Remembering Fr. William "Emmett" Collins, C.Ss.R.
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December 1, 2022“Hell, why would you want to write about me?” That might have been the reaction of Father William Emmett Collins, C.Ss.R., to this account. Many Redemptorist students can say we have met people we’d describe as saints. Not the canonized, capital “S” kind but the day-to-day, small “s” saints who are prayerful, kind, generous, patient, God-centered. For us, such a person was Father Emmett Collins.
Born in Detroit on November 28, 1915, Emmett was one of four children of William Joseph Collins, Canadian-born and a Detroit policeman, and Laura Deneweth Collins. The Catholic family had Emmett baptized on December 12, 1915.
The couple’s only son spent all but grade one of his K-12 education in Catholic schools under the wings of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters, then the Brothers of Mary. His skills included writing, graphic arts, and love for the Church. His illustration of the wedding feast at Cana for a Catholic group helped prod him to seek a religious vocation. By his late teens he was attending Mass every Saturday in the Blessed Virgin’s honor and frequenting the Mother of Perpetual Help devotions, which helped him nurture thoughts of the priesthood.
In 1934, he enrolled at the Redemptorist minor seminary in Kirkwood, Missouri, St. Joseph’s Preparatory College. A long stretch of scrupulosity ensued, darkening his next several years. But on June 21, 1938, he began postulancy before receiving the Redemptorist habit on August 1, officially beginning the year of novitiate. While the angst accompanying his year of soul-searching kept him unsure of his call, he spoke several times with the revered novice master, Father John Zeller, C.Ss.R., who finally said to him. “Emmett, stop worrying. You will go right on through the seminary.” Emmett later said he decided to be a priest and never look back.
“I learned to pray” at the novitiate, Emmett said. He remembered how, as a little boy, he’d get cold at night, jump from his crib, and run to his mother, who would cradle him in her arms. He realized “God loves me the way my mom loved me.” While this was his constant image of God, he still had doubts about his vocation. While the prayerful Emmett pronounced his first vows on August 2, 1939, his anxious questions remained.
THE GREAT CROSS:
At Immaculate Conception Seminary in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, he found the studies easy and felt the worst of his scruples had passed. But in his second year at the seminary, the seizures returned. The doctor had no clear diagnosis, but some thought he might be epileptic. Under canon law, epilepsy forbade a man from becoming a priest unless the Vatican approved a rarely given dispensation.
In the early 1940s, a doctor said medical advances were promising, but the Provincial rejected Emmett for the priesthood. A second opinion was sought, tests were performed, seizures and short attention-loss episodes continued, and plans for Emmett changed.
The Provincial ultimately said Emmett should continue to renew his temporary vows the next three years before a final decision. No one wanted Frater Collins to leave the Redemptorists, but the prefect recommended Emmett be freed from the strain of the seminary for a while.
A new assignment took him to the finance office of the province at St. Alphonsus “Rock” Church. He got better, and doctors who examined him saw “no reason to apply the term epilepsy in this case.” But in April 1944, a canon lawyer said the convulsions were a problem requiring dispensation from the law. It was not granted, leading Emmett to a unique state as a permanent “cleric.”
He became a teacher at St. Joseph’s Preparatory College in Kirkwood. The next eight years of Frater Collins’ life were spent at the minor seminary and teaching. Meanwhile, Emmett continued to see several doctors. Finally, a doctor at Jewish Hospital in St. Louis determined his problem was an improperly functioning pancreas causing insulin shocks and periods of low blood sugar. The right medicine controlled the seizures, leading to dispensation from the Vatican in 1950. Emmett Collins’ “dark night” was over.
On June 7, 1952, Emmett was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Joseph Ritter in the seminary chapel at Kirkwood. This happy occasion was soon followed by the death of his mother and, in 1956, of his father. “My being able to offer Mass for my mother on the day of her death has made the whole long wait for ordination worthwhile,” Emmett said. He officiated at both funerals.
As his future unfolded, Emmett Collins concluded that future Redemptorists needed a solid education in the post-war world. This idea gave him the impetus to make this a crusade. He challenged rules and his leadership skills led to his appointment as academic dean at the Kirkwood seminary. In that role he demanded that new faculty members have at least a master’s degree in their fields.
Setting an example, Emmett earned a master’s in Latin and a minor in French. Later he earned a master’s and a doctorate in education. Simultaneously, new environs for the seminary were needed. The search ended in Wisconsin, with the new St. Joseph’s Preparatory College, the Redemptorist high school/junior college seminary, opening in Edgerton in 1959.
EDGERTON:
The seminary population was large and growing in the 1960s and 1970s, and Father Collins turned his attention to the college program. He began to agitate for the establishment of a separate, unified four-year college program that students would follow with graduate theology studies. Ultimately, his efforts led to the 1968 establishment of Holy Redeemer College in Waterford, Wisconsin. Academic Dean Emmett Collins would become president in 1970 and spend the rest of his active teaching years at the college until 1985.
Fathers Collins and myself, who succeeded Emmett as academic dean, worked actively to receive accreditation for the college. Through much work by the entire faculty, the college was fully accredited in 1977. Thus, at age sixty-two, Emmett had achieved the major task of his ministry of leading the educational development of the province’s seminary system of the province.
While teaching, administering, and dealing with lawsuits over roof issues, Father Emmett made time for the necessary task of raising money for the college. As Emmett took up more direct work in raising finances, he began with the establishment of the St. John Neumann Scholarship Program, which during his presidency raised a quarter of a million dollars in capital to provide annual support for seminarians. He also worked to establish the Redemptorist Alumni Association. The association continues to meet.
Beyond these notable accomplishments, Emmett constantly provided personal spiritual guidance and example to several generations of young men. No one can capture in words the gentle, witty, and wise ways this gentleman found to provide leadership in education and formation. His promotion of the role of education in the structure of the province was often not appreciated by confreres because it made demands on the resources of the province. Yet his efforts brought strength and foundation to the lives of hundreds of young Catholic men and gave the province a vigor many other religious communities have not experienced in recent times when vocations are no longer in plentiful supply.
At age sixty-five in 1980, Emmett felt he had given all he could as the chief administrator of a college started from scratch. He spent a year helping the province in New Zealand before returning in 1981 as president emeritus at Holy Redeemer College. He directed the Alumni Association, raised money, and helped plan and evaluate the college’s programs. He also devoted time to writing, counseling, and formulating a data bank of the men who had entered any of the Redemptorist seminaries from 1890 to 1991.
In his free time, Emmett took to gardening in some of the areas around the house. He also loved to bicycle through Lincoln Park and along Lake Michigan; he tried to get in six or seven miles of biking a day. In spite of Emmett’s efforts to remain healthy, in 1989 he was stricken with a heart attack. He was hospitalized and underwent heart surgeries that year and in 1991.
At St. John Neumann House in St. Louis in the early 1990s, he began serving as a guide to men seeking to join the Redemptorists. He provided encouragement for the men who were involved in directing the students and for those who were working in the vocation office.
Everyone who knew him can remember rolling in laughter at his sharp wit or smiling over the mix-ups he was prone to. A confrere at Neumann House remarked: “He showed how life in the Congregation could mellow a man into a true gentleman and the kind of person we would all want to become.” Emmett always kept his mind sharp by study and reading. As one confrere remarked, “there was something of John Henry Newman about him.”
Father Collins continued this fulfilling work until 2004, when, at eighty-nine, his physical health required him to relocate to the St. Clement’s Health Center in Liguori, Missouri.
Emmett, whose mind remained sharp, often referred to St. Clement’s as “the vestibule of heaven.” By 2007, he needed to use a walker and then a wheelchair, which began to give him a sense of isolation. He coped with jigsaw puzzles or simply holding someone’s hand.
By suppertime on August 4, 2011, he developed serious stomach pains and soon dropped into semiconsciousness. By 10 AM on August 5, my friend Emmett drifted into the arms of God. He is a saint, small “s,” in the eyes of many, including me.
He was an unforgettable memory in the lives of too many people to count, and he will always be missed. So, hell, Emmett, that’s why we wanted to write about you!(Adapted from the original article by Fr. Fenili.)
