The ongoing journey started by three Norbertine priests who came to the United States from Europe in 1893

First a Kitchen Table, Then a Community

by Rob Kaiser

The story of the Norbertine order in the United States starts with a stern-looking immigrant priest named Bernard Pennings teaching students Latin around a kitchen table in Wisconsin.

Pennings came to the United States when a Wisconsin bishop wrote to Berne Abbey, in Holland, asking for help with non-English-speaking students; Pennings and two other Walloon-speaking priests arrived at the Diocese of Green Bay in 1893 and began ministering to Belgian immigrants. 

Pennings, a frugal man who liked a good cigar, wasn’t the first Norbertine in America; holding that distinction were men such as the Rev. Adalbert Inama of Austria’s Wilten Abbey, a missionary priest who died in 1879, and the Austrian the Rev. Maximilian Gaertner, who arrived in Wisconsin in 1846 and remained until 1858. But Pennings’ was the only U.S. mission that endured. He established high schools, founded the priory in De Pere, Wis., that would become St. Norbert Abbey – the first Norbertine Abbey in the new world – and, in 1925, became the abbey’s first abbot. Pennings also founded Santa Maria de la Vid Abbey, in Albuquerque, N.M., and Immaculate Conception Priory (Bayview), in Middletown, Del. And he established St. Norbert College, the only Norbertine institution of higher education in the world, which in turn founded Daylesford Abbey, in Paoli, Pa.

“He believed in education, not only for the students of St. Norbert College but also for the young Norbertines whom he sent off one-by-one to complete their doctorates – not only in theology but also in other subject areas,” says Rosemary Sands, director of the Center for Norbertine Studies at St. Norbert College.

And yet, this year, as Norbertines around the world celebrate the order’s 900th anniversary with an ongoing jubilee that began on the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 29, 2020, and culminates on Christmas Day 2021, Pennings’ legacy in this country remains a well-kept secret. The Norbertine order is better-known in Europe; Norbert of Xanten founded it, in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s relatively low profile in the United States is at least partly because Norbertine vows are stationary to one house, not missionary. “Localitas” and “stabilitas,” which are about committing to one place for life and being of service to the local bishop and community, are important Norbertine principles, says Father Andrew Ciferni of Daylesford. “We didn’t have this strong monastic life to offer like the Benedictines and weren’t a purely active community like the Jesuits or Redemptorists. We were neither fish nor fowl. We were new on the scene, there was a lot of competition, and we weren’t well-known historically.”

The Norbertines had a much bigger footprint in Europe, especially Central and Northern Europe, Sands says. Until the French Revolution, there were 92 Norbertine abbeys in France, she says. In comparison, the United States has only four abbeys and a single priory.

“Throughout the world, Norbertines make a commitment to serve the needs of the local community in which they have settled,” Sands says. Pennings founded St. Norbert College in 1898, with the aim of training young men for the priesthood. With localitas in mind, Pennings realized that what the Green Bay community needed was a place for all young men to be educated, and not just those planning to become priests. The curriculum was expanded to include business courses, and the student body grew exponentially. The college offered both high-school and college courses, Sands says.

Pennings’s legacy in the United States, says Ciferni, is informed by what he saw before emigrating: private preparatory schools for seminaries that cropped up in the wake of the 1545–1563 Council of Trent – the 19th ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. Pennings attended one such school, in his hometown of Gemert. He saw the schools as seedbeds for vocations, Ciferni says.

In 1886, Berne Abbey decided to start its own Latin school, and Norbertines for the first time got into mission work. Pennings volunteered to go the United States. In 1898, he started teaching Latin – the beginning of a minor seminary for men to become priests. That same year, he founded St. Norbert College, adding a fully developed business curriculum by 1902. 

In 1932, Pennings sent a handful of Norbertines to open Archmere Academy, a college preparatory school for boys in Claymont, Del., which now counts among its alumni President Joe Biden and his children. Two years later, in 1934, the Norbertines were asked to open an archdiocesan high school for boys in South Philadelphia. First called Southeast Catholic, the school later was renamed St. John Neumann High School.

In 1941, the bishop of the Green Bay diocese asked the Norbertines to be founding educators at the new Central Catholic High School in downtown Green Bay, Wis. In due course, because of size limitations, the Norbertines decided to build a new school on the west side of Green Bay, and called it Our Lady of Prémontré. That school opened in 1955. In 1959, St. Norbert High School moved to a new location and was renamed Abbot Pennings High School. 

Responding to the vocations coming especially from these two schools, the community started a novitiate-seminary in 1954 at the Cassatt Estate at Daylesford. In 1956, the community was further invited to open and staff the newly founded St. Norbert Parish, in Paoli, Pa. In 1963, the Norbertine community moved from the Cassatt Estate to Pinebrook, its present site, an 88-acre farm in Paoli. The abbey church and residence buildings were completed in 1966. The abbey church was blessed on August 15, 1967 and dedicated to Our Lady of the Assumption.

In 1990, the two Green Bay Norbertine high schools merged with the only Catholic high school for girls (not run by the Norbertines) to form a new school, Notre Dame de la Baie Academy. Notre Dame still counts on Norbertine involvement as staff, faculty, or board of trustee members.

Not only was the Norbertine order involved in educating students, they also saw the need to educate parochial school teachers, who at that time were primarily nuns. In 1934 a summer school for sisters was established on the St. Norbert College campus. 

“There is a desire within the Norbertine community to plant deep roots in the local community and to grow with and among our neighbors,” says Father James Neilson of St. Norbert Abbey.

“To this end, we find our essential identity woven into the fabric of the local community from one generation to the next. We are all very grateful to be living in one accord with our families, friends and neighbors in our beloved hometown of De Pere.”

Excerpt from a Letter Home to His Family Written by Bernard Pennings
(Written during a visit to New York)

November 16, 1893:
“The general impression we have gotten so far is way beyond our expectations.
I don't think they were exaggerating when we heard strange tales about
America in Holland. It is beautiful here, colossal, and it is unbelievably busy.

“No one troubles anyone else, everybody goes his own way; or rather every-
one takes the tram and rides. The most dignified gentlemen and ladies sit next
to a working man carrying a saw and a plane; always and everywhere the fare
is five cents (that is, 12½ guilder cents) whether you travel for five minutes
or two hours.

“This evening we rode a train through the city, from one end to the other.
It was unbelievably crowded. Between 5 and 7 there is a long tram leaving
every minute in opposite directions and every coach, each with a capacity of
100 or more passengers, was so crowded, that many people had to stand. Who
would believe it; but that also costs only 5 cents. [On the street] the traffic
of wagons and carts is so great that two rows are constantly forming in a kind
of procession. It is possible to cross the street only when the policeman halts
the procession of wagons from time to time. No drayman will venture to keep
on riding then.

“Without intending it, I have gone into details, don't forget that right here
we are at the busiest spot in America. How totally different our own regions
will look. It just would not have been right to travel farther without having
seen something at least. About our region later.

“Most cordial greetings Mother, Jana, Johan,

“also to family and friends

“Affectionately yours,

“H. Pennings”

From Letters Written in Good Faith: The Early Years of the Dutch Norbertines in Wisconsin by Walter
Lagerwey, Alt Publishing Co.; 1st edition (1996)

Feb. 3, 2021