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Abstract
This article examines the lives of Irish-born women religious around the world in the period 1840–1940. Ireland sent thousands of nuns overseas as teachers and missionaries, to work in schools, orphanages and hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, the Americas, Australia and Europe. Looking at contemporaneous views of missionary work, recruitment to religious life and the social conditions for Irish women during and after the years of the Great Famine, the article determines some of the attractions of religious life for Irish women, and the expression of their Irish identity to be found in convents internationally. The article concludes with comments on the bifurcated identity of Irish women religious who, though first and foremost members of particular religious orders, were often identified by others as “Irish Nuns”.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article has received support for which this author is grateful. The Ireland-Canada University Foundation supported research into the lives of Irish women religious in Canada. Material on Irish women religious in America was gathered following the receipt of a Hibernian Research Award from the CUSHWA Centre for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Some of the translation of French material from the Society of the Sacred Heart General Archives, Rome; the Society of the Sacred Heart Archives, Dublin; and the National Archives, Society of the Sacred Heart, Canadian and United States Provinces, St. Louis, Missouri, was supported by an award from SCoTENS.
Notes
1This author recognises that in the nineteenth century Catholic Church, women in religious “orders” took solemn vows and received the title “nun,” and women in “congregations” took simple vows and were called “Sister.” Throughout the article, the terms nun, woman religious, and Sister are used interchangeably, as is common in scholarship. See Mary Peckham Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns: Women, Religion and Cultural Change in Ireland, 1750-1900 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 138. While there were many nuns, particularly in the United States, who were second-generation Irish and who identified strongly with their Irish heritage, only those born in Ireland are treated within the scope of this article.
2Fanny Cronin, RSCJ, to Rev. M. Lehon, RSCJ, 20 November 1883, Society of the Sacred Heart General Archives, Rome (hereafter SSHGA), C IV [Trans: I am neither French nor Irish; I have no nationality; I am cosmopolitan, a religious of the Sacred Heart].
3Kate O’Brien, The Land of Spices (1st edition, 1941; this edition, UK: Virago Modern Classics, 1988), 15.
4Much work has been done on indigenous orders such as the Mercy and Presentation Sisters, but less on orders that came in to Ireland to make foundations, educate girls and recruit Sisters for their missionary convents.
5The contributions of Irish nuns are included in Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); John J. Fialka, Sisters: Catholic Nuns and the Making of America (New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003) and Maureen Fitzgerald, Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York’s Welfare System, 1830-1920 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006).
6See Suellen Hoy, “The Recruitment and Emigration of Irish Religious Women to the United States, 1812-1914,” Journal of Women’s History 6, no. 4 / 7, no. 1 (1995), 64. For a discussion of Irish women, including women religious, and migration see Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).
7Ibid., 64–5.
8Ibid., 88.
9This article draws on data currently being compiled and analysed by this author for a history of Irish women religious in the international mission field. The research process has included creating searchable databases on Irish-born members of missionary orders, which allows the missionary activity of thousands of sisters to be traced over countries and continents during a period of 150 years. The databases have been prepared with material collected at archives in the USA, Canada, Rome, Paris, Singapore, and Ireland. Second-generation Irish nuns are also recorded, though separately, thereby including women religious born to Irish parents who had emigrated from Ireland. Because the ongoing research process includes that the Irish identities of members of religious orders are still being adjusted (added/deleted), the figures given in this article are approximate, and not fixed.
10“MS Foundations of American Women’s Religious Orders, 1812–1921,” in Suellen Hoy Papers, Series 3, Box 3, Ida Gannon Centre for Women and Leadership, Loyola University (hereafter, Hoy Papers, IGC Loyola).
11Data drawn from Register (Black Book), Infant Jesus Archives, Ireland (hereafter, IJSA, Ireland).
12Data drawn from “MS Cahier d’entrée 1841-1845: Irlandaises Entrées au Noviciat des Dames de St. Louis à Juilly,” Sisters of St. Louis General Archive, Ireland (hereafter, SSLGA, Ireland).
13“Irish Postulants for American Convents,” Cork Examiner, March 1 1898.
14Many Irish Infant Jesus Sisters went to Japan, Malaysia and Singapore in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and they were also part of twentieth-century foundations in Australia and the USA. The Society of the Sacred Heart opened schools along the Mississippi, educating Christians and Native Americans, in addition to running schools for large Catholic communities in cities such as New York and Chicago. Irish Loreto Sisters displayed an early commitment to teaching non-Christians when they made foundations in India in the nineteenth century, while their Canadian schools – also founded in the nineteenth century – catered for Christians, most of whom were Catholic.
15The motherhouse of the Institute is on the Rue St. Maur, Paris, and the Sisters in France were often known as the Dames de St. Maur.
16See Catherine KilBride and Deirdre Raftery, The Voyage Out: Infant Jesus Sisters, Ireland, 1909–2009 (Dublin: Origin/IJS, 2009).
17See Phil Kilroy, Madeleine Sophie Barat: A Life (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000) and Phil Kilroy, The Society of the Sacred Heart in Nineteenth-Century France, 1800–1865 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2012).
18Figures calculated from databases developed by this author at the Society of the Sacred Heart archives in Ireland, Rome and the USA.
19See Joyful Mother of Children: Mother Frances Mary Teresa Ball, by a Loreto Sister (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son Ltd., 1961).
20See Emmet Larkin, “The Devotional Revolution in Ireland, 1850–1875,” American Historical Review 77 (1972). He argues that a revolution in Irish devotional practice occurred immediately following the famine of 1845–1851. Ways in which historians have challenged Larkin’s thesis are discussed in Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns, 4–5.
21It was Dr. Daniel Murray, Archbishop of Dublin and close friend of the Ball family, who encouraged Teresa Ball to enter the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary at York, and to later make the first IBVM foundation in Ireland. The decision of the Infant Jesus Sisters to come to Ireland was their own, as they recognised that they needed a greater supply of English-speaking missionary nuns for their convents in Malaysia, Japan and Singapore. With the help of Père Charles Nain, a priest from the Séminaire des Missions Etrangères de Paris, they identified Diocese of Kerry as a suitable site for their first convent and novitiate. Their arrival was not greeted warmly by the Bishop of Kerry, who considered that they were “forcing themselves into this diocese where there is no want to be supplied by them.” MS letter from Bishop Mangan to Canon Casey, n.d. [January 1909], IJSA, Ireland.
22See Hoy, “The Journey Out,” 70. See also Magray, The Transforming Power of the Nuns, 9.
23See Catriona Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1987), 36–9.
24For a discussion of the increase in vocations see Anthony Fahey, “Female Asceticism in the Catholic Church: A Case Study of Nuns in Ireland in the Nineteenth Century” (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Illinois, 1982); for an analysis of the spread of convents in Ireland, see chapter two of Clear, Nuns in Nineteenth-Century Ireland.
25For a discussion of this see Deirdre Raftery, “The ‘Mission’ of Nuns in Female Education,” Paedagogica Historica 48 (2): 299–313 (2012).
26Fahey, Female Asceticism in the Catholic Church, 5.
27Deirdre Raftery, “A Great Builder’: Nineteenth-Century Women Religious andStrategies for Convent Expansion,” Ninth Triennial Conference of the History of Women Religious, USA (2013).
28The first Superiors of the Institute houses in Canada were all Irish women, sent from Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham, as follows – Toronto (1847): Teresa Dease, IBVM; Brantford (1853): Joachim Murray, IBVM; London, Ontario (1855): Berchmans Lalor, IBVM; Guelph (1856): Berchmans Lalor; Belleville (1857): Teresa Dease, IBVM; Niagara Falls (1861): Joachim Murray, IBVM; Hamilton (1865): Stanislaus Hennigan, IBVM; Lindsay (1874): Dosithea Gibney, IBVM; and Stratford (1878): Evangelista O’Sullivan, IBVM. When the Institute made its first foundation in the United States in 1880, its first Superior was also Irish-born, and from Loreto Abbey, Rathfarnham: Gonzaga Gallivan, IBVM. Source: Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary Archives, Canadian Province (IBVMACP).
29MS letter from Mother Teresa Dease, IBVM (Toronto), to Mother Teresa Ball, IBVM (Dublin), April 20 1851, TB/CAN/2/2, Loreto Central and Irish Province Archives (hereafter, LCIPA).
30MS letter from Mother Teresa Dease, IBVM (Toronto), to Mother Teresa Ball, IBVM (Dublin), October 3 1859, TB/CAN/2/15, LCIPA.
31MS letter from Mother Teresa Dease, IBVM (Toronto), to Mother Teresa Ball, IBVM (Dublin), n.d. [c. late 1859], TB/CAN/2/16, LCIPA.
33Sr. Eilis Casey, IJS, A Missionary Remembers (Ireland: IJS, 1999).
32Hoy, “The Recruitment and Emigration of Irish Religious Women,” 65.
34 MS Drishane Convent Annals, 13 September 1938 (Ireland: IJSA).
35“The Catholic Church in America: Recruiting from Tipperary,” Irish Catholic, October 13 1888.
36Deirdre Raftery, “Into the Swing of the Sea: Nuns and International Travel, 1840–1940” (forthcoming).
37See KilBride and Raftery, The Voyage Out, 107.
38 Vie de la Révérende Mère Anna Josephine Shannon: Religieuse du Sacré Coeur 1810–1896, [Trans. C. KilBride, 2012].
39Ibid., 6–7.
40Pauline Jackson, “Women in 19th Century Irish Emigration,” International Migration Review 18 (1984): 1014.
41By 1854, it is estimated that between 1.5 and 2 million people had emigrated from Ireland, and between 1.1 and 1.15 million people died from starvation or disease from 1846 to 1851.
43 Irish Catholic, June 8 1912, and weekly until September 14 1912. See Hoy Papers, IGC Loyola, Series 2, Box 3.
42 Irish Catholic, May 4 1907. The advertisement invited young ladies to correspond with Sr. M. Philomena, at Gardiner’s Place, Dublin.
44 Irish Catholic, June 9 1928. See Hoy Papers, IGC Loyola, Series 2, Box 3.
45“Irish Postulants for American Convents.”
46For a discussion of the different forms of provision for girls, see Deirdre Raftery and Susan M. Parkes, Female Education in Ireland, 1700–1900: Minerva or Madonna? (Ontario and Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2007).
47 Report of the commissioners appointed to enquire into the nature and extent of the instruction afforded by the several institutions in Ireland for the purpose of elementary or primary education; also the practical working of the system of national education in Ireland, 1870 (Powis Commission).
48David Fitzpatrick, “‘A Share of the Honeycomb’: Education, Emigration and Irishwomen,” in Mary Daly and David Dickson, Language, Change and Educational Development, 1700-1920 (Dublin: Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin, 1990), 173.
49Fitzpatrick notes that “Crash courses for emigrants were… encouraged by State agencies” and that “many National teachers were or had been emigration agents.” See “‘A Share of the Honeycomb,’” 176–8.
50“Mr. Vere Foster’s Irish Female Emigration Fund: Under the Auspices of All the Clergy of All Denominations in the West of Ireland,” National Library of Ireland (hereafter, NLI), MS 13,552.
51Carol K. Coburn and Martha Smith, “Creating Community and Identity: Exploring Religious and Gender Ideology in the Lives of American Women Religious, 1836–1920,” U.S. Catholic Historian 14, no. 1 (1996): 104.
52For a discussion of the hostile reception Irish people encountered in the United States, and attitudes toward Catholic immigrants, see Charles Hirschman, “The Role of Religion in the Origins and Adaptation of Immigrant Groups in the United States,” International Migration Review 38, no. 3 (2004): 1206–33.
53Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lettres Annuelles 1906-1908, Vol. 3, 34–5, trans. Society of the Sacred Heart Archives Dublin (hereafter, SSHAD), [trans. 2013].
54Biographical Index, SSHAD, [trans. 2013].
55Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lettres Annuelles 1900-1902, Vol. 3, 168–9, [trans. 2013].
56Ibid.
57Ibid.
58Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lettres Annuelles 1906-1908, Vol. 3, 81–2. SSHAD, [trans. 2013].
59Women religious and leadership is discussed in Deirdre Raftery, “Rebels with a Cause: Obedience, Resistance and Convent Life, 1830–1940.” History of Education (forthcoming), Available on iFirst from June 2013.
60 Vie de la Révérende Mère Anna Josephine Shannon [trans.], 81; and database of Irish members of the Society of the Sacred Heart compiled by this researcher.
61In the religious orders discussed in this article, choir Sisters were usually destined for teaching, while lay Sisters carried out the domestic work of the convents. The two-tiered system of membership in teaching orders is discussed in Christine Trimmingham Jack, “The Lay Sister in Educational History and Memory,” History of Education 29 (3): 181–194 (2000). Many orders used the term “lay sister,” though some used the terms “House Sister,” “Converse Sisters,” and “Coadjutrice .” Lay Sisters in the Society of the Sacred Heart were called “Coadjutrice Sisters” and the latter is the term adopted in this article where appropriate.
62For a sample of such women see Raftery, “Rebels with a Cause,” which notes the biographical details of nuns such as Frances Ball, whose father was a prosperous silk merchant, while her mother’s family was the Eyrecourt estate in Galway. Teresa and her sisters were educated at the Bar Convent, York, while her brothers attended Stonyhurst.
63Janet Erskine Stuart, The Society of the Sacred Heart (Roehampton: Convent of the Sacred Heart, 1923), 26–7; and Trimmingham Jack, “The Lay Sister,” 185.
64Extrapolated from this researcher’s database on nineteenth-century Irish nuns.
65Ibid.
66Born in Co. Fermanagh, Helen McAloon and three of her siblings emigrated to America. Helen worked in a shoe factory before deciding to enter the Society of the Sacred Heart. Personal File, National Archives, Society of the Sacred Heart, Canadian and United States Provinces, St. Louis, Missouri (hereafter, NASSHCUSP). While detailed records of Lay Sisters are scant, in some instances the death of a Sister resulted in reflections and letters of sympathy being written; where these have survived, they are useful sources.
67Personal files, NASSHCUSP [trans. 2013].
68Ibid.
69Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lettres Annuelles 1906–1908, 19. SSHAD [trans. 2013].
70Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Lettres Annnuelles 1924–1926,162. SSHAD [trans. 2013].
71There is evidence that in the decades that followed Vatican II, Superiors paid increasing attention to the maintenance of archives, and called for memoirs and reflections to supplement existing official records of the lives of community members.
72Written by women religious or by secular writers, these publications include William Hutch, Nano Nagle: Her Life, Her Labours and their Fruits (Dublin: McGlashen and Gill, 1875); The Life and Work of Mary Aikenhead, by a Member of the Congregation (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1924); and Margaret Gibbons, The Life of Margaret Aylward (London: Sands and Co., 1928).
73Bessie R. Belloc, Historic Nuns (London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow: Sands and Co., 1911), 163.
74Ibid., 171.
75Mother Teresa Ball to Bishop de Charbonnel, 1850, cited in Life and Letters of Rev. Mother Teresa Dease, by a Member of the Community (Canada: McClelland and Co., 1916), 59.
76 Life and Letters of Rev. Mother Teresa Dease, 17–8.
77
78This term was used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to signify the privileged successors of the Protestant Ascendancy – that is, professional and landed people who were members of the Established Church (later Church of Ireland).
79Fanny Cronin, RSCJ, to Rev. M. Lehon, RSCJ, 20 November 1883, C IV. SSHGA.