By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
My current writing project involves documenting the wonderful friendships that developed between the Utah Trappist monks and their Huntsville neighbors, many of them Latter-Day Saints. The Ogden Valley folks I spoke with loved all the monks except one, who was thought to be quite unpleasant. I had never heard of him and wondered—who was this disliked monk called Brother Pascal?
The negative reports came from some impeccable sources and rather pleasant people. One report involved how a prominent local man, widely known for getting along with pretty much everyone, somehow ended up in an uncomfortable argument with Pascal about religion. The other report was from the wife of a friend of the monks. She adored the other monks, but got this bad “feeling” whenever Pascal was around. I had to get to the bottom of this situation.
My research file about the monastery’s origins does identify a “Bro. Pascal” as one of the first three dozen men sent to Utah from Kentucky—the 1947 pioneer monks of the new Holy Trinity Abbey. Pascal was a lay brother (i.e. a monk who worked in the fields and did not chant in the choir) assigned to do carpentry work at the new monastery. I could not learn much else, either from the file or from searches on Google or newspapers.com.
I did get a lucky break, however, when an interviewee told me he heard that after Pascal left the monastery, the former monk often got into trouble in nearby Ogden in the 1970s while using his given name of “Dominic.” A light went on! From my high school days, I remembered an unusual man with that name who wandered Ogden’s streets.
Eventually, I learned (through more online research) that Dominic left the monastery in the late 1940s or early 1950s, stayed in Huntsville for a time, eventually moved to Ogden, was involved with some local businesses, and did various odd jobs. He had a house wrecking permit, drove a dump truck, sold radiators from his home, owned some decrepit buildings, sold some jewelry, and even operated a club (allegedly featuring some illegal slot machine gambling) in Ogden Canyon.
Unfortunately, Dominic had some legal dealings too. Old newspapers report criminal charges and some convictions involving mailing and distributing pornographic materials, battery, and making indecent overtures to teenage girls. Some of the newspaper articles refer to him as a self-proclaimed “prophet.” That’s the Dominic I remember.
He walked around downtown Ogden, sometimes wearing robes and sandals, with wild unkempt long hair and a beard, and carrying one or two large walking sticks. He quoted Bible passages, announced “prophesies,” and threatened to “smite” people with his staff. He even interrupted church services with fire and brimstone heckling. It was all very Old Testament, except he also liked to write and recite vulgar and explicit poetry, which he shouted at anyone within earshot, especially young women.
I did not really consider back then what I see now—his sad circumstances. One judge exiled him from the courtroom during a trial for constantly interrupting the proceedings. Dominic accused the judge of “high treason” for not letting him present his case “according to the dictates of God.” During the sentencing for one conviction (the jury was out for only a half hour before reaching a guilty verdict), an Ogden judge asked Weber County Mental Health to intervene and help. The judge also told Dominic to stop “getting in people’s hair!”
I assume Dominic struggled with some serious mental health issues and maybe even substance abuse. Some Ancestry.com research shows his boyhood in Pennsylvania was turbulent. His young parents Leonardo and Vincenza, Italian immigrants from Calabria, both died on October 28, 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic. The flu took his older brother Pasquale (age 5) too. Dominic and his four surviving siblings (the oldest was 8 at the time) were orphans.
My guess is that Dominic, and/or those who cared about him, hoped a monastery might help stabilize his life. He was involved with another religious order in Ohio before he went to join the Trappist monastery in Gethsemani, Kentucky, sometime prior to 1947. He took the religious name “Pascal,” likely in honor of his brother and grandfather with the same name.
I asked one of my friends, a retired Utah monk, about Pascal/Dominic. My friend arrived at the monastery a few years after Dominic left, but had heard of him and of his nickname, “Pascal the Rascal.” Apparently, Brother Pascal had a hard time getting along with his fellow monks too and left as a result. My Utah monk friend said, “Not everyone belongs at a monastery,” and noted that much more stringent selection and admission procedures were put in place in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Dominic story reminds me of what my friend Father David Altman—who joined the Utah monastery in the 1960s and eventually served as abbot there—wrote in 2007. He explained that in “a monastery, there is little or no escape. The monk must put forth great effort to make many relationships work and to grow through them.” He also compared monastic life to a marriage, “where the primary focus is on efforts to make relationships work, and this is challenging work.” (See “The Value of Monasticism” )
The Utah Trappist monks saw things—and saw suffering souls like Pascal/Dominic—through clear eyes. They saw him for what he was, warts and all. Yet, they also were incredibly compassionate men, and they prayed for their former brother every day. And I am pretty certain their prayers mentioned something about a Good Shepherd and lost sheep.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah will be published in the Spring of 2021.
