Promoting vocations has been at center of his faith
By Lou Baldwin
Special to The CS&T
The purpose of the Serra Club of Philadelphia is the promotion of religious vocations, especially to the priesthood. Long-time member and former club president William C. “Bill” Collins, who was honored by the club on his 90th birthday at the June17 meeting, places religious vocations at the center of his faith.
“The priesthood is the life-blood of the Church; without priests there is no Church,’’ he said.
Catholicism was a gift Collins received in adulthood. Born in Jacksonville, Fla., he was first exposed to the faith during his World War II duty in the U.S. Navy.
“A lot of my friends were Catholic and I started reading about it,” he said.
It wasn’t long after the war that Collins, along with his late wife, Mattie, came to Philadelphia seeking a better life. Although he was not Catholic, he began attending Mass at the former Holy Souls Church and participating in parish activities.
“I became Catholic in 1957. Mattie and I went in together,” he recalled. Father Joseph Murphy, “a good old-time Catholic priest,” Collins said, was pastor of Holy Souls.
Old-time doesn’t mean behind the times. The civil rights movement was happening. African-Americans were arriving in North Philadelphia and many white families were moving away.
“Father Murphy realized the neighborhood was changing and welcomed the new community to his church,” Collins said. “For others it took time. We suffered slings and arrows but change came.”
Meanwhile Collins was serving on virtually every committee the parish had. When lay Eucharistic ministry was introduced, then-pastor Father John O’Brien had Collins appointed as one of the first in the area.
On an archdiocesan level, he became vice president of the Cardinal’s Commission on Human Relations, and Cardinal John Krol nominated him for the papal honor of Knight of St. Gregory. Later, Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua elevated him to the highest rank of Knight Commander in the Knights of St. Gregory.
A great personal thrill came in 1987 when Cardinal Krol sent him to New Orleans to represent Philadelphia at a meeting between Pope John Paul II and black Catholics. The Pope told the group he understood their problems but the Church needed them and they needed the Church. “I appreciated that,” Collins said.
Collins spent his career as a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy at the former Philadelphia Naval Base and retired as a naval architect technician. Mattie, whom he married in 1940, died in 2005.
“It was a good marriage, she was my rock,” said Collins, who takes special pride in their only child, William C. Collins Jr., a graduate of Georgetown University Law School.
As the neighborhood continues to change and other ethnic groups move in, some things are constant. He still attends Mass at Holy Souls, which is now a worship site for Our Lady of Hope Parish.
Whatever happens, “the Church is here to stay. It’s been God’s Church for 2,000 years and it will be here long after me,” Collins said. “It has its problems and its faults, but it’s flexible and wherever you go you feel at home.”
Lou Baldwin is a member of St. Leo Parish and a freelance writer.