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15 n adieu, texas i n the summer of 1858, Jean-Marie Odin had no way of knowing that within just a little more than two years he would have departed his adopted Texas to head up the Archdiocese of New Orleans, an assignment that was to consume the remaining nine years of his earthly life. But the Frenchman’s final thirty months as bishop of Galveston marked the apex of that diocese’s early ecclesiastical development. The cornerstone of this was Odin’s convening of the see’s first diocesan synod in 1858. With the calling of the synod the future growth of the church in the Lone Star State could be envisioned more clearly. In terms of rules, organization, and structure, the synod served as a foundation for both the immediate and future of Catholic Texas. As the Lone Star State was growing in population and becoming ever more complex demographically , a more complex development of the institutional church would be needed. Given the frontier character that in many ways still marked Texas, missioning would remain an urgency for the clergy and nuns of the diocese. The fathers of the synod fully recognized this. The synod also would prove significant to future generations of Catholics in their appreciation of Bishop Jean-Marie Odin as the chief architect of the laying of a base for the Catholic Church in Texas during the mid-to-latter half of the nineteenth century.The synod reflected that under Odin’s leadership the Catholic face of Texas had matured in a wondrous manner since his arrival in the land eighteen years earlier. The synod of 1858 has survived to the present day as a visible monument to this most important aspect of Odin’s contribution to the Catholic narrative of Texas. On the third Sunday after Pentecost of 1858, several priests from throughout the diocese gathered in Saint Mary’s Cathedral for a Solemn Pontifical Mass, with their bishop as celebrant, opening the synod. It was June 13, a warm but comfortable day in a city known for usually being cooler than most of the rest of Texas during the summer.1 Odin, in his capacity as ordinary bishop, presided as the sole lawgiver of the diocese. The synod enacted decrees and statutes | 148 | c h a p t e r 1 5 that were to help form the character and structure of the Galveston diocese for decades to come. These included prescriptions that dealt with the erection of parishes, the clarification of rules for the clergy and nuns, the setting out of budgetary principles, and the establishment of guidelines for Catholic life in general throughout the diocese, even among laypeople. These enactments were formed in harmony with the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545–63) and the seven Provincial Councils and one Plenary Council of Baltimore, as well as those of the First Provincial Council of New Orleans. But they definitely bore the stamp of a Bishop Odin who by that time in his life had become known as a disciplined ecclesiastic. Included in the list of prescriptions appeared one “to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially under the title of The Immaculate Conception.”2 The opening session gave way the next day, Monday, June 14, to the beginning of a three-day retreat for the attending priests, one that Father Michael McDonnell conducted. On the seventeenth, the synod returned to its public and private sessions and continued through the next four days. It concluded with another Solemn Pontifical Mass and a lengthy public session on Sunday, June 20.The topics covered in the decrees of the synod were broad in scope but stated with precision. Specifically, they named diocesan consultors and vicechancellors , established norms for the formation of parishes, set rules for diocesan and seminary funding, defined clerical dress and customs, outlined the requirements for the erection of churches and the keeping of clerical records, made recommendations for the education of youths and the administration of the sacraments, and introduced into the diocese the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The final statute mandated that the synodal decisions were to become effective as soon as all of the diocese’s missionaries had received them.3 the Waning of his labors in texas, 1858–60 With the drawing to a close of the synod, Bishop Odin began preparing for his annual pastoral visit among the Catholics of his...

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