Background
He was born on July 16, 1841 at Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, from which place his family removed to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1853. His paernts were Alexander and Margaret (Creedon) Phelan.
He was born on July 16, 1841 at Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, from which place his family removed to St. Louis, Missouri, in 1853. His paernts were Alexander and Margaret (Creedon) Phelan.
Trained in local schools and by wide reading, he studied theology in the diocesan seminary.
He was ordained a priest by Bishop P. R. Kenrick on May 20, 1863. After serving a few months as a curate at the Cathedral and at Indian Creek, he was assigned to a pastorate at Edina, where as editor of the Edina or Missouri Watchman he was imprisoned for his refusal to take the test oath prescribed by the Drake constitution, which he attacked in his journal.
A horseman, he was also arrested for violating a town ordinance which limited the speed of riding to ten miles an hour. When the case came to trial he was acquitted largely because the petty persecution involved was obvious. In 1868 he was transferred to the Church of the Annunciation in St. Louis and brought with him his paper, which afterwards was known as the Western Watchman. In a sense he was fostered by Kenrick, although the Bishop regarded him as somewhat dangerous as an editor.
A militant campaigner against intolerance, he destroyed the American Protective Association in St. Louis by printing the denial of membership on the part of a number of merchants and then ruthlessly publishing their activities in the association from its official record, which he obtained irregularly. He was always in ecclesiastical difficulties, but he accepted censure with equanimity, even printing the official letter.
In 1893 he was reproved by Archbishop John J. Kain for an imprudent attack upon a recent episcopal appointment as a lowering of the intellectual level of the hierarchy. Phelan thereupon retorted that since Kain was from a slave state he must be taught how to rule freemen. He was answered by an episcopal proscription of his paper, but Archbishop Ireland, an admirer who was known to have inspired some of Phelan's editorials, especially at the time of the Third Council of Baltimore, compromised the difficulty. Phelan joined Ireland in his condemnation of Cahenslyism and said bitter things relative to German lay and clerical leaders. With Bishop Schrembs he came into open dispute; Archbishop Glennon in a friendly way frowned upon his activities.
He died in 1915.
David Samuel Phelan was the oldest and best-known Catholic editor of the passing school of militant, independent writers. He built the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in North St. Louis, which he served as pastor until his death; he also organized St. James's Church at Ferguson. As a writer, he attracted favorable attention through The Gospel Applied to Our Times (1904), Christ the Preacher (1905), and translations of three French works on ascetic theology.
A Democrat, he advocated free silver and opposed the war with Spain, though he accepted our colonial policy. A liberal, he advocated Catholic schools for Catholics and public schools for all other citizens, while he supported Archbishop Ireland's Faribault School plan.
He regarded himself as a defender of the clergy against episcopal arbitrariness. He did not hesitate to censure episcopal interference in the affairs of patriotic societies and American Catholic meddling in the Roman question.
His defense of the tango and the right of girls to use cosmetics aroused some reforming Protestant ministers, and the Christian Endeavor Society at one time urged his unfrocking. Becoming a teetotaler, he condemned drinking.
An excellent orthodox priest, beloved by the poor, a good preacher, a fair German scholar, and a pleasant, witty companion, Phelan was a laborious man.
There is no infrormation about his marital status.