Adman's Church

Alfred Emanuel Smith, Associate Justice Pierce Butler of the U. S. Supreme Court, Lawyer Francis Patrick Garvan, the four U. S. Cardinals, ten archbishops and ten bishops were among the distinguished Catholics invited to attend the dedication last Sunday of a handsome church in the suburbs of Detroit. Those who accepted beheld a Norman stone edifice blessed by Detroit's Bishop Michael James Gallagher. What made this ceremony notable was that the church is one of the few parish churches in the U. S. maintained on a layman's estate, perhaps the only one in which lay Catholics may be buried. Its builders: Theodore Francis ("T. F.") MacManus & wife.

From the days of the Pope-Toledo and the Pope-Hartford, Theodore MacManus has been famed as an automotive adman. Born in Buffalo 60-odd years ago ("I have never bothered to look it up"), he has at one time or another written copy for practically every existent make of automobile, many a defunct one. Cadillac and Pontiac are now the chief accounts of MacManus, John & Adams Inc. "T. F." MacManus has never learned to drive a car.

A vigorously devout Catholic, Adman MacManus is a Knight of Malta, a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory, an honorary doctor from Notre Dame, Detroit and Marquette Universities. Practiced at writing books such as Men, Money & Motors and The Sword Arm of Business, he turned to Catholic apologetics in An Enemy Sowed Cockles. Sympathetic with the interest of Pope Pius XI in Chinese education, Layman MacManus helped found the Catholic University of Peiping. All this smoothed the way for a request he made of the Holy See five years ago. Of the six MacManus sons and daughters, two had died within two years: Hugo, 20, of pneumonia and Hubert, 24, of sarcoma. Mr. & Mrs. MacManus determined to build a church on their estate at Bloomfield Hills, bury their offspring therein.

Among rich Catholic laymen, private chapels are not unusual. John Jacob Raskob has one at Hartefield Manor in Maryland; devout Mrs. Nicholas Brady has chapels in her homes in Rome and Manhasset, Long Island. But according to Canon 1205, Section 2 of the Roman Catholic Church, only "popes, royal personages, cardinals, bishops and abbots'' may be buried inside a Catholic church. As his church began to rise, Layman MacManus asked, and got, permission in the form of a papal rescript granting him and his family the extraordinary right to be laid away in it. The MacManus church, called St. Hugo of the Hills, was there upon given the consecration necessary to hallow its ground. In its crypt were hollowed 18 vaults opposite a table altar at which, also by special dispensation, masses for the dead may be celebrated. There last week two bishops, some 50 priests and monsignori and 400 lay catholics attended a simple dedication service and Mass.

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