The month of June offers us at Portsmouth Abbey several distinctively ecclesial moments. With the universal church we celebrate next week the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, and thus the “source and summit” of our faith and our ecclesial communion. For the Portsmouth community, the month is also bookended by two commemorations distinctive to our monastery and its home diocese. We begin the month with the Dedication of the Abbey Church and complete the month with the Dedication of the Cathedral in Providence. Last spring, on the sixtieth anniversary of the dedication of our own church, the doors remained locked and its sacred space physically inaccessible. It seems appropriate now, as we now look forward to greater access to the church and its sacraments, that we remember, at sixty-plus-one, this unique and beautiful place of prayer. Rather than devote our attention to the often and rightly lauded architecture of Belluschi or the wire sculpture of Lippold, or the other material details that comprise the distinctive building, we will try to envision the community that was then inhabiting the space and its experience of the event itself. The notes of the Prior, the Headmaster, and a lay faculty member provide a few brush strokes to create an impressionistic vision for us. The former School newspaper, the Beaverboard, also adds some of the student perspective. We should note that the church project was the centerpiece of an even more extensive project including the construction of the monastery itself, as well as the Stillman Dining Hall. This trifecta produced a stunning metamorphosis for the entire monastery and school.  

The superior of the community at this time was Dom Aelred Graham. In “The Portsmouth Bulletin” of Fall 1960, he writes: “June 1^st last was a memorable day in the history of Portsmouth Priory. It witnessed the culmination of long years of work and prayer by the monks of this house. We now have our completed church and monastery, built by the generosity, and at the cost of much sacrifice, of our friends. It was good to have so many of those friends with us on the day when the church was blessed, the high altar consecrated, and the first Mass offered to God.” For those not present, Graham offers an invitation to visit, assuring readers that “there is as yet no instance, so far as I have heard, of anyone inspecting our new church and going away disappointed.” While he dwells on the predominant sense of lingering gratitude in the community, he also notes, as the dining hall was nearing its completion, that “there remains a debt.” The figures are detailed in the Dom Peter Sidler’s “Treasurer’s Report,” which mentions $948,265 in the Building Fund, to cover $1.4 million in expenses - a stunningly low figure in our present day calculations. The Prior states with no apology that, “We have no plans, we have no resources, for any large-scale expansion,” since the Priory, “must be measured by the standard of quality rather than quantity.” Still, the new building project pointed to additional unmet material needs: an infirmary, a science building, and an auditorium head that list, all of which soon came to fruition. Graham also thanks the donors who have made all of this possible, with explicit reference to the oblates: “And last, but very far from least, our devoted Oblates, members, you might say, of a kind of third Order of St. Benedict. They have contributed, in many cases a heart-touching sacrifice, to the building of their own chapel in our new Church. Their reward should be rich indeed.” 

The Bulletin also offers a report of Dom Leo van Winkle, the Headmaster during this new construction, which thoroughly transformed not only the monastery, but generated reverberations throughout all of the facilities available to the School. Father Leo reports that, “The old chapel has been converted into four classrooms and a Language Laboratory…” These adaptions began to address, “one of our most pressing needs, that of more classrooms.” He adds that the monastery itself was turned over to younger students: “…the remainder of the former monastery is being converted into a dormitory which will hold 27 boys: new boys entering the Third Form.” The lay faculty gained offices from the Old Blue Dormitory, whose passing “may well be mourned,” says Fr. Leo, being one of many in the community sharing and shaped by the Old Blue. The old dining hall was adapted to use as the new library, which then enabled St. Benet’s to gain a common room (now a faculty apartment). A further effect he notes is that, “the Farm House (currently used for faculty housing) will no longer be used as a small dormitory for new boys in the Third Form.” Interesting additional historical notes from this issue of the Bulletin include mention of the graduation of the first sons of an alumnus, Carroll Cavanagh, with six sons of alumni waiting in the wings in the next year’s Sixth Form. The issue also reports that Dom Matthew Stark, who by the end of the decade will become the monastery’s first abbot, will join the faculty to teach Classics, and most significantly, will make his Solemn Profession on September 29, 1960. The Monastery Notes also tell us that Fr. Philip Wilson and Fr. Damian Kearney began their tenures as Housemasters in that year as well. 

Student life was radically affected by this tsunami of development. A brief note in the student newspaper, “The Beaverboard,” of May 27, 1960 calls the chapel, “the dream of Portsmouth Priory School since its founding by the late John Hugh Diman,” speaking of its “imposing octagonal structure” and how its “clean-cut lines blend in perfectly with the monastery and surrounding landscape.” The October 28 issue mentions favorably the new dining hall, and its “rush operations which have now diminished to finishing touches.” The students also welcome the additional classroom space made available to them, commenting in particular of how it would assist Father Andrew, who “was inconvenienced in making out the class schedules of students.” Those of us who experienced something of these moments of inconvenience understand the world of meaning packed into that sentence. The Beaverboard concludes that, “In all these innovations one must appreciate not simply physical changes for the better but also stimulating new spiritual associations of which a school is made.” 

While we now have seen the three major additions of church, monastery, and dining hall require renovation and reconstruction, we all have benefited from the dedicated efforts of our earlier Portsmouth generations to bequeath them to us. And the experience of this community’s life, entering into its seventh decade with these structures and still marveling at St. Gregory's church, continues to resonate with Mr. Pelletier’s aptly-expressed sentiment: “It is good for us to be here.”

The new church gathers its flock