Maher, Father Daniel

1906, May 25

Date of Birth:  1858, December 8

Paris
August 14, 1906

Fathers and Very Dear in Our Lord:

The Boston seminary, open fewer than twenty-one years, recently lost, in the person of Father Maher, its third superior; and it might have been supposed that he would be the one to give it its definitive character. At the least, he would in many ways have stamped on it the mark of his regularizing mind and left it to his successor to finish the job already far advanced by his own effort.

Father Daniel Edward Maher was born in Blairsville, Pennsylvania, on December 8, 1858. His parents – originally from Ireland but married in the United States – gave their new homeland a large and Christian family, half of whom dedicated themselves to God’s service; three of our confrere’s sisters became Sisters of Charity.

Young Daniel received a good, practical education in several Catholic schools, and at the age of fifteen or sixteen he secured a good job in the office of the Pennsylvania Railroad, known in the United States for its excellent management. He turned over to his mother all that he earned; and on Sundays helped his pastor in conducting a Sunday School in which he was soon right-hand man. At nineteen, he began to give Latin lessons in his spare time; and at twenty-one he entered St. Charles College, and five years later, St. Mary’s Seminary. After two years of Philosophy, he was employed as a teacher at St. Charles during the year 1886/87. Convinced from then on of his Sulpician vocation, he came to study Theology at Paris (1887-90). Ordained priest there, he went to spend two years at the Procure in Rome – where he took a Doctorate in Philosophy – and at length came back to finish his preparation by a year of Solitude. He was especially marked by exemplary conduct and great maturity of mind. Father Magnien said of him that early that he could be appointed then and there as head of a seminary.

On his return to America in the vacation period of 1893, he was named Professor of Philosophy at Boston; and without giving up that teaching post, he soon after became superior of the little Philosophy community. Three years later he was called to the same jobs – Professor and Superior of Philosophy – at Baltimore, jobs much larger than those at Boston. When, in 1901, Father Hogan’s death had left open the superiorship of Boston, Father Maher was appointed to it, and he kept the title up to his death; although from November, 1905, afflicted by an obscure illness which had long troubled him, he was forced to turn over to other hands the work to which he had dedicated himself so bravely and fruitfully.

It was in the running of the Boston seminary that Father Maher especially showed the great qualities of his mind, his heart, and his character, applying them to a work more extensive and more difficult than that he had so happily engaged in in the two seminaries of Philosophy.

Under a quite cold appearance he had, as the constancy and fervor of his striving after good indicated, a warm spirit. For the young men he had a heart generous, devout, and truly fatherly; there was never any doubt of that up to the end. But he had some very clear ideas about the importance of discipline in a major seminary, a very strong determination to maintain it, and the gift of enforcing it without recourse to any underhanded spying. In the respect and regard that could not be denied him, a certain fear was mixed in, abetted, perhaps, by a kind of stiffness which came from his temperament, from his education, and doubtless, too, from the latent illness whose seeds he bore within himself. One of the greatest sacrifices he made was bound to be that of a kind of popularity which he would have been able to acquire at the price of a softer and more lenient attitude. In time, however, he was better understood; and affection increased without his yielding on his principles:  in one of his last chats with one of his confreres, he expressed his pleasure in thinking that the family spirit might henceforth prevail in the seminary without discipline being negatively affected.

As regards intellectuality, Father Maher was especially remarkable for the clarity, the precision, and the solidity of his mind. He was an excellent teacher, and that praise is the first word which his memory often provokes in his old students. The same qualities were evident in his spiritual readings. When he devoted those readings to the explanation of the rule – which he presented in a contemporary mode – he took great care to show the eminently reasonable character of each of its articles and its harmony with the order and the spirit of the house as well as with the personal formation of the seminarians. When he went on to the rules of Christian and priestly living, he so methodically drew them from theological principles that it was hoped that before long he might publish a brochure on Christian and Priestly Life and Virtues; for these instructions seemed to constitute an outline for such a work. In developing these topics, he worked hard to bring everything into harmony with the present state of things and attitudes; he was fearful of compromising the authority of his teaching if he clothed it in the garments of another age. He was deeply imbued with the spirit of St. Sulpice, but he had so much made it his own that he knew how to express it in a thoroughly modern vocabulary.

A series of spiritual readings much appreciated by the students when he introduced it at the Boston seminary two years before his death was that which he devoted to Catechetics. He showed himself in this matter to be thoroughly cognizant of the Sulpician Method, and at the same time to be full of respect for that method whose importance and beauty he made clear with an enthusiasm which carried over into his hearers. In the vibrancy of his speaking might be heard, no doubt, an echo of memories from his youth when, by his zeal as catechist, he anticipated – though still a layman – the works of his vocation.

Father Maher’s work at Boston was not limited to the establishment of a discipline more exact and more firm than that which had prevailed before him; nor to the feeling communicated to the young men about the benefit they might draw for their spiritual and intellectual formation from that better order, from that more profound quiet; nor in their growing willingness to work hard through a sense of duty and faith. The fact is that, from all evidence, he introduced into the seminary some important improvements.