An Informal, Anecdotal History of Saint Francis' Parish
as Told by Past and Present Members
As told by Jean Marie Preston
My earliest recollection of Fr. Homer Rogers is that of a young priest (1943) giving instruction in my home to a young couple and me. This was a great kindness, as I was not long out of the hospital and alone with a three-month-old baby. For one who had been instructed in the Christian Faith only in Methodist Sunday Schools, this was a stunning revelation. His course in Christian Apologetics - the essentials of Christian Doctrine - this teaching by a brilliant young man who knew the Glory of the Faith (the good old knock-down Glory) - this was God's great gift to large numbers of us as the years went by.
Fr. Rogers continued to give home instruction for many years. Also, he was to be found throughout any day teaching (informally) in the Parish House, where students and parishioners benefited from his powerful ability to relate to all things. This ability to "see relationships" was extraordinary. In these days, he was also busy introducing us to the great Christian writers of our time: C.S. Lewis, Dorothy Sayers, Jacque Maritain, etc.. We began to read the writings of St. Theresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and many other works of the saints. -- Jean Marie Preston
As told by Mary Tuck
Years ago, in Denton, when Padre was starting out (so the story goes), the instructions were given individually. When someone came to him with questions, he'd sit them down and tell them all he knew. Over the years, this was seen to be an inefficient system and he began having classes composed of a number of people with questions. Then someone got the idea to tape the lectures. The tapes were transcribed, edited, and published, making them available to a much wider group of people.
Structured by classical systematic theology, these classes taught "that which has always and everywhere been taught," but with a distinctive Texas flavor.
The apologetics used were the Biblical model of the illustration of great principles with narrative. And who can forget those stories? -- The McGilacuty family, Aachan, Padre's grandmother, and countless examples taken from a deep love of the natural world, especially pigeons, trees, and dogs.
One important characteristic of these instructions is that they are personal. Padre never overshelmed us with his knowledge. And he speaks directly to us, not concealing the fact that he is a sinner, too. He made us want to go to Mass, to make our confession, to say our prayers, to forgive our enemies, to practice self-denial, and to be joyful in the worship and service of God. It's remarkable that a book of instructions could call us so insistently to a life of sanctity. -- Mary Tuck
As told by John Heidt, priest
Like other Episcopalian seminaries at the time, Nashotah House, in the fifties, was one of those hybrid institutions which attempted to combine a respectable Christianity with the academic trappings of a small, Ivy League college but, in this case, overlaid with a veneer of Anglo-Catholic piety. Having grown up in a very respectable Episcopal Church of moderate Anglo-Catholic leanings, and having just graduated from an Ivy League university, I thought that I knew what to expect when I entered Nashotah House. What I did not expect was to trudge through the woods with fellow students night after night to drop in, unannounced, at the home of the Professor of Pastoral Theology. Yet, such unannounced visits had already been going on for a year, and were to continue for two more years after I arrived.
Nashotah House hired Fr. Rogers, or Padre, as everyone called him, as Professor of Pastoral Theology; but what they got instead was not so much a professor as a living pastoral theologian or, if you prefer, a theological pastor. We had all gone to Nashotah to learn how to be priests and here was a man who only was a teacher because he was a priest, rather than a teacher who happened to be a priest. We spent night after night in his house, sitting around the dining room table drinking cups of coffee and talking casually about God and all sorts of other exciting things; because in him we pierced through the expectations of secular custom and the dry-as-dust patina of an old-fashioned ecclesiastical culture to discover what it meant simply to be a priest. And we learned about priesthood not just in him, but in his home. In Dottie, we caught a glimpse of what it meant to be a priest's wife, and kneeling with the whole family for night prayers, something of what it meant to be the children of a priest.
What we learned in classrooms during the day and read from text books back in our rooms suddenly became vitally important, and often earth-shattering, when transmuted into theological gold through Padre's mind. We discovered that we had to know about the Trinity and the lives of the saints and great literature and, perhaps, even something about raising pigeons in order to care for souls and administer a parish. In him, the high churchmanship we had brought with us to seminary was transformed into the richness of two thousand years of catholic culture; and in that process, we discovered that there was indeed a "romance of orthodoxy"; and that true pastoral care springs from faithfulness to the whole Christian tradition, manifested in a life of personal sacrifice where everything is willingly abandoned for the sake of the Gospel and, if necessary, for the spiritual nurture of just one abandoned soul.
Fr. Rogers was not everyone's cup of tea. His manner of life offended the sensibilities of some and his criticisms of contemporary society sounded alarmingly un-American in the America of the fifties. After three years, he was forced to resign by a Dean who could no longer tolerate a lifestyle that flew in the face of professorial respectability and which ignored the formalities of an academic institution. But in those three years, he gave many of us a pastoral vision which, to this day, remains both our standard of priesthood and a gentle judgement upon our own ministry. As one student who never appreciated him at the time admitted to me a year after he had graduated, "Padre's lecture notes will be the only ones worth re-reading once you've been ordained." -- John Heidt+
Padre's Instruction at St. Barnabas as Told by Joe Mitchell
My recollection of Padre's instruction classes to the Canterbury Club at North Texas was that they took place on Sunday evening. The evening started around 6:00 or 6:30 with a simple meal, since dormitory rooms were closed on Sunday evening. After the meal, there was discussion and usually Padre ended up talking either about topics brought up in the discussion or about some subject of his choosing. The session ended no later than about 9:30, since the last bus to the NT campus ran at 10:00. The girls' dormitories were locked at 10:00 or 10:30, so (because of that and the transportation) most girls had to leave. Some of the topics that Padre spoke on were those of his regular Instruction Class. I was there in the time period of September, 1949 to January, 1953. -- Joe Mitchell
Padre's Instruction Classes as Told by Ray Pearce, Sr.
I first attended an Instruction Class in 1948 at St. Barnabas, in Denton. The classes were held on Tuesday evenings at 8:00 in the sitting area in the Parish Hall. I got there because I managed to acquire two Episcopal roommates and one of them, John Wilson, kept bugging me to go hear Fr. Rogers, who already had quite a reputation as a teacher. I told John repeatedly that I was definitely and forever through with Christianity, but he kept on. Finally, I said, "John, if I will go hear him one time, will you shut up?" He said that he would, and so I went.
One time was all that it took. The class lasted from 8:00 to 10:00 and I stayed until nearly 2:00 AM asking questions and arguing. Most of the class stayed to the end. I remember him saying that first night, " You know, I like you. You can see that a thing either is or it isn't."
Later, I realized that while I probably slept late and cut classes the next day, he got up at 5:30 or so to say Mass.
The regular class was rather small that year, six or eight, but was supplemented from time to time by John Wilson or my other roommate, Art Names, or others who dropped in for part or all of one class. All, or almost all, of the attendees were students at either North Texas or TWU.
The class lasted for nine months and was in substance the same class that was taught later at St. Francis. I attended four other times, once with my wife and once with each of my children, Ray, John, and Cecilia, all at St. Francis.
At Denton, Padre got us involved early, even though some of us were not confirmed. Among other things, we as students would go on Sunday evenings to the missions that he was in charge of (Decatur and Bowie, I believe) and read Evening Prayer for the congregations there.
He was first, last, and always a teacher. Aside from religion and the associated history and philosophy, he taught me the rudiments of chess, how to fence, and a host of songs and poems. I remember we were playing tennis one day and after a particular point neither of us could remember the score. He said, "We're sacramentalists. We can remember better if we say it out loud."
One of his teaching venues was his dining-room table. He was very generous about inviting people to eat with them, which must have been very hard on Dottie because she never knew how many to cook for.
He thought that everyone should have at least one animal to look after and followed his own advice by raising both dogs and pigeons. That made for another in the multiplicitous things that he was ready to converse about. -- Ray Pearce