Denis T. O'Connor

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Denis T. O'Connor CSB , also Dennis T. O'Connor (born March 28, 1841 in Pickering , Upper Canada , † June 30, 1911 in Toronto ) was a Canadian Roman Catholic clergyman, educator and archbishop of Toronto .

Life

Origin and early years

He was the eldest of the three children of Denis O'Connor, a farmer, and his wife, Mary O'Leary. In September 1852 he was enrolled at St Michael's College , Toronto, he was a member of the founding class of this educational institution. In June 1859, after completing his schooling, he joined the Congregation of St. Basil and took his first vows a year later . He then traveled to France to study theology at the Basilian universities in Feyzin and Annonay . A tuberculosis infection forced him to return in 1863 to Toronto, where he will be on December 8 of that year, St Mary's Church , the ordination received. For the next five years he was largely unable to work due to his illness.

Act as an educator

When O'Connor returned to St Michael's College in 1869 , he was immediately appointed administrator of the seminary because Superior Charles Vincent was absent for an extended period. This is how Jean-Mathieu Soulerin , the superior general of the Basilians, noticed O'Connor. His superior general commissioned him to assist Charles Vincent in negotiations between the Basilians and Bishop John Walsh of Sandwich in order to transfer the Assumption College in Sandwich (now Windsor ) to the congregation . O'Connor was the Basilian negotiator. He managed to bring together the positions of Bishop Walsh and Superior General Soulerin, and the treaty signed on September 27, 1869 gave the Basilians control of the college, its parish, and 80  acres (32  hectares ) of land for 499 years . O'Connor was given the leadership of the college and parish, which he took on July 20, 1870. A breathtaking challenge awaited him there: the college building was falling into disrepair, only a few students had enrolled for the next academic year, there was virtually no teaching staff and the budget was just 300  Canadian dollars .

So O'Connor took over the duties of the superior, the treasurer and the professor of philosophy at the same time, in addition he devoted himself personally to the bookkeeping and the correspondence. During his 20 years of leadership - the longest tenure in the college's history - he tripled the number of students, expanded the curriculum and had two new wings erected. He was also responsible for the pastoral care of the parishes of St John the Baptist in Amherstburg and St Anne’s in Detroit by Basilian priests. When the papal delegate George Conroy attended college in June 1877 , O'Connor's accomplishments were evident. In 1888 Pope Leo XIII awarded him the theological doctorate. When he became Bishop of London, Ontario two years later, O'Connor left behind a well-ordered and highly respected college in the Province of Ontario .

Church career

On July 18, 1890, Denis T. O'Connor was elected Bishop of London, Ontario . He was ordained episcopal on October 19 of the same year by the Archbishop of Toronto, John Walsh; Co- consecrators were John Samuel Foley , Bishop of Detroit , and Thomas Joseph Dowling , Bishop of Hamilton .

On January 7, 1899, the Archdiocese of Toronto was transferred to him. Here Catholic society was in a state of great change. Catholics no longer belonged mainly to the class of unqualified and poorly paid workers, but were more and more business people, employees and members of the liberal professions; so they now lived in all parts of the city and in the suburbs. As a result of these social changes, they now increasingly married non-Catholics, sometimes with a dispensation from the Church, but much more often without one. In 1897, the proportion of such "mixed marriages" in Catholic church marriages was around 20%, but more than twice as many marriages of mixed confessional couples were concluded outside the Roman Catholic Church. Archbishop O'Connor now turned his attention to this and determined that all dispensation requests must be addressed to him personally in writing. In this way he succeeded in reducing the proportion of mixed denominational marriages with dispensation in the Archdiocese of Toronto to 6% by 1901 and to less than 3% by 1907. But resistance also arose against this. State statistics show that as a result, Catholics were more likely to leave the Roman Catholic Church to marry non-Catholics. In York County, for example, for every eight couples who sought and received dispensation, 90 couples married in Protestant churches. Catholics from the leading families of Toronto, however, asked the Apostolic Delegate and further in Rome for dispensation; and parish priests who thought it better to marry people into the Roman Catholic Church than to lose the Catholic spouse and future children to Protestantism often supported such requests.

Another source of conflict arose in the area of ​​church music. Archbishop O'Connor was one of the few North American bishops who kept Pius X. Motu proprio Tra le sollecitudini literally. On this basis, he banned mixed choirs, ordered women to leave the church choirs and banned compositions by “secular” composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Joseph Haydn . Further disagreements with the clergy arose when O'Connor introduced exams for all priests who had been ordained less than four years ago.

All this led to more and more complaints from the laity , but also from the priesthood, so that he was finally induced to resign, which was confirmed by Rome on May 4th, 1908. On the same day, Denis T. O'Connor was appointed titular archbishop of Laodicea in Syria .

Last years and death

After his resignation, Denis T. O'Connor retired to the Barnabite Novice House in Toronto. For a short time he stepped into the light of the ecclesiastical public again when his successor Fergus Patrick McEvay died on May 10, 1911 and Archbishop O'Connor once again donated the sacrament of Confirmation to Toronto's school children .

He died a few weeks later of chronic kidney disease and the consequences of diabetes .

literature

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predecessor Office successor
John Walsh Archbishop of Toronto
1899–1908 		Fergus Patrick McEvay
John Walsh Bishop of London in Ontario
1890–1899 		Fergus Patrick McEvay
personal data
SURNAME O'Connor, Denis T.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES O'Connor, Dennis T.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian Roman Catholic clergyman and Archbishop of Toronto
DATE OF BIRTH March 28, 1841
PLACE OF BIRTH Pickering , Upper Canada
DATE OF DEATH June 30, 1911
Place of death Toronto