits.

“You can see the history of the city in this booklet,” said Gov. Maddox outside the church, waving the brochure prepared by the Shrine. “It’s wonderful that they put this out.”

“Five churches are sharing our happiness,” said Pastor Murray, a member of the Franciscan order which took over the Shrine in 1958 at the invitation of then Bishop Francis Hyland.

They are, he said, the Shrine where, Father O’Reilly was pastor during the Civil War, and the following churches; St. Phillip’s Church of Hunter Street, now St. Phillip’s Cathedral; Second Baptist Church of Washington Street, now of Ponce de Leon Avenue; Central Presbyterian and Trinity Methodist Church, still at their same locations on Washington Street.

Father O’Reilly saved the churches from destruction by Gen. William Sherman’s torch by making a personal appeal to one of the general’s aides.

The first Catholic church building was razed and a new one built after the war.

Representatives of the churches were at the centennial celebration.

Father Murray recalled recent days when services were banned in the Shrine and Central because of settling due to excavation for the government plaza next door.

Due to a movement, “not ecumenical in nature,” he said, “we have come closer together.” If they came any closer, he added, “we would both be in that hole next door.”

Msgr. O’Connor, now retired, but the last secular pastor before the Franciscans took over, said in his homily that the Shrine was the early settlers’ “Monument of love” for their church. “It has remained the cradle of Christianity in North Georgia,” he added, “a monument to the spirit of those people.”

He noted that when the cornerstone was laid in 1869, the times were “stormy” and they still are that way, with the Church riding the waves by preaching “social justice, brotherly love and liberty, but not license.”

He described the Church as being “living stones joined together by the cement of love.”

Noting the Shrine’s recently completed renovation project, he said she enters her second hundred years “beautifully attired and splendidly appointed.”

Quoting a Biblical question, he asked: What mean these stones?”

“To the world,” he answered, “they mean God is not dead. God lives-God loves.”

Archbishop Thomas A. Donnellan, principal concelebrant at the High Mass, said at its conclusion that he was grateful for the capacity attendance, “particularly the governor and his first lady and the brethren from other churches.”

He said he hoped the crowd would be protected “coming and going, waking and sleeping, for now and forever.”

Dorothy M. Sherman, who said she was a granddaughter of Gen. Sherman, was among participants at the Mass.

Comments from other participants included:

Stella F. Cefalu: “It was a beautiful affair.”

Lorraine Maloof: “It was grand--the Mass, the friends, the food, the drinks and the fun, but most of all I liked meeting up with an old school chum.’

Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Fargason: “Everything was lovely!”

Mrs. B.F. Warren: “This is a wonderful event and I shall never forget this night.”

Guests honored at the dinner included Father Finian Kerwin, Franciscan Order Provincial, and Sister Mary Celeste, mother general of the Sisters of Mercy who staffed the old parish school for several years.