Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary - Late 1950s To 1970s

Late 1950s To 1970s

Before Cardinal Stritch could complete the plan for the second Quigley, he died in Rome on 27 May 1958. At the direction of his successor, Cardinal Albert Gregory Meyer, a former seminary rector and Milwaukee archbishop named archbishop of Chicago on 19 September 1958, the seminary built a new high school, Quigley Preparatory Seminary South, at 77th Street and Western Avenue, which opened in 1961, with Msgr. Howard named as its first rector. The original Quigley classes of 1960 and 1961 graduated in Spring, 1961, with the new Chicago college seminary, later to be called Niles College, opening that Fall.

Cardinal Meyer dedicated the Quigley South Chapel of the Sacred Heart (so named to hearken to the original Chicago minor seminary, Cathedral College of the Sacred Heart), its 40-acre (16 ha) campus, and new facilities for its 869 students on 13 September 1962. For a short period in the early 1960s, both Quigley campuses held joint events, including graduations, in order to instill among the students the spirit of sharing one school.

Msgr. John P. O'Donnell (Q' 41) was named rector of the newly named Quigley Preparatory Seminary North at the original Chestnut Street location in 1961. Msgr. O'Donnell encouraged his faculty to seek degrees from many universities, and he himself earned a PhD from Loyola University and a master's degree from the University of Notre Dame, in addition to earlier master's and licentiate degrees from St. Mary of the Lake Seminary. Cardinal Meyer continued the practice of appointing priests to Quigley on the theory that "young seminarians needed a good number of priest-models to make an intelligent decision about their vocations." In 1965, Msgr. O'Donnell also led Quigley North in earning accreditation from the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and took steps to make Advanced Placement classes available for students, an action mirrored at Quigley South, the year that Archbishop John Patrick Cody was named to succeed Cardinal Meyer, who had succumbed to cancer on 9 April. Quigley North faced for the first time a problem of declining enrollment, seeing its freshman class decline from 256 in 1962 to 130 in 1967. Declining enrollments brought both Quigley seminaries to consider further changes.

In 1966, Cardinal Cody instituted a Chicago seminary system-wide change abolishing the Thursday day off and Saturday school day, which had for decades separated Chicago seminarians and seminary faculty from participating in Saturday social activities, while Quigley faculty voted to alter their own dress code requiring a cassock, in place of other clerical attire. Seminary policies prohibiting seminarian participation in co-educational activities and organizations were also revised in that same year. In 1968, dress codes for both Quigley seminaries requiring a suit coat and tie for students were revised to fit the seasons of the year, and the Quigley seminaries made the necessary arrangements so that Quigley students could join the National Honor Society. After a year-long self-study of the entire Chicago archdiocesan seminary system in 1969, assisted by the Arthur D. Little Company of Boston, Cardinal Cody announced in 1970 a new admissions policy for the Quigley seminaries, which expanded beyond Cardinal Mundelein's original requirement in 1916 that Quigley students be "educated with those who only look forward to that same great work in life, the priestly field of labor." Boys from two categories would, as of 1971, be admitted to Quigley, "(a.) ... who have indicated a desire for the priesthood and who meet the requirements of admissions, and (b.) ... who, in the judgment of parish priests, have the kind of character, ability, and temperament which might lead to the personal discovery of a vocation in the priesthood." The new policy also indicated that Quigley North and South should "emphasize the fact that they are contemporary seminaries primarily concerned with the development and encouragement of vocations to the priesthood," and that "a vigorous campaign should be begun, especially on the part of priests, to enroll qualified students."