Dartmouth's Friend
FATHER SLINEY OBSERVES HIS 25TH ANNIVERSARY AS PASTOR IN HANOVER
lAST DECEMBER the Reverend John W. Sliney of St. Denis Catholic Church completed twenty-five years of service on Hanover Plain. Thus his career here as parish priest nearly parallels that of President Ernest Martin Hopkins who was inaugurated President of Dartmouth College two years before Father Sliney arrived in Hanover.
The modern Dartmouth we know was created during these years. Memorial Field, ten or more new dormitories, Sanborn House, Baker Library, Carpenter Hall, Silsby, Tuck School, and Thayer School have all been built since 1918. The College enrollment has grown from around 1100 to more than 2400 in normal times.
When Father Sliney first came to Hanover he occupied the pulpit in the old wooden church on South Street, but in the spring of 1923 the new St. Denis Church on Lebanon Street was dedicated and he has been priest there ever since.
Father Sliney was born in Franklin, New Hampshire, on May 12, 1885. He graduated from Franklin High School in 1902, went a year to St. Anselms in Manchester, and then to the House of Philosophy in the Grand Seminary in Montreal where he took his bachelor's degree in theology and canon law in, 1908. He was ordained priest in St. James Cathedral, Montreal, on December 19, 1908.
He went to Rome in 1913 and returned in August 1914, as the Great War broke out, with the post-graduate doctorate in Canon Law. His two years in Rome coincided with the papacy of Pius X.
Before coming to Hanover Father Sliney served as assistant in various New Hampshire parishes, notably in St. Anne's Church in Manchester, and just before his arrival here at the Church of the Immaculate Conception at Pennacook.
Being priest in a liberal arts college town brings its own individual problems. Young and often immature boys face in their classrooms, perhaps for the first time in their lives, the onslaught of new ideas, new philosophies, and new sciences. They are more often than not filled with doubts and for the first time Pascal's "silence of the infinite spaces" has significance. Most of them are homesick; all need a friend.
At this point the parish priest enters the picture and if he is essentially human, tolerant and sympathetic, he renders a great service to the boy when he most needs it. Thousands of Dartmouth men, both Protestant and Catholic, and now scattered all over the world, bear witness in their hearts to the kindness and wisdom shown them by Father Sliney. Many of them he hears from; many he still writes to. He knows better than anyone else the inner satisfactions arising from his life work. They must be many.
FOND OF BOOKS
Father Sliney is widely read and he reads and speaks several foreign languages including Latin. But his great and sympathetic understanding comes from years of intimate contacts with all sorts and manner of people; at the beds of the sick and the dying and in joy and in sorrow he has been and still is the wise counselor of his people.
In ordinary times of peace (or perhaps I should say extraordinary) Father Sliney has in his church something more than three hundred Dartmouth boys. At the present time under the V-12 regime he has around five hundred. At 10:30 Mass the church is filled and men are standing in the aisles. This was true not only at this New Year's Morning Mass but is true now on other Sundays as well.
He is also the spiritual leader of the Catholic Church in West Lebanon and between his two churches he serves more than a thousand parishioners.
Everybody knows of his love for sports. He attends the Dartmouth games, and it can be recalled how he used to play handball with Eddie Shevlin, who was then welterweight champion of New England. He is also a familiar figure on the golf course, playing once a week or so in the golf season with his friends Harry Hillman, Dr. John Murtagh, Fred Longhurst, and others. His usual score is in the eighties.
One of the most successful organizations in his church is the Catholic Club which during the college year meets every month and which often has a distinguished speaker. Among these in recent years has been Frank Sheed, of the English Catholic publishing house of Sheed and Ward, the well known Dr. W. E. Orchard, and Professor Louis Mercier of Harvard, author of a life of Irving Babbitt and a well-known humanist. Recent student leaders of the Catholic Club have been W. D. (Bill) Hutchinson '40, Edward F. (Pidge) Hughes '41, now missing in the Pacific, and at the moment Charles Regan, who is attending Medical School in the V-12 program.
Father Sliney leads a rich and busy life. He visits the local hospital three or four times a week, he conducts daily mass with two or more services on Sunday, and he attends the West Lebanon Church. Besides this he spends hours with students, and he still manages to keep up with the current books on philosophy, theology, and world affairs.
The College and the community have been fortunate in having here for a quarter of a century so human and so wise a man. That he may have many more years of service here is the wish of all his Dartmouth friends.
THE REV. JOHN W. SLINEY
