Mary Anne Zak
Two Catholic Churches emerged in Suffield during the past 100 plus years. Officially named Sacred Heart and St. Joseph, they were unofficially called the Irish church and the Polish church. Both were Roman Catholic.
Sacred Heart was a parish based on population. In late 19th century Suffield, an Irish- Catholic population needed sacramental care. The only immigrants who shared the language of the general population, the Irish spoke English.
The next incoming religious population spoke Polish. The Polish needed pastoral care in Polish and they struggled to acquire it. Language figured largely in the struggle. Early Catholic clergy, predominantly Irish, did not speak Polish and did not know Poland’s history.
Poland had been Europe’s battleground for centuries. It had remained a feudal culture after three neighboring nationalities removed it from the map of Europe. Many of its people were poor, struggling to earn a living. To escape hardships, poverty, and conscription by foreign nations, many Polish came to the United States. They intended to return to Poland when it returned to the map of Europe.
The Polish language was different and so were Polish customs, dress, and behaviors. Tensions arose between the Irish and the Polish, and various social groups. Discrimination often developed in contradiction of religious principles.
Suffield’s Polish community has done what other ethnic communities have done throughout the United States. They found home and the spirit of their heritage in their church. They have honored and retained fond respect for the home of their ancestors.
Suffield’s ethnic parish felt sadness, loss and anger on learning that St. Joseph’s Church would be closed, their membership transferred. It was a century ago last year that the parish celebrated its first Mass in a converted barn. Sixty-five years have passed since St. Joseph’s built its new church in a proud joining with traditional aspects of New England architecture.
Like most changes, the change for St. Joseph’s, Suffield’s Polish church, will be painful.