Word: novenae
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Servite fathers had found that the average individual contribution by a "Novenite"-3?-totaled enough to pay novena costs, sometimes build up a surplus. At Father Keane's church the surplus was large enough to furnish snappy uniforms for the male ushers at services, and to uniform 400 members of a new Novena Auxiliary Club for young women...
Busiest of all was the handsome, dark-haired prior of a Servite community in Chicago, Rev. James R. Keane. Two winters ago, in Our Lady of Sorrows Church in Chicago, Father Keane inaugurated a perpetual novena in honor of Our Sorrowful Mother, with special Stations of the Cross and prayers of his own compilation. Last winter Father Keane's novena began getting publicity when 16,500 people attended it every Friday, each making nine devotions in succession to the Virgin, in hope of spiritual or material reward (TIME, Dec. 27). By last week, 50,000 Catholics were thronging...
Last week the novena of Our Sorrowful Mother was available to Catholics in 87 churches in 50 cities, drawing an aggregate attendance of 260,000 people at its repeated Friday services, which totaled 315. Four cathedrals were holding novenas, and four more planned to. Novena Notes, Father Keane's clubby weekly, had a circulation of 145,000. Each church requesting it and paying the cost of printing could obtain an edition containing a page of local notes. Churches could also buy special prayer books for the novena, 10? each...
Since Father Keane's novena began, Novenites have addressed some 4,000,000 petitions, on slips of paper, to Our Lady of Sorrows. No statistics exist on the ratio between prayers and fulfillments, but in Father Keane's church alone, 80,000 letters are on file from Catholics whose prayers have been answered. An analysis of 800,000 petitions showed them to be predominantly personal, begging jobs, boy friends, good health, etc. Only 8,000 of the faithful asked nothing for themselves, petitioning good health for the Pope, etc., or, in one case, a cure for Dizzy Dean...
After the eighth Friday of my Novena I met a fine Catholic young man. He has been taking me out since then. It is such a relief to have a boy friend who understands as well as practices his religion. . . . A CATHOLIC GIRL...