Adaptation and professionalisation: challenges for teaching sisters in a pluralistic nineteenth-century America

Abstract

Sisters, especially teaching sisters, were the principal agents of Americanisation for the millions of Catholics who settled in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 1884 decision of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore that each parish should have its own school was less the initiation of sisters’ crucial roles in this regard as it was tacit acknowledgment of what they had already accomplished educationally in preventing “leakage” from the faith. But what did adaptation really mean?

This essay argues that sisters – many themselves immigrants, of course – arrived at a range of responses to the challenge of determining what it meant to be American and Catholic, religious and educator. Based upon primary research in dozens of congregational archives in all regions of the US, and upon the experiences of communities that variously negotiated the challenges of adaptation in their own ranks, it suggests that the very diversity of sisters’ responses is itself central to the creation of an American Catholicism that has been vital, variable and permeable.

Keywords:

• Catholic
• Sisters
• nuns
• educators
• professionalisation

Notes

¹The term “leakage” derives primarily from the very influential Gerald Shaughnessy. See Has the Immigrant Kept the Faith? A Study of Immigration and Catholic Growth in the United States, 1790–1920 (New York: Macmillan, 1925). See also Hugh J. Nolan, ed., Pastoral Letters of the United States’ Catholic Bishops, Volume I (Washington: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, 1984), 224–5; Margaret Susan Thompson, “Cultural Conundrum: Sisters, Ethnicity, and the Adaptation of American Catholicism,” Mid-America 74 (1992): 205–30; J.A. Burns, The Growth and Development of the Catholic School System in the United States (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1912); JoEllen McNergney Vinyard, For Faith and Fortune: The Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit, 1805–1925 (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1988).

²List of US congregations compiled by and in possession of the author; abbreviated version in Thompson, “Cultural Conundrum,” 229. See also: Barbara Misner, Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies: Catholic Women Religious in America, 1790–1850 (New York: Garland, 1988).

³Margaret Susan Thompson, “Sisterhood and Power: Class, Culture, and Ethnicity in the American Convent,” Colby Library Quarterly 25 (Fall 1989): 149–75.

⁴This is borne out by presentations at the Triennial History of Women Religious Conference in the US.

⁵While “nuns” and “sisters” have distinct meanings in canon law, they are used interchangeably in popular discourse. That discursive custom is followed in this essay; “women religious” is another synonym.

⁶Jane Frances Heaney, A Century of Pioneering: A History of the Ursulines in New Orleans, 1727–1827 (New Orleans: privately printed, 1993); Louise Callan, The Society of the Sacred Heart in North America (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1927); Charles E. Nolan, “Carmelite Dreams, Creole Perspectives: The Sisters of Mount Carmel of Louisiana, 1833–1903” (PhD diss., Gregorian University, Rome, 1970); Mary Francis Borgia Hart, Violets in the King’s Garden: A History of the Sisters of the Holy Family (New Orleans: privately printed, 1976).

⁷Octavia Gutman, Not with Silver or Gold: A History of the Congregation of the Precious Blood, Salem Heights, Dayton, Ohio, 1834–1944 (Dayton: privately published, 1945); Suzanne Noffke, The Dominicans of Racine, Wisconsin: Volume One: Embrace the Swelling Wave (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2004); Mary Eunice Hanousek, A New Assisi: The First Hundred Years of the Sisters of Saint Francis of Assisi, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1849-1949 (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1948); Mary Eunice Mousel, They Have Taken Root: The Sisters of the Third Order of Saint Francis of the Holy Family [Dubuque, Iowa] (New York: Bookman Associates, 1954). Many other books could be cited, as well as archival materials (in both the original German and in translation) from the repositories of these and other congregations.

⁸Mary Janice Ziolkowski, The Felician Sisters of Livonia, Michigan: First Province in America (Detroit: Harlo Press, 1984); Mary Jane Menzenska, Guide to Nazareth Literature, 1873–1972 (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1975); Anne Marie Knawa, As God Shall Ordain: A History of the Franciscan Sisters of Chicago, 1894–1987 (Chicago: privately printed, 1989); Josephine Marie Peplinski, A Fitting Response: The History of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis, 2 volumes (South Bend, IN: privately printed, 1982, 1992); M. Edwina Bogel and Jane Marie Brach, In All Things Charity: A Biography of Mother M. Colette Hilbert, Franciscan Sister of St. Joseph [founder] (Hamburg, NY: privately published, 1983). The author of this essay has visited only the archive of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Third Order of St. Francis, and has seen original and translated documents there.

⁹Sister Mary Francis Joseph [Ann Eliza Dillon] to Bishop Joseph Rosati, March 22 1838, Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Louis, MO; Mary Lucida Savage, The Congregation of Saint Joseph of Carondelet (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1923), 50–60; Dolorita Marie Dougherty, et al., Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet (St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1966), 66–7.

¹⁰Helen Louise Nugent, Sister Louise, American Foundress (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1931), 13–4, 60–1, 77, 83–4, 251–2; Helen Louise Nugent, Sister Julia (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1928); Angela Elizabeth Keenan, Three Against the Wind: The Founding of Trinity College, Washington, D.C. (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1973).

¹¹Anna Shannon McAllister, Flame in the Wilderness: Life and Letters of Mother Angela Gillespie, CSC, 1824–1887 (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1944); M. Georgia Costin, Priceless Spirit: A History of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, 1841–1893 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994).

¹²Mary Carol Schroeder, “The Catholic Church in the Diocese of Vincennes, 1847–1877” (PhD diss., Catholic University of America, 1946), 1; Mary Borromeo Brown, History of the Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, 1806–1856 (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1949).

¹³M. Cherubim Duffy, Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart in the United States, 1865–1926 (Peekskill, NY: privately printed, 1927), 18; Barbara Brumleve and Marjorie Myers, ed., Mother Mary Caroline Friess: Correspondence and Other Documents, Resource Publication No. 35, SSND Heritage Research, 1985; Judith Best, Sturdy Roots: An Educational Resource for Studying the Heritage and Spirit of the School Sisters of Notre Dame (DVD, St. Louis: privately produced, 2005); identities of multi-ethnic members in Profession Book, SSND Archives, Milwaukee, WI.

¹⁴Bishop Michael Henni to Mother Benedicta Bauer, November 8 1862, Archives of the Racine (WI) Dominican Sisters. Evidence that retreats were being offered in German as late as the 1930s is in the “House Diary” entry for December 24 1930, announcing forthcoming retreats in both German and English. See also Dolores Enderle, The Dominicans of Racine, Wisconsin: Volume Three: 1901-1964: A Time to Grow (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2009); Louise Hunt, A History of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross, 1868–1995 (Green Bay, WI: privately printed, n. d.).

¹⁵Seraphine Staimer to Pia Backes, June 10 and 26 1882; Pia Backes, Her Days Unfolded: Woman of the Word, trans. Bernardina Michel (St. Benedict, OR: Benedictine Press, 1953); Mary Thomas Lillis, Seed and Growth: The Story of the Dominican Sisters of Mission San José (Fremont, CA: privately printed, 2012); Here We Shall Be (Blauvelt, NY: privately printed, 1978); Mary Philip Ryan, Amid the Alien Corn (St. Charles, IL: Jones Wood Press, 1967); Mona Schwind, Period Pieces: An Account of the Grand Rapids Dominicans, 1853–1966 (Grand Rapids: privately printed, 1991).

¹⁷M. Clarissa Dilhoff and Mary Olivia Frietsch, With the Poverello: History of the Sisters of Saint Francis, Oldenburg, Indiana (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1948), 66.

¹⁶Thompson, “Sisterhood and Power”; Eileen Mary Brewer, Nuns and the Education of American Catholic Women, 1860–1920 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987).

¹⁸Mother Joseph Pariseau to “Sisters in Vancouver,” January 27 1864; typed English translation from the original French, Sisters of Charity of Providence Archives, Seattle, WA.

¹⁹M. Anne Francis Campbell, “Bishop England’s Sisterhood, 1829–1929” (PhD diss., St. Louis University, 1968), 63.

²⁰Sylvester Schmitz, The Adjustment of Teacher Training to Modern Educational Needs: A Comparative Study of the Professional Preparation of Teachers in the Public and Elementary and Secondary Schools in the United States, with a Proposed Plan for the Training of Teachers for American Catholic Schools (Atchison, KS: Abbey Student Press, 1927); Dougherty, Sisters of St. Joseph, 54; Mary of the Incarnation Byrne, “A Retrospect of Fifty Years” (bound typescript), 59, 76, Sisters of Divine Providence Provincial Archives, Melbourne, KY.

²¹Clara Graham, ed., Works to the King: Reminiscences of Mother Seraphine Ireland (St. Paul, MN: North Central Publ. Co., 1950), 56–7.

²²M. Infanta Fischer, “Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis, 1855–1928,” Records of the American Catholic Historical Society 40 (1929): 136; Keenan, Three Against the Wind; M. Caedmon Homan, “Years of Vision, 1903–1928,” typescript in the Rochester (MN) Franciscan Sisters Archives, n.d.; Mary J. Oates, ed., Higher Education for Catholic Women: An Historical Anthology (New York: Garland, 1987).

²³Phil Kilroy, The Society of the Sacred Heart in Nineteenth-Century France, 1800–1865 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2012); Janet Erskine Stuart, The Education of Catholic Girls (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1911), Callan, Society of the Sacred Heart.

²⁴M. Rosalita Kelly, No Greater Service: The History of the Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, 1845–1945 (Detroit: privately printed, 1948), 319–47; M. Bonaventure Exnicios, “Fortune Favors the Bold: Annals of the New Orleans Dominican Sisters” (unpublished typescript), 27, Archives of the New Orleans Dominicans; Rule of the Sisters of Providence of St. Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana (privately printed, 1887), 97, Archives of the Sisters of Providence; Nugent, Sister Louise, 199.

²⁵M. Annunciata, “Child of Prophecy,” in Superior Generals: Centenary Chronicles of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Vol. II (Paterson, NJ: St. Anthony Guild Press, 1941), 117–8; Maria Concepta, The Making of a Sister-Teacher (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), 25–7; McAllister, Flame in the Wilderness, 285–6; Josephine M. Sferrella, “Preparing IHMs for the Educational Mission: Infrastructures, Schooling, and Sister Formation,” in Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 281–97; Circular Letters of Mother Praxedes Carty, November 1 1897, March 31 1898, August 12 1914, Archives of the Sisters of Loretto, Nerinckx, KY.

²⁶ Directory of Customs of the Sisters of the Holy Ghost and Mary Immaculate, San Antonio Texas (San Antonio: privately printed, 1911), paragraph 494, Sisters of the Holy Spirit Archives. For more on the Sisters of the Holy Ghost, see also: Margaret Susan Thompson, “Women, Feminism, and the New Religious History: Catholic Sisters as a Case Study,” in Belief and Behavior: Essays in the New Religious History, ed. Philip VanderMeer and Robert Swierenga (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 136–63; and Anne M. Butler, Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 252–5.

²⁷Sr. Mary Borgias, “In Our Lady’s Household,” Vol. I (privately duplicated and bound mimeograph, 1958), 18–20 Sisters of Notre Dame Archives, Cleveland, OH.

²⁸Mary Emma Hadrick, “Contributions of the Oblate Sisters of Providence to Catholic Education in the United States and Cuba, 1829–1962” (Master’s thesis, Catholic University of America, 1964), 147–8; Hart, Violets in the King’s Garden.

²⁹Mother Praxedes Carty to “Sister Superiors,” November 1 1897; Circular Letters of Mother Praxedes, Sisters of Loretto Archives, Nerinckx, KY.

³⁰Evidence of this for the School Sisters of Notre Dame is in dates recorded in the Book of Professions (which also recorded dates of entrance into the community, the novitiate, and first vows), SSND Archives, Milwaukee, WI; Peplinski, A Fitting Response, Vol. I, 114–15, 222–3.

³¹Mary Emerentia Petraslek, A Brief History of the Sisters of SS. Cyril and Methodius, Told in Five Decades, 1909–1959 (Danville, PA: privately printed, 1959); M. Leona Naujokas, History of the Foundation of the Sisters of Saint Casimir (Chicago: privately printed, 1940); Katherine Burton, The Bernardines (Villanova, PA: Maryview Press, 1964), 21; M. Zita Maria Kane, “The Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scranton, Pennsylvania) in the Northwest, 1897–1947” (Master’s Thesis, Villanova University, 1948), 21.

³² Mother Hyacintha’s Diary, Vol. I, October 8 1874, trans. Suzanne Noffke, Racine Dominican Archives; Thomas Aquinas Winterbauer, Lest We Forget: The First Hundred Years of the Dominican Sisters of Springfield, Illinois (Chicago: Adams Press, 1973), 177, 376–7; Sr. Elizabeth Venus to Mother Emily Power, May 18 1908, and Mother M. Thomasina Buhlmeier to Mother Emily Power, March 1 1915, Sinsinawa Dominican Archives; Celestine Bloomer, “Story of a Sister of Providence” (bound typescript, n.d., c. 1937), 19–20, Sisters of Providence Archives, IN.

³³For historical background on enclosure, see Elizabeth Makowski, Canon Law and Cloistered Women: Periculoso and Its Commentators, 1298–1545 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1997); Elizabeth Rapley, A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2009).

³⁴Judith Sutera, True Daughters: Monastic Identity and American Benedictine Women’s History (Atchison, KS: privately printed, 1987); Ephrem Hollermann, The Reshaping of a Tradition: American Benedictine Women, 1852–1881 (St. Joseph, MN: privately printed, 1994); Mary Cecilia Murray, Other Waters: A History of the Dominican Sisters of Newburgh, NY (Old Brookville, NY: Brookville Books, 1993); Mary Patricia Green, The Third Order Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of St. Catharine of Siena, St. Catharine, KY: Their Life and Constitutions, 1822–1969 (St. Catharine, KY: privately printed, 1978).

³⁵Sister Maria Alma, Standard Bearers: The Place of the Catholic Sisterhoods in the Early History of Education and Schools within the Present Territory of United States, as Seen by Contrast and Comparison with the Education Provided for by Federal and State Legislation from Earliest Sources until 1850 (New York: P. J. Kenedy & Sons, 1928), 171–2; P.M. Abbelen, Life of Mother Caroline (St. Louis: Herder, 1893), 105–9.

³⁶A similar concern was behind a canonical prohibition of sister-nurses assisting in childbirth, or of sisters studying medicine, which would require them to complete an obstetric rotation; this remained in effect until 1936, when the ban was lifted by Vatican decree. Katherine Burton, According to the Pattern: The Story of Dr. Agnes McLaren and the Society of Catholic Medical Missionaries (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1946), 213–5.

³⁷As the historian of one international community has written: “In Ireland, where the schools of the Christian Brothers multiplied rapidly throughout the nineteenth century, there was no widespread need for the Sisters to educate boys. The situation was different outside Ireland... Usually the system of mixed education was already established in the areas to which the Sisters went, and where their first priority was always the establishment of the parish school. Given the difficulties of finding finance and personnel to establish a Catholic school, few parishes would have been ready to attempt a double effort, even if there had been a strong feeling against mixed education.” This certainly applied to the United States. M. Raphael Consedine, Listening Journey: A Study in the Spirit and Ideals of Nano Nagle and the Presentation Sisters (Victoria, Australia: Port Phillip Press, 1983), 299–300.

³⁸Mary Caroline Friess, Correspondence Addressed to Her from Various Persons, ed. Barbara Brumleve (Baltimore: School Sisters of Notre Dame, Heritage Resource Publication No. 35, 1986), 32; Clarisse Fallon, A History of the Community: St. Mary Priory, Nauvoo, Illinois (mimeographed typescript, n.d., c. 1974), 11.

³⁹Mary J. Oates, “Learning to Teach: The Professional Preparation of Massachusetts Parochial School Faculty, 1870–1940,” Working Paper Series 10 (1981), Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, University of Notre Dame; Winterbauer, Lest We Forget, 183.

⁴⁰Evidence that clerics, and not the sisters themselves, orchestrated the merger is ample in the Emmitsburg archives. See, for example: Bishop Joseph Rosati to John Timon, CM, July 8 1840 and July 9 1842; L.R. Deluol, 1846: Portion of document presented to Fathers of the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore (May 1846); “CIRCULAR” by L.R. Deluol to Sisters of the Baltimore Province, September 7 1849; and “Father [Francis] Burlando’s Notes relating to Union with France (handwritten).” See also: Ellin M. Kelly, “The Rule of St. Vincent dePaul and American Women’s Religious Communities,” paper presented at the Cushwa Center Conference on Perspectives on American Catholicism, Notre Dame, IN, November 12 1982.

⁴¹Antonietta Maraone and M. Pauline Grady, Two Outstanding Adorers: Mother Caterina Pavaoni, Mother Clementina Zerr, On the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of Their Entrance into Eternal Life (Rome: privately printed, 1981), 21.

⁴²Bernadine Pieper, Footprints: The Story of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, Part I (Davenport, IA: privately printed, 1978), 62–3, 147–8; Mary Faith Schuster, The Meaning of the Mountain: A History of the First Century at Mount St. Scholastica (Baltimore: Helicon, 1963), 129–30.