As Tenacious as the Wild Honeysuckle ...
by: Jon Crane

Saturday Ramblins, Vol. 1, No. 15 (August 22, 1998)

Every Sunday morning, the small Catholic community of Louisville, Mississippi, a town located in the east central part of the state, makes its way to a little church building on Spring Street. This wasn't the original site of the church, founded in 1866, the first year of Reconstruction after the War Between the States. It's people, though, like the wild Mississippi honeysuckle vine, have been tenacious in keeping the spirit of the parish alive and growing, both having deep roots in the Southern soil.

Construction of the first chapel began in 1871, by a Fr. John B. Mouton of Columbus, Mississippi, on North Columbus Street at a cost of $500. Money problems delayed it's construction and postponed its completion until 1875. The first resident pastor was a priest by the name of Fr. Julius Van Houver. Fr. Van Houver's tenure as the head of Sacred Heart's people lasted until 1887, when he transferred to a parish in Brookhaven, Mississippi. It would be many years before the little church would have a permanent pastor again.

By the turn of the century, the chapel itself was falling into ruins as wild honeysuckle vines took over the cemetery adjacent to it, a spot known to locals as "Catholic Hollow." The congregation had decreased as well, and by 1917 only three members of the parish remained. During the same year, what remained of the original chapel was destroyed in a storm. The story of this little Catholic community could well have ended here, but God had already planted the seeds of the modern parish and was nurturing them.

Ironically, it was a young Methodist woman whom God used to rebuild the Catholic community in Louisville. In the early 1940s this woman lay dying of cancer. She had educated herself in the ways and beliefs of Catholicism by listening to Bishop Fulton J. Sheen on the radio and reading The Baltimore Catechism. As she neared death, she pleaded with relatives to fetch her a priest so that she might convert.

At the family's request, one Fr. Raphael Toner, a priest from Tucker, Mississippi, came to Louisville and met with the dying woman. Impressed with her faith and her knowledge of Catholicism, he agreed to baptize her. So impressed was Fr. Toner that someone could convert herself in this sleepy little Southern town that he decided it needed a priest. After all, he reasoned, if people came to the Catholic religion in the absence of a church, what would happen with an active ministry?

For the next couple of years, Sunday Mass was celebrated in the home of one of the local families, by a visiting priest, before a congregation of three women and their children. Following the end of World War II, the tiny congregation had grown so large that the Mass was moved to the town's community center.

Late in 1945, the diocese of Jackson purchased two acres of land on Spring Street, northwest of the town's center, and began construction on the modern chapel. The women of the parish helped finance the building by holding sidewalk sales of cakes and other projects. March 1947 saw the dedication of the new home of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church. It has been the gathering place of the small community of faith ever since.

The last half-century has seen the size of the congregation ebb and flow with the ups and downs of the local economy. In spite of this and despite the fact that it almost disappeared in the early 1900s, this little church in the heart of the South has held on and survived as tenaciously as — well — as tenaciously as the wild Mississippi honeysuckle vine.

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