Lesser Known Religious Orders: Glenmary Home Missioners

Continuing my series on lesser known religious orders in the Catholic Church, I thought I would do one closer to my heart: the Glenmary Home Missioners. If you have never lived in either the American South or in rural areas in the US in general, you have probably never heard of this group. To be honest, I had never heard of them until they started a mission in the county seat of my home county in rural East Tennessee many years ago. 

By the time the Glenmarians, as they are called, started a little Catholic mission near my home town, I had already moved away from home. In fact, I may have been out in Nebraska and in the Episcopal church by the time this particular mission started. But, after becoming Catholic, when I would go down to visit my parents in Tennessee, I would need somewhere to go to church on Sunday. Turns out the nearest one to my parents' home was in Maynardville, Tennessee. Maynardville was on the other side of the mountain from the home I grew up in. Imagine my surprise when upon searching for Catholic churches that one popped up near there. 

At the time about 15 years ago now, the parish was not even a parish. It was a Glenmary mission that was literally in a store front. My wife and I walked in for Mass, and it was truly a delight. The wonderful priest pounced on us after church. I think he was morbidly curious how this couple from Nebraska ended up at his little mission in the Tennessee sticks. So, we got the full story of how this little mission called St. Teresa of Calcutta got started, and the story is really neat. 

The Glenmarians specialize in starting new churches primary in rural and poor areas, particularly in the American South. You have to keep in mind that particularly in the Bible belt, the Catholic presence historically has been virtually non-existent. The hostility to anything Catholic is extreme. The Glenmarians to their credit do an incredible amount of research before committing to starting a church plant. They study the area, the needs, feasability studies, and all that often for many months...fly by night church plants, they are not. The research pays off because their model for church planting is extremely effective, as they have never had a mission fail. In fact, many eventually become so large they become full parishes and are handed over to the local Diocese. 

The parish in Maynardville was started in a covert way due to the outright distrust of all things Catholic. There is a large Hispanic population who work the local tomato fields. Under the guise of ministering to the small Hispanic community, the Glenmarians started a mission for Spanish speakers so as not to upset the local Protestant church communities. This is where the magic begins. To grow the parish, the local Glenmarian pastor had a very simple idea. He took bags of groceries into the local trailer parks and just gave people groceries. The economy in rural Appalachia is very depressed and largely has been for decades. If you factor out the people at the courthouse and the one medical clinic, those are the only people in the whole county that have any advanced degrees. Very few have more than a high school education. If you want a job in my home county, your options are the 3 M's: Moonshine, Motors, or Mines. You either run whiskey, you become a car mechanic, or you go into the limestone mines. Poverty is just a fact of life for virtually everyone, so someone going into trailer parks and offering free groceries to the people society refers to as "white trash" and saying they are not necessarily to blame for their poverty is a very powerful counter-cultural witness in a world where prosperity Gospel charlatans and/or fire and brimstone preachers are everywhere. 

Over the next 15 years, this priest started a second Mass for English speakers. Eventually, the mission became a parish made up almost entirely of adult converts! The mission grew so large that they were able to purchase land that used to belong to, of all people, the local now closed Klan lodge. (I'm quite serious...I remember it still functioned when I was a kid well into the 80s. Still marched in parades with hoods, the whole smash.)  They built a new church and became a parish in the Diocese of Knoxville in 2020. The new church building opened right in the middle of Covid.

While I was never a member of this parish, I feel like St. Teresa of Calcutta is my home away from home when I go back to visit my folks. I am amazed at how thrived a Catholic parish it has become. The first Mass that was said when the Mission started was, in fact, the first Catholic Mass in Union County since the Confederate army on leaving the battle of Knoxville stopped on a Sunday morning and the Catholic Chaplain in Longstreet's army said Mass for the Catholic Confederates. (General Longstreet became Catholic later in his life.) 

The Glenmarians currently have missions across the South. They are focused currently in places like Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, but have created parishes from Texas to Ohio. They minister to the poor and neglected, largely in rural Appalachia. Having grown up in Appalachia, I fully support their mission. They are good people, bringing the Catholic vision of human dignity to the poor in the rural American South.