Rocky Ground

Wimmer Wednesday. Boniface Wimmer did not find the grounds of Hart’s Sleeping Place, near Carrolltown, suitable for farming. Oswald Moosmüller writes:

“Father Boniface, whose cradle had stood in the so called “Dark Soil” region, the most fertile wheat country in Bavaria, contemplated the harsh, rocky, and mountainous countryside around Carrolltown with a heavy heart. This was not how he had imagined America when Father Lemke had described his new homeland, his creation, and his parish to him in Munich a year before with persuasive words, and described the success of his activities of many years in detail. Father Boniface now found himself in Carrolltown and looked for the “town,” or at least the “village” of which Father Lemke had presented himself in Munich as being the founder. That half a dozen wooden huts earned the title of “town” so easily for themselves in America, was something he was not familiar with. He came to believe in general that, in this country, considerable misuse was being made with the concepts behind words such as “church,” “house,” and “town.” Perhaps, of course, the people, like surveyors or architects, were able to imagine grand plans from a few lines, or that, like philosophers, they postulated the existence of hidden powers and possible capabilities in potentia.”

—From Boniface Wimmer, Abbot of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania, translated by Dr. Maria Von Mickwitz and Father Warren Murrman, O.S.B., editor.