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and the parents had begun to grumble, he wrote, "Of all the persons I have met in Galveston, none has manifested genuine satisfaction with the College." It was the college department with which all were dissatisfied. 11 Bishop de Mazenod assured Bishop Odin that the missionaries of Mary Immaculate were not dissatisfied with the work in general, but that the teaching of laymen was foreign to their institute. "To teach ordinary classes in such a school, there is no need to employ Priests, where zeal could be better used for the service of souls, in a country where there is a lack of laborers in the Lord's Vineyard. A religious congregation of Teaching Brothers would suffice." Pursuing the same thought, he declared, "the education, even of Seminarians, is but a secondary end of the Insti- tute of the Oblates ... and the education of laymen in the sciences is totally foreign to them." He was willing for one or two priests to continue in the college for the religious service of the house and the "higher direc- tion of the establishment, if the administration and teaching was placed in the hands of some community of teaching Brothers. Bishop de Mazenod concluded his letter with these words: "In order to give you proof of our good will, I consent to leave provisionally (one year) two of our Fathers in the College, one to be specially in charge of that work, the other to help him and at the same time be at your disposal for divers other occupations you could give [him] in and around Galveston." The other Oblates in Galveston were to join their confrers in Brownsville to strengthen that community and enable the missionaries of the Rio Grande to expand their apostolic work. The saintly Bishop of Marseilles sympa- thized with the Missionary Bishop of Texas. He understood how Bishop Odin had set his heart on St. Mary's Seminary-College ·and how much it would grieve him to see the Oblate Fathers give up its direction. De Mazenod asked for no compensation for the labor of his zealous Fathers. "The sums we have obtained from the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and placed in the building of the College," we give to you, he said. 11 St. Mary's Seminary-College under elze Franciscans. St. Mary's faced a crisis as the year 1857 neared its end. Bishop Odin has no choice but to accept his college back and put it in charge of some other Order of Priests or Brothers, or close it. He was determined to keep it going. He believed firmly that the seminary was essential and that the college 17 Doyon, op. cit., 88; Parisot, Reminiscences, 37; Notes for Oblate History, 2 I. 11Bishop de Mazenod to Bishop Odin, June 20, 1857; see also De Mazenod to Father A. Gaudet, June 26, 1857. Both in Arcl1ives of tire Provincial House, San Antonio, Texas.
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