Journey of a Country Soul

On January 7, 1922, a young Catholic priest the Reverend Felix Newton Pitt sat alone with his thoughts on the eve of his mission work in Finley, Kentucky, a small Taylor-County rural community. Though he was a native son of old Kentucky, he felt like a stranger here among the poor “hillfolks” in the remote countryside, far from his friends and family and the life he had known. At 25, he had already tasted the fruits of scholarship and society; he had studied at Saint Meinrad College in Indiana, experiencing the wonders of cities while attending Saint Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore, and Catholic University in Washington DC. Now, though, Father Pitt was here alone in the rectory of Our Lady of the Hills church, in his first lonely hours as pastor of a small parish and the attached missions in the hills of Kentucky, Taylor and Marion Counties. After a successful two year tenure at a thriving parish in bustling Bardstown, he had his first epiphany of what would become his true calling as an educator. “My beloved children at school are all on their good behavior these days.” He wrote in his diary at the time. “I love to teach……The love of little children I feel I have gained & which I know I have given them, is the secret of their happiness. May God grant my influence & love for them, keep them good & make them better men and women.” But Father Pitt’s superiors had given him this assignment in the Kentucky hill country to minister to a scattered, uneducated flock which seemed to him like banishment. Was this what he had worked so hard for all those years? To suggest to him that in ten years he would earn a doctor of philosophy degree from a prestigious university in Switzerland and see the glory of St. Peter’s in Rome and sites throughout Europe would seem to be but an impossible dream in 1922. One cold winter night, he wrote in his diary, “Finley, Kentucky, my address now for I wonder how long? If anyone was ever homesick, I am that one tonight……The future! An interminable road stretching out ahead with prospects of books & work my only consolation and hope. Ah yes, I am forgetting Our Lord. ……If Finley & its works bring me back to Him, what a blessing it will be. Our Lady of the Hills, I am under thy patronage now. Inspire me tomorrow & let me get an opening into the hearts of the people & do something for them & Thee.” A month later, Father Pitt traveled on his first mission journey to the nearby village of Campbellsville, and his worst fears were confirmed. Could the seeds of faith and learning ever take root in this rocky, windswept ground? Was he himself up to the task, was he even worthy of such an assignment? “I tried to preach a sermon but it was miserable, not many present,” he wrote in his diary. “After Mass…..I walked down for breviary and finished-up while waiting at church for children. About 10 were present, 6 had not made 1st communion and two 8 & 9 years old could not make a sign of the cross. Here’s the problem now, no one there to teach them, parents indifferent & ignorant & children in public school……The people look on me as a strange sort of animal, some with indifference, some with contempt & some with hatred.” Some would resign themselves to this situation, or simply dismiss it as a hopeless cause. Father Pitt was made of stronger stuff. He was determined to make a difference. His hardships were many in tending his flock, as he often rode a horse for hours on end over almost impassable muddy mountain roads. Much as he loved the countryside’s rugged beauty, he came to love the humble folk who had little in the way of possessions but were generous with what little they had. With his devoted dedication to his ministry, Father Pitt gradually won over their hearts and minds, just as they did his. Forty years later, Father Pitt would reflect on these hungry years spent ministering to the needs of these scattered parishioners. With deep affection he told the author, his nephew, that those long-ago days tending to his flock on horseback were the happiest of his priestly life. Yet, being a man of God, he knew it was His will he should move on and undertake new responsibilities, which he did with his characteristic enthusiasm and high energy. Father Pitt’s major legacy grew from that young priest’s epiphany in Bardstown and his missionary years in rural Kentucky where he saw the effects of a lack of religious education, leading him to establish a Catholic elementary school system for the Diocese of Louisville which, by the 1940s, was second to none in the US. In 1931, early in his efforts to organize a Catholic school system, he wrote an article “Why Catholic Schools”. It outlined the guiding principles he used throughout his tenure, yet is still valid today over eighty years later. In 1949 he started the first school in Louisville for students afflicted with cerebral palsy, which still is functioning today under the name The Mattingly Center, and followed this in 1959 with a school for the developmentally disabled students, which eventually became the Pitt Academy, which still exist today These were the first such facilities of their kind in Louisville.. He had a very fertile mind, always interested in exploring new ideas; he was a raconteur par excellence who thoroughly enjoyed stimulating conversation. His life was devoted to bringing Catholic education to all children in the Diocese and to their parents through the League of Catholic Parent-Teacher Association. He was a pioneering panel member of the ecumenical radio-TV program WHAS’s “Moral Side of the News”, one of the longest-running public affairs programs in the history of American broadcasting. He was a first-rate scholar, a creative thinker and a generous man. But above all, he was a faithful Priest of God, the voice of Catholicism in the greater Louisville region of Kentucky. Upon his death in 1971 at the age of 77, Father Pitt was remembered as a revered and much beloved figure in the community at large.