MENASHA — St. Mary Catholic Church has been a fixture in Menasha since 1867 when 34 German families belonging to St. Charles Borromeo Parish on Doty Island formed a new parish “downtown.”
A year later, St. Mary Parish opened one of the first Catholic schools in the Diocese of Green Bay, with its 40 students studying the German language in the mornings and English in the afternoons.
On Ash Wednesday, Feb. 12, 1883, the church caught fire during Mass and burned to the ground. A significantly larger structure, with a basement and stone foundation, replaced the original wooden church, and still stands on that spot today at 528 Second St.
Through the decades, St. Mary Church has gone through a series of renovations, with its walls and ceilings repainted as a refl section of the trends at those given times. When Fr. Michael Lightner was assigned in 2021 as administrator of St. Mary and its sister parish of St. John the Baptist, he said he realized that it was time for interior renovations once again at the St. Mary site.
“There was some cracking on the wall and some of the plaster needed to be repaired. If we did that work, we’d have to paint the whole place,” Fr. Lightner recalled.
“I pulled together a committee of artists and people who know the artist. I have a BFA (bachelor of fine arts), so I’m always into the art aspect of faith, because it’s the first teacher of our children when they come into the church. They see an image, and ask, ‘Who’s that?’”
Consecrated in 1884 as St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception, the church is renowned for its design by Adolphus Druiding, who was a proponent of German-style Gothic revival churches. It is also renowned for its stained-glass windows and its collection of saints’ relics, statues and paintings.
The unified Gothic wooden interior of the church was designed and built by William Laemmrich, a local Lutheran carpenter. He crafted three altars, the communion rail, an altar canopy (baldachin), ambo, the baptismal font and frames for the Stations of the Cross — each creation a piece of fine art itself.
Because the back altars hadn’t been oiled since the 1960s, Fr. Lightner suggested a major overhaul of the church interior to bring it back to its Gothic revival glory.
“I pitched the deep midnight-blue ceiling,” he said. “Once the committee saw the rendering from our contractor, Conrad Schmitt Studios in Milwaukee, they were like, ‘Wow, that’s striking.’ The committee got on board with it and we pushed forward (rich) primary colors — yellow, blue and red.”
A Renaissance Fund campaign was initiated. Through the generosity of the St. Mary community, enough was raised to cover the cost of restoring the altars and painting the sanctuary and the side altars’ wall in 2022.
“There’s an emotional response when people see it,” Fr. Lightner said.
“The whole idea of a Gothic church is it’s a microcosm of heaven and earth. It’s an ordered creation,” said parishioner Bill Walsh, a member of the committee. “Oftentimes, it’s busy, with lots of elements, but the elements are very ordered because they’re attempting to demonstrate the intelligence behind the universe. There are really intricate patterns, repeated motifs. That’s how this church was originally.”
The paint colors for the latest renovation were inspired by two historical churches in Paris, Walsh added. “We have almost that jewel-blue ceiling with the gold stars. Father said, ‘Let’s make it blue like Saint-Chappelle and Notre Dame Cathedral.’”
Pamphlets titled “Behold Thy Mother: Our Vision to Restore St. Mary Catholic Church to Glorify our Lord and His Mother,” are available. It depicts what the interior of the church will look like after renovations are complete.
In order to continue this project, a considerable amount of funding needs to be raised, said Fr. Lightner.
“Now it’s getting it into different venues,” he added, “the larger St. Mary’s community, alumni, people who are connected to the St. Mary’s school system, or anyone in general who’d like to buy a memorial star for their loved ones. We daily pray for our benefactors, alive or deceased.”
Stars will be painted on the ceiling of the nave — each in honor or memorial of someone. They will be digitally mapped, so donors can find theirs online.
In addition, there will be numerous other decorative elements throughout the sanctuary and nave available at varying price points for donors select.
Those include two human-sized paintings of angels in the false windows inside the sanctuary arch, the vine-and-rose motifs surrounding the arches over the nave windows, and roundels depicting Our Lady’s apparitions to visionaries around the world at the peak of each arch.
If possible, Fr. Lightner would also like to renovate the choir loft and narthex.
“Our narthex is going to become our baptistry,” he explained. “It has vaulted ceilings, but they’re close to the person when they’re being baptized. I want them to look up and see John the Baptist baptizing Jesus and these beautiful images. We want to go out to local artists in the community (for) renderings. Then it becomes the church of the artists, this church of God, this beauty that can speak to people in an emotional way and an intellectual way as well.”
Ideally, he said, the next phase of the project will begin in fall 2023. If the responses thus far from visitors and parishioners are any indication, Catholics far and near are embracing the renovation of this historic church.
“There’s an emotional response from people when they walk in,” Fr. Lightner said. “They gasp and say, ‘Wow, this is beautiful.’ That emotion allows God to speak (to) and move the person with beauty because he is the true and the beautiful. There’s so much more to this space that we can do, we just need the generosity of people to do it.”