Teamwork in North Carolina

One evening last week, 15 men and women came to the rectory of the Infant of Prague Church in Jacksonville, N.C. (pop. 3,960) seeking instruction in the Roman Catholic faith. What brought them there was "frontline" evangelism and the part-time partnership of two priests.

Father Ambrose F. Rohrbacher, 49, is a grey-haired man from Milwaukee with a quiet voice and a shy manner. Behind his spectacles his eyes peer tentatively, and he looks far more of a scholar than an evangelist. Yet 15 years ago his church gave him one of the toughest U.S. missionary assignments it had. St. John's parish in North Carolina's western mountains was eight counties of hardscrabble farmland, with only 50 resident Catholics and not a single Catholic church.

Missionary Rohrbacher set out to get some money. He went to New York City and Chicago and made speeches, finally raised enough to build a parochial grammar school and high school and two churches. Then, to get around among his scattered flock, he took flying lessons and piloted a Piper Cub from county to county.

The Macedonian Cry. In 1950 Father Rohrbacher was transferred to Jacksonville's Infant of Prague Church on North Carolina's east coast. The church itself had been converted from a nightclub called "The Bucket of Blood," and its members were all marines from Camp Lejeune five miles away or civilians attached to the base; there was not a single Tarheel Catholic in the parish.

Father Rohrbacher needed help and he got it. In 1947, he had written to Father John A. O'Brien of Notre Dame University, who is also a Catholic leader in the National Conference of Christians and Jews.* Stout, handsome Father O'Brien could step into any casting office and get a role as a Catholic priest. His voice is rich and he uses it effectively, he knows how to make people feel warm and at home, and the right words seem to grow in his mouth and fall ripely from it. He looks far more the evangelist than the scholar. Yet 60-year-old Father O'Brien has done graduate work at the University of Chicago, the Catholic University of America in Washington, B.C., the University of Illinois (Ph.D. in psychology) and Oxford. Since 1940 he has been research professor of the philosophy of religion at Notre Dame. His books, e.g., Truths Men Live By, The Faith of Millions, What's the Truth About Catholics?, have sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

To Father O'Brien, Father Rohrbach-er's letter describing what he called "the church's front line" in North Carolina sounded like the cry that summoned the Apostle Paul to Macedonia. He decided to go down himself.

The Trickle. Last week Notre Dame Professor O'Brien returned home from the seventh annual month of his summer vacation that he has spent preaching on the farms and street corners of Missionary Rohrbacher's parish. Together, the two priests make an effective team.

Wearing sport clothes to keep the focus on his colleague. Father Rohrbacher helps gather a crowd for Father O'Brien's direct approach. "I'm here," Father O'Brien will begin, "as a Catholic priest and a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Boys, is this the first time a Catholic priest has talked to you?" When they answer yes, he goes on to deal with some of the popular misconceptions about Catholics, e.g., that they worship the Virgin Mary, pay priests to have sins forgiven, are forbidden to read the Bible.

Those who come up afterwards Father O'Brien introduces to Father Rohrbacher. whose quiet personal follow-up and instruction may bring them into the church during the months ahead. Last week's 15 and about 15 more who have not quite decided to come to classes yet--the fruit of this summer's evangelistic teamwork--amount to no more than a trickle beside the figures the Baptists and Methodists rack up every day in the week. But many a stream was a trickle once: when Father Rohrbacher went to North Carolina in 1938, there were 8,000 Catholics in the state, and there are 28,000 now.

*And one of three signers of the N.C.CJ. telegram to President Eisenhower last week protesting McCarthyman J. B. Matthews' charges against Protestant ministers (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS).

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