Utah the Beautiful
Keyting, Margaret Lee
z9o THE COMMONWEAL January 19, I927 UTAH THE By MARGARET ~c ]['~j SCALANTE: A Spanish priest, the first white 12,man to look upon this valley. Camped with his comrades beside the Spanish...
...Another significant endeavor is the ambition of the great student of western history, Dr...
...Lake Gennesaret of the old law finds its prototype in the fresh waters of Utah Lake, some 292 THE COMMONWEAL January i9, I927 thirty-five miles south, which is joined to the great green sea of salt by the Jordan River...
...A people must have a house...
...Each moment is lovelier than the last...
...Bolton a second transla- tion will be completed...
...It is instinct with psychological confidence...
...There were but ninety Catholics in Ogden and Salt Lake...
...Harriman made his act of faith in Salt Lake City when he pur- chased her traction system...
...Poets and artists woo her beauty...
...Herbert E. Bol- ton, of the University of California, to complete the last segment of the old Escalante trail...
...z9o THE COMMONWEAL January 19, I927 UTAH THE By MARGARET ~c ]['~j SCALANTE: A Spanish priest, the first white 12,man to look upon this valley...
...He pointed a proud finger to the past of Utah...
...Those in the flesh upon this opened path catch a new glory in the sunshine--a new promise in the wind upon their eager faces...
...Beneath, rises the minaretted temple of Moroni, the towers of the Cathedral of the Madeliene, and the constantly increasing skyscrapers--those lifts of industrialism that have given to American architec- ture its native symbolism and strength...
...The spirit of pioneers is still her energizing force...
...and he made Utah believe it...
...When he built Salt Lake City, he built it to stand...
...They were seeking a direct route from Sante Fd, New Mexico, to Monterey, California...
...Utah's history is not a complicated one...
...Two years after his arrival, he solicited the Sisters of the Holy Cross for aid in opening a school...
...A Catholic high school ap- propriated part of the Judge Mercy building, and is running into its fourth year...
...America as a nation, in I776, was shedding the blood of her sons that the United States might live to posterity...
...The mottoes on the episcopal coats of arms of Utah's three bishops are challenges that have rung through her spiritual capitol, and indicate a complete cycle of religious consecration: Quid timidi estis (Right Reverend Lawrence Scanlan, I89I-t9x5...
...It is well to remember that American literature and thought were then in the first period of national consciousness...
...She is firmly convinced today, that in the person of her third bishop, the very best has come to her...
...Conquest...
...Your eye rakes three points of the compass: from the Wasatches behind you at your left, round to the Oquirrhs and the Great Salt Lake before you, to rest on Moroni rising on your right hand, his trumpet pointing to stars you cannot see...
...Just this has hap- pcned to Utah...
...Such repudia- tions leave her as unstirred as Mona Lisa's smile...
...We leave it to her native sons, like De Vota, to damn her...
...However this might be, no tribute too great can be paid those who aided the first Catholics in their en- deavors to erect a church for their people, schools for their children, and a hospital for their sick...
...He was prodigal of space...
...That Brigham had no definite knowledge of just where he would settle with his colony, is a well-known fact, and after meeting with Father De Smet, he determined to seek the land de- scribed to him by the Jesuit priest, and kept the matter a secret unto himself until he had discovered the exact locatlon presented on the map furnished him...
...Recent explorations in the South are unearthing archaeological finds to intrigue and task the scholar...
...In the hour of such a benediction, the spirits of those who have gone, return to hallow the land of their endeavors...
...But the first Lincoln highway to the land of sunshine--forgotten till now--will re-main unmarked no longer...
...That same year, in the great stillness of her unclaimed wastes, a party of Spanish Franciscans, under the valiant leadership of Escalante, trudged across her warm, red, south country...
...The faculty is composed of the Sisters of the Holy Cross and the priests of the diocese under the leadership of Reverend Joseph S. K~eefe, diocesean superintendent of Catholic educa- tion in Utah...
...and Chicago and Salt Lake, with the sweep of fertile valleys and desert wastes surging against their shores...
...It was the first ecclesiastical recognition by the Church of her own initial step in Utah...
...Escalante looks down implacid upon the more strenuous beauty of Bryce Canyon-- that mystic temple of wind and sun...
...Salt Lake, the cathedral city, has a definite per- sonality...
...Airplanes fly its beauty in eight...
...If educational advantages are the measure of the progress of any community, the history of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in Utah is her greatest pledge for future greatness...
...Its very simplicity makes its importance illusive...
...The colonization that superseded the Indians was rapid and American...
...The Indians who roamed these regions were not highly civilized...
...Looking back, one sees that the man who stood here January 19, 19z7 THE COMMONWEAL 291 on the middle ground of episcopal succession, Bishop Glass, begarl to build on the drained swamp...
...An interesting letter has come to light, from the pen of John MacReynolds, writing in the Kansas City Star in the year I9o3: The Reverend Father De Smet visited Kansas City, probably the last time in January, x 862...
...Fired by an intense realization of her heritage, sustained by the natural beauty of the land to which he came, and energized by her utter need, he made Catholicity in Utah a beautiful thing...
...When Father Scanlan arrived as parish priest in I873, he could claim but 8oo souls in a parish of 87,ooo population...
...I bring you] fortitude and peace...
...She is the enchantress of mighty faiths and heroic con-secrations...
...It draws its romance from the fewness of the number and the character of those few souls who laid her corner-stone...
...It is his pur- pose to retrace every foot of this, and for several years this historian of the West, with men of Utah and California, has been making this exploration, armed with the original of the Spanish diary of Esca- lante...
...Whatever may have been his financial shrewdnesses and populating complexes, he was a born builder, a colonizer, and a general of the first magni- tude...
...There is another temple block where the sunset hour spins a golden web of passion...
...Philoso-phers ponder her sinister silence...
...In the great lift of Gothic arches above a sanctuary of the Living God, one knows the exultation of eternal silence...
...It is not a newspaper sentimentalism...
...Game was too plentiful--dimate, atmosphere, living, too sufficient, to inspire personal ingenuity...
...They do not realize that the Catholics have no giant com-mercial organization, such as the Zion Co6perative Mercantile Institution, which, reaching out like an octopus into the soil of this intermountain territory, locks the land in a magnificent, efficient monopoly of supply and demand...
...For] to me, to live is Christ...
...The Moquis, in the South, were agricultural---and agriculturally lazy because of earth abundance...
...He imported teachers who brought the advance and learning coincident with the erudition of the eastern seaboard of the late nineteenth century...
...It took I5o years to awaken Utah to consciousness of her Catholic romance...
...or the hill, Cumorah...
...not in pinnacles to pierce the sky, but in a long, flat altar of red sandstone, where blue shadows creep as incense about its feet...
...The sun touches it in the morning and the evening with the high mystery of light...
...She fires the imagination of great adven-turers...
...Cathol- icism's organization exists solely for the function of the individual conscience...
...Bishop Scanlan, the first bishop, reclaimed enough from the swamplands of inertness for his church...
...From my recollection of what Father De Smet said to me at that time, about the Mormon immigration to Salt Lake Valley in Utah, it is true that Father De Smet had met Brigham Young on the banks of the Missouri River and advised him to go to Utah with his followers, where they would be undisturbed by the trend of emi- gration for many years to come...
...His Emi- nence, Patrick Cardinal Hayes, blessed this majestic new building of Spanish interpretation which stands high on the eastern foothills...
...So reads the inscription on the tablet erected in i923 by the Daughters of the Amer- ican Revolution, and by the city of Spanish Fork, Utah, to perpetuate the memory of that event...
...Mormonism concerns itself with the temporal and the spiritual welfare of its own...
...or the golden plates...
...People from Ogden, from Provo, from Salt Lake, and from points more distant, motored to this historic spot, where, fifty miles from Salt Lake City, Esealante had turned south and westward again...
...He seems to have very little to do with Mormon, his father...
...They lay reverent hands on the past...
...It was a state celebration...
...They penetrated her north-crn quietudes of lake and forest, and there offered the unbloody Sacrifice...
...It is Moroni at nightfall who would convert me to Mormonism--if I were to be converted...
...Of more signal importance, however, was the open- ing of Saint Mary's College and Academy of the Wasatch, by the Sisters of the Holy Cross...
...He dedicated to God the best he could find of contemporary art in decorating the magnificent English Gothic cathedral which Bishop Scanlan had completed...
...Shortly after the death of Bishop Glass, Mass was celebrated in Spanish Fork for the first time since the intrepid Escalante, i5o years before, had lifted the chalice to the rising sun before the wondering eyes of the Indians...
...Grad-ually this old prayer in a new world is flinging its mesh of spiritual aspiration about a city as beautiful as any in the world---and as indifferent...
...Like the Catholics, the Mormons understand ec-clesiastical leadership...
...Railroads span this difference today in twenty-four hours...
...So accurate were many of the descriptions of permanent landmarks, that the first translation by Dean Harris, while useful, has been proved erroneous in many places...
...He gave them schoolsDand not those of pioneer ruggedness...
...today Salt Lake, the largest diocese territorially in the United States and one of the smallest numerically, has become an integral part of the largest archdiocese in the country numerically, and one of the smallest in geographical expansiom The year just passed has been, indeed, a significant one in Utah...
...He laid it out in strong, straight, long lines...
...She is in the making...
...Today, in a population of 45o,ooo, the Catholics number i2,ooo...
...They plant hardwood trees-- gaily reckless that the hands that seed them will be idle for their flowering...
...Ecstasy of color--the lure of upward line--the quiet breath- ing of harmony--lay siege to the spirituality of old- world churches, and hold it incarnate--illusive...
...History marches in centuries---not in days and months, or even in years...
...Katherine Fullerton Gerould, in her Aristocratic West, says : If you wish to come under Moroni's spell, dine at sun- set on the roof of your hotel, opposite the Temple Block...
...Hers has been an exultant awakening...
...but a great deal to do with human asplra- tion...
...One might well question the perspective on a diocese but two bishops oldDa brief forty-six yearswwith her third bishop on the threshold of her adventurings...
...They draw one's attention with pride to the topographical like- ness of the valley to the Holy Land...
...One cannot understand the Catholic point of view here, without knowing some- thing of the spirit dominating this valley...
...She is the temple city of a sect that in less than one hundred years has proselyted the earth...
...Brigham "Young was their high priest, their prophet and their banker...
...They build in thousands of acres--not city blocks...
...Out of a forbidding faith and a lurid history, has come the figure of the angel at sunset...
...E. H. Harriman predicted that there would be four cities in America--New York and San Francisco, washed by two great oceans...
...By a unique unity, the establishment of the Holy Cross order in America, and the founding of Salt Lake by the Mormons, are synchronous...
...Pointing to the solid foundations that had been built by his great predecessor, Bishop Scanlan, in his forty-two years of labor, Bishop Glass insisted that there was nothing too good for Utah...
...He had walked the entire distance from St...
...To those who possess parochial systems that are resplendent in the tradition of brilliant alumni and consecrated masters, the infancy of Utah's system may appear insignificant...
...When the great French educator, the Very Reverend Edward Sorin, C.S.C., was dreaming of Indiana as the frontier of his endeavor, Joseph Smith was reaching for freer wastes in I84I...
...Mormonism has a group conscience--an organization complex...
...Fortitudo et pax (Right Reverend Joseph S. Glass, xgxs-t926 ) ; Mihi vlvere Christus est (Right Reverend John Joseph Mitty, t926 ). "Why do you fear...
...Seven years ago, the Daughters of Charity of the order of Saint Vincent de Paul opened a school in the abandoned building of the Judge Mercy Hospital...
...Father De Smet must have been the archangel whom the Mormons generally credit with ap-pearing unto Brigham Young and directing his course across the western wilderness into a hitherto almost un- known part of the country...
...and that Father De Smet furnished the Mormon prophet with a vivid description of the beautiful and fertile valley of Salt Lake, and also a map and chart of the route across the plains to that promised land...
...They lived like the Indianswon the soil...
...This valley they made to "blossom like a rose...
...It scans Salt Lake's western skyline with the great Romanesque capitol building...
...Nor have the Catholics any clear- ing-house of policing ingenuity, like the council of the Twelve Apostles...
...While the history of Utah is inseparably linked with the padres of the great California, and stands be-holden to the archdiocese of San Francisco...
...Camped with his comrades beside the Spanish Fork, Septem- ber 23, x776...
...By reason of the vision of the two men who have passed, however, there is a definite perspective...
...Wide streets and good roads secure the valleys and run like open adventures into its hills...
...Their names and their deeds arc on the lips of those who follow the "path that remains open...
...Salt Lake City, like Jerusalem, overlooks the Dead Sea--but that of the new world...
...No doubt his attitude to alien faiths was char- acterized by the same rugged fearlessness with which ~e met the objections of the more timorous of his flock, when the first railroad was headed toward Utah in I869: "It's a damned poor religion that can't stand a railroad...
...It was the sesquicentennial of her bap- tism...
...In Utah's great land of southern adventure, Esca- lante Mountain lifts itself...
...and all the lure of the undiscovered treasures of an E1 Dorado...
...Proximity eliminates perspective...
...It was the first dream of a highway linking Utah and California...
...The Utes, in the North, were a roving, BEAUTIFUL LEE KEYTING treacherous, warring tribe...
...To the Mormons, she is the land of promise, and they the chosen people of the last dispensation--the Latter Day Saints...
...Tho' the pathfinders die, the paths remain open...
...Nine families, in what became his cathedral city seven years later, were those with whom he started to build...
...These three forces have laid siege to the soul of Utah, and made her mystical freewoman of Christ's endeavor...
...illumination...
...He located that land and drained it of the impossible~shoulder- ing the difficulties with frenzied heroism...
...Brigham Young had built three cities before he reached his ultimate...
...It was a field Mass...
...They both came into being about the same time...
...He sent members of his flock into the outlying sedusions...
...By I847, Father Sorin was firmly established in Indiana and Brigham Young had walked to Utah and said: "This is the place...
...One must understand this to appreciate Utah's present jubilation and sense of security...
...He imposed on them agricultural necessities...
...He was on his way back to the plains and New Mexico, where he had spent many years among the Indian tribes...
...understanding...
...The year that Father Sorin sailed for America, Brigham Young sailed for England on the first missionary trip for his sect...
...Significant events of the present stand at attention...
...Salt Lake City has the romance of ancient cities: the beauty of Genoa--the symbolism of Jerusalem...
...Spanish missionaries located the ground, and trappers blazed the trails...
...Catholicism, with the spiritual alone...
...There is a lure in this new country...
...What the Mormons today cannot understand, how- ever, is that politically, Catholics are not a unit...
...Unless one has stood on the ground of the mother-house at Saint Mary's, Notre Dame, Indiana, one cannot realize in what terms of immor- tality these spirits build...
...She is in review...
...Utah has a picturesque past...
...Buffeted through the Middle~West, the Mormons were leaving Illinois about the time that Father Sorin was breaking ground in Indiana for his stronghold of intellectual conquest...
...or Joseph Smith, his prophet...
...One year later, the Sisters of the Holy Cross began primary grades in the base- ment of the cathedral...
...Under Dr...
...Louis to Kansas City, as transportation had dosed on the Missouri River, and staging was attended with too many difficulties, owing to the disturbed conditions incident to the Civil War...
Vol. 5 • January 1927 • No. 11
