This past summer yours truly along with a dear friend made a pilgrimage to the tomb of this legend, located on this grassy hill overlooking a lovely lake known as Silver Lake.
Meet Monsignor Rudolph G. Bandas (1896 - 1969). Monsignor is buried where he was born, in the little town of Silver Lake in the northern state of Minnesota. This land is gorgeous cropland where the immigrants from Bohemia and Western Moravia settled. And the German farmers. This was his land and he loved it, in the shadow on the German Benedictines of the nearby Abbey of Saint John.
Monsignor grew up and went on to study the sacred science in America, Rome and Louvain. He went on to be a star theologian. He authored books which are many and varied (his works on Catholic education are the best written in any language) and his books were translated into many languages (once at a Rome book stall I found one of his old books with his business card still in it).
Monsignor Bandas was one of the good guys at Vatican Council II. For this he was ridiculed during and after the Council. He was made to look like a fool. He died of a sad heart in 1969. The liberal media, at that time headed by the National Catholic Reporter, in a fit of modernism, tore him to bits (and they still owe him a posthumous editorial apology).
He was a prophet. A great man. A holy man. A saint.
That we might canonize such men as this: he was a former seminary rector, curate, pastor, univeristy, college and seminary professor, spiritual director, author, consultor of the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries and Universities, member of the Pontifical Roman Academy and conciliar peritus at the twenty-first General Council.
Where can I find out more about Msgr. Bandas?
ReplyDeleteThere is a bio on him in the little blue book on the history of St. Agnes parish in St. Paul, Minn. It is just a small chapter on his life. The book can be purchased in the church basement after the 10 am Sunday High Mass.
ReplyDelete