Behold the Catholic Man -- Joyce Kilmer, Catholic Poet-Patriot

Joyce Kilmer, a Catholic poet most widely renowned for the poem “Trees,” was very popular in the early 1900s. He was author of three books of poetry and editor of Dreams and Images, an anthology of then-modern Catholic poets of England and America. Trees was probably the most printed poem of its time, put to music, and memorized by more school children than any other. But that’s not important. What’s important is that Joyce was more than a poet—he was a Catholic poet . . . and, in fact, more than a Catholic poet—a unabashedly Catholic writer, interviewer, husband, father, speaker and patriot . . . and when it comes right down to it, an uncommonly good man.

Of him it is said by a priest who knew him well:

"Few men could afford to speak so sternly in the security of their own manhood as Joyce Kilmer. His strong masculine courage is writ ineffaceably in his brief career as a soldier. But his manhood does not appear, to those who knew him, nearly so distinctly from the courage he displayed in war as from the purity and undeviating goodness of his life in peace as well as in war. He feared sin more than he feared shot and shell. I know this to be true, and all his intimate friends divined it, if they did not know it for a certainty. He was a daily communicant whenever circumstances permitted; and, although there is probably no journalist, poet, or literary man living who worked harder than he, the main business with him was to keep his soul clean and unspotted. This is the highest and most difficult kind of manhood attainable. It was this ideal of manhood which inspired Joyce Kilmer’s life even more than it inspired his poetry."

One of Kilmer’s associates said:

"Kilmer was, above everything else a poet, and poetry is sometimes defined as the very truth of life. But the poetic genius of Joyce Kilmer has this about it—that it could touch and glorify the commonplace and everyday things in life—a tree, a deserted house, a lonely road—until they were invested with a hallowed beauty and seemed freighted with an almost sacred significance. There is so much in all our lives, young and old, so much that is commonplace and everyday and seemingly devoid of meaning, that he does a great service indeed to his fellow men, who can brighten the commonplace things in life for us."

Joyce Kilmer was born in December, 1886, and christened Alfred Joyce Kilmer, but the name Alfred never stuck—except when he was teased about it as a boy. Joyce did stick, especially after his college years, when he started to use it professionally. Joyce’s parents, Fred and Annie Kilmer, were good Episcopalians and raised Joyce deeply in that religion. Joyce therefore had a religious influence much like that of the famous Catholic convert Cardinal John Henry Newman. Joyce almost became what Cardinal Newman had been, an Anglican priest.

Kilmer converted too, but Kilmer’s conversion was not out of theological study; it was out of faith, and it shows in his poetry and all of his writing. Kilmer said, “The Catholic Faith is such a thing that I’d rather write moderately well about it than magnificently well about anything else. It is more important, more beautiful, more necessary than anything else in life.”

His conversion happened at one of the most prayerful times in his life. He and his wife Aline had been married about 5 years and had three children. The second one, Rosamond (who went by “Rose”) had been afflicted with infantile paralysis. Even though he wasn’t a Catholic yet, Joyce prayed for Rose daily at a Catholic church on his way to work.

“Just off Broadway,” Kilmer wrote (after Rose’s affliction claimed her life), “on the way from the Hudson Tube Station to The New York Times Building, there is a church called the Church of the Holy Innocents. Since it is in the heart of the Tenderloin, this name is strangely appropriate—for there surely is need of youth and innocence. Well, every morning for months I stopped on my way to the office and prayed in this church for faith. When faith did come, it came, I think, by way of my little paralyzed daughter. Her lifeless hands led me; I think her tiny feet still know beautiful paths.”

Later he would write: “Her death was a piercing blow, but beautiful. It happened at the best time. Aline was there and I and our parish priest. Rose was happy but did not want to get well. “I’ll drink it in another house,” she said, when the nurse coaxed her to take some broth. Perhaps she meant the new house which we move to in October. And perhaps not. There was a Mission in our parish-church, just a couple of blocks from the house, and while Rose died the voices of the Sisters singing “O Salutaris Hostia” could be heard in the room. . . . Certainly Rose makes Heaven dearer to us.”

On November 5, 1913, Joyce and Aline Kilmer surprised their families and closest friends by becoming Catholic. And yet this fact is only a half-truth because, although November 5 was the day he and Aline were officially, ceremoniously, and sacramentally welcomed into the Roman Catholic Church, Joyce confessed, “I like to feel that I have always been Catholic.”

Only the time of Kilmer’s conversion was accidental; his conversion itself was inevitable. Kilmer and his wife became Catholic because it was the thing that made their spiritual “comfort level “ perfect; it completed their sense of belonging to the right Faith. “My wife and I are very comfortable now that we are Catholics,” he wrote. “I think we rather disappointed Father Cronin (the Paulist who received us) by not showing any emotion during the ceremony. But our chief sensation is merely comfortčwe feel we’re where we belong, and it’s a very pleasant feeling.”

When pressed later about what brought him to conversion, he said, “I believed in the Catholic position, the Catholic view of ethics and aesthetics, for a long time. But I wanted something not intellectual, some conviction not mental—in fact I wanted Faith.” According to his biographer, Joyce was never really himself before he became a convert. “Then his fluid spirituality, his yearning sense of religion, was stabilized.”

Kilmer knew he was Catholic because he possessed Catholic truth inwardly. It was alive in his mind and he knew that it was a gift lent to him by God, to be used all the while he had life. That stewardship was not a sterile acceptance within his soul—as it is in some Catholics—but an enriching commitment that was a part of his being and a part of everything he did and was to do. Once he was a Catholic, according his biographer, “There was never any possibility of mistaking his point of view: in all matters of religion, art, economics and politics, as well as in all matters of faith and morals, his point of view was obviously and unhesitatingly Catholic.”

He showed his defense of Catholicism in words and actions. Joyce took it very seriously, as when he was quick to defend our priests. Here’s an example cited by his first biographer:

"A somewhat antagonistic non-Catholic once remarked to Kilmer that the Catholic priesthood in this country was, to a rather large extent, recruited from the sons of Irish policemen and scrub-women, to the detriment of the ecclesiastical state. Kilmer flushed an angry red, and rebuked the person in great indignation, saying: “I do not for an instant admit that you are right. And even if you were right—which you most certainly are not—then I should consider it to be the greatest glory of the Catholic Church in this country that its clergy are (as you falsely state) largely recruited from the sons of Irish policemen and scrub-women; and I should have the greatest pride and happiness in telling you or any one else that I feel it the highest privilege to receive the Sacrament of the Catholic Church at the hands of such priests.”

When it came to anti-Catholicism, Kilmer wouldn’t keep silent. This is amply evidenced in Kilmer’s letter to his Jesuit friend, Father James Daly:

Dear Father Daly,

Soon you may hear that I have been arrested—charged with malicious mischief, larceny and assault and battery. On lower Fifth Avenue, near Nineteenth Street, is the Presbyterian Building. The eighth floor is occupied by the Board of Foreign Missions. There are numerous executive offices and two reading rooms. In one of the reading rooms is a small collection of idols, most of which came from Africa and China. A shelf prominently placed, holds six or seven ugly green images, a little model of a Confucian temple. . . and a large crucifix. The crucifix is of iron and the figure is painted in natural colors.

“These idols,” the curator explains, “were given up by people our missionaries converted. That cross belonged to a Mexican family that used to be Roman Catholics.”

This is bad enough—but here is something worse. The corridor—open to the public—contains large cabinets filled with idols from all over the world. In one of them, among other curious idols, is a large black wooden figure, the image of some African god. It is hideously ugly and furthermore it is obscene—being obviously the relic of some cult of phallic worshipers. In the same cabinet, directly above this lewd thing, is an image of Our Lady.

Of course, this outrage must stop. I am going to work quietly at first, getting some influential man or organization to send a letter of protest to the Board of Presbyterian Missions. Then, if necessary, I will publish the correspondence in the Times—I can easily get it printed if the letters are strong enough, and both sides are fairly represented. But if I get no results this way, I’ll break the cabinet and steal the image of the Blessed Virgin. I can pass it to a friend of mine who’ll be a block away before the attendants are through with me.

I think your clerical dignity would desert you if you saw that cabinet—you’d feel like smashing it and smashing a few Presbyterians too.

Long read continued here.

The Robe of Christ

(For Cecil Chesterton)

At the foot of the Cross on Calvary
Three soldiers sat and diced,
And one of them was the Devil
And he won the Robe of Christ.

When the Devil comes in his proper form
To the chamber where I dwell,
I know him and make the Sign of the Cross
Which drives him back to Hell.

And when he comes like a friendly man
And puts his hand in mine,
The fervour in his voice is not
From love or joy or wine.

And when he comes like a woman,
With lovely, smiling eyes,
Black dreams float over his golden head
Like a swarm of carrion flies.

Now many a million tortured souls
In his red halls there be:
Why does he spend his subtle craft
In hunting after me?

Kings, queens and crested warriors
Whose memory rings through time,
These are his prey, and what to him
Is this poor man of rhyme,

That he, with such laborious skill,
Should change from role to role,
Should daily act so many a part
To get my little soul?

Oh, he can be the forest,
And he can be the sun,
Or a buttercup, or an hour of rest
When the weary day is done.

I saw him through a thousand veils,
And has not this sufficed?
Now, must I look on the Devil robed
In the radiant Robe of Christ?

He comes, and his face is sad and mild,
With thorns his head is crowned;
There are great bleeding wounds in his feet,
And in each hand a wound.

How can I tell, who am a fool,
If this be Christ or no?
Those bleeding hands outstretched to me!
Those eyes that love me so!

I see the Robe — I look — I hope —
I fear — but there is one
Who will direct my troubled mind;
Christ’s Mother knows her Son.

O Mother of Good Counsel, lend
Intelligence to me!
Encompass me with wisdom,
Thou Tower of Ivory!

“This is the Man of Lies,” she says,
“Disguised with fearful art:
He has the wounded hands and feet,
But not the wounded heart.”

Beside the Cross on Calvary
She watched them as they diced.
She saw the Devil join the game
And win the Robe of Christ.

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