Giants Were On The Earth In Those Days: A Review
By
James Wudarczyk

(This review originally appeared in the May- June 2004 newsletter of the Holy Name Society of Our Lady of the Angels Parish and is reproduced with permission of the president of that organization.)

Giants Were On The Earth In Those Days: The Life of Archbishop John Regis Francis Canevin, D.D., Fifth Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh 1904 – 1920 by Most Reverend John B. McDowell, D.D., PhD.

The Most Reverend John B. McDowell, retired Auxiliary Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh, is able to write books faster than most people can read them. In the last two years, he has produced an amazing three biographies and in the course of his live has written more than fifty books dealing with literature, history, and religion. That, itself, is quite an accomplishment.

While there may be a tendency to shy away from books, written by clergymen about other men of the cloth, such an attitude would cheat one from the vast amount of Pittsburgh history that McDowell has managed to resurrect. In spite of his academic credentials, the Most Reverend McDowell is truly a man who is totally unpretentious. He writes with such clarity and simplicity that one would think he was standing in front of you and casually talking about his historic discoveries. Truly, he wants everyone to share what he knows.

While His Excellency writes about a Church that he truly loves and one to which he dedicated his life serving, his writings are those of a populist historian. The recent biographies are like novels that end just when one is really getting into the subject matter.

Two of McDowell’s subjects, Hugh Boyle and John Canevin, should be of particular interest to the members of the Lawrenceville Historical Society since both bishops are buried in Saint Mary Cemetery. While the Boyle biography contains a great deal of information about the man, the Canevin book seems to center more around the changes in the diocese that Bishop Canevin inaugurated and witnessed. This does not detract from the book but rather gives the reader an idea just how challenging the task of managing the phenomenal growth of the diocese really was. In essence, Canevin’s life, though intertwined with the events of the Church and city, takes a back seat, while McDowell drives us through one of the most fascinating periods in the life of urban America.

Lawrenceville is mentioned several times by the author. McDowell gives a brief history of the early years of Saint Mary’s 46th Street since this was Canevin’s first assignment as a priest in June, 1879. As an assistant to Father Gibbs, Canevin organized the parish’s first literary society. While in Lawrenceville, Father Canevin attempted to learn German from Father Felix Lenz, one of the first three Capuchin friars stationed at Saint Augustine Church. In exchange, Canevin promised to teach Lenz English but as the archbishop later recalled, “Neither profited from the experience.”

When discussing the contribution of the laity in helping to teach catechism, McDowell cites the Doyle Family of Saint John the Baptist Church as examples of “exemplary Catholics.”

Although the founding of Saint Francis Hospital predated Bishop Canevin’s administration, the Most Reverend McDowell elected to include a brief history of this institution, and showed how Canevin successfully built on the concept of the Catholic medical institutions.

There is also a photograph of the March 26, 1927, funeral of Archbishop Canevin in Saint Mary Cemetery.

This is not a book for Catholics only. It is an easy-to-read biography/history that will captivate anyone with even the most remote interest in Pittsburgh’s rich past.