Father Kapaun at Newman University

On Saturday, September 24, I attended the Father Kapaun Symposium at Newman University. It was great program with highlights of the celebration of Holy Mass in St. John's Chapel in the Sacred Heart Hall, a presentation by William Latham on the experience of the POW's in the Korean War followed by a panel discussion, a fine lunch, and three great ferverinos by priests of our diocese. The Seminar was sponsored by the Father Kapaun Cause of the Diocese of Wichita and the Gerber Institute for Catholic Studies at Newman University.

William Latham is the author of Cold Days in Hell: American POWs in Korea published by Texas A&M University Press. He provided both background on the Korean War and Chaplain Kapaun's actions in the North Korean prison camp in which he died on May 23, 1951. Latham also provided the information that was instrumental in Chaplain Kapaun posthumously receiving the Medal of Honor on April 11, 2013 after a previous failed attempt:

Around 2002, Bill Latham entered the picture. Latham began noticing the name “Kapaun” in papers he collected. At reunions, Latham thought there was something wonderful about how soldiers talked about him. They said to him that Kapaun should have received the medal. The old soldiers’ passion for their friend touched Latham. After he heard about Todd Tiahrt’s failed application, he called the congressman’s office. Tiahrt’s staff told Latham that in 2002, Tiahrt had recommended to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that Kapaun be awarded the medal. Rumsfeld rejected it because of lack of “substantiating evidence.” Latham suspected there was plenty of substantiating evidence. He now went to find it.

Read more on how the story unfolds here. For more on Latham’s new book, in which Fr. Kapaun figures prominently, click here.

Latham is an excellent presenter and kindly gave me a private history lesson during a break when I asked why, if the Soviet Union and the United States of America had been negotiating about the future of Korea, it was the Chinese who supported the North Korean Army when they crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea. We had to sit down because it was about a fifteen minute answer! He knows that history better than I know the history of the English Reformation!

Father Kapaun was ordained in Saint John's Chapel at what was then Sacred Heart Junior College, founded by the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, by Bishop Christian Winkelmann on June 1, 1940. 

The chapel of course was named for Saint John the Evangelist, but since Newman's Beatification and Canonization, it's also become a center of devotion to St. John Henry Newman, with Masses on his feast day on October 9 and during the annual Heritage Month.

But also, St. John's Chapel and Sacred Heart Hall are strongly associated with Father Kapaun, with a painting in his honor at the back of the of the chapel and a case filled with memorabilia from his ordination outside the in hall. 

Because of my decades long devotion to Saint John Henry Newman and growing devotion to Servant of God Emil Joseph Kapaun, I've meditated a little since Saturday on the lives of these two men and what they have in common. 

On first glance, you might think not much: an English convert of the Victorian age and a Bohemian farm boy from Kansas?

But they were both called to serve the People of God--Newman's long life was spent in ministry from a young age first in the Church of England and then sacramentally in the Catholic Church; Kapaun's short life was spent in service to the Catholic Church as an altar server, seminarian, deacon, priest and chaplain. 

Both were assigned by their bishops to serve a certain community: Newman at first was asked to reach out to those Tractarians who remained in the Church of England to help them become Catholics (his Anglican Difficulties and his constant correspondence and counsel with those who were thinking about becoming Catholic); Father Kapaun to the Bohemian communities of St. John Nepomucene Church in Pilsen, Kansas and then at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Timken, Kansas (now in the Diocese of Dodge City).

While Father Kapaun gave his life up for the men in the prison camp, serving them in both spiritual and physical ways--which makes him extraordinary and is the basis of his Cause for Canonization--as an Oratorian priest in Birmingham, England, we know that Father Newman served the poor in that industrial city--especially during a cholera outbreak in nearby Bilston in September, 1849--as Pope Benedict XVI commented at the Beatification Mass on September 19, 2010:

While it is John Henry Newman’s intellectual legacy that has understandably received most attention in the vast literature devoted to his life and work, I prefer on this occasion to conclude with a brief reflection on his life as a priest, a pastor of souls. The warmth and humanity underlying his appreciation of the pastoral ministry is beautifully expressed in another of his famous sermons: “Had Angels been your priests, my brethren, they could not have condoled with you, sympathized with you, have had compassion on you, felt tenderly for you, and made allowances for you, as we can; they could not have been your patterns and guides, and have led you on from your old selves into a new life, as they can who come from the midst of you” (“Men, not Angels: the Priests of the Gospel”, Discourses to Mixed Congregations, 3). He lived out that profoundly human vision of priestly ministry in his devoted care for the people of Birmingham during the years that he spent at the Oratory he founded, visiting the sick and the poor, comforting the bereaved, caring for those in prison.

Obviously, it's in that care for souls, souls and bodies, in their assigned congregations and beyond, that these two priests and holy men share the greatest link. But while Father Kapaun was not called to a life of study and teaching, even though Bishop Mark K. Carroll sent him to the Catholic University of America to earn a Master's degree in Education, and so can't "compete" with Doctor Newman (honored by Pope Pius IX and Trinity College with that title) they both were both students of the Word and of Catholic Faith.

Servant of God Emil J. Kapaun, pray for us!

Saint John Henry Newman, pray for us!