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MY FAVORITE PRIEST
What a priest should be
By James S. Crossman
When I was growing up, the name “Father Cashen” was synonymous with the
Church in Duluth, Minnesota. Father Joseph A. Cashen was born in Ishpeming, Michigan, grew
up in Coleraine, Minnesota, attended the St. Paul Seminary, and was ordained from St.
Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, Maryland. At St. Paul he was a classmate of Bishop
Fulton J. Sheen and was able to bring Bishop Sheen to Duluth for two memorable lectures to
packed audiences in the 1930s.
After his ordination in 1921, Father Cashen was assigned to the Mission
House in Duluth. The Mission House was a venture by Dominican Bishop John T. McNicholas
where the young clergy of the diocese would live together for further study and training
after ordination and be sent to the outlying parishes of the diocese on weekends. Father
Cashen became the director of the Mission House after being ordained one year.
In 1924, when he had been ordained only three years, he was appointed
the pastor of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in downtown Duluth where he remained until
1940. During that time he paid off the original debt of the Cathedral, paid off a second
debt when repairs had to be made, edited a periodical and wrote a history of the diocese.
He was also the director of a diocesan-wide drive to raise funds for the whole diocese.
There were many “Fr. Joe” stories that came out of that
period of his priesthood, but three of them especially showed his sharp wit.
One of his young assistants was gaining quite a reputation as an
orator. One day a lady called the rectory asking if Fr. O’Reilly was preaching at the
8:00 a.m. Mass.
“No,” replied Fr. Cashen.
“Or the 9:00 a.m. Mass?”
“No.”
“The 10:00 a.m. Mass?”
“No. Fr. O’Reilly isn’t preaching at all this weekend,
but he tells the rest of us what to say.”
Another story concerned the time that repairs were being made to the
interior of the Cathedral and there was a large amount of scaffolding up on one side of
the church. In his sermon Father Joe explained that during the coming week the scaffolding
would be moved from one side of the church to the other without taking it down.
“And,” he added, “I’m sure that by the time Mass is over some of you
people without missals will have figured out how they are going to do that.”
A third story concerned a colorful local character who frequently came
to Fr. Joe asking for money and assistance. When the man died, although he was not a
Catholic, Father Joe went over to the mortuary to conduct a prayer service. When he got
back to the rectory he realized he had left his coat at the funeral home; so he called
there to ask if the coat could be returned. The mortician left the phone for a few moments
to look for the coat and returned to say he could not find it. “Look on the
corpse,” Fr. Joe said. I think he did get the coat back.
Father Cashen’s priesthood was marked by a great compassion for
the poor. During the Depression he was known for helping the poor regardless of religion
or race. He leased some lands on the outskirts of the city and then gave out parcels to
anyone who wanted to grow their own vegetable garden.
He was also involved in ecumenism when it was not as popular as today
and was the Catholic representative on the Roundtable of Christians and Jews, as it was
called here in Duluth.
During World War II he was selected by the Army, along with a prominent
Protestant minister and well-known Jewish rabbi, to tour the Aleutian Islands and speak to
soldiers in order to bolster the morale in those far off places.
In 1940 he was transferred from the Cathedral downtown to the Holy
Rosary Parish in Duluth where a new Cathedral was to be built. His task was to pay off the
debt on the existing school building, which also served as the church, and to begin
gathering money to build the new church. He remained there for twelve years and
accomplished both of those tasks. His last assignment was in Crosby, Minnesota, where he
built a parochial school. He remained there for eighteen years.
His preaching style was simple and from the heart, sprinkled with
humor. He was a noted convert instructor in the days when priests took each convert
individually.
To those of us who were young priests during his active ministry, he
epitomized what a priest should be.
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