The CatholiCity Message

Volume II, Number 9 – March 5, 1999

Dear CatholiCity Citizen,

We hope you've been keeping your Lenten resolutions. As promised, the story of tje trip to see Our Lady of the Rockies is the last item, but first:

1. TO OUR BELOVED NON-CATHOLIC FRIENDS
After last week's message when we discussed Our Lady, a CatholiCity citizen (and former Protestant) wrote and reminded us that a minority receiving this message are not Catholics, or are "seeker" Catholics struggling to come to grips with such matters. We're sorry if we caused you discomfort. We figure that you know this is a Catholic site, and that you cut us some slack. But as long as we're on the subject of Protestants, let us relate one thing we love about you guys: What we love is, dare we say, the *tradition* you have for lay ministry. Oftentimes over the years, some Catholics have looked sideways Catholic laymen who work in the apostolate, and you could practically hear them thinking, "Full time work for the Faith? Isn't that just for priests and nuns?" For Protestants, laymen working full-time for the Lord is second nature. Man, we love that.

2. IS THIS TRUE?
Who was the tallest man in the Bible? Enoch, because he tied his ass to a tree and walked five miles.

3. CLIMB A MOUNTAIN TO SEE OUR LADY.
Last Monday, February 23rd, 1998, we met LeRoy Lee in Butte, Montana. LeRoy was the designer and welder, who, along with the people of this tough little city in mid-central Montana, built a 90' statue of Mary and placed it on an 8500 ft. mountain on the Continental Divide in the early 1980s. "So you really want to see Our Lady?" he asked over coffee in his kitchen. LeRoy has a wind-beaten face, big, calloused hands, and crystal grey eyes gleaming from beneath faintly Scottish brows.

LeRoy's book, Our Lady of the Rockies, is compelling. The statue itself is spectacular. It's the same scale as the Statue of Liberty. A week before, when we called LeRoy, who is a convert to Catholicism, he was pretty skeptical about our desire to climb the mountain to see Our Lady. He was even more skeptical when he met us during Mass that morning. But we suppose he thought if he could get an 80 ton statue up the mountain, he could get us up there too. We drove in LeRoy's pick-up to the base of the mountain. "Have you fellas ever driven a snowmobile?" the wiry, 64-year-old asked.

We shook our heads. But before we knew it, we were skimming into the snowdrifts on the rough road leading up the mountain. One of our snowmobiles was a 20-year-old warhorse "that tends to overheat" according to our intrepid guide. Two hunting dogs barked and ran with us for the first mile, and knowing better, left us to our own devices for the remainder of the 45 minute climb as the road narrowed, and three feet to our right, two thousand foot cliffs begged for attention. We tried to keep our minds off the below-zero windchill numbing our faces, and implored Saint Michael to protect us as we grew accustomed to the slippery machines. "Will we live to tell about this?" we wondered as we switched back and forth, and the road became more narrow, more bumpy. We got the hang of our machines, and started to relax a bit. It was kind of like a video game.

Then the snowmobiles conked out. The drifts became too high, and the engines overheated. We were on the backside of the mountain, 8000 feet above sea level, 5000 feet above Butte. The mountain was silent. "Come on, old men!" LeRoy goaded us, bounding into drifts up to his hips to break trail. "There's only a little ways more!" A little ways for LeRoy meant half a mile to us.

Ten steps later, we were sucking air–not much oxygen at that altitude. Our feet were frozen, but LeRoy was an unstoppable force, cajoling and teasing us. "You're gonna see Our Lady today!" Pride, and desire to see the remarkable statue, pushed and pulled us.

Over an hour later, completely worn out, we slowly marched around the side of the mountain, and there she was, Our Lady of the Rockies, her hands outstretched East and West, saying to America on either side of the divide: "Come to my Son, all you who labor and are weary, and in Him you shall find rest." We began to race to Our Lady. "Beat-ya to her, old man!" he teased.

We slammed him into a drift and raced forward. He laughed and recovered, but we were ten yards ahead. And out of gas, so the old guy easily beat us to his "other woman," as his wife has taken to calling the statue. We fell, exhausted, at her feet.

For about ten minutes, we stood at the base of Mary and looked up in awe. Below us, we saw what she saw: the city of Butte, seven mountain ranges, and an entire country. We couldn't help but think of the "other" lady, the Statue of Liberty. For our grandparents and great grandparents, Lady Liberty meant freedom: freedom to speak out, freedom to practice religion, freedom to work for our families' well being. Lately, Lady Liberty has come to mean Lady License. License to "choose" abortion. License to do whatever our basest desires command. License to become slaves to immorality.

This woman on the mountain, and rough-and-tumble Catholics like LeRoy Lee, seemed to understand that true freedom, the freedom to do the right thing, the freedom to choose life, is embodied by the gleaming mother who now towered above us in Butte. She was the woman who had said, "I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to thy word." 2000 years after Mary changed the world with those words, on the other side of the planet, her sons and daughters literally climb mountains and do the impossible to echo her words of hope.

You see, the people of Butte didn't have any money to build the statue we were seeing. Nobody–nobody–not even LeRoy, thought is was possible. LeRoy himself, drafted into designing the statue when the original designer dropped out, didn't even graduate from high school. They didn't have engineers or sculptors or government largess. Just building the seven mile road up the mountain was an incredible feat that took years. In fact, there was talk at the time of the town turning into a ghost town because the big mine had been closed down a year or two earlier. Lots of Butte folks were out of work. The rest were poor. Even when the mine was open, the town had never really pulled out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. The town had been founded by Irish immigrants who came to rip most of the copper used in the world out of the ground in the 1880s and 1890s. It was one of the few places on earth where Irishmen worked for Irishmen. "More Sullivans than Smiths" they said. Their lives revolved around the mines, the family, and the faith. It is said Butte was more well-known in Ireland than Chicago.

LeRoy took us into the statue. Thousands of rosary beads from pilgrims who come up in the summertime lined the walls. The wind slipped around the mountaintop, and through ingenious screens designed into folds of Our Lady's steel garment.

One of the guys whispered, "I've been all over the world. I've been to Moscow, and all over Europe, and just about every state in this country. I've been on aircraft carriers. I've seen the great works of art in the finest museums in the world. I've kissed the marble floor above the bones of our first pope in the center of Saint Peter's in Rome. But this is one of greatest thrills of my life. I've never been so moved and impressed. The world needs to know what Our Lady has done here in Butte."

LeRoy nodded, like he knew something we didn't know.

A little while later, after LeRoy told us some amazing stories about the struggles building the statue, he showed us a church that was being constructed on the backside of the peak. He had designed it. First a statue, now a church. "They told us we'd be needing a million dollars to build a church up here," he said matter-of-factly. "But with volunteer labor and scrap metal from the Anaconda company, plus donated concrete, we're getting it done for thirty thousand bucks." He told us about plans to put the Stations of the Cross on a nearby peak. When this man told me something would happen, "if Our Lady wants it," We believed him.

"You git going and don't slow down!" LeRoy yelled at us a few minutes after we prayed the first Rosary said in the still-unfinished chapel, on the 54th day of the 54 day Rosary novena many CatholiCity citizens had also prayed. We gunned the throttle on the SkiDoos and started careening down the mountain, half afraid of the cliffs a few feet away, and half afraid of having to trudge down the mountain if the machine overheated again. LeRoy raced behind. Like a little kid, he was trying to beat us down the mountain! He cut through a wooded deer path in a vain attempt to catch up. He went over a rut near the bottom and went flying off the snowmobile. He wasn't hurt.

We won the race. And Our Lady of the Rockies won our hearts forever.

For pictures, go to:

THIS PAGE NO LONGER EXISTS

4. MORE ON OUR LADY OF THE ROCKIES
LeRoy told us that writing his book describing the building of the statue was more a miracle than building the statue itself. It's called "Our Lady of the Rockies" and you simply have to read it. It's a gripping, page-turning adventure as compelling as any novel. You'll have tears in your eyes as you read, even you tough guys out there. Write to Our Lady of the Rockies, PO Box 668, Butte MT 59703. Get it, read it, evangelize with it. You'll love it! It's filled with photographs, too. (All proceeds go toward building those Stations of the Cross LeRoy mentioned). For information about visiting the statue, call 1-800-800-LADY. Tell 'em CatholiCity sent you.

Until next week.

Yours in Christ,

Your Friends at CatholiCity