City Safari: The Cephalophore Society And Freedom Of Expression Saint Denis the Headless Saint, Paris. Thu, Oct 15, 2020 By Thom Nickels Contributing Editor
Experiencing high Catholic culture in the ‘tall tree’ section of the city’s Overbrook neighborhood: what could go wrong? For me, it was navigating the neighborhood and locating the monastery where I was supposed to go. The monastery event included a Vesper service and a gathering with serious (and mostly) conservative Catholic men who would gather around a bonfire while enjoying drinks and snacks. The bonfire was situated under a large white rock which acted as a speaker’s platform. Those who wished to say something merely had to mount the rock and speak. The event was sponsored by The Order of Malta, or The Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a lay religious Order and one of the oldest institutions of Western and Christian civilization.
I rarely get to the city’s Overbrook section. More often than not I pass through this neighborhood while on my way to the Main Line, especially when taking the regional rail line once known as the Paoli Local. The event was a celebration of the victory at Lepanto, which saved Europe from the Ottoman Turks. On October 7, 1571, a fleet of ships from Naples, Venice Genoa and the Papacy (called ‘The Holy League’) battled with a fleet of the Ottoman Turks in the Gulf of Patras in western Greece. While the Turks outnumbered the ‘The Holy League,’ the latter had superior firepower which thwarted the Ottomans from taking control of the Mediterranean. Many of the men at the event belonged to a newly formed organization called the Cephalophore Society, founded by attorney David Ermine. A cephalophore is a martyred saint generally depicted in art and sculpture as holding his own severed head. To become a member of the Cephalophore Society one merely has to show up for meetings and events. There’s no initiation ceremony, no dues, no secret oaths or insignias. Finding Visitation monastery, a community of cloistered nuns (under strict papal enclosure) located on Overbrook Avenue, was no small task.
Overbook Avenue is a grand and winding thoroughfare that comes to multiple dead ends only to pick up again after these bizarre cut offs. It took me an hour to find the small hidden monastery. During my walk-a-thon I wandered near the Orthodox community of Talmud Yesiva of Pennsylvania and asked a mother and son out for an evening walk if I was going in the right direction. Prior to meeting these two, nobody on the street seemed to know where Overbook Avenue was. When I finally hit on the correct address, it turned out to be the Baiva Muhainaddean Fellowship, a mosque and not a monastery, which struck me as highly ironic given the celebration I was about to attend. The monastery, as it turns out, was located directly across the street from the mosque but to get to it you had to enter a small wooden gated entrance and then pass a lighted guard house. The dark gravel path to the monastery had a ‘country- monastic’ look. I walked on the path until I spotted a bonfire, entered another gate and was met by a caretaker who told me that the guests were all up at the little chapel, "way up the path amidst the great trees, you can’t miss it.”
The great October night was an inducement to walking. When I spotted the guests, some twenty in all, I noticed that everyone was in a tie and jacket though some wore sweaters and ties. This was no sloppy sweat suit gathering. The friendly assembly greeted me, and soon I was in the quaint Visitation convent chapel for the Vesper service. A priest, ordained just weeks before, officiated. These were G.K. Chesterton style Catholic men, readers of Hilaire Belloc and Thomas Aquinas. I met a retired Army Major, several attorneys, a graphic artist and a sculptor of chandeliers. My host for the evening (the person who invited me) was Steven J. Schloeder, PhD AIA, with Liturgical Environs PC, or Specialists in Catholic Architecture. The men belonged to different Philadelphia Catholic parishes, like Our Lady of Lourdes in Overbrook, or St Mary in Conshohocken an FSSP parish where only the Traditional Latin Mass is said. Conversation, fueled by the best bourbon, Scotch and varieties of beer and wine, swirled around the crisis in the Catholic Church, from the Amazon Synod (and the Pachamama debacle), to the Catholic Eastern Rites vs Orthodoxy (here, I was of some use) and the milquetoast Catholicism of Mr. Biden and Ms. Pelosi. There was also some robust commentary devoted to the November elections
There was lots of laughter and camaraderie. Cephalophore Society’s founder, Mr. Ermine, was decked out in his best Anglo-Roman Catholic bow tie (his description) as two of his sons, dressed like Edwardian princes, sat near the bonfire while a member mounted the rock and recited G.K. Chesterton’s poem, Lepanto,by memory. And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross, The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun. I sat on a lawn chair beside the newly ordained priest and the graphic designer, listening to Chesterton’s words while looking up at the swaying-in-the-wind treetops. Another man mounted the rock and told the story of a woman he fell in love with who ended the relationship in order to become a nun. The bonfire crackled and snapped, the smells encapsulating the essence of October. At the makeshift bar, David Erimine showed me his rosary, which he had draped over his left hand. Near the bonfire was a very old looking wooden statue of the Virgin Mary framed inside a lattice container.
When the gathering was over, my problem was how to get back to Center City. That was not a problem for long because my gracious host saved the day when he introduced me to the sculptor, Adam Wallacavage, who specializes in handmade octopus chandeliers, and who kindly offered me a ride home. Wallacavage was the subject of an extensive feature in the March 2020 edition of The New York Times Stylemagazine. Wallacavage, who grew up in a conservative Catholic family, agreed with me that the evening had been fascinating on many levels. The free-form, relaxed mood of the gathering was one in which one could say anything without the fear of censorship or disapproval. Freedom of expression, being a major tenet of conservatism.
