Last night I stayed in Prince Gallitzin State Park, right outside of Patton, Pa. This morning, there was a prayer service in the amphitheater there, which is really just a small shack with a few benches in a semi-circle. I didn’t even know they had it until I saw it while walking to take a shower, and as I normally don’t bathe with my camera, I didn’t take any photos.
It was a rather unremarkable service, with the exception of the calisthenics. The minister had the congregants do slow jumping jacks, while shouting “Praise the Lord” whenever they clapped their hands above the head. It was surreal and comical.
But the park is named after a quite interesting character, and a blog post about him would be much more fruitful than one about a milquetoast service.
“Prince” Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin was a Russian immigrant who left a life of privilege at The Hague, Netherlands, to preach Catholicism to the Americans.
It’s amazing what he left behind. Literally cradled by Catherine the Great, Gallitzin was raised speaking French and was friends with Voltaire. He spurned Russia by choosing the Roman Catholic Church over the Russian Orthodox one, and like many young aristocrats, went on a journey of self-reflection. (Being rich, he probably didn’t do it on a bicycle like me.)
Because the French Revolution made Europe unsafe for the silver-spooners, he went to Baltimore, where no one is rich. There, he met with Bishop John Carroll at the Basilica of the Assumption, which I discussed in this blog post and my first podcast.
There, he became a priest and rebuked his inheritance, which annoyed his father to no end. But this doesn’t mean he was one of the proletariat. As he began missionary work all over Maryland and Pennsylvania, his pompous, aristocratic manner constantly make Carroll and the Church rebuke him.
He ended up founding the first English-speaking Catholic church west of the Alleghenies in Loretto, Pa., and was subsequently recommended for many bishoprics. He never became a bishop, though, and died in much debt accrued for charitable purposes.
In middle Pennsylvania, he’s somewhat of a celebrity, with a town, a park, and many other things named after him. And, in the Catholic Church, he’s on his way to canonization, names a Servant of God in 2005.
Here’s a quite of his, hard to understand through his loquacious mannerism:
“The true minister of Christ, dear sir, speaking in the name of his divine master, must speak with authority, with certainty, without any hesitation, on all the different mysteries of religion on which he is obliged to instruct his flock. Woe to the wretch who shall deliver his private opinions, his own uncertain notions, as the word of God; and thus often give poison for wholesome food; the productions of weak and corrupted reason for divine revelations. The idea we have of a minister of Christ, you will perceive, is precisely the same which the first Christians must have had. Surely, dear sir, the Church in 1815 must be the same as it was in the beginning: the same kind of pastors, provided with the same powers, administering the same baptism, the same Eucharist or Lord’s supper; in short, all the same sacraments, and preaching the same doctrine.”
What a guy.
