By Father John Kieran

The Catholic community of Dalton celebrated St. Joseph’s Day by recognizing the founders of their parish. Following the liturgy, Father Raymond Govern accepted and blessed a recently installed bronze plaque.

Father Govern, now pastor at Fort Oglethorpe, was the first resident priest in Dalton when the Redemptorist priests opened a mission here in 1941. “It was an experience I’ll never forget,” he said. “When I moved in, the rectory had heat in only one room.”

Seeing the need “for the Church to state her case,” a radio program was started in Dalton and Cedartown. This apostolate of Catholic instruction made the priest well-known in the area, and was faithfully pursued by his successors, Father Anthony Kalb, who is also stationed at St. Gerard’s, and spoke on radio for 11 straight years.

The parish scrapbooks contain many clippings, often extensive quotes of these lectures. But the local papers were also quick to include vociferous ridicule against the Church, which made this work so trying and yet so needed.

“There were only a handful of Catholics in those days,” smiled the missionary.

Tragically, Dalton, like many other places, lost numerous Catholics because of being without priests. We know that in the mid-1800’s there was a church, Catholic school, sisters and a resident priest in Dalton. But within a few years the church seems to have closed down. Tradition has it that the sisters left to take care of the yellow fever victims in New Orleans, and the priests was recalled to Savannah.

Public presentations of the teachings and life of the church has been a forte of the Redemptorist Order. Over the years, they distributed thousands of handouts about the church in North Georgia. Frequently, space was bought in the local newspapers, and when more priests were stationed at St. Joseph’s, Sunday Masses were said at six locations across the 11 county area of the parish, to make the Lord and His Church better known.

Following Mass, Father Ray shared his intimate knowledge and love of his confrere, Blessed John Newman, with the ladies of the Altar Society. “John Newman’s greatness was in his ability to do the ordinary extraordinarily well. His tremendous love of people and heroic service moved thousands to a greater love of Christ and the Church,” he said.

John Neumann died at 49, as Bishop of Philadelphia, only 14 years after his ordination. Twenty thousand attended the funeral of America’s first Redemptorist priest, and founder of the parochial school system.

The evening was a pleasant reminder of the past and a spur to the future.