BY RITA McINERNEY

One enduring keepsake of the 125th anniversary of the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1994 will be a videotape. People with bonds to Immaculate Conception – today’s generations of the parish’s first families, clergy, former parishioners and recent converts – contributed to this electronic memoir of a beloved church.

On a humid Saturday in August six people came to the rectory to talk with their interviewer, Dave Hayward, a freelance writer. Irving Williams, a parishioner, handled video filming. Richard Hauke, chairman of the Shrine history task force, kept the interviews on schedule.

Sounds of rectory life drifted into the small parlor: the doorbell ringing, ushers for a wedding party talking in the hall, parishioners in and out. Outside the side door of the basement hall, a truck waited to take extra pastries from St. Francis Table to other places where the poor are fed. Lines formed to gain admission to the World of Coca-Cola across Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive.

As it is today, Immaculate Conception in the 1950s was in the midst of what was happening downtown. The state Capitol, City Hall and police headquarters were nearby when Msgr. Donald Kiernan came to the parish in 1951, two years after his ordination in Boston, Mass. His first night in the rectory he was called out on three emergencies including one at Grady Hospital and another at Piedmont.

He served as assistant to Msgr. James Grady who had instructions from Bishop Gerald P. O’Hara of the Savannah-Atlanta diocese, to restore and preserve historic Immaculate Conception.

“The church was in shambles,” Msgr. Kiernan recalled. Money was scarce. The former pastor, Father Joseph Smith, had built a new school next to the church.

“He started bingo games. All the money went to the school. It cost $100,000 and there were no frills. It would cost a million today,” Msgr. Kiernan remarked.

The new school replaced the school the Sisters of Mercy staffed in the deteriorating old Marsh mansion where Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium is now.

After Msgr. Grady was able to raise more money and restored the church, Bishop O’Hara visited. A Catholic police captain, E.D. Mullin, a friend of Grady’s, assigned one of his men, A.L. Posey, to drive the bishop around town.

“Posey told O’Hara the church needed a designation because of its history,” Msgr. Kiernan said. That designation came in 1954 when O’Hara, by that time archbishop and also serving in England as apostolic delegate, sent a letter decreeing the church would henceforth be known as the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

“So a Baptist policeman was responsible for the Shrine,” the All Saints pastor remarked with a grin.

Msgr. Grady was a good friend of one of Atlanta’s most respected mayors. “Lots of times the back door of the rectory would open and the mayor (William Hartsfield) would ask if he could join us for lunch. The soup always smelled good.”

The mayor, with his insider’s road map, pointed Msgr. Grady to a good spot for a new church, where the planned Route 285 and Interstate 20 were blueprinted to meet. The church, St. Paul of the Cross, was dedicated in 1960.

The early 1950s were pre-RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) years. The Immaculate Conception priests would give instructions in the Catholic faith during lunch hour and again in late afternoon to accommodate workers in nearby government and commercial offices.

When potential convert Buck Alexander asked Msgr. Grady what he should do he was told to “go down and help the men with the bingo games,” by the pastor. “I thought that’s what you had to do to become Catholic,” Alexander later said. He worked the bingo games for 10 years.

While Msgr. Kiernan was at Immaculate Conception, Msgr. Grady built a convent for the Mercy Sisters on the site of the old Redman’s Wigwam Building by the church. The school closed in 1967 when enrollment dwindled with the relocation of families to the growing suburbs. So ended the school dating back to 1866 when the Sisters of Mercy first arrived in post-war Atlanta.

Annie McDevitt Dove lived for 30 years in Decatur before moving to Jonesboro three months ago, but her home has always been Immaculate Conception.

I’ve always loved this church. It’s like home to me, part of my life…like my family.”

Fourth in a family of eight children, she is the only one who remains a Shrine parishioner. The others attend church nearer to where they live. But they come to the mother church for special celebrations, Mrs. Dove said. On one occasion, a family reunion in 1977, 76 McDevitt and Moran descendants worshipped in the old church.

Seven generations of the McDevitt and Moran families, Mrs. Dove’s ancestors, have been baptized and married at Immaculate Conception. Her great-grandfather, Pascal J. Moran, an associate editor of The Constitution, was a daily noon Mass attendee.

Mrs. Dove, 63, recalls her father telling her of the two priests, Fathers O’Reilly and Clary, buried under the church, perhaps a bit scary to a young child. She also remembers him marching the family into church each Sunday morning.

Her daughter, Vickie McDevitt Mahone and granddaughter, Jeanne Mahone, 18, share her love for the venerable church. They’re secure there, it’s always been so much a part of family life. The three generations of women attend the 8:30 Mass each Sunday morning. Vickie is a lector and Jeanne a eucharistic minister. Annie Dove says she is too shy for either role but is proud of both of them.

Though she admits to not knowing too many people in the parish now, she considers the congregation family. And she credits her pastor, Father John Adamski, with “building up the church…Everyone says he’s transforming things.” She likes the involvement and dedication to social action in the parish and is grateful for Father Adamski’s openness to everyone and his willingness to “listen and help you anyway he can.”

Catherine Warren and Fritz Baumgartner grew up in the Shrine parish and were married at its altar.

As young people, much of their lives revolved around the parish Young Peoples Club. After Immaculate Conception started the Club in the 1930s Sacred Heart and St. Anthony parish, the first two offspring of Atlanta’s mother church, did the same. The young members of the Atlanta clubs often attended Mass and socialized together and every three months traveled to “conventions” of clubs in Rome, Albany, Macon and Savannah.

“It filled a need for young people,” from 16 through their 20s, Mrs. Baumgartner recalled. The weekends included a Saturday night dance, Sunday Mass and luncheon. They met a “lot of young Catholics” this way.

The club faded out when World War II called up the young men.

The Baumgartners acknowledged there was a good deal of prejudice when they were young. “If you want to get a job, better not say you’re Catholic,” was advice often heard. And years after they finished school they learned of one Immaculate Conception parishioner who kept her faith secret for the 20 years she taught in public school.

Mrs. Baumgartner attended Commercial High School on Pryor Street near the church; her future husband attended Tech High School after finishing Immaculate Conception School.

After their marriage the couple lived in Sacred Heart Parish for several years, then moved to Decatur where they became founding members of St. Thomas More.

Evelyn Taylor came to the Shrine through RCIA. Although raised a Baptist she felt that she “did not have a church that was my church.”

But that changed. “I came here several times in 1977, 78,” after traveling about to different churches since 1972. One Sunday she noticed an invitation in the church bulletin to people “who wanted to know more about the Catholic Church.”

She was fortunate, she recalls, that Father Frederick Kirchner, OFM, made her “hear more clearly when he talked about the Lord of all comfort and of how we have to minister to one another.” The Franciscan was a “go-getter. You believed when he spoke. He wasn’t someone getting a job done.”

Mrs. Taylor joined the Shrine in 1978 along with several others, including a young woman who is now her daughter-in-law, Rosalind Taylor.

She was one of “a few” black Catholics in the parish at the time. “I was comfortable. As you become older you tell yourself there is no sense in going anyplace else.”

When Father Adamski arrived after the Franciscans left, parish social outreach expanded. “The church seemed to move on, to develop a mission statement. When he did was appreciated and quite a bit overdue.”

The church is made up of a diverse group. To her “the kingdom of heaven is that way.” There are former parishioners she misses, mentioning Joe Smith, who ran the Joe’s Old Clothes shop at St. Francis Table and his wife Marilyn, who gave considerable time and effort to the Table.

Her son, Charter Taylor, his wife, Rosalind, their two children, her daughter, Melody Freeman, and her daughter all attend the Shrine. Her son and daughter married there. “We hope (the children) will stay in church. You know we don’t have too much control over what our children do.” But Mrs. Taylor is happy her grandchildren are forming friends in the parish.

There are 300 households in today’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception Parish, a diverse membership of cultures and lifestyles that brings energy and compassion to the church community and its neighbors.

For some members, but especially for Father Adamski, pastor since 1987, the Shrine, as the oldest Catholic church in Atlanta, offers a “continuing connection to Catholic roots” in the city.

“This sense of faith tradition is very much a part of who we are,” and moves members to respond to today’s needs.

“Catholics believe that the Spirit of God, present and active, is moving us to continue the ministry of Jesus Christ to the needs we see around us.”

Sometimes outreach is undertaken with two other Capitol area churches that were saved by Father O’Reilly’s plea, Central Presbyterian and Trinity Methodist.

Most recently, Father Adamski said, the three congregations have “established the Capitol Hill Neighborhood Development Corporation to try and be a voice in what happens in this neighborhood.”

The ecumenical group favors a proposal to build a mixed-use complex of housing, including low income, retail businesses and parking. “We try to be concerned about the whole area rather than having parking lots and government buildings” dominate the neighborhood.

St. Francis Table, established at the Shrine before the Franciscan fathers left, serves about 500 hungry people each Saturday morning, the pastor said. It is “well supported by many parishes and groups” and is an ecumenical activity as is the Shrine night shelter which provides beds and warmth to the homeless during cold weather months. Both the Table and the shelter are housed in the church basement.

A parish ecumenical effort that has wide support is Tuesday Night at The Shrine. Volunteers cook and serve a delicious dinner, enhanced by tablecloths, flowers and candles, to people with AIDS and those who are HIV positive. “While the numbers of people attending are not as high as they once were, as a parish community we are still committed to AIDS ministry,” Father Adamski said.

This commitment is also seen in Street Home, a day program for people with AIDS run by Mercy Mobile Health Care and AID Atlanta. It is housed in the same basement hall that welcomes guests to outreach endeavors and church members to parish suppers of both Spartan and celebratory menus.

Father Alan Dillmann, parochial vicar, is well known for his AIDS outreach ministry. He is chaplain at the AIDS Clinic at Grady Hospital and chairman of the AIDS Task Force of the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

Since 1988, Friends of the Shrine, a volunteer organization, has been raising funds for special projects including wrought iron doors for the church, a reconciliation room, and exterior lighting. Friends act as boosters to make Catholics and other Atlantans aware of the history of the Shrine.

And what of the archdiocesan commitment to this mother church of Atlanta Catholicism?

This commitment is “most visibly seen,” Father Adamski said, “in the restoration following the fire in 1982. This commitment continued with the restoration of the crypt in the fall of 1988. The archdiocese still maintains support, particularly in the major upkeep of the building.”

The pastor said Msgr. Edward Dillon, vicar general of the archdiocese, encouraged the first city parish to establish the Shrine Historical Preservation Fund, a designated fund within the Catholic Foundation of North Georgia.

Jane Enniss, Shrine parishioner for six years and assistant director of the archdiocesan development office, said the idea for the fund came after the parish held a seminar on wills last spring.

Mrs. Enniss said a fund such as the Shrine’s helps people “stretch stewardship beyond weekly giving and makes it easy for them to share their assets.”

Because of the age of the Shrine buildings, she said, and the constant drain on the parish for repairs, the fund will maintain and preserve the physical structure. Goal for the endowment is $125,000.

“It’s a very special place, to people of all backgrounds,” she said, “because of its history, because they went to school here and because of its rich ministry.”