Posted on Tuesday, September 19, 2006 - 4:59 pm:

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On the Sanborn map of St. Francis, does anyone know what building was on the SE corner of Campbell and Buchanan? It looks like it says "vend" but I can't make it out clearly.

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Posted on Wednesday, September 20, 2006 - 11:51 pm:

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“By 1933 Detroit was the focal point of 70 per cent of the unemployment that gripped the state. One-third of the wage earners of Michigan had been partly or totally unemployed for four years in succession. When the depression was only two years old, the army of 211,000 dependents on Detroit’s relief rolls was equal in size to the entire population of Grand Rapids.
“An additional 150,000 persons had fled Detroit ...” leading to the infamous Ford Hunger March. *** Although the meat protest started in the small city of Hamtramck, Zuk’s protest gained national attention immediately. Since the movement touched a massive sensitive cord, e.g., the high meat price, the bandwagon began to roll downhill with reverberations felt around the Nation. Out of the blue on July 27, 1935, “Buyers Trampled by Meat Strikers” reported the New York Times, proof of the national impact. Over 500 militant female pickets were led by Mary Zuk of the “Committee for Action Against the High Cost of Living.” Hamtramck Mayor Joseph A. Lewandowski first charged “some Communists appear to be participating,” but he later conceded, “The big majority are good honest citizens with a legitimate complaint against exorbitant meat prices.”
Zuk protested, “Maybe Roosevelt started it by killing the little pigs and the cattle. We don’t know and we don’t care. We aren’t going to pay such high prices for meat and that’s all there is to it.” Hamtramck’s butchers estimated that the strike proved 95 per cent effective resulting in meatless dinners.

“Agriculture Adjustment Administration (AAA) processing taxes on pork were blamed by Detroit packers for Saturday’s turbulent meat strike which Hamtramck butchers said cost them thousands of dollars.” Mrs. Mary Zuk stated that the strike would resume unless prices were reduced 20 per cent. More than 100 housewives in Lincoln Park prepared to protest.
The ultra-liberal Polish Trybuna Robotnicza (The Worker’s Tribune), which followed the custom of the day by featuring an “Extra.” Because the older, extremely conservative Dziennik Polski (The Polish Daily), established in 1904, favored the butchers over the strikers, whom they labeled as Communists, the Tribune referred to their opponents as the Dziennik Niepolski (The Un-Polish or literally not Polish Daily).
The following Trybuna Robotnicza ran an eight column bold banner headline, STRAJK MIESNY W DETROIT 3 SIERPNIA (Meat Strike in Detroit August 3) with a photograph claiming that 1,200 women attended the meat strike meeting on July 26th at Copernicus School in Hamtramck. A similar meeting took placed at the west side Detroit Dom Polski (Polish Home) on Junction the day before and a rally occurred at Perrien Park, located on Chene St., south of Warren at Hancock on August 1st. The paper lauded the picketing of July 27, 1935 by Hamtramck women as the start of the historic first battle for meat price reduction.
Mrs. Mary Zuk announced that the movement was the start of a “general strike against the high cost of living.” Denying that the strike was communistic, she asserted that the charge “is part of a ruse on the part of the butchers and meat packers to frighten timid people and split the ranks.” From: Hamtramck History

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Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 12:02 pm:

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A Priest Conscious of His Charms

Today few Detroiters and not many parishioners of St. Albertus congregation know anything about Rev. Dominic Kolasinski. But in the 1880's and 1890's, aside from Bishops Caspar Borgess and John Foley, no local Catholic priest was more familiar to readers of Detroit newspapers. In The Evening News alone (according to Eduard A. Skendzel's unpublished exhaustive bibliography), Fr. Kolasinski appeared in almost 400 separate notices and articles. Seated in his "splendid turnout" with its "liveried coachman and a pair of creams," he was the cynosure of all eyes as he rode along Detroit streets on business or for recreation.

The flamboyant, contentious and turbulent life of Fr. Kolasinski in Detroit had its beginnings in Austrian-Poland. He was born August 13, 1838 (if not possibly 1836), in the southwestern Galician town of Mielec. The oldest of four sons of an organist, he studied for the priesthood and was ordained August 14 (not July 25), 1864, at the age of twenty-six in Krakow by Bishop Antoni Galecki. Then for eighteen years, he moved from one parochial post to another, until he was assigned in 1875 to Czernichow, a town of about 1,000 inhabitants near Krakow.

At forty-four, when most priests were firmly settled in their pastoral appointments, Fr. Kolasinski left the Diocese of Krakow. He came to Detroit partly at the instance of Joseph Przybylowski, a St. Albertus parishioner, who wrote him about the parish, but chiefly at Bishop Caspar Borgess' prior invitation of August II, 1881, assuring him of a pastoral ministry in the diocese. The bishop acted on the basis of documents submitted both by Fr. Kolasinski and the Krakow chancery, testifying to the good character and conduct of the priest. Upon his arrival March 30, 1882, he was formally adopted into the priestly group of the Detroit Diocese and appointed pastor of St. Albertus Parish in place of the one-armed Rev. John Wollowski.

Fr. Kolasinski was then in the prime of life and gave eye-catching evidence of it. A reporter of The Evening News described him as "the polished gentleman. His full ruddy features are well rounded. His hair of light auburn tinge rises from a forehead in curls. His light gray eyes are quick and active, and his lips seeming ever ready to part in a smile which breaks into dimples on either cheek. Brumel would stop to admire his splendid white teeth. His manner is hardy and
vigorous like his appearance, and his action if full of attitude and gestures which would be applauded in an actor. He dresses with the care and elegance of a man who is conscious of his charms and intends that they should be noted and
admired."

Fr. Kolasinski's pastoral tenure at St. Albertus lasted three years and seven months, from March 30, 1882 to November 28, 1885, when Bishop Borgess
suspended his priestly functions in the diocese. But Fr. Kolasinski refused to vacate the parish rectory, stubbornly remaining in residence, though not engaging in priestly activities, four additional months, till April 5, 1886.

When Fr. Kolasinski became pastor of St .Albertus Church, the congregation numbered 750 families and was growing rapidly. He assisted this growth in part by writing about Detroit's Polish settlement to the Krakow-based monthly Missye Katolickie (Catholic Missions) which published his glowing accounts in 1883 and 1884. These reports brought to St. Albertus Parish the first larger influx of "Galicians" or “Austrian-Poles;" who became his" most dedicated followers and supporters.

But even before their arrival the congregation, which included all the Polish Catholics in Detroit, had developed two geographical centers: one on the city's East Side where the St. Albertus Parish plant was located, and another on the
West Side along Twenty-Third Street north of Michigan Avenue. In November, 1882, Bishop Borgess acceded to the petition of the West-Side Poles for a separate parish, appointing Rev. Paul Gutowski OSF pastor of the new congregation soon to be named St. Casimir's. At the same time, the bishop
informed Fr. Kolasinski that henceforth St. Albertus Parish would be limited to Polish Catholics residing east of Woodward Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare. Whether Fr. Kolasinski played any role in preparing St. Casimir
Congregation for parochial status is not clear and would seem to appear doubtful from the anniversary booklet of the parish. In any case, St. Casimir's
congregation became the first parochial offshoot of St. Albertus.

This initial peaceful geographical division of St. Albertus congregation removed several hundred parishioners, but it did not deter Fr. Kolasinski from embarking on his most notable project -the construction of a new St. Albertus Church. Not only he but also the trustees were convinced that the parish needed a new structure, since the original frame building was unable to accommodate
the steadily growing number of parishioners estimated in February 1883 at 1500 families or 8,000 souls, though the allegation was not supported by proof.

But Fr, Kolasinski apparently intended to do more than erect just another church for St. Albertus Parish. He meant to build the largest Catholic Church in Michigan and, if possible, the finest Polish Church in America. To do this, he
meant to reconstruct the existing parish premises by removing the old buildings, purchasing additional real estate, and also putting up a new school and rectory. This bold project, conceived on a grand scale provoked the first open outbreak
of dissent between the Austrian-Polish Fr. Kolasinski and the Prussian-Polish parishioners who dominated the building committee. On February 6, 1883, or within ten months after Fr. Kolasinski's appointment as pastor, twenty-four of
the thirty committeemen submitted a grievance petition to Bishop Borgess contesting Fr. Kolasinski's plans for the projected edifice-
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While agreeing on the need for a new church, the committee disagreed with Fr. Kolasinski on two key points. The first concerned the location of the church. Fr. Kolasinski wanted to use the premises already owned by the parish on St. Aubin Avenue; the committee argued for a new site eight blocks westward on Antoine Street (subsequently named St. Antoine). The committee claimed that the new location fitted more conveniently into the residential distribution pattern of the parishioners and was preferred by the majority. The second disputed issue concerned the cost of the proposed church. The committee claimed that the pastor's architectural design was exorbitantly expensive, considerably beyond the congregation’s means, all the more so since the project did not have the full support of all members of the congregation.

The signers of this petition, composed largely of established parishioners who had contributed to the development of the congregation included: Leonard Olszewski, Franciszek Kostecki, A. M. Corrus, Franciszek Sikora, Anton Ostrowski, Jozef Tuska, W. Cyganek, Franciszek Lewandowski, Thomas
Zoltowski, August Brzozoski, Jan Gajewski, August Stieber, Anton Wrosch, Jakub Myslowiecki, Ksawery Januszewski, Jozef Brieskel, Anton Fetha, Franz Balicki, Franc. Polakowski, Jan Kunka, Jan Cichowlas, Adam Lange, Joseph Zielke, and Joseph Hildebrandt.

This manifestation of the European patronal right of church donors to have a voice in the property affairs of the congregation (called trusteeism in America and opposed by the bishops during the nineteenth century) did not go unchallenged. Eight days later, Fr. Kolasinski wrote Bishop Borgess a Latin rejoinder to the petition, rejecting its allegations outright as false, and impugning
the right of the signers to call themselves the representatives of the congregation and much less of it’s majority. The bishop upheld Fr. Kolasinski's position in the controversy which simmered till December 1883 when the building plans were finally adopted.

Bishop Borgess, who on January 26, 1883, had given Fr. Kolasinski tentative permission for the building of the church on condition "that you do
not contract any debts," relaxed this restriction the following year. In May 1884, he authorized Fr. Kolasinski to incur a debt of $25,000 to be repaid in two years "for the earlier and immediate completion of St. Albert's new
church."

Before construction of the new edifice began, Fr. Kolasinski (apparently thinking of another site. for the new parish school he had in mind) purchased three lots of land on the northern side of Fremont (Canfield) -across from the corner on which he intended to locate the new church. The transaction was completed August 16, 1883, when Mary E. A. Moran signed the parcel over to
Bishop Borgess.

Though prevented from pursuing the school project further, Fr. Kolasinski succeeded in completing his church-building program. Construction began
shortly after the signing of the contracts on February 14, 1884. The agreement stipulated that the new church would cost $61,000 and be finished by June 1, 1885 -within fifteen months. Twelve parish committeemen, besides Fr. Kolasinski, signed the contract: Laurentz Ignaszak, Martin Grenka, Franz Koss, Anton Treppa, Joseph Przybylowski, John Gruszczynski, Martin Kopydlowski, Frank Brzozowski, John Lichowlas, Adam Lange, Joseph Tuske, and Frank Kurschnia. Among the signers were several individuals who earlier had affixed their signatures to the grievance petition in February, 1883.

The new church was completed on time and dedicated July 4, 1885, in an impressive several-hour ceremony attended by "two-thirds of the Detroit's
22,000 Polanders" and presided over by two bishops -Caspar Borgess of Detroit and Camilus Maes of Covington, Kentucky (former secretary to the
Bishop of Detroit).

Early Saturday morning, before nine o'clock, four parish societies -St. Albert's, St. Joseph's, St. Stanislaus Kostka, and the Children of Mary Goined by a patriotic semi-military organization formed by laymen of St. Albertus Parish in May 1877 under the name of the Kosciuszko Guard) marched to the bishop's residence on Washington Avenue. From there the procession, following a designated itinerary, picked up additional marchers of various Catholic nationalities as it escorted the two bishops to the dedication site on St. Aubin and Fremont (Canfield).

The ceremonial march was an impressive public demonstration of Catholic solidarity. Chief Marshal John Kulwicki led the procession on horseback followed by the Hamtramck Band, eight societies, several thousand marchers and some carriages accompanied by mounted guards of honor. The carriages carried the bishops and officers of the participating societies. Among the organizations were two Bohemian societies -St. George's and St. Vaclav's. Local and out-of-town clergy of various nationalities completed this colorful parade.

The procession reached St. Albertus Church about ten o'clock. Ceremonies began in the old "wooden and barnlike” church which had served the
congregation for thirteen years as a place of worship. In a solemn sad ritual, the building was shorn of its ecclesiastical character and restored to secular use, as some of its founders shed a sorrowful tear over its passing and its former
comforting services to Polish immigrants.

Then the dedicatory ceremonies moved to the new church which towered like a cathedral before the admiring eyes of the Polish Detroiters and their
children. As the bells rang out, the bishops and the clergy walked around the exterior of the edifice, chanting and reciting the ritual prayers by which "St. Albert's Church was dedicated to the service of God forever.”

The Solemn Mass that followed was celebrated inside the church by Bishop Maes, while Bishop Borgess occupied the Episcopal throne in the sanctuary. Bishop Maes was assisted by Vicar-General Peter Henneart as presbyter, Rev.
James Pulcher of Grand Rapids as deacon, and Rev. Frank Kolaczewski of Cleveland as subdeacon. Rev. Nicholas Kolasinski, the pastor's brother, preached in Polish on "the Savior in Zaccheus' house."

The parish choir conducted by Jaroslav de Zielinski, perhaps the foremost organist and choral director in the city if not in Michigan, sang Andre's Mass Opus 43. Maestro Zielinski used outside help of some of Detroit's better singers
in the special renditions: "Miss Forsyth and Miss Cross sang the 'Laudate Dominum' at the offertory, and Miss Cross sang Rossini's '0 Salutaris' in place of the 'Benedictus.' “The ceremonies ended at one o'clock in the afternoon.

Among the clergy taking part in the dedication, besides Fr. Kolasinski and those already mentioned, were the Capuchin Fathers and Jesuits, Rev. M. Matkowski of Grand Rapids, Rev. John Barzynski CR of Chicago, Rev. Paul Gutowski of Detroit, Rev. Bernard Wermers of Detroit, Rev. Cornelius Sullivan,SJ of Detroit, the three Laporte brothers (all priests) from Detroit and Montreal, Rev. A. Swenson (Svensson), Rev. F. Hendrickx of Detroit, Rev. M. Dempsey secretary of Bishop Borgess, four Jesuit scholastics who assisted Fr. Dempsey in his function of master of ceremonies, and other clergy not recorded by the
usually observant and personality-conscious reporters.

The press did greet the newly dedicated Church of St. Albertus as "marking the beginning of a new era among the exiled sons of catholic [sic] Poland" a statement almost prophetic in its import and the events which soon were to rend apart rather than knit more closely together Detroit's Polish community. For the moment, however, the awesome spectacle of the new edifice elicited a somewhat purplish prose of astonishment that so grand a structure could have come from the "denizens" of "The Polack Quarter" or from "Polackville" with its "Polack Church."

2. PASTOR OF THE FINEST POLISH CHURCH IN AMERICA

Called "the largest church in Michigan" and "the finest Polish Church in America," the new brick St. Albertus Church was described erroneously as
"early English Gothic in style." It was Gothic, indeed, but rather in the German-Polish style reminiscent of centuried churches with which the "Prussian Poles" were familiar in Poznan, Bydgoszcz, Kwidzyn, Torun, Grudziadz, and
elsewhere; it also awakened memories of similar Gothic brick churches in Tarnow and in some respects particularly Krakow's famous Panna Maria (St. Mary's Church) among “Austrian-Poles" like Fr. Kolasinski and his Galician countrymen. The church architect was Herbert Engelbert, while the builders were the Spitzley Brothers and Patrick Dee.

The new St. Albertus Church rose 200 feet from the ground to the top of the cross on the spire. Its floor stretched 208 feet in length and seventy-five feet in width. The ceiling hovered forty feet above the floor, while the transept
climbed to 107 feet. The church had a seating capacity of 2,500, steam heat, and incandescent electric lights "for the first time in a Detroit church." The main altar, rising fifty feet, contained five statues, each six feet high except the central one that of the church's patron, St. Albertus, which was eight feet tall. Four
splendid bells installed in 1884 for $ 2000 tolled the griefs and pealed the joys of the people.

The Evening News could not restrain its amazement in the presence of this Polish achievement costing over $80,000 and (according to one journalistic
estimate) representing "100,000 days of labor on the part of the individual members of the congregation." Where in November 1883, the same paper had featured a human-interest article on "The Polack Quarter," describing "how its
denizens exist and how they multiply" and commenting on "their liberality in maintaining religious institutions," now is spoke less superciliously and condescendingly of "The New St. Albert's": "The magnitude of the task which
the Polish Catholics have accomplished in the erection of the new church becomes evident when the comparative poverty of the members of the
congregation is considered. The members are, for the most part, of the poorer class, with low wages and large families."

Among the contributors to the erection and equipment of the new St. Albertus Church was Bishop Borgess, who donated two stained-glass windows located in the stairwell leading from the vestibule to the choirloft. The other panels were donated by parochial societies and wealthier members of the congregation in memory of their families or in fond recollection of their former
parish churches and Marian shrines in partitioned Poland.

The red brick Gothic church stands to this day as Fr. Kolasinski's chief positive contribution to St. Albertus Parish. But there were other things he did during his forty-three months as pastor which also deserve notice and testify to his growing influence and leadership not only in the Polish community in Michigan but also in the diocese and in Detroit's burgeoning cultural life. In December, 1882, acting as the official representative of Bishop Borgess, Fr. Kolasinski blessed the new church of St. Mary in Parisville. Wednesday, September 12, 1883, Fr. Kolasinski with a committee of nine other representatives led the Polish Community of Detroit in the 250 anniversary
observance of the Battle of Vienna in which the forces of Poland under King John Sobieski played a decisive role in turning back the Moslem Ottoman threat to central Europe.

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Posted on Thursday, September 21, 2006 - 12:18 pm:

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The Detroit News for several days in advance wrote up the coming event as "the first celebration of the kind that has ever been held in Detroit by the Poles. The parade promises to be the largest and most interesting in a historical sense, ever seen in Detroit, in which a single race has participated." The parade included three bands, parochial and secular organizations, carriages, floats, horsemen and several thousand marchers from various sections of the city. Fr.
Kolasinski celebrated the crowning religious service, a Solemn High Mass, assisted by Fathers Paul Gutowski and Joseph Sieffert, with other priests also in attendance. Most of the estimated 15,000 participants took part in the religious
worship by standing or kneeling outside the old frame church in which the Eucharist was celebrated.

Still another aspect of Fr. Kolasinski's outgoing personality and his continuing effort to raise the cultural prestige of the Polish group (as well as his own perhaps) consisted of the ties he established with the Jesuit Detroit College
(the forerunner of the University of Detroit). In June 1885, Fr. Kolasinski donated to the college a medal which was presented during the commencement
exercises to Charles L. Palms for excellence in elocution. Apparently Fr. Kolasinski intended this to be an annual award, but his subsequent difficulties at St. Albertus Parish nullified the plan. It may also have been his way of
encouraging boys from St. Albertus Grade School to pursue higher studies and to attend the Jesuit College, which in the 1880's began enrolling boys of Polish ancestry in its student body.

Within the parish itself, Fr. Kolasinski founded two additional organizations: St. Wojciech Society and St. Joseph Society. The first was started
in 1882, while the second was launched three years later. In addition, he obtained special approval from Bishop Borgess for the Rosary Guild in 1882. To what extent Fr. Kolasinski fostered the growth of lay organizations not directly associated with St. Albertus Parish it is not possible to say with any degree of assurance. But it would appear that he did not oppose the formation of local chapters of the Polish National Alliance founded in August 1880 to organize all Poles in the United States without any regard for their political or religious persuasions or lack of them. In effect, the founders of the Alliance (both lay and
clerical) revived Rev. Theodore Gieryk's proposal of 1875 (rejected at the Union's Milwaukee convention) and turned it into a viable organization that in time outnumbered the Polish Roman Catholic Union both in membership and in
assets.

The first chapter of the Polish National Alliance was formed in Detroit October 13, 1885, shortly before the termination of Fr. Kolasinski's pastorate by the bishop. The group was the twenty-eighth chapter organized since the birth of the Alliance, and it called itself "Sons of Poland." The founders were parishioners of St. Albertus Congregation: F. Melin, S. Jozefiak, P. Leszczynski, and J. Dembinski. The "Sons of Poland" were the first of over twenty Alliance
chapters founded in the next two decades in Detroit, which became an Alliance stronghold but never achieved the status of the organization's headquarters. The "Sons of Poland" held their meetings in a building located at the corner of
Hastings and Willis Avenues.

Two sources (mistakenly it seems) mention an earlier Alliance Chapter Number 155 as having been established in Detroit October 9, 1883, under the
name Tow. Dramatyczne Hr. Fredry (The Count Fredro Dramatic Society). The date would also place it within the pastorate of Fr. Kolasinski, while the names of A. Konus, J. Deja, M. Nowicki, A. Brzozowski, J. Piotrowski and L. Olszewski
among the fifteen specified founders indicate a marked St. Albertus influence (if not origin) in the formation of this unit. The doubt which attaches to the founding year of this chapter (1883) derives from the chapter's number (155).
As new chapters of the Alliance were organized, each was given its sequential number and subsequently listed in a chronological order in the first history of the Alliance. The Fredro Dramatic Society is listed in the numeral group that came into existence in 1890.

The sacramental record of Fr. Kolasinski's pastorate presents some impressive statistics. His incomplete annual reports would indicate about 900
baptisms, over 200 marriages, and nearly 1,000 funerals. Another source, not yet fully identified but seemingly drawing upon the parochial registers would credit his administration with over 2,000 baptisms and more than 450 marriages from 1882 through 1885. The highest yearly total of baptisms was 662 (for 1885), while the largest number of marriages -123- was solemnized in 1882. In April
of that same year Bishop Borgess confirmed 328 individuals (of whom 231 were adults) -the largest confirmation sum for any parish in the diocese during that year.

The number of families reported in the parish did not rise significantly till 1885 when it exceeded 1000; before then, the highest total was 850 in 1883. School enrollment kept rising steadily though not spectacularly from 474 in 1882 to 570 in 1884 and an estimated 600 the next year. The number of teaching sisters increased from five to eight. At least four young ladies of the parish entered the Felician Sisterhood.

Fr. Kolasinski's annual parish revenues from pew rent and collections, in spite of his ambitious building program, were modest. They reflected no unusual increases, running between $4,758.28 in 1882 to $6,040.86 in 1884; no figures are available for 1885. Fr. Kolasinski paid off all parish debts by 1884, but in 1885 he left the parish with an indebtedness of $67,000 (the highest in its history to that time), resulting from his failure to stay within the $25,000 debt
limit laid down by Bishop Borgess for the construction of the new church.

Whether it was this parochial unsolvency (which seemed astronomical to the economy minded trustees and certain members of the parish) or whether it was Fr. Kolasinski's personal peccability (which appeared morally monstrous to certain parishioners, the Sisters, and some priests) that set off a smoldering fuse of resentment against him toward the end of 1885, it is difficult to say even at this late date. Perhaps both factors exerted an influence on the eruption.
Contemporaries found it difficult, if not impossible, to appraise Fr. Kolasinski with sobriety of judgment, leaving his future biographers a historical pottage of allegations, facts, and conflicting estimates.

The first evidences of restiveness with Fr. Kolasinski in St. Albertus Parish appeared before the church-building grievance petition filed against him with Bishop Borgess in February 1883. About mid-1882 rumors started circulating in
the parish about the pastor's alleged carnal adventurism. The matter came to the attention of Bishop Borgess who, at first inclined to dismiss the hearsay charges as vindictive slander, decided, after consultation with priests whose judgment he valued, upon a thorough investigation into Fr. Kolasinski's Galician background
as well as his Detroit activities. After a two-year accumulation of records, statements, and affidavits, the bishop found himself with a file of data that presented an unflattering moral profile of Fr. Kolasinski -a record of moral
turpitude which began in Galicia and continued in Detroit.

At the same time, complaints against Fr. Kolasinski's management of parochial affairs grew in volume and variety. Excessive fees for funerals and marriages (thirty to one hundred dollars), exorbitant demands for tithes (one day's income out of every thirty working days), careless supervision and control of collections resulting in petty thievery, irregular and slipshod-bookkeeping, highhanded procedures in dealing with parishioners as well as arbitrary decisions about the management of church income and the maintenance of parish premises, particularly his involvement of the congregation in a $60,000 instead of a $25,000 debt and his determination to entangle the parish in still greater debt by contemplating the construction of a new brick school and parsonage - these were some of the grievances voiced against Fr. Kolasinski's pastoral management by parishioners who insisted that their views be heard and heeded in parochial decision-making.

3. KOLASINSKI THECRISIS-MAKER

These complaints laid the groundwork for the Kolasinski Crisis which precipitated the saddest time of trouble in the hundred-year history of St.
Albertus Parish. After simmering for several months, the accumulation of grievances reached the boiling point in November 1885, when Bishop Borgess asked Fr. Kolasinski to submit the parish’s financial books to examination and
audit by the chancery .Upon Fr. Kolasinski's three-fold refusal to comply with the request, the bishop suspended his pastoral and priestly functions Saturday November 28, 1885, and requested his departure from the diocese. Two days
later, Rev. Joseph Dabrowski was appointed temporary pastor of the parish.

Fr. Kolasinski's suspension, followed by Fr. Dabrowski's appointment to the pastoral post of St. Albertus Church, precipitated the initial, and perhaps the most explosive, of the four phases that comprise the Kolasinski Crisis. This
disaster, continued to seethe with unpredictable, irregular, occasionally volcanic eruptions for over eight years before it simmered down during its last four years. Fr. Kolasinski's sacerdotal independentism (which some preferred to call
disobedience), lay trustee claims to decision-making in matter of parochial
property and personnel, Polish partitional and regional differences and enmities encouraged by the Prussian, Austrian and Russian governments, the example of contemporary or recent ecclesiastical and sacerdotal troubles in other Catholic parishes of the diocese, and the sensationalistic yellow journalism of Detroit's
newspapers -all combined to produce the most serious Polish disorders in the history of Detroit, replete with church disturbances and cathedral sit-ins, riots and street fights, an accidental homicide and injury , arrests of men and women, payment of fines and imprisonment, destruction of convent property, private
and public personal vituperation, calling in of city police and state militia, civil court cases for eviction and slander, the closing of the St. Albertus Church and School, the formation of bitter parochial factions of Kolasinskiites and
Dabrowskiites, the imposition of episcopal censures of interdict and excommunication upon the violators of church and convent premises and
priestly persons, the forcible retention of church and rectory premises from duly appointed pastors, and finally the construction of two successive Polish Churches independent of the jurisdiction of the bishop.

In its closing years, however, the Kolasinski Crisis did conclude with a happy ending. Fr. Kolasinski took the initiative in making his peace with the new bishop of the diocese, John S. Foley, publicly admitted the error of his ways, and returned with his congregation to the jurisdiction of Bishop of the Detroit Diocese.

The Kolasinski Crisis followed a pattern of four phases before its final reconciliatory resolution. Each aspect affected St. Albertus Parish to a different degree, and will be discussed in connection with the pastoral administration of
the priest (or priests) most affected by it. Here, at least the major outlines of the crisis might be sketched for future orientation and as a supplemental rounding out of Fr. Kolasinski's profile at this canonically terminal point of his pastorate at St. Albertus Parish.

The first, explosive, stage of the Kolasinski Crisis lasted from November 28, 1885, when Fr. Kolasinski was suspended and dismissed from the pastorate, until April 5, 1886, when he finally left the diocese in obedience to a civil court
decision ordering him to vacate the rectory. The second, absentee but also violent, phase extended from April 6, 1886, to December 7, 1888, when Fr .
Kolasinski pastored a rural Polish parish in the Dakota Territory (present North Dakota) while some of his militant supporters in Detroit sought to hold or regain St. Albertus Parish for him. The third, disjunctive (or as some prefer to designate
it, schismatic) period stretched from December 8, 1888, to February 17, 1894, when Fr. Kolasinski returned to Detroit without the bishop's authorization and, on his own authority, erected two successive Polish churches not subject to local episcopal control and formed one of the largest Polish congregations in Detroit if
not in Michigan. The last, reconciliatory, aspect covered the period from February 18, 1894, when Fr. Kolasinski recanted his misconduct and returned with his congregation to the jurisdiction of the Detroit Bishop, and remained in union with the Roman Catholic Church in the Diocese of Detroit till his death April, 1898. Probably no pastor of St. Albertus Parish has tantalized friend and foe, in life and death, as much as Rev. Dominic Kolasinski has done. Few, if any, persons were able to speak of him with calmness and moderation of judgment. The events of his spectacular career, the authenticity of the statements attributed to him by the English-language press (to whose representatives, at least in the first phase of the crisis, he always spoke through interpreters, as his
knowledge of modern languages then was limited to Polish and German) and, most of all, the inner motive that spurred him on to deeds of daring and
dissention -all these remain, as they have been for decades, matters for controversy.

Fr. Kolasinski seems to have used two faces (or at least left such an impression) in his dealings with people: one to attract and charm his friends and followers, another to repel and affront enemies and opponents. To some sincere,
knowledgeable and saintly priests and nuns Fr. Kolasinski was an unconscionable priestly knave, using his holy vocation for his own appetites and aggrandizement. They, as well as some lay Catholics, regarded him as an impure and sacrilegious man, a contumacious priest, a public heretic and schismatic, a" thief and a liar -
in short, an ecclesiastical villain who flagrantly disregarded the laws of the church and incited others to do the same.

To his many devoted and loyal followers, most of them recent immigrants from partitioned Poland (and Austrian Galicia in particular), Fr. Kolasinski was a shining sacerdotal knight, a lover of Polish religious tradition and political
freedom, a man of vision with plans to make the Poles of America a meaningful segment of the city's and the country's population, a beaming and prestigious friend of helpless and exploited Polish immigrants in whom he awakened a sense
of personal dignity and worth and whom he encouraged to fight for their rights rather than to plead for servile favors. They believed unquestioningly his every denial of the charges raised against him and concluded, either on the basis of his explanations or perhaps at his own suggestion, that he was the unhappy victim
of German episcopal despotism, especially when he claimed to have been condemned without due process. He was called December 17, 1885, for a
preliminary examination, at which he declared himself not guilty. Two days later, he refused to submit a written request for an investigation of the charges against him, unless he were first reinstated for three months. In the light of the
serious nature of the complaints, the bishop found the condition unacceptable. As a matter of fact, Fr. Kolasinski's presentation of his due process complaint both to the press and to the congregation was less than candid or comprehensive.

In closing, however, this much may be said about Fr. Kolasinski without favor or rancor, and without renewing the fray over his character. He split the congregation in two, creating a bitter factionalism that lasted for decades, even
among friends and relatives, slowing the course of Polish progress in Detroit. He also left his name in American Catholic history as an early forerunner of Polish American trusteeism and religious independentism that in time resulted in the rise of the Polish National Catholic Church in the United States. Yet in Detroit itself, strangely enough, he did not contribute to the rise of a permanently schismatic church nor even to any movement of disenchanted Polish Catholics to join an existing American or form a new Polish Protestant congregation of their own, in spite of some Protestant proselytizing among the Poles during the first phase of the Kolasinski Crisis.

But perhaps the most significant thing to be said about Fr. Kolasinski, and the one action of his life for which he would choose to be most remembered, is this: he made his peace with the bishop at an age when he was still able to devote several years of priestly service to the church of his fathers before him died. May his soul rest in peace - the peace he denied himself (or failed to find) during his adventuresome priesthood."

Credits for the photo and description above: "St. Albertus 1872 - 1973 Centennial: Detroit's Oldest Polish Parish" History by Rev. Joseph Swastek and Polish Heritage by Rev. John Szopinski, S.J.

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