By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
It’s not every day you get to take a summer road trip, even if it is just for a couple of hours, with a Trappist monk. So last week I donned my COVID-19 face mask and jumped at the chance to drive 92-year-old Father Patrick Boyle (now residing in a Salt Lake City assisted living facility) to Huntsville for a socially-distanced picnic at the home of Bill and Alane White near the old Trappist monastery. The drive time flew by, as he told me fascinating tales from his long and interesting life.
I have known Father Patrick since 1972, and over the years I have introduced him to both friends and family, but I never heard some of the stories he shared during our recent road trip together. He recalled how both his parents were born in Ireland, his father Edward in Donegal and his mother Mary Delahunt in Kildare. They came to America as twentysomethings early in the twentieth century, met, and married sometime after World War I in St. Louis, Missouri. Edward worked as a plumber’s assistant and Mary took care of the growing Boyle family.
Their second son—John Patrick Boyle born in 1928—was a diminutive but determined boy. At age 11, he knew two things with great certainty: he loved to play baseball (whenever possible at second base) and one day he would be a Catholic priest. During World War II, he joined St. Louis Preparatory Seminary to start his studies.
In 1949, he drove west with a priest and some fellow seminarians and the group stopped in Utah. They toured Salt Lake City and swam/floated in the Great Salt Lake. And fortuitously, they also drove 50 miles north, to the brand new Trappist monastery in Huntsville. The 21-year-old John Patrick fell in love with the simple Quonset hut buildings of the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity.
He wrote to the founding abbot, Father Maurice Lans, and asked to join the order. He told me it must have been a good letter, because the abbot wrote back with an invitation. In the summer of 1950, John Patrick checked out of the seminary, packed his bags, and bought a train ticket west.
Before he left town, however, the second baseman went to the local ballpark to watch his beloved St. Louis Cardinals play one more time. He saw Stan Musial hit a home run and then caught his train to Utah. John Patrick arrived in Ogden on August 15, 1950. He walked over to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and asked if someone could help him get to Huntsville. A young seminarian named Rudolph Daz—who now has been a priest for 66 years—drove him there. (Today, they reside in the same assisted living center, and during non-pandemic times, say Mass together.)
Since the time of that 1950 trip west, John Patrick Boyle has spent the last 70 years as the monk so many people know as Father Patrick. When I tell people—even total strangers—I am friends with the Utah Trappists, inevitably they ask about Father Patrick. I would guess that thousands of people know him as the kind and peaceful monk they chatted with during a visit to the Abbey gift shop.
They remember his jokes. (“What’s the difference between a monkey and a monk? A monkey has a tail!”) They remember his keen insight about the incarnation. (“When you walked into the room, Christ came through the door!”) And they remember him blessing them, regardless of their religion, before they departed. When Father Patrick was considering moving to Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, a common joke was the Trappists would have to schedule a regular charter bus trip between Utah and Bardstown to accommodate visits by all his fans.
Father Patrick told me, during our recent road trip, that one morning Dorothy Day—the renowned advocate for the poor (and potential Catholic saint)—walked into the Abbey gift shop while he was working there. He thinks she may have had a speaking engagement in Utah and made a side trip to visit the Abbey too. They spoke together for a few moments. He remembers her as kind and humble.
Father Patrick showed Day that her 1952 book The Long Loneliness was for sale on the monastery bookstore shelves, but she was embarrassed and modestly told him they should move it to the back room. Over 60 years later, of course, Pope Francis addressed the United States Congress and said Day “shaped fundamental values which will endure forever in the spirit of the American people.” The Pope explained, “Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints.” (See the very first post for the Boy Monk blog: The Pope’s 2015 Speech to Congress: Essential Aspects of American Catholicism.)
During our 2020 road trip, Father Patrick told me he loved working in the gift shop, but he also loved his many years of mowing the lawn, cleaning the dairy barn, and helping his friend Father Joseph with the dairy calves. He said it all was a blessing and a prayer, reminding me that “you don’t have to be on your knees to pray.” For seven decades he has practiced what he calls “the sacrament of the now moment,” living in millions of different monastic moments, but each one moment at a time. (See Finding the Sacrament of the Now Moment on Abbey Road.)
1950 was quite a year. The New York Yankees, led by stars like Phil Rizzuto, Joe DiMaggio, and Yogi Berra, and managed by the legendary Casey Stengel, won the World Series in four straight games over the Philadelphia Phillies. The St. Louis Cardinals finished fifth in the National League and missed the playoffs, but Stan Musial had a good season, with 28 home runs and a .346 batting average that led the league.
Still, seventy years later, I suspect that the intrepid, resilient, Irish second baseman from St. Louis who was traded to the Huntsville Trappists may have had the best 1950 of all. He hit the home run of a lifetime.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.
To the best of my knowledge, the only time Dorothy Day visited Utah was in January, 1970 for the funeral of her Catholic Worker colleague Ammon Hennacy, She spoke at the Newman Center and visited the monastery on that occasion. Her visit was little noted. Joseph L. Federal, the conservative southerner who was bishop of the Catholic diocese at the time, had told Hennacy explicitly that he did not support the ministry of the Joe Hill House which Hennacy had created downtown at Post Office Place.
That must be when she went to Huntsville. In her column in the Catholic Worker in 1978, she wrote, “Eileen Egan sent out home-made bread and creamed honey from Holy Trinity Abbey, Huntsville, Utah. She had been attending a meeting of co-workers of Mother Teresa of India nearby- and the Abbot of Holy Trinity had remembered my visit there.”