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Abstract
This article explores the experience of Catholic women as students, teachers, scholars and administrators at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. The article is set within the context of current international scholarship on women and higher education, social history and feminist theory. The article focuses on two women's colleges – St. Joseph’s College, established by the French-founded and initially diocesan Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, and Loretto College, established by the Irish-founded, pontifical Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The article argues that Catholic women in general, and women religious in particular, negotiated complex paths. Not only were they confronting the patriarchies of both the university and the Roman Catholic church, but they were also dealing with the pressures, supports and discrimination emerging from their religious, social and intellectual peers. The article concludes with suggestions for further international comparative studies.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
The research reported here was supported by the Strategic Grants Program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). In addition to SSHRC, I am grateful for and acknowledge the support of the leadership teams and archivists of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto (CSJ) and the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the Loretto Sisters) Canadian Province and the archivists of the University of St. Michael’s College.
Notes
1While the terms “nuns” and “sisters” are used in the vernacular as synonymous, even among women religious themselves, nuns and sisters are two distinct and canonically defined paths of religious life. Nuns are women with permanent vows living lives of prayer and contemplation in cloistered settings, while sisters are engaged in what they describe as active apostolates, living lives of prayer and action, under simple vows. Nuns have the longest history within the Catholic church, with sisters emerging as a form of consecrated life in the seventeenth century. This article will generally use the phrase “women religious” to describe both, and the term “sister” when referring to vowed women engaged in the active apostolate. Further, while women religious are members of the laity of the Roman Catholic Church, since they are not members of the ordained clergy, and have been defined as part of the laity of the Catholic Church, this article uses the phrase “lay women” to mean Roman Catholic women who are not living lives as members of vowed religious communities.
2For further details and images see http://usmcpresident.tumblr.com/post/9708909790/st-michaels-college-confers-honorary-degrees-for-2011
3See for example Rebecca Sullivan, Visual Habits: Nuns, Feminism, and American Postwar Popular Culture (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2005).
4. Jill Ker Conway, “Faith Knowledge and Gender,” in Catholic Women’s Colleges in America, ed. Tracy Schrier and Cynthia Russett (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins, 2002), 11.
5The origin of this label is attributed to a number of leading Anglicans, including James Beavan, who thus described the University of Toronto.
6It is only the Canadian Province of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary that spells its name Loretto.
7Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto Archives (hereafter, CSJT Archives). Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto. Constitution and Rules of the Sisters of St. Joseph in the Archdiocese of Toronto. (Toronto: CSJT, 1881), 1.
8The Sisters of St. Joseph of Hamilton (1852), the Sisters of St. Joseph of London (1868), the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peterborough (1890), the Sisters of St. Joseph of Pembroke (1921) and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Sault Ste. Marie (1936).
9See Elizabeth M. Smyth, “Much Exertion of the Voice and Great Application of the Mind: Teacher Education Within the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, Canada 1851–1920,” special joint double issue of the History of Education Review and Historical Studies in Education 3 (1994): 97–114; and Elizabeth M. Smyth, “Loretto Academy Niagara (1861–1969): Education Under The Rainbow,” Encounters on Education/Encuntros/Recontres 7 (Fall 2006): 25–42.
10See Elizabeth M. Smyth, “Gertrude Lawler and St. Joseph’s Academy: Alumnae, Advocate and Author,” Historical Studies 72 (2006): 124–41.
11According to the Calendar of the University of Toronto (1921–22), St. Michael’s was “declared to be a College in the Faculty of Arts on the 8th December 1910” (p. 64). Students began working toward the degrees in 1906, with the first graduating class in 1910.
12CSJT Archives, Community Annals of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto (Annals), July 8 1902, 318. Unfortunately, none of this material has survived in CSJT Archives.
13CSJT Archives, Annals, September 22 1905, 392.
14Archives of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Canadian Province (hereafter IBVM Archives), Box 6A, Affiliation with St. Michael’s College File.
15CSJT Archives, Annals, May 2 1908, 428.
16CSJT Archives. Among the prizes she won were the Edward Blake Scholarship (1909) and in 1910 the George Brown Prize and the Italian Prize. Annals, 30 June 1909, 444; Annals, 9 June 1910, 450.
17University of St. Michael’s College Archives (hereafter, USMCA), “Arts,” The Echo (St. Michael’s College Yearbook), 1913, 66.
18CSJT Archives, Annals, May 6 1909, 441, citing a description in The Catholic Register.
19IBVM Archives, Dr J.J. Cassidy to Rev Marijon, December 11 1911, Loretto College Box, Box 6A. (emphasis in original).
20IBVM Archives, Loretto College Box 6A, Affiliation with St. Michael’s College File, Letter from Dr J.J. Cassidy to Mother Agatha O’Neill, February 12 1913. This letter states that “Mr. Brebner [Registrar of the University of Toronto] also report [University of Toronto] President Falconer as saying he has no date of an application of Loretto Abbey, St. Joseph's Academy etc. ... no such formal application was made to the University, although the matter was discussed.” Handwritten notes which accompanied this letter state, “In 1909, a form of application was drawn up including the Academies of the Sisters of St. Joseph, Toronto and Ursulines of Chatham which was never presented.”
22Laurence K. Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education in English-Speaking Canada: A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 158.
21IBVM Archives, Affiliation With St. Michael’s College File, Loretto College Box, Box 6A, Mother Agatha O’Neill, IBVM. Notes dated October 10 1911, entitled “Written after an interview with Fr. Roche.” The notes stated that “He [Father Roche] also said that the Sisters of St. Joseph were also working for it [affiliation] but only one of us would get it. A letter was written from St. Joseph's Convent saying that Father Teefy had applied for them three years ago in May. Father Roche said he never heard of it.”
25
23Ibid., 157.
24Kathleen McGovern, IBVM, “Outline of The History of Loretto,” a paper read before the students and guests at the annual dinner in honour of Mary Ward (January 22 1976), 3. In Anne Rochon Ford, A Path Not Strewn With Roses: One Hundred Years of Women At The University of Toronto 1884–1984 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 34.
26Archives of the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto (hereafter, ARCAT), Letter from Rev. Marijon, Provincial of the Basilians, to Rev J. Kidd, December 21 1911, Sisters of St. Joseph Box.
27IBVM Archives, Loretto College File, Box 6A.
28CSJT Archives, St. Joseph’s College, Manuscript, 2, St. Joseph’s College Box.
29USMCA, The Echo, 1913, 48.
30Archives of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s (hereafter, ASSJ), “St. Joseph’s College,” Manuscript, 3.
31ASSJ, “Obituary: Sister Mary Agnes Murphy,” October 20 1962.
34ASSJ, “Sister Austin: Obituary,” written by W.P.M. Kennedy, MA (Professor of English Literature, St. Michael’s, Toronto University), Scrapbooks xviii, xiv.
32CSJT Archives, Untitled, undated obituary for Sister Austin Warnock, Scrapbooks xviii, xiv.
33CSJT Archives, Annals, June 30 1909, 444.
35ASSJ, Unsigned obituary, “Modern Nun: Sister Austin,” Scrapbooks xviii, xiv.
36Ibid.
37 St. Michael’s Alumni Magazine, 2006, 30.
39Florence Daly, “The Woman Lawyer,” The Rainbow: College Alumnae Number 1915–1925, 28.
38M. Estelle, “The College of the Future,” The Rainbow: College Alumnae, Number 1915–1925, 4–7.
40Kathleen Lee, “Law From a Woman’s Viewpoint,” The Rainbow: College Alumnae Number 1915–1925, 29.
41“St. Joseph’s Sisters Endow Theology Chair,” The Catholic Register, September 25 2007, http://www.catholicregister.org/component/content/article/18-torontogta/1106-st-josephs-sisters-endow-theology-chair
42M. Loretta Petit, OP, “Sister M. Madeleva Wolff, CSC,” Catholic Education (March 2006): 320–33.
43As cited by Gail Porter Mandell, Madeleva (New York: State University of New York Press, 1997), 216.
44M. MadelevaWolff, The Education of Sister Lucy: A Symposium on Teacher Education and Teacher Training (Holy Cross, IN: Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, 1949).
45Ellen Leonard, “The Process of Transformation: Women Religious and the Study of Theology, 1955-1980.” in Changing Habits, ed. Elizabeth M. Smyth (Ottawa: Novalis, 2007), 240.
46Ibid., 241.
49The 2011 figures compiled by the Toronto School of Theology indicate that at basic degree level, 47% of students are female and 53% are male; at advanced degree level, these figures are 36% and 64%, respectively. See http://www.tst.edu/webfm_send/400
50USMCA, “Convocation,” St. Michael’s College Yearbook, 1919, 24.