September 27, 1999

DePaul Editor Indexes Significant American Sites Founded on Faith

It’s hard to believe that despite hundreds of travel guides on the market, there are still niches to be filled, but Chicago writer Jay Copp found one. His book "The Liguori Guide to Catholic U.S.A." highlights places most others overlook and tells a story of American history through sites significant to the faithful.

Churches, shrines, monuments and grottos that beckon believers grace the guide’s 300-plus pages. The fact-filled narrative points out places where great American Catholics performed their good works and shines a spotlight on the elegant structures American immigrants built to worship in the New World.

The book (Liguori Publications, 1999) offers a concise overview of religious people, places and events, from the miraculous to the movies. It juxtaposes the Academy of the Sacred Heart in Grand Coteau, La., a shrine located on the exact spot where a miracle occurred, with California’s Mission San Juan Bautista, where Alfred Hitchcock filmed "Vertigo."

Copp is the editor of DePaul Magazine, the alumni publication for more than 90,000 DePaul University graduates. The seed for his book was planted when he was a reporter for The New World, the Archdiocese of Chicago’s newspaper, and wrote a story about touring Catholic Chicago. "People are not aware of what is available in their own backyards," he said.

Architecture buffs can marvel at the Cathedral of St. Paul, Minn., or Sts. Peter and Paul Church in San Francisco, which rival their European counterparts. "The sites in the book are testaments to faith, brick-and-mortar representations of spiritual beliefs," Copp said. "We have stunning architecture and stained glass in the United States that aren’t as old as European cathedrals, but are just as spectacular. American immigrants built our churches with pennies, but they built the best."

Bing Crosby fans can visit St. Malachy Chapel in New York City to see where the 1944 movie "Going My Way" was filmed. Once known as the Actors’ Chapel because of its proximity to Broadway and Times Square, its most famous altar boy was Bob Hope. Scholars of social justice will be happy to learn that Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis., holds the personal papers of Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, cofounders of the Catholic Worker Movement.

The book relates the story of a Civil War medical unit that transformed the sanctuary of St. Mary of Sorrow Church in Fairfax Station, Va., into a hospital in 1862, and touched the heart of young nurse Clara Barton. She later founded the American Red Cross. Today you can hear the ring of the same steeple bell that chimed when Barton received her inspiration.

Legendary Yankee Babe Ruth set the standard for celebrity charity events in 1923 when he darted from a no-hitter against the Philadelphia Athletics to Ascension of Our Lord Parish in time to appear at a fund-raiser to pay down the debt of a new parish ball field. He knocked one out of the park, much to the delight of 10,000 cheering fans, but perhaps even more meaningful to parishioners whose red ink had been erased by the wildly successful event.

"Average Joes, salt-of-the-earth people, these are the places they go," Copp said. A case in point is the Bible Museum in Eureka Springs, Ark., where 6,000 bibles in 625 languages and dialects are on display and a dramatic Passion play draws millions of visitors.

The book traces 21 missions that snake down the coast of California and were built to evangelize indigenous people in America’s earliest days. The missions of Texas, too, are described. "We think of the Alamo as an American fortress, but it was founded as a mission church," he said.

Even his employer, DePaul University, merits a mention in the guide for its designation as the nation’s largest Catholic university.

At 41, Copp is a well-credentialed author for a book on sacred sites. He spent seven years as a reporter for The New World, and has written countless freelance stories for the Catholic News Service, U.S. Catholic, Our Sunday Visitor, St. Anthony Messenger, Catholic Digest and America, among others. He holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Almost a year in the making, Copp tithed his free time to create the guide. Many passages were written with one of his three young sons on his lap or sitting at a nearby word processor pretending to write a book, just like dad.

The guide was researched as simply as many of the historic churches listed inside were founded. Notwithstanding today’s rage of technology, Copp relied mainly on the U. S. Post Office. He wrote dozens of letters to diocesan newspaper editors, historians and archivists asking for information about interesting sites. He used the old-fashioned card catalog to identify potential listings of places mentioned in a plethora of Catholic magazines and other publications. The response was amazing. Parish histories, picturesque postcards and brochures poured into his mailbox. Additionally, he discovered two Catholic newspaper editors who attempted to write this very book but were unable to complete the task. One, Jane Quinn, now the archivist of the Orlando, Fla., diocese, turned over her notes on religiously significant sites in Florida.

Note to Editors: Copp can be reached at 312/362-8824. Review copies of the book are available by calling Liguori at (800) 464-2555 ext. 520.