St. Alphonsus priest, Civil War chaplain left journal

   
    James B. Sheeran, an Irish immigrant, was a teacher at a Redemptorist school in Michigan in 1849 when his wife died, making him a single father to two young children.
    In those days, there weren’t many options for a single dad other than remarriage or placing his children in an orphanage to be reared. Deciding to leave his children behind, Sheeran said, “was like tearing the heart from my bosom.”
    But what happened next was an even bigger surprise.
     At the urging of Redemptorist Father Giles Smulders, whom he had heard preach, Sheeran, then in his mid-30s, entered into formation to become a Redemptorist priest. (His daughter became a nun but died at an early age.)
Paint was barely dry
    Sheeran eventually was ordained for the Redemptorists in 1858 and was assigned in 1859 to St. Alphonsus Church in New Orleans, still close enough to the 1857 opening of the awe-inspiring Irish Channel church that “it would have been brand, spanking new, and he could have smelled the paint still drying,” Redemptorist archivist Dr. Patrick Hayes told a recent gathering of the Friends of St. Alphonsus ROOTS program.
    What makes Father Sheeran a figure of extreme historical importance for the Catholic Church in the south, Hayes said, was his four years of perilous and debilitating service as a chaplain in the Confederate army.
    Hayes, who oversees the Redemptorists’ archives in Brooklyn, N.Y., said Father Sheeran left behind a two-volume, leather-bound, 1,600-page diary of his Civil War service. Only one other Civil War journal written by a Catholic chaplain for the Confederacy exists – by Jesuit Father Louis-Hippolyte Gache of Mobile.
    The opening page of the journal has a note from Father Sheeran indicating the diary is “meant for my Redemptorist confreres” and “if something should happen to me, it should be burned.”
    “Thank God, no one burned it,” Hayes said.
    “We simply don’t have too many accounts from Catholic chaplains from the south,” said Hayes, who is hoping to have the diary published. “I don’t know the reason for that. There were about four dozen Catholic chaplains that served the Confederacy.”
Union diaries abound
    Hayes said there are dozens of diaries in print written by Union army chaplains. The most famous was written by Holy Cross Father William Corby, held at the University of Notre Dame.
    Hayes said what sets Father Sheeran’s journal apart from others he has read is that “it is a little less spiritual and focuses on some of the tactics used by the two sides. They are quite specific. As a chaplain, although you are not involved in the fighting, you are an eyewitness to what goes on on the field, so you know where to go to pick up or minister to your wounded.”
    Most of the time, Hayes said, Father Sheeran, chaplain for the 14th Louisiana Regiment, would have been within “yards” of the battle. He writes specifically about the revolutionary “miniball,” which while not leaving a large entrance wound could explode inside the body to splinter bones.
    “The miniball was a killing machine because it could rip through flesh,” Hayes said. “When infection set in, it killed people within a day or two.”
    At Gettysburg, Father Sheeran wrote: “Had Hell itself broken its boundaries, it would not have presented a more terrifying spectacle.”
    Father Sheeran was famous for facing down even Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson to get free rein in ministering to the wounded and dying. After Jackson reprimanded him for some unknown offense, Father Sheeran reportedly shot back that as an “officer in God’s army” he outranked every other officer, including Jackson.
Helped soldiers on both sides
    He also regularly crossed enemy lines to minister to Union troops, something which eventually led to his capture late in the war. But he was unafraid to berate doctors and nurses for not properly caring for the wounded and dying, directing the nurses at one point to salvage the uniforms from dead soldiers to provide bandages for the living.
    Father Sheeran falls victim to one common malady of military observers, Hayes said.
    “Typically, his figures (of casualties) are inaccurate,” Hayes said. “In battles that are typically acknowledged as being in the win column for the North, Sheeran says, based on the number of bodies, clearly the South won this battle.”
    After being imprisoned by the Union army in Fort McHenry in Baltimore during the winter of 1864-65, Father Sheeran eventually made his way back to St. Alphonsus, where he knocked on the door of the priests’ residence and then collapsed as it was opened for him. He spent the night telling his story. In the next few years, he raised money to build St. Alphonsus Boys’ School.
    “Based on his diary, I think this is where he was truly the happiest,” Hayes said.
Died in New Jersey
    Hayes came to New Orleans to examine St. Alphonsus’ sacramental records, which showed Father Sheeran performed many baptisms. He eventually got into a dispute with his Redemptorist provincial and became a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark. He died in 1881 at age 62 and is buried in the Assumption Church cemetery in Morristown, N.J.
    The ROOTS program is one of a number of activities sponsored by the Friends of St. Alphonsus  (FOSA) to “attract more visitors to the jewel of the Irish Channel,” said FOSA president Armand Bertin.
    While St. Alphonsus is not open for weddings or funerals, it is available for reunions, receptions and other activities.
    FOSA will open its Religious of the Irish Channel Exhibit at St. Alphonsus Church April 13 from 5 to 7 p.m. The exhibit, which will be on display through the fall, will feature the people and activities of the Mercy Sisters, the School Sisters of Notre Dame and the Redemptorist priests. It will be free and open to the public on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
    Also, on April 21, Redemptorist Father Richard Thibodeau will celebrate 10:30 a.m. Mass at St. Mary’s Assumption and then host a “Come Back to the Irish Channel” reception, with tours of both St. Mary’s Assumption and St. Alphonsus churches.
    Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at [email protected].