News – Fall 2009

In October, Michael A. Diebold gave us 26 cassette audio tapes containing interviews he conducted with teaching priests of the Archdiocese of Louisville, and transcriptions of the interviews. Sister Rose Marie Mantin, O.P., donated a collection of prayer books, missals, and hymnals used by the Dominican Sisters of Grand Rapids, Michigan, before the Second Vatican Council.  The Notre Dame Center for Liturgy sent papers of Rev. Gerald Shirilla, consisting of research files having to do with the Catholic Church and its liturgy: collected material, articles, note cards, and drafts of chapters of his dissertation, amounting to approximately three linear feet.

In November, Sister Dorothy Ann Blatnica, S.C., sent 2.5 linear feet of research material gathered for her doctoral dissertation, “In Those Days”: African American Catholics in Cleveland, 1922-1961 (Case Western Reserve University, 1992), published as At the altar of their God: African American Catholics in Cleveland, 1922-1961 (New York: Garland, 1995). This collection consists of audio tapes and transcriptions of interviews; photocopies of historical documents including correspondence, reports, and newspaper clippings; photographs; releases signed by subjects of interviews; the prospectus for her dissertation, with critiques; and a copy of the dissertation itself.

In November and December, Peter Denio sent records (1983-2009) of the National Pastoral Life Center amounting to some 180 linear feet; including general office files, church magazine files, development files, pastoral services files, Roundtable files (The Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors), New Pastors’ Workshop files, Executive Director files, and files of NPLC founder and director Msgr. Philip J. Murnion, with photo albums, videos, and other audio-visual material; and some 50,000 computer files amounting to 33 gigabytes of digital data.