Fr. Byron Looks Back - and Ahead
A priest in North Carolina for 60 years, he's still active in planning for the
church's future
When J. Paul Byron was ordained in 1946, there were 300 Catholic families in the
city of Raleigh. When he retired as pastor of St. Raphael some 50 years later, there
were 3000 families in his parish alone. This year Fr. Byron marks 60 years as a
priest of the Diocese of Raleigh, and he talks about those years with humor and
affection.
Byron was born in Albany, New York. "You might say I was an illegal immigrant,"
he says with a touch of mischief. "In those days the Irish weren't very welcome.
If a shipload of immigrants arrived in New York, and there was any sickness aboard,
it would be turned away. So they'd just sail north and down the St. Lawrence to
Canada, then come down here through the mountains. That's how my grandfather entered
the U.S."
Although he had an uncle who was a priest, Byron says his own vocation was influenced
more by the "marvelous" pastor of the church where he was a boy soprano soloist
with the choir. "He was a man of independence and vision," Byron recalls. "I think
my personal interest in liturgy came from him. On Good Friday, for instance, we'd
have a full orchestra and choir, and he would preach the Stations from a high pulpit
in a dark church with the Station he was preaching lit by a spotlight." When Byron
applied to become a priest in the Albany Diocese, he was turned away as too young,
but his pastor introduced him to Bishop Eugene McGuinness of Raleigh, who needed
priests badly and sent him to the seminary in Syracuse.
Following ordination, Byron came to North Carolina just as new Bishop Vincent S.
Waters was implementing his plan to make North Carolina Catholic. In a first, "Apostolate
Year," a new priest would be assigned to an experienced missionary. Sent to Whiteville
under the tutelage of Fr. Francis Howard, Byron would travel each week, often hitchhiking,
to minister to the handful of Catholics in the surrounding area. "We were also expected
to knock on doors and deliver pamphlets to non-Catholics," he recalls. In his second
year, he worked with another priest from a motorized "chapel trailer," bringing
Mass to the more remote areas of the state. Along with his friend Fr. Charles Mulholland,
he was noted as one of the most energetic young missionaries in the diocese.
Noting Byron's interest in liturgy, Archbishop Paul Hallinan of Atlanta had him
appointed to the board of the National Liturgical Conference in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
"I'm actually responsible for the liturgy of North Carolina," Byron says with a
self-deprecating smile. "When Vatican II finished, I called a conference in Charlotte
for the Metropolitan area, sponsored by Archbishop Hallinan. And I got permission
for us to celebrate the Mass in English, anticipating the general permission which would come soon. So in January, 1966, we celebrated the first English liturgy in
the United States. And it snowed that day."
Bishop Waters was known to be less than enthusiastic about the liturgical changes
wrought by the Council. Byron remembers when the priests of Asheville scheduled
a meeting with Waters, "and some of us young Turks were arguing that we should have
Mass available on Sunday evenings. That came before Saturday evening Mass, you know.
And we were arguing that tourists coming down from Chicago, where they already had
Sunday evening Mass, would expect it. And Waters said, ‘No. Sunday morning is the
law!' And we said, ‘But Bishop, you made the law, you can change it.' And he said,
‘I can't change the law! It's the law!' So we lost on that one. And Bishop Waters
was so angry at us for arguing that halfway into the three-day conference he just
left - packed and went home."
Despite disagreements, Byron remembers Waters as "a missionary, very zealous to
spread Catholicism in North Carolina." When Bishop F. Joseph Gossman arrived in
1974, Byron says the difference was "just that we were free. Bishop Gossman treated
his clergy as cooperators, and we were on our own responsibility."
Asked about the biggest changes he has witnessed in the North Carolina church, Byron
says, "Well, of course there have been many Hispanics coming, but there's also the
impact of the Yankee coming.
One in five people coming from the North is Catholic
- the national average - and that's changed our population completely."
Today, Byron is on a Priests' Council committee examining solutions to the priest
shortage and exploring the use of lay pastoral administrators in the diocese. And
he is still optimistic about the future of the church he has loved and served for
60 years.