Fr. Reginald James Newell, OP

On the morning of April 28th, Father Newell died at the age of 83, the oldest Dominican in the Province; one of the oldest, indeed, of the whole country.  For the past ten years or so he has been living in retirement, old age and ill health keeping him from appearing in public.  Despite his venerable years he was active to the last; was first in choir in the morning, engaged in reading, meditation and writing when not praying, all day long.  Above all he was living that definition of philosophy which Plato wrote with golden pen.  Philosophy is nothing else but a preparation for death and participation in it.

Born in Ohio, early in life Father Newell came West with his parents and settled in Portland, Oregon.  Orphaned by the death of his mother and too faithful to her memory to have much love for his stepmother, he was sent to St. Vincent's Orphanage near San Rafael.  Here he came in contact with Dominican Fathers, established but a decade before on the Pacific Coast.  He sought admittance into the Order of St. Dominic, was received, and sent to England where he made his Novitiate at Woodchester.  After his simple profession he went to Louvain for the study of Philosophy and Theology.  His keenness of mind and application to his books impressed his teachers.  They insisted that he undergo the examination for the Lectorate in Sacred Theology, which he did successfully, a year after his ordination.

Coming home shortly afterward, he was assigned to work among the Indians in the southern portion of the State.  He did not find them the noble red men of fiction—they were lazy, dirty and listless.  His task was a thankless one, considering his youth and freshness from European convents; hopeless and discouraging too, but he had the spirit of the pioneer and a profound sense of humor, which never left him, always made him see the brighter side of things.

His assignment to Benicia as Prior and Professor was more in keeping with his talents.  He had all the qualities of a fine teacher — wide grasp of his subject, ability to make it intelligible to the dullest mind; also, did he have the rare faculty of arousing and sustaining the interest of his pupils.  A builder, too, was Father Newell.  The present lovely little church in that unlovely little town is a monument to his zeal and tireless energy.

Preaching was, however to use the language of the old orators, Father Newell's darling passion.  He belonged to the Order of Preachers; to the pulpit, he considered, was he especially called.  His talents voiced the truth of his belief.  He had a fine presence, his lean, mobile face and expressive gestures radiated learning and feeling, gifted with a manly voice always under control he appealed to the intellect as well as to the heart of his audience.  The congregations of every church up and down the coast had heard him.  The generation of his peers is dead but the old men and women of Hangtown and Placerville, where he gave his first mission still recall him; still remember the simple little stories he told to illustrate, to impress, more deeply, the doctrine of his sermons.  His Order recognized his ability; he was made a Preacher General—the highest honor the Master General can confer on one of his sons for his oratorical ability.

A writer, too, was Father Newell.  The pages of the now defunct magazine Dominica are full of his articles. He wrote, principally, on pertinent questions of the day, with fads and faddists of his time he dealt none too gently.  Widely did he range in his writing, however, he was as much at home discussing the theology of the daily newspapers as the religious beliefs of Tennyson.  A small volume of sermons of his younger years gives one an idea how he wrote and talked.  To call Father a poet would be no misnomer.  His muse was a virile one, somewhat akin to that of Mr. Kipling.  His metrical compositions display power, pungency and wit. Unfortunately, he would not allow them to be printed.

A good man, a brilliant man, was Father Newell.  He retained his keenness of intellect to the last.  A month before he died he could still argue with the finesse of a Medieval philosopher.

Saturday, April 30th, Father Newell was buried. The funeral Mass was sung by the Very Rev. Provincial James B. Connolly O.P., assisted by Fathers O'Connor and Rourke.  His Excellency Archbishop Mitty delivered the eulogy and pronounced the final absolution.  Interment took place at St. Dominic's Cemetery, Benicia.

-from "St. Dominic's Church, San Francisco," June 1932

"In Lower California," Journey with Fr. William Dempflin, O.P. from July 1887 to March 1888

From many points of view, Lower California presents great attractions.  Leaving the description of its vast material resources to the enterprising pen of those who only look for such advantages, we confine our observations to the religious view of the Peninsula and its inhabitants.

About ten years ago, in the hope of contemplating the monuments of the Dominican Order in that country, we crossed the line of Mexico at Tia Juana [sic] with a buckboard and two Indian ponies, and drove down through the peninsula for a distance of about four hundred miles, or to the most southerly Dominican Mission.

But, let us say it at once, we found very little left to describe.  Since Mexico's achievement of independence from Spain, and the expulsion of the Spanish Friars from the Peninsula -- that is, for a period of seventy years -- these missions had been utterly abandoned, and, what is worse, adventurers and interlopers from Sonora -- who constitute the present owners of the Mission lands -- after driving and killing off the Indians, dismantled the churches and monasteries, seized on and sold the valuable church furniture and works of art, and even tore the tiles from the Mission roofs for their own huts, thus exposing the walls to the dissolving action of the rains, so that there is hardly a Mission in that country of which it might not be said, Etiam ruinae perierunt! Even the ruins have perished.

The dwindled remains of these Dominican Missions form a long chain of ruins at intervals of about thirty miles apart, and extending down from the line to a distance of about 400 miles -- that is, not geographical, or as the crow flies, but practical, or better still, impractical -- awful, Mexican road miles -- every league of which we have ample reason to remember!

And here we venture to offer a correction to what, in our firm opinion, is a gross error of so-called history.  Historians, following one another like a flock of geese, have been repeating the assertion of some confused writer that the Franciscans gave up their flourishing Missions in Lower California, or the Peninsula, to the Dominicans, and then proceeded to establish others in Alta California, or the California of the United States.

The fact is that, though members of the several Missionary Orders visited the Peninsula a century ago, yet before the establishments of any missions in either of the Californias was undertaken, a joint council of the Jesuits, Franciscans and Dominicans was held under the proper ecclesiastical sanction, and, with the aid of the civil authority, at Guadalajara, in Spain, and the respective spheres of jurisdiction and evangelization were there and then fixed and determined for each of these orders, the Jesuits being assigned to the southern half of the Peninsula -- that is, from Cape St. Lucas to the desert of San Fernando; the Dominicans to the northern half -- that is, from the desert of San Fernando to what is now called the line, and the Franciscans to Alta California -- that is, to all the region now comprising our State.

The dates of the earliest Dominican foundations in Lower California are contemporary with the earliest foundations of Father Junipero Serra, in our State.  While the names and titles of the missions mentioned in the records of establishment are all Dominican -- Santo Tomas, Santo Domingo, Santa Catalina, San Pedro Martir, San Ramon, San Telmo, San Vicente, El Rosario, the statues and paintings taken from the missions, and yet, in great number, piously preserved in the houses of the people, are all and exclusively of Dominican saints and scenes.

It is not the custom for one Religious Order to erect churches under the name and invocation of the saints of another, and especially a contiguous Order; nor is it the custom in the Church to change the names of the saints or the sacred titles under whose invocation the mission has been founded.

The life of the Catholic Indian, where unmolested by the vices and violence of the so-called civilized white man, is usually of great length, and it was our good fortune to meet survivors of the earliest missions -- old they were, of course, but yet vigorous enough to sit two whole days in the saddle as our guides, and who remembered no other missionaries than the "white-robed Padres del Santo Domingo."  All that, for love or money, we could secure from the people as mementos of the fast-vanishing monuments of Dominican zeal are a few small oil paintings of the Rosary and of S. Vincent Ferrer, and some registers of foundations, including many thousands of recorded baptisms, marriages and interments of Indians evangelized by the sons of S. Dominic in Lower California.

At the time of our visit there was a Catholic population of not less than 15,000 from the line to Cape S. Lucas; and yet there were not more than three priests in all the Peninsula.  One, at the southern end, had a reputation of being a successful cattle rancher, and another, at the northern end, was an eccentric man -- half-Indian and half-witted -- who made an unsuccessful bee farmer!  Some ten years before that, Bishop Moreno had been appointed to the Peninsula, but left for Europe -- and for good -- after a short stay at la Paz; and since then no bishop had visited the country.   Later on, Lower California was placed, nominally at least, under the administration of the Bishop of Hermosillio, Sonora.  At present, as a result of his recent visit to the Peninsula, its administration is in the hands of Propaganda, and we are happy to say that it enjoys the watchful care of a resident Bishop and the spiritual attention of several zealous and active Priests.  This timely action of the Propaganda has re-lighted the torch of religion in the peninsula, and preserved the rising generation there from the danger of perversion at the hands of the wily Methodists who, under favor of a gang of Kentucky sharpers called "The International Colonization Company of Lower California," were erecting cross-mounted steeples to seduce the simple Mexican Catholics.  What religion and piety we found among that long-neglected people we can solemnly aver was due mainly to the widespread and deeply-rooted practice of reciting the Rosary.

--1899, Dominicana, Vol. I, pp. 210-211

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