St. Patrick’s Old Rock Church, Catawissa Celebrates 2023 Homecoming Picnic

By Pauline Masson –

David Murphy and Matthew Pross, two grandsons of the late Billy Murphy and Steve Conley, nephew of Bob Conley now spend their early summer months preparing for the revival of an 1870s tradition, the annual homecoming picnic at St.Patrick’s Old Rock Church, Catawissa.

Sunday August 20, is picnic day this year, with the festivities beginning immediately after 11:00 a.m. Mass in the stone church.

Now veteran event leaders, these men spent every summer of their youth in the same effort, hammering together booths, unpacking boxes of tee shirts and bingo cards, throwing up temporary canopies, stacking bags of ice and cases of beverages, and marking off spaces in the adjoining parking area around the church that grew decade after decade.

Once the crowds arrive, this regional gathering more resembles a country fair than picnic.

Bingo tables are lined beneath a huge open pavilion built to memorialize another Murphy family member, the late Mark Pross, who served as picnic concierge, and Murphy’s and Conley’s right hand man until his untimely death in 2010.

A row of covered booths lines the side of the church offering children’s games. In a thrown up temporary pavilion tables are lined with mimentos and collectables in a country store. In the huge dining hall and kitchen volunteers are frying chicken and assembling meals for upwards of 2,000 diners. Under the smaller pavilion next to the cemetery entrance, the Missouri Valley Boys arrive with their instruments to provide dancing that lasts late in the afternoon and into the evening.

Throughout the day and evening, a group of volunteers work the parking area, directing arriving vehicles to the next available space.

In various corners of the quadrangle between the church, cemetery, dining hall and ticket booth, groups of relatives, many from across the country, gather in annual family reunions.

It is one of the more popular annual celebrations in the region, that boasted for decades that it sold more beer than any event in Franklin County except the Washington Fair. In recent years, the beverge of choice used as a barometer of the size of the crowd, has been bottled water.

The homecoming picnic is also the only source of revenue for the landmark limestone church built in 1865 and survived barely 60 years as a parish before being relegated a mission church in 1925.

The legendary duo of Billy Murphy and Bob Conley managed the picnics and the restoration of the church, cemetery and grounds for more than 40 years. 

After breaking down of picnic paraphenalia and cleaning the grounds they hosted a supper for the volunteers, reported on the year’s revenue and discussed what maintenance or restoration project the picnic funds would support that year. A tall tally sheet listed each year’s revenue after expenses and a cumulative total since the picnic had been revived in 1967. In 2013, the cumulative total topped $1 million. 

As populations changed, hundreds of Catholic churches across the county have become desanctified and reused as museums, restaurants, or other businesses. Some have been razed. Few of these former parishes have been able to match the success of St. Patrick’s.

Local lore attributes the success of the restored rock church to Billy Murphy, who led the St. Patricks Preservation Society for forty years. But Murphy eschewed that idea. A renowned raconteur who spun stories of the descendants of the former parish church, who welcomed area Protestants into the St. Patrick’s family completely, Murphy said St. Patrick’s became more a community center than a country parish.

Today in addition to the the August picnic, Mass is celebrated here on St. Patrick’s Day and Memorial Day. The cemetery, which has been expanded twice, is maintained like a show place, as are the church, rectory and church grounds.

Weddings, Catholic and Protestant, are held in the church.