Neighbors and Missionaries: A History of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine 9780823266234

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Neighbors and Missionaries

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Neighbors and Missionaries A History of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine Margaret M. McGuinness

Fordham University Press | New York

2012

Copyright © 2012 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. All photographs are courtesy of RCD Papers, Fordham University Archives. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data McGuinness, Margaret M. Neighbors and missionaries : a history of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine / Margaret M. McGuinness. —1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index (p. ). ISBN 978-0-8232-3987-0 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine (U.S.)— History. I. Title. BX4485.64.M36 2012 271′.97—dc23 2011032068 Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction

1

American Women Religious and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, 2 • The Catholic Church, the Poor, and Catholic Social Settlements, 5 • The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 8 • Writing the History of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, 12 1. From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

18

Education for Service, 19 • A Church Settlement, 23 • A Catholic Settlement in New York City, 28 • A Training School for Catechists, 33 • A New Community, 37 2. Fighting to Save the City of New York

46

A Catholic Social Settlement on the Lower East Side, 48 • Madonna House, 49 • Conflict with Clerical Authority, 52 • Forming Faithful Citizens, 57 • Ministering to Veterans, 61 • Not Just Italians, 63 3. Neighbors and Teachers

Growing Pains, 70 • A Motherhouse and a Second Settlement, 73 • Hard Times, 78 • Settlement Work and the Second World War, 87 • The Closing of the Settlement Houses, 92

68

vi | Contents

4. Settlements Go South

98

A New Foundation, 100 • Staying Connected, 104 • A Southern Settlement, 106 • Growing Friendships, 109 • Valley Catholics, 112 • Maintaining the Mission, 114 • A Problem of Numbers, 116 5. More than Settlement Houses

122

Parish Ministry in the South, 122 • Northern Apostolates, 139 • Changes in Ministry, 145 6. Changes and Continuities

147

Adjusting to the Loss of Mother Marianne, 149 • Moving Forward, 152 • Responding to Transformations, 155 • Challenging Times, 162 • Coming toward the End of a Century, 165 169

Epilogue Notes

177

Selected Bibliography Index 221

213

Acknowledgments

Thanking and remembering all those whose help and encouragement were essential to completing this project is something I have looked forward to for some time. The staffs of Holy Spirit Library, Cabrini College, and Connelly Library, La Salle University, never failed to find a requested resource or offer assistance. Patrice Kane, Head of Archives and Special Collections at Fordham University’s Walsh Library, arranged for the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine to deposit their records at Fordham, and welcomed me whenever I needed to view the collection, check footnotes, or scan documents. Vivien Shen, Preservation and Conservation Librarian at Fordham, helped to make my time in the Fordham Archives pleasant and free from stress. Brian Fahey, archivist of the Diocese of Charleston, helped me to locate sources and information that could not be found elsewhere. Wilma Slaight, archivist (now retired), Wellesley College, provided information concerning Marion Gurney’s undergraduate curriculum, and Wayne Kemptom, archivist, Episcopal Diocese of New York, helped me find information related to Marion Gurney’s work in Protestant social settlements. The archival staff of the Center for Migration Studies, Staten Island, New York, allowed me to access documents relating to St. Joachim’s parish during Father Victor Jannuzzi’s tenure. Monsignor Thomas J. Shelley (Fordham University), an eminent historian of American Catholicism in his own right, answered questions and tracked down documents essential to telling the story of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine.

viii | Acknowledgments

A faculty development grant from Cabrini College enabled me to spend some time in that part of South Carolina that the Sisters of Christian Doctrine refer to as “the Valley,” an area in and around Gloversville. While there, I benefitted from a conversation with Sister Mary Jean Doyle, DC, director of what is now Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Center. Members of the Religion Department at La Salle University, along with Yvonne Macolly, unflappable administrative assistant, have been congenial colleagues and are a joy to work with. Michael McGinniss, FSC, president, Thomas Keagy, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, and Associate Dean Margaret McManus have been supportive of the project since I arrived at La Salle in 2006. Several friends and colleagues provided invaluable assistance by reading all of parts of the manuscript. Margaret Mary Reher, friend and mentor, certainly deserves a reward of some kind for reading the entire manuscript. Marge’s comments, offered with great insight and wit, significantly enhanced future drafts. Peter Wosh, Mary Brown, and Roseanne McDougall, SHCJ, graciously agreed to read chapters, and the book is far better for their probing questions and critiques. Dolores Liptak, RSM, read an earlier version of chapter 5 and helped me shape that part of the story into a final draft. Christopher J. Kauffman invited me to publish much earlier versions of this project in U.S. Catholic Historian, and I am grateful for his editorial skill and historical wisdom. Any errors or misrepresentations, of course, are mine. Colleagues, many of whom are now friends, offered support and encouragement. Christine Anderson, Mary Beth Fraser Connelly, and Michael Engh, SJ, shared their knowledge of social settlements; Bernadette McCauley, James T. Fisher, Kathleen Flanagan, SC, and Mark Massa, SJ, helped me think about the place of this particular religious community within the context of New York City Catholicism and the general history of women religious. Carol Coburn, Suellen Hoy, James Carroll, Barbra Mann Wall, Sandra Yocum, Paula Kane, Cecilia Moore, and Patricia Byrne, CSJ, all of whom share my interest in the

Acknowledgments | ix

history of women religious, are wonderful colleagues and sounding boards—even when the subject strays from Catholic sisters! Mary Oates, CSJ, probably doesn’t remember a conversation that took place a number of years ago at Marquette University, but she is the one who first told me I ought to get busy and write a history of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. Kathleen Sprows Cummings and I have had many conversations—in Philly, South Bend, the Jersey Shore, and Scranton—about “everything under the sun,” including this project. James M. O’Toole has offered support and encouragement since I first discovered Catholic social settlements as a graduate student (some thirty years ago!). The editors and staff at Fordham University Press, especially Fred Nachbaur, Wil Cerbone, and Eric Newman, have been extraordinarily helpful and made the process of preparing this manuscript for publication much less onerous than it could have been. A number of friends have encouraged me along the way, even if they weren’t always sure what questions to ask or how to ask them. Ruby Remley, Kathleen Daley McKinley, Sharon Schwarze, Jerry Zurek, Leonard Primiano, Carol Serotta, Marilyn Johnson, Christine Baltas, MSC, and Adeline Bethany are great friends and, in some cases, mentors. Conversations with any or all of them are always enlightening and entertaining. Shirley Dixon has gone the extra mile and accompanied me on trips to see the sisters in Nyack, New York, on several occasions, making the two-hour trip seem like twenty minutes. Life without The Diva, as Shirley is known, would not be the same. Without the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine there would be no book, and I thank each and every member of the congregation for their support and encouragement. For the past seven years, I have been researching, writing, and generally making a nuisance of myself, but the sisters have been nothing but hospitable and kind. They fed me, housed me, welcomed my family and friends to their events, and—most important—prayed for myself, my family, and this book. That the book is finally finished, I am convinced,

x | Acknowledgments

is the result of their prayers. Community presidents Sisters Agnes O’Connor and Rose Vermette have lent their support and encouragement to my work. Sisters Dorothea McCarthy, Ursula Coyne, Regis Beck, Helena Price, Rose Frazetta, Lucilla Beretti, Angela Palermo, Angela Reames, Lorraine Gosnell, Christine Cunningham, Margaret Hennessey, Beatrix Pergola, Rose Vermette, and Doris Sayhonne all agreed to be interviewed for this project, and put up with my questions and follow-up questions. In addition, Barbara Wall, Special Assistant to the President for Mission Effectiveness, Villanova University, a former member of the community, shared her memories and experiences with me. Three members of the community were especially important to all stages of this book. Sister Virginia Johnson, archivist, truly understood all that was involved in writing this history and served as research assistant, resource, chef, cheerleader, and friend, as the occasion demanded. One of the delights of this project has been the new friends I have made during the course of my work, and Virginia is one of the best. I am looking forward to celebrating with her when she finally sees this in print. I also became friends with Sister Lucilla Beretti. She and I had many conversations over lunch and dinner on topics ranging from her experiences in the community to the contemporary art world. Entering the Sisters of Christian Doctrine in the 1930s, Sister Lucilla held strong opinions on many subjects, including what it meant to be a member of a religious community! When I needed a break from digging through files, Sister Lucilla became my go-to person. She did not live to see the completion of this book, but she would rejoice to see it finally finished. I first came into contact with Sister Dorothea McCarthy when she invited me to visit the community archives. A lover of history and a former community archivist, Sister Dorothea was a fervent supporter of this project. Although she was rarely able to get over to the archives during my research trips, I had a standing invitation to visit her whenever I was in town. Her memories of growing up

Acknowledgments | xi

in Greenwich Village, of entering the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, and of experiences in community will stay with me forever—as will the view of the Hudson River from her apartment windows. Sister Dorothea died shortly before the final draft of this manuscript was due at the Press, and, although I wish she had lived to see the story of the community she loved so much finally published, I know she is at peace. Last, but certainly not least—my family. They lived with me while I was writing this book and rarely complained about the time it consumed or the miles I racked up on the car going back and forth from Malvern, Pennsylvania, to Nyack, New York (about 280 miles round-trip). Watching Will and Erin grow from children into young adults with their own interests and dreams has been the great joy of my life. Erin, who is a fledgling historian in her own right, read several chapters of the manuscript and reminded me that not everyone is familiar with the “jargon” relating to women religious. Will took precious time away from his beloved Eagles and Phillies to ask about the book and “the sisters.” Sarah Aguilar, who will be my daughterin-law by the time this book is published, graced my returns from Nyack with her wonderful smile. Bill has been my best friend and critic for twenty-seven years. If life is indeed a journey, he is the best travel companion anyone could have. This book is dedicated to him with love.

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Neighbors and Missionaries

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Introduction

In 1936, shortly before her nineteenth birthday, New York City resident Veronica McCarthy decided to enter the convent. The only problem, she confided to a friend, was she did not know any “sisters.” When Veronica told a priest she wanted to “work with the poor,” he described a “fairly new” religious community located on the Lower East Side of New York. One Sunday, Veronica and a friend visited these sisters, who were living in a settlement house on Cherry Street, and found it “unlike what you would expect a convent to be.” They rang the doorbell and, after explaining the purpose of their visit, were introduced to two of the resident sisters. Despite the obvious poverty in which the sisters lived, Veronica—who would become known as Sister Dorothea—immediately felt at peace, and decided to enter the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine.1 Sister Dorothea McCarthy’s story is not especially unique in the annals of American Catholicism. What is somewhat unusual, however, is her decision to enter a religious community unknown to most American Catholics. Founded in 1910 by Marion Gurney, a convert from the Protestant Episcopal Church, by 1936 the congregation had founded two settlement houses in New York City, and they were teaching religious-education to children attending public schools in a number of New York City parishes. Because the sisters were neither teachers nor nurses and ministered primarily among the poor, a young woman searching for a religious community that was “right for her” would probably not know much about them. Unless she was told about them or happened to meet a member of the community,

2 | Introduction

the Sisters of Christian Doctrine remained a well-kept secret, even on New York’s Lower East Side, where they administered Madonna House—a social settlement—from its opening in 1910 until it closed in 1960.

American Women Religious and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine

When a group of Ursulines arrived in New Orleans in 1727, they became the first women religious to minister in what is now the United States. In 1790, several women left their convents in Antwerp and Hoogstraeten and established a Carmelite monastery at Port Tobacco, Maryland, becoming the first women religious in the former British colonies.2 John Carroll, who had been appointed first bishop of the United States one year earlier, celebrated their arrival but hoped that the women—whose lives were dedicated to prayer and contemplation—would agree to teach Catholic children in desperate need of education. The Carmelites rejected Carroll’s suggestion, and the bishop would have to wait until 1799 for three women to establish what would become a Visitation convent and school in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C.3 Carroll remained determined to create a system of Catholic education in the United States, however, and three sisters living in one convent on the outskirts of the nation’s capital were not enough to accomplish his goal. Although he was not adverse to women religious from European communities crossing the ocean to teach in the new nation, Carroll needed American Catholic women to work with and for the Catholic population. He would begin to see his dream come to fruition in 1808, when Elizabeth Ann Seton, a convert to Catholicism, took her first vows as a Sister of Charity of St. Joseph and recruited women from New York and Philadelphia to join her in a new American religious venture.4 Seton’s community moved from Baltimore to Emmitsburg, Maryland, in 1809, and the sisters immediately opened both a private

Introduction | 3

academy and a free school for girls. Knowing there were many girls whose families were unable to afford tuition, the sisters funded both schools from the fees paid by the daughters of the wealthy.5 Eight years later, in 1817, they began an apostolate in New York City. By 1830, four other communities of women religious had been founded in the United States to meet the growing educational needs of American Catholics: Sisters of Loretto (1812), Sisters of Charity of Nazareth (1812), Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy (1829), and the Oblate Sisters of Providence, an African American community (1829).6 The educational ministries of American religious women continued to increase throughout the nineteenth and into the first half of the twentieth centuries. In addition to women born in the United States, sister-teachers included members of European religious communities that established foundations throughout the nation—usually at the request of bishops desperate to staff schools, hospitals, and orphanages for poor and needy Catholic immigrants.7 As the number of women religious in the United States grew from about 200 in 1822 to 88,773 in 1920, they were able to serve and impact the Church and its faithful in a variety of ways.8 A ministry of caring for the sick began in 1823, when the Sisters of Charity of Emmitsburg assumed responsibility for the Baltimore Infirmary. A doctor remembering the sisters’ early days at the hospital commented, “Many of the sisters were women of great intelligence, and for the time, superior education. . . . They did what the good nurse of the present day does—carried out the doctor’s orders with promptness and intelligence.”9 The sisters’ decision to venture into nursing and hospital administration marked the beginning of what would become a varied and complex system of American Catholic hospitals and health-care institutions. Many non-Catholic Americans would come to know Catholic sisters as a result of this ministry, especially as it was manifested in responses to wars and epidemics. It was not unusual for larger religious communities to administer a number of institutions devoted to teaching, nursing, and social service. The Sisters of Charity, for instance, often taught during the day,

4 | Introduction

cared for orphans during the evenings and on weekends, and nursed those unable to care for themselves during times of epidemics and wars.10 A young woman who entered religious life, however, was not guaranteed placement in the ministry of her choice. Someone choosing to work exclusively with the poor might find herself assigned to teach in a private academy, far from those she felt called to serve. When Marion Gurney, who received the name Mother Marianne of Jesus, founded the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, she had no intention of developing an apostolate involving parochial schools or hospitals. Concerned about poverty-stricken Catholics living in congested urban areas without access to either religious education or sacramental preparation, as well as about those living in rural areas where priests and churches were few and far between, Mother Marianne was convinced that social settlements were the most effective way to meet the material and spiritual needs of those Catholics she believed were in danger of being lost to the Church. Settlement houses that operated under Catholic auspices could, she believed, offer both children and adults opportunities for socialization and educational enrichment designed to ease the myriad of problems faced by America’s urban poor—all this while also providing opportunities for spiritual growth and development. Her experience in social settlements had convinced Mother Marianne that education was about more than “schools,” especially in poor, urban neighborhoods where people needed to be provided with the necessary tools that would help them obtain employment or receive their citizenship papers. She also strongly advocated programs designed to teach religion to children enrolled in public schools. Prior to founding a religious community, Mother Marianne had been an enthusiastic supporter of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD), believing it was an effective way for young Catholics attending public schools to receive instruction in the tenets of their religion. Although this kind of religious instruction is conducted primarily by members of the laity willing to spend a few hours each week in service to their church, Gurney concluded that children needed teachers

Introduction | 5

whose primary commitment was to developing their spiritual lives. When she could find no religious congregation that seemed to combine religious education with ministry to the poor, Gurney, along with four other women who shared her views, organized themselves into a religious community.

The Catholic Church, the Poor, and Catholic Social Settlements

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Catholic Church in the United States was often criticized for demonstrating a lack of concern for the poor and dispossessed, particularly immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. Pope Leo XIII (1878–1903) worried especially about Italian immigrants, who might abandon the Church after arriving in their new home. In the apostolic letter Quam Aerumnosa (1888), the pope informed American bishops that he was aware of the hardships and deprivations suffered by those emigrating from Italy to the United States. Italian immigrants, he understood, were usually poor, had difficulty understanding and speaking English, and were often at the mercy of the padrone system. The solution to this “Italian problem,” the pontiff believed, was the appointment of Italian-speaking priests to immigrant parishes, but he also recognized the need for home missionaries dedicated to working with the immigrants in their neighborhoods.11 American Church leaders vehemently refuted Catholic and nonCatholic critics who accused them of not offering the newcomers much-needed assistance, but they ruefully admitted that, if the Church appeared unwilling to help those in need, their Protestant competitors were only too happy to provide both material and spiritual programs designed to improve the bodies and souls of the Catholic underclass while leading them away from their faith. By the dawn of the twentieth century, social settlements were viewed by some Catholic reformers as one type of charitable institution able to meet the material and spiritual needs of the poor. Also known as settle-

6 | Introduction

ment houses, these institutions represented an earnest response to the challenges posed by industrialization and urbanization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Located in the midst of those they proposed to help, settlements were based on the premise that workers should live in a neighborhood in order to develop relationships with the residents. Social settlements first appeared in the United States when Stanton Coit established New York City’s Neighborhood Guild in 1886. The most famous American settlement, Jane Addams’s Hull House, opened in Chicago in 1889; and by the 1890s Protestant and secular social settlements were operating in most major American cities.12 Because they were deliberately founded as institutions devoid of religious affiliation or identification, most American reformers during the Progressive Era equated religious settlements with missions, and it was sometimes hard to decide where the work of a settlement ended and that of a mission began. East Side House, which opened in 1891, did not maintain its official connection with the Episcopal Church for very long, but head resident Clarence Gordon continued to stress the importance of the gospel message in settlement work. Anyone could work in social settlements, Gordon claimed, “but only on the foundation of Christ . . . and His example, and [by His] grace to inspire and direct, can the settlement realize its highest possibilities.”13 Progressive reformers were adamant, however, that a mission could not be transformed into a social settlement simply by adding social and educational activities. John Gavit, editor of the Commons, an early periodical devoted to charity work, described a mission as coming from “outside to a neighborhood or community which it regards as ‘degraded.’” A social settlement “‘bases its existence . . . on the firm foundation of Democracy—on the thesis that the people must and can and will save themselves.’”14 Some Catholic clerical and lay leaders were—like other religious reformers of the Progressive Era—attracted to the idea of social settlements. Deborah Skok has recently argued that Catholic reformers in Chicago adopted the settlement-house model used by Jane Add-

Introduction | 7

ams and Hull House to “instruct the Italians in their faith and incorporate them into Chicago’s existing Catholic community”; these institutions themselves were later incorporated into the organizational structure of the Archdiocese of Chicago.15 Like their non-Catholic colleagues, Catholic proponents of social settlements tended to be from the middle and upper-middle classes, and their financial backing was crucial to the establishment of successful settlement houses. A group of dedicated volunteers was also necessary if a wide variety of social and educational programs were to be implemented. These volunteers, who included the poor and “working girls” as well as the more well-to-do, “taught catechism, led play groups, put on plays, [and] taught sewing classes,” thereby creating a neighborhood settlement to which people would be attracted.16 Marion Gurney’s decision to found a community of women religious dedicated to promoting the educational, social, and spiritual goals of a Catholic settlement house eliminated—most of the time—the need for the corps of volunteers whom similar institutions depended on. American bishops were initially suspicious of settlement houses, believing them to be at best a generic Protestant institution and at worst a training ground for socialists and anarchists. By 1897, however, diocesan leaders were beginning to allow Catholic settlements to operate within their boundaries. Sisters of Charity Blandina and Justina Segale—who were biological sisters as well as members of the same religious community—opened Cincinnati’s Santa Maria Institute, the first Catholic social settlement in the United States, in 1897.17 One year later, Marion Gurney, a recent convert to Catholicism, was appointed headworker at the newly established St. Rose’s Settlement, the first Catholic settlement house in New York City. Gurney spent several years at St. Rose’s, but by 1908, after consulting with a number of people, including her spiritual advisor, Francis McCarthy, SJ, she and seven other women began living in a community that would be formally recognized as the Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine.18 This new community of women religious, dedicated to providing material and spiritual sustenance

8 | Introduction

to poverty-stricken Catholics, particularly immigrants, originally planned to focus its apostolate among Catholics living on the Lower East Side of New York City. In 1910, after operating a day nursery in the area for two years, they opened Madonna House, a social settlement serving the area’s poor and working classes. The Santa Maria Institute and Madonna House offered many of the same programs that could be found at nonreligious social settlements such as Hull House. Clubs for boys and girls, a sewing school, dressmaking classes, a kindergarten, millinery instruction, a music school, and public-speaking and citizenship classes could all be found at Catholic settlement houses. Many also sponsored Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops as well as clubs offering support to both Englishand Italian-speaking mothers. A number of Catholic settlements offered programs in religious education that were not found on the schedule of their non-Catholic counterparts. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine, who believed in the importance of spiritual sustenance, taught religious education to children affiliated with several parishes on the Lower East Side, prepared children and adults to receive the sacraments, and offered adults—primarily women—who had been away from the Church an opportunity to return.

The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine

Although they constituted a distinct minority among American women religious, sisters whose ministries were almost exclusively devoted to day nurseries, orphanages, and social settlements played an important role in the development of American Catholicism. These sisters manifested, according to Ethyll Dooley, “‘the teachings of the Church . . . in practical form.’” Dooley, a laywoman active in Catholic day nurseries, claimed that “the Christ-like charity and devotion of the sisters [working in the nurseries] had to make a deep impression ‘on the recipients of such service [and that] if of themselves they [the

Introduction | 9

recipients] do not become more practical Catholics, they at least are well disposed to receive and heed the advice of Priest or Sister.’”19 Marion Gurney believed that settlement work conducted under Catholic auspices was missionary work. “Christianity is a social religion,” she wrote, “in which unity of faith overcomes all class distinctions, leading those who have more of any sort of goods to share them with those who have less.”20 The way to reach those in need, she taught, was to live among them. “In our congested cities,” she opined, “with our modern housing system, old fashioned neighborly living has died out. Many do not even know the names of those who live in the same house with them. The settlement provides opportunity for the practice of Christian fellowship.”21 The community she founded exemplified this teaching by establishing Madonna House, a social settlement on New York’s Lower East Side, in 1910. The sisters hoped that the settlement’s programs and activities would provide material assistance desperately needed by their neighbors while demonstrating the concern of the Catholic Church for its poor and dispossessed members. At the same time, religious education and sacramental preparation were a crucial element of the sisters’ apostolate, and this work was incorporated into the programs offered at Madonna House and other places where the community ministered. According to the community’s original Constitutions, “The special end of the Congregation is the salvation and perfection of the neighbor through the teachings of Christian Doctrine.”22 In addition, the sisters were expected to “live among those whom they seek to help, identifying themselves in all that is suitable with the life of their neighbors after the example of our Divine Lord, ‘who dwelt among us.’”23 The sisters’ neighbors would realize that “the Catholic religion is not merely a creed. It is a way of life. The Christian Doctrine class gives the theory—the settlement is the workshop where the theory is put into practice.”24 Catholic settlement houses allowed those participating in its activities to do so in a Catholic environment supported by classes designed to teach people

10 | Introduction

the tenets of the Catholic faith, and encouraged those who had been away from the Church to return by providing opportunities for them to receive the sacraments and validate their marriages. Because the congregation was not founded to either teach or nurse, the sisters were able to minister to the poor in ways other communities could not. Living and working in settlement houses meant they did not have to spend most of the day in either the classroom or the hospital ward and were able to visit neighbors in their homes, counsel men and women who were unemployed, or tend to small children whose mothers were forced to work outside the home. Because they were not tied to a schedule dictated by educational or medical needs, the sisters were also able to adjust their daily routines to meet any unexpected crisis that arose in their neighborhood. When the influenza epidemic of 1918 broke out, for instance, sisters spent hours moving throughout nearby tenements to nurse the sick, comfort the bereaved, and arrange burial for the dead. Madonna House remained the community’s primary foundation until its closing in 1960, but Mother Marianne and her community established a second settlement house in the Bronx in 1930. When invited by Rev. George Lewis Smith to adapt the concept of an urban social settlement to rural South Carolina, the congregation accepted the challenge, and three sisters began a ministry in a section of the state known as Horse Creek Valley. The sisters would remain in “the Valley” until 1970, when decreasing numbers forced them to leave the welfare center they established in the 1940s. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine could not establish social settlements throughout the United States; they had neither the financial resources nor the personnel to accomplish such a feat. They did, however, implement a principle behind settlement work—to share in the lives of those with whom they worked—in ministries that took place outside the venue of settlement houses. Whether establishing “little Madonna Houses” to serve black Catholics in Florida, working at Camp Marydell in Nyack, New York, during the summer months, or staffing and administering parish religious-education

Introduction | 11

programs in New York, South Carolina, and Florida, the women continued to believe that the poor would not remain loyal to their faith if the Church did not demonstrate a concern for their spiritual and material needs. Mother Marianne governed the Sisters of Christian Doctrine until her death in 1957. An examination of the congregation during the decades following her death reveals that the sisters wrestled with the same issues confronting other religious communities in the turbulent 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s. The Sister Formation Conference (SFC), which originated in the 1950s, and the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) impacted all communities of women and men religious, and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were no exception. The work of the SFC and the documents produced by Vatican II, along with several papal pronouncements, led religious communities to examine their apostolates in light of the changes taking place within the Catholic Church and American society during the latter half of the twentieth century. At the same time that religious communities were involved in this intensive process of self-examination, they began to experience a decline in the number of young women attracted to this lifestyle. Decreasing numbers of available personnel meant the Sisters of Christian Doctrine—and all active communities of women religious—were forced to make difficult decisions that involved withdrawing from ministries where they had been a presence for many years. As the Sisters of Christian Doctrine celebrated their centenary in 2010, they continued to work together to plan for the future. Historians do not generally focus on the present or future, so I simply remind readers that the community continues to strive to remain faithful to Mother Marianne’s vision of a religious congregation dedicated to combining the spiritual and corporal works of mercy in a ministry to those in need. Today, community members are involved in a process that will determine how their resources, including property, can best be utilized to aid the poor and dispossessed in the twenty-first century.

12 | Introduction Writing the History of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine

Unlike many other active religious communities, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine have always been relatively small in number. When women attending Catholic secondary schools turned to a sisterteacher for advice about religious life, very few were told of the small community founded to minister to the poor through the medium of social settlements. Sister Ursula Coyne, who succeeded Mother Marianne as mother general in 1957, remembered that she first met the Sisters of Christian Doctrine when, in high school, she volunteered as a catechetical instructor at Our Lady of Grace parish in the Bronx. Believing she was called to religious life, Sister Ursula considered joining either the Presentation Sisters or the Sisters of Charity, who had taught her at Our Lady of Sorrows parochial school and Cathedral High School respectively. During her time teaching catechetics, however, she met Sister of Christian Doctrine Helen [Magdalen] Keough and learned of the community’s outreach ministry in the surrounding neighborhood. Although Sister Ursula was attracted to all three groups, she found herself increasingly drawn to the spirit of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. After working at Camp Marydell, a ministry of the congregation, during the summer of 1935, she entered the community on September 3 of that year.25 Other young women learned about the Sisters through chance meetings that led to longer conversations. Sister Regis Beck, who entered the community in 1948, lived in the Bronx and often encountered “a nun who was collecting [begging]” when she shopped with her mother. When she was about fourteen, Sister Regis gave the sister a donation. Usually, she recounted, the sister collecting did not look up when people gave her money; she continued reading her prayer book while thanking them for their contribution to the community’s ministry. On this particular day, however, the sister looked up. Sister Regis asked her to pray for her mother, who was in the hospital, and the sister readily agreed. When asked what she wanted to be when “she grew up,” Sister Regis replied that she hoped to become a nun

Introduction | 13

and teach religion to children. She learned that the sisters’ apostolate involved religious education, she told me during an interview, and “the rest was history.” She visited Sister Annunciata Archer at Ave Maria House, a settlement administered by the sisters in the Bronx, every Sunday for the four years she was in high school. Toward the end of her senior year she traveled to Marydell, the community’s motherhouse, in Nyack, New York, to meet Mother Marianne. Following a successful interview, Sister Regis entered the community the September following her graduation from high school.26 Even friends and family members were sometimes unclear about the work performed by the congregation. Sister Mary Loretta Dolan’s niece remembered visiting her aunt once a month at Madonna House on the Lower East Side of New York. After awhile, she asked her mother exactly what Sister Loretta “did.” Her mother explained that she did “not belong to a prestigious outfit by any means, but the work they do is endless and you can see for yourself that Sister’s love of God makes it seem easy.” Recounting this story in 1988, her niece explained that Sister Loretta, who entered the community in 1924, apparently cared for the older sisters, taught catechism to the children at Madonna House, and—when necessary—begged “for alms outside the department stores or at construction sites in the City, where often my father was working as a steamfitter.”27 A ministry that involved working with the poor, she concluded, was as essential as teaching or nursing to the growth and development of the Catholic Church in the United States. Because the congregation is very small, I have written this book from the perspective of the community’s apostolates rather than focusing on any core group of sisters. Chapter 1 is the story of Mother Marianne, whose interest in both service to the poor and religious education began when she was a student at Wellesley College. Involved in social-settlement work both before and after her conversion to Catholicism in 1897, Mother Marianne came to believe that she and her sisters could not be effective teachers of religion unless they knew and understood those among whom they lived and

14 | Introduction

worked. By 1910, she was the foundress and superior of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine and had established a social settlement on the Lower East Side of New York. Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted to the community’s work in New York; two of their three major ministries were located in the Bronx and Manhattan. Madonna House, the first social settlement, was established in 1910, followed by Ave Maria House in the Bronx in 1930. Working in the settlement houses involved staffing and administering social, educational, and religious programs as well as helping those in need. The sisters operated a bread line, distributed food and clothing, and assisted their neighbors during emergencies. They also offered classes in religious education and sacramental preparation for children and adults and staffed parish CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) programs. Their work was accomplished with very little financial support from either Church or civic organizations. Although the congregation received some funding from Catholic Charities in the New York archdiocese, most of their income was the result of “collecting” (i.e., begging) and an annual “entertainment” that usually took the form of a card party. The sisters collected for themselves and their neighbors and did not limit their requests to financial donations; fruits, vegetables, milk, and coffee were also solicited. The community closed their social settlements in the 1960s, when changes in social-welfare programs and deteriorating physical plants made their continued operation impractical. Their ministry in New York City and its environs, however, continues in the twentyfirst century. Chapter 4 focuses on the community’s first major mission outside New York. In 1940, Rev. George Lewis Smith invited Mother Marianne and her sisters to begin work in the Horse Creek Valley area of rural South Carolina. Convinced that the concept of a social settlement that operated from a faith perspective could be adapted to rural areas, she agreed, and the sisters began a ministry that would continue until lack of personnel forced them to withdraw in 1970. Although they have been away from the “Valley” for about forty years,

Introduction | 15

the sisters are fondly remembered by their former neighbors, who believe they would have starved to death during the Great Depression had the community not arrived to work among them. During interviews with them, members of the community often emphasized the importance of their work outside of social settlements. Sisters were assigned to work and teach religious education in many places, but some parishes clearly played a more important role in the community’s history than others. Chapter 5 details the congregation’s work at four parishes, three located in the South and one in New York City, and at Camp Marydell. Located on the grounds of the motherhouse in Nyack, New York, the camp provided summer fun and recreation for hundreds of girls during the years it was in existence. Camp Marydell holds an important place in the community’s collective memory and is seen as a vital piece of its apostolate. Most settlement workers believed in the importance of getting children out of the city during the summer, and Mother Marianne established the camp with this principle in mind. Several sisters with whom I spoke attended the camp and credit sisters working at Marydell with nurturing their vocation. Mother Marianne died in 1957, a time when major changes were beginning to transform both the Church and American society. Chapter 6 details these changes as they impacted the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. Beginning in 1958, changes in lifestyle and work began to be implemented as the congregation responded to both the mandates of Vatican II and the work of the Sister Formation Conference. Although I have tried to explain the ways in which the community was transformed, I am hesitant to say much about changes implemented after the late 1970s; historians are not expected to comment much on the recent past and present, at least in writing. Because the congregation was not involved in either the parochialschool system or the network of Catholic hospitals, there is little documentation concerning their interaction with other communities of women religious. Although one assumes that Mother Marianne and the first sisters knew of Mother Frances Cabrini’s Missionary Sisters

16 | Introduction

of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and their work among New York City’s Italian immigrants—at one time both communities were ministering within the boundaries of St. Joachim’s parish on the Lower East Side—there is virtually no archival evidence indicating any sort of interaction between them. The same is true of other communities working among New York’s urban poor during the first decades of the twentieth century. Anecdotes and stories recounted by members of nearby communities such as the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill (New York), as well as by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine themselves, indicate that the community cooperated with other congregations when feasible. One member of the Sparkill Dominicans, for instance, remembers swimming in the pool at Marydell Camp at the end of long, hot summer days in the 1950s. In general, however, a religious community that was involved in social-settlement work and religious education would simply not have the opportunity or the need to interact with other women religious on a regular basis. Most of the primary documentation used in writing the history of the community’s apostolate was found in the Archives of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. With the exception of confidential personnel and financial records, I was allowed full access to the collection documenting the founding and history of the congregation. During the process of producing this book, the community, under the leadership of Sisters Agnes O’Connor and Virginia Johnson, transferred their archives from their property in Nyack, New York, to the Fordham University Archives. In order to provide accurate documentation, I have noted the title of the file folder, to describe where the documents used might be found. The collection is virtually unprocessed, and this seemed the best means of describing the location of documents in such a way that future researchers will at know at least where to begin to look. Any material housed in community offices in Nyack, New York, is differentiated from the collection at Fordham. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine remain a small community of fewer than twenty-five members; their average age is around eighty. I

Introduction | 17

have chosen not to end this book in any particular year, because their story continues as they plan for the future. Settlement houses, of course, are no longer a part of the American social-welfare infrastructure, but communities of women religious, large and small, continue to minister to those in need of material and spiritual sustenance— sometimes through their work in schools and hospitals, and sometimes through other venues. The story of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine is a part of this larger history and will, I hope, contribute to historians’ understanding of the place of women religious in both the Catholic Church and American society.

1

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

“Miss Marion Lane Gurney,” the New York Times reported on December 1, 1897, “a member of the old Boston family of Gurneys, who founded the Church Settlement House connected with the Church of the Redeemer, has renounced the Protestant Episcopal [Church] and adopted the Roman Catholic faith.” Gurney was baptized at Manhattan’s St. Francis Xavier Church on November 1, and one week later Archbishop Michael Corrigan administered the sacrament of confirmation. “It is said,” the reporter concluded, “she will either join the Franciscan Sisterhood or Sisters of the Holy Souls in Purgatory.”1 The newspaper’s account of Marion Gurney’s conversion was accurate, but it did not provide readers with a description of the journey that led the Wellesley College graduate to embrace Catholicism. Following her graduation from college, Gurney played an active part in the movement to improve the lives of New York City’s working poor through the medium of social settlements. Although her entrance into the Roman Catholic Church meant she would no longer be associated with the city’s extensive network of Protestant church workers and missionaries intent on reforming America’s largest urban center while leading its residents to salvation, Gurney did not discard all she had learned either at Wellesley or in the slums of New York City. She redirected her commitment to both the poor and Christianity, however, through the establishment of a community of women religious dedicated to serving those in need through Catholic social settlements that offered all of the programs found at their

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 19

Protestant and secular counterparts, while teaching religious education and preparing children and adults to receive the sacraments.

Education for Service

Marian Lane Gurney was born in New Orleans in 1868, the only child of Asa and Adeline Gurney. Very little is known of her early years, but autobiographical notes indicate that her father’s army career took the family to California in 1872. Returning to the East Coast in 1883, Gurney enrolled in the exclusive Friends’ Seminary, located on East 17th Street in New York City, to prepare to enter Wellesley College in the fall of 1884.2 Although she spent only one year at the school, her lifelong interest in faith and spiritual development deepened during this time. After becoming friendly with a student she later described as an “ardent Anglican,” Gurney began accompanying her to various Episcopal churches around New York City. It was during these services, she later remembered, that she first heard of the “Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist” and developed “longings for Communion.”3 Gurney matriculated at Wellesley College in 1884. Boston philanthropist Henry Fowle Durant, who had founded the Massachusetts College in 1875, believed that God was calling women to “come up higher, to prepare [themselves] for great conflicts, for vast reforms in social life, for noble usefulness.”4 Durant’s philosophy was manifested by the pedagogy of the college faculty, who, in the 1880s, were engaged in an ongoing discussion concerning the role that higher education should play in the intellectual and moral development of young women in order to prepare them to “develop a socially responsible civic role and a career.”5 According to Patricia Ann Palmieri’s history of the college, many of this first-generation of women faculty chose to remain single and “commit themselves to causes and careers”; they hoped their students would come to understand that

20 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

they could and should make a difference in the rapidly changing world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.6 Many Wellesley faculty subscribed to an ideology known as “symmetrical womanhood,” which taught that healthy women who entered middle age in good physical and psychological health were free to reject the traditional feminine roles of wife and mother and enter into the work of community activism or a professional career. They were among the first women educators to recognize and teach their students the potential limitations of a family that “absorbed woman’s energies and prevented her from reaching a consciousness of self that would allow her to participate in public life.”7 Firmly convinced that Wellesley students were capable of joining their male counterparts in shaping the future of America, the faculty insisted they study the social sciences in addition to the traditional fields of English, science, mathematics, and language.8 Gurney enrolled in a wide range of courses during her four years at Wellesley, including rhetoric, Greek, and French; she also studied history, constitutional history, zoology, and physics.9 Because the faculty believed that the “systematic study of the Bible holds the place of first importance as a method of liberal education,” she was required to take a course in Bible each year.10 Wellesley students were expected to know something of the early history recounted in the Bible, from the creation accounts to the story of the exodus, by the time they matriculated at the college. They then spent their first two years studying the entire Old Testament. The messianic prophecies and gospels were taught during junior year, and senior year was devoted to the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles.11 In addition, first-year students met once a week for “Studies in Christian Ethics,” where they discussed the “simple systemization of the Bible principles and laws of life.”12 Undergraduates were encouraged to be involved in extracurricular activities, especially those programs and organizations designed to improve the lives of the poor and working classes in Boston and its surrounding suburbs. In 1886, Gurney and other members of the college’s Christian Association provided entertainment for South

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 21

Natick factory girls every four weeks.13 The following year, she volunteered to teach Sunday school at a local church. Her first class consisted of three girls and three boys between the ages of twelve and fourteen—“a much nicer age for me,” she wrote Adeline Gurney, “for I can never talk to very small children.”14 By Gurney’s junior year at Wellesley, she was an active participant in campus religious activities. She was instrumental in bringing students together for “religious conversation,” for example, and prepared several for confession and confirmation.15 In an undated letter to her mother, probably written in 1886, Gurney noted she was still uncomfortable speaking publicly about religion. Even though a Miss Tuttle had invited her to participate in prayer meetings, she “would just—sooner be switched than get-up and state my views on religious matters in general.”16 She apparently overcame her misgivings, however, because several months later her mother was informed that her daughter had just finished leading a prayer meeting.17 Gurney’s own faith would continue to develop during her undergraduate years. On December 6, 1885, she wrote her mother that she had been confirmed in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In this same year Gurney began to read the Fathers of the Church, including St. Augustine, and for the first time came into contact with the Sisters of St. Margaret, an Episcopal order of nuns who had arrived in the United States in 1873. Believing she was called to the life of an Anglican nun, she attempted to enter the community before completing her education but was rejected because she was too young.18 Her active involvement in organized religious activities was clearly of some concern to her parents, however, because, Gurney wrote, she was praying her mother would “learn that a woman may worship God in His Church without ‘neglecting her home duties.’”19 Gurney’s deepening interest in religion also attracted the attention of the Wellesley faculty, who in 1887 informed her parents that they were concerned about their student’s “Popish” tendencies.20 Asa and Adeline Gurney hoped to dissuade their only child from entering a religious community and encouraged her to consider mar-

22 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

riage and a family. In an effort to distract her from what they believed was a preoccupation with the religious life, Gurney and her mother spent almost two years touring Europe after her graduation from Wellesley. The trip did nothing to change Gurney’s mind. “Do not imagine,” she wrote her father, “that the distractions of travel have dulled the feelings which I . . . expressed. I am more profoundly convinced than ever before that the one mission & aim of my life should be the complete and undistracted service of Christ and his poor and I am more than ever resolved by His help, to consecrate my life with what talents & acquirements I possess, to his glorious end.”21 Her friends from college may have understood their classmate’s feelings better than her father did, because she had combined the idea of “symmetrical womanhood,” instilled in her at Wellesley, with her call to religious life. Gurney believed her religious vocation was genuine, but the time spent with her mother on their European tour led her to the realization that, at least for the present, Adeline required the help and care of her only daughter. Family obligations, however, did not prevent her from immersing herself in works of service; “not desultory mission work,” she explained, “but first the life of devotion, or prayer & meditation—& then the work growing out of the life.” In an attempt to help Asa Gurney understand her call to serve God, she compared her vocation to religious life to the desire most women had for marriage and a family.22 Adeline Gurney was convinced that her daughter planned to become a deaconess in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In a letter to her husband, who had remained behind in the United States, she not only expressed disapproval of their daughter’s plan but admitted the two had argued over it. “If I urge her to have what is becoming to her age and station,” she complained, “she takes it as a form of persecution so it is very difficult to deal with her. Where in the world she has taken all her fanatical ideas from I cannot understand, but they are there and it is very difficult to know what to do.” On their return to the United States, it would be up to her husband to persuade their

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 23

daughter to choose a different path in life and “make her see the folly of [her decision] but always gently and firmly.”23 Recognizing that the grand tour of Europe had not lessened Gurney’s desire to live a life dedicated to God, mother and daughter returned to the United States in 1891. In a letter to Wellesley friends, Gurney reported that she had spent almost two years touring Europe but would be spending the coming winter in Philadelphia. Since her return, she told her “Dear Girls of ’88,” she had been involved in mission work and teaching, but she did not provide any specific details about her activities.24 In November of that same year, Gurney finally entered the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Margaret in Boston, Massachusetts. A short time later she was given the religious name of Sister Marion Margaret and clothed as a novice. She never made final vows, however, and left the community on July 9, 1893.25 Although Gurney’s reasons for leaving the Sisters of St. Margaret are unclear, she remained convinced of her vocation to religious life. Extant correspondence indicates she was resisting her mother’s pressure to pursue a more traditional lifestyle. “As for the obligation laid upon me of leading the Religious Life I have not the slightest shadow of a doubt, and while I still think that under peculiar circumstances such a life might be practicable outside of a community, experience has shown me the extreme difficulty not to say impossibility of procuring these circumstances, at least in my case,” she reflected. “Now as to my Vocation, I am as firmly convinced of it as I am of my own existence.” Reminding her mother that her calling to religious life was not entirely her own decision, she wrote, “My dearest, if it is God’s Will, you would not wish to fight against God.”26

A Church Settlement

Her plans for religious life had been put on hold, but Gurney still hoped to work for the church in some capacity. Combining that desire with the lessons she had learned at Wellesley concerning the

24 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

role women could play in the transformation of society, in 1894 she accepted a position as head resident at the Church Settlement— founded by the Episcopalian Church of the Redeemer—at 1556 Avenue A in New York City. Settlement houses had been a part of the urban landscape since Toynbee Hall, the world’s first social settlement, was founded by Anglican clergyman Samuel Barnett in London’s East End in 1884. Convinced that traditional methods of charity would not break down the barriers of class, Barnett and the young men who joined him believed that living among the poor allowed different socioeconomic classes to interact as friends and neighbors. Toynbee Hall’s residents would bring “art, music, literature, and moral idealism to the East Londoner,” allowing them to give, according to Walter Besant, “not money, but themselves.”27 A number of American reformers enthusiastically embraced Barnett’s proposed solution to the social problems of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Established during an era of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration, proponents of settlement houses planned to improve the quality of life of their immigrant neighbors and to assist in their assimilation into American society.28 Settlement workers were among the first to identify urban poverty as a systemic problem rather than a personal failing; they also believed that education was essential to improving the lives of their neighbors.29 Amherst College graduate Stanton Coit, who spent three months at Toynbee Hall after completing doctoral studies in Berlin, is credited with establishing the first American settlement, the Neighborhood Guild, in 1886 in New York City. In 1887, Coit decided to return to England, leaving the Neighborhood Guild to his coworkers and their neighbors. The settlement failed to prosper, however, and was not revitalized until 1891, when it was reorganized as the University Settlement under the leadership of Charles B. Stover.30 The most famous American social settlement, Chicago’s Hull House, opened in 1889, and by the 1890s social settlements were operating in most major American cities.31

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 25

Settlement houses have been described as “redemptive places,” which “were important to the industrial American city because they assimilated immigrants and migrants, brought women volunteers into legitimate contact with strangers, supervised potentially disruptive groups while they learned to negotiate the city, and redefined the boundaries between charitable and municipal responsibility for poverty.”32 Living among the poor allowed settlement workers to come to a better understanding of poverty and, at the same time, establish relationships with the neighbors they hoped to help. In urban centers throughout the United States, social settlements sponsored Americanization programs for newly arrived immigrants, lobbied for laws requiring that housing meet certain standards, and encouraged the formation of labor unions.33 By 1894, when Gurney and several other young women opened the Church Settlement, several other religiously affiliated settlements, including Boston’s Andover House (Congregational), New York’s East Side House (Episcopalian), and Chicago Commons (Chicago Theological Seminary, Congregational) were already operating.34 Despite some claims to the contrary, these settlements were never intended to be missions. The religious reformers operating and supporting them agreed that there was a distinction between social settlements and missions: “A Settlement,” William Jewett Tucker wrote, “enables the rich to know the poor in a way not possible for a Mission, whose members go about with minds set on their object [evangelization], and who are often held at a distance because of that object.”35 Other settlement proponents, however, believed the spiritual components of one’s life were as important as the material. “We are more than ever convinced,” wrote Charles Henderson, an advocate of religious settlements, “of the futility of presenting religious truth to the masses without a practical demonstration of the brotherhood of man, and the equal hopelessness of attempted social reform based on any other foundation than that of the Incarnation.”36 Gurney’s Church Settlement was committed to meeting both the physical and spiritual needs of the surrounding neighborhoods. The

26 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

residents who opened the settlement hoped to meet two goals: (1) to make the settlement self-sufficient and (2) to present the “Gospel of Christ as the only satisfactory resolvent of the social problem.”37 Rev. Henry A. Adams, rector of the Church of the Redeemer, approved the settlement; essential financial support was provided by Anna (Mrs. William) Arnold, a church member. Gurney spent three years developing the religious and social programs of the settlement and did not draw a salary during that time. Despite the settlement’s affiliation with an Episcopal parish, as well as its stated purpose, it was not designed to be a sectarian institution “in any sense of limiting its labors or of making church membership obligatory.”38 “The object and purpose of our lives,” Gurney told a New York Times Reporter, “is to help our neighbors and to show them how to better their own condition.”39 Because social settlements developed programs and services in response to the needs of the neighborhood, no two settlements were exactly alike. In the neighborhood in which the Church Settlement was located, “the public schools [were] often inadequate to meet the demand,” so classes were held for children who could not be admitted to school for lack of room. For five cents an hour, parents were able to give their children “the education the city ought to provide” until they were admitted to the public school.40 Other programs were designed to offer children recreational activities when school was not in session. Within six months of its opening, approximately 450 children were attending at least one of the many programs offered by the Church Settlement. Shortly after Gurney began her work as head resident, Adams resigned his pastorate. Several months later he shocked the congregation by announcing his decision to convert to Catholicism, claiming among his reasons that Episcopalian clergy did not receive the respect from the laity they deserved, and bemoaning the “considerable immorality [found] among the laity.”41 Soon after, Anna Arnold, the settlement’s chief benefactor, also entered the Catholic Church. She honored her promise to pay the building’s rent for the year but

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 27

did not offer any additional financial support. When Arnold’s contributions ceased, the settlement found itself struggling to maintain its existence, causing most of the young women affiliated with it to leave. Gurney remained, however, and attempted to continue its educational and social programs.42 By October of 1897, Gurney was publicly expressing her unhappiness with the Protestant Episcopal Church. Although extant correspondence leaves readers with some uncertainty concerning the source of her dissatisfaction, it is clear she was moving toward a theological position that was more Roman Catholic than Episcopal. In a letter to her mother, she admitted that her views had become untenable with the beliefs of her religion, saying, “The trouble is that I do not find in the Protestant Episcopal Church any warrant for the doctrine and practices which we of the Catholic [high Anglican] party hold and teach.” She and others who shared her theological sentiments had no right, she maintained, to remain in the church while continuing “to hold and to practice doctrines which the Church disallows.” Despite her disagreements with the Episcopal Church, she was still somewhat uncomfortable with the thought of converting to Catholicism. “Personally there is nothing in Rome to attract me,” she continued. “I do not enjoy the services. For dignity and impressiveness nothing can compare [with] the Anglican ritual properly rendered.”43 Knowing she would soon have to make a decision about church membership, Gurney took this opportunity to begin to prepare her mother for the inevitable. “Of course I know that you will feel dreadfully worried about [my conversion], and I cannot tell you how sorry I am, for your sake, as well as for other reasons, that this has come up. It has troubled me more or less for the past year, and now the ghost simply will not be laid.”44 There was really no place for her in the Protestant Episcopal Church; it was not providing her with the spiritual sustenance she required. She was being called to the Roman Catholic Church. When Gurney was baptized at New York City’s St. Francis Xavier Church, Father Henry Van Rensselaer and Anna Arnold—both con-

28 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

verts from the Protestant Episcopal Church—served as sponsors.45 When a reporter from the New York Herald spoke with Gurney, she “decline[d] to discuss the reasons which prompted her to join the Catholic Church” but spoke “in the kindest way of those with whom she had been associated in the parish of the Church of the Redeemer.”46

A Catholic Settlement in New York City

In 1898, when Clement Thuente, OP, pastor of the newly established St. Catherine of Siena parish on East 68th Street, decided to open a Catholic settlement house (to be called St. Rose’s Settlement), Gurney’s interest in and experience with social settlements led to her appointment as resident directress. According to Thuente, Gurney, “knew the needs of the neighborhood as well as the priests who had thoroughly surveyed it, understood settlements thoroughly, and generously offered her services to organize a Catholic Settlement, no matter how humble and how poor.”47 The establishment of Catholic social settlements was slowly coming to be seen as one way to demonstrate the Church’s concern for its poor and dispossessed members. Critics of Catholicism charged that the Church was uninterested in the urban poor, especially those Catholics who had recently immigrated to America from southern and eastern Europe. Catholic writers and commentators refuted this claim and issued a criticism of their own, accusing Protestant churches and missions of establishing charitable institutions, such as social settlements, day nurseries, kindergartens, and camps, so “Catholic and Jewish children of thickly settled tenement districts” would increase the membership rolls of the “fast disappearing Protestant congregations.” To compete with Protestant agencies, some Catholic pastors and laypeople argued, the Church had to develop its own system of social services, including settlement houses. Writing in The Messenger of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1903, lay journalist

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 29

Thomas Meehan called for the implementation of progressive methods to provide for the material needs of the new immigrants. “We may scoff at ‘settlement work’ and the kindred varieties of modern professionally trained philanthropy,” Meehan wrote, “but their disastrous results stare us in the face on all sides. And what do we offer in their place as a practical substitute?”48 If the Catholic Church did not develop an alternative to Protestant settlement houses and missions, immigrants would slowly drift into other churches. A social settlement, “with a prudent administration under Catholic auspices and control,” Rev. James B. Curry opined, “would mean much for the Catholics of the crowded districts of our great cities.”49 Although Gurney recognized the potential role of the Protestant social settlement as a proselytizing agent, she willingly admitted that her adopted religion had not done its best to welcome newcomers, particularly Italians, into its churches, schools, and charitable institutions. There were four reasons, she speculated, why Italian Catholic immigrants might be enticed to join any one of a number of Protestant churches: (1) Neither the immigrants nor their children had received or were receiving any sort of religious instruction under Catholic auspices; (2) the “decadence” of life in the city’s tenements forced them to look outside for spiritual sustenance; (3) the attraction of non-Catholic (Protestant and secular) missionaries and settlements; and (4) a lack of communication between priests and parishioners. Educational and social activities combined with religious education would lead Italian immigrants away from Protestant missionaries and back into their ancestral church.50 “All that was needed was personal contact with a friend and the creation of a Catholic atmosphere to get [an] immediate response and bring the patients back to what they had once known and lived with intimately.”51 Gurney believed that the establishment of Catholic social settlements would enable the Church to help solve the immigrants’ practical problems and encourage them to remain faithful to Catholicism. The work of Catholic settlements would include social and educational programs and focus on traditional activities designed

30 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

to provide material assistance; an additional component would include classes in religious education and sacramental preparation to improve their neighbors’ spiritual lives.52 “The city of New York will be saved if it is,” Gurney reflected, “not by the distribution of clothing and groceries, nor yet by the study of Browning and the cultivation of fine arts, but by regeneration of individual human lives as one by one they are brought back to the Sacraments of the Catholic Church.”53 American bishops were slow to endorse the establishment of Catholic social settlements in their dioceses. Some prelates were suspicious of the very idea of a settlement house, and several claimed they were hotbeds of both secularism and radicalism. The New World, Chicago’s Catholic newspaper, described settlements as “mere roosting-places for frowsy anarchists, fierce-eyed socialists, professed anti-clericals and a coterie of long-haired sociologists intent upon probing the moonshine with pale fingers.”54 By the end of the nineteenth century, however, Church leaders were slowly being persuaded to allow the operation of Catholic settlements within their diocesan boundaries as a way to demonstrate the Church’s concern for immigrants, particularly the Italians. In 1897, at the invitation of Archbishop William Elder, Sisters of Charity Blandina and Justina Segale (who were biological sisters as well as members of the same religious community) began work among Cincinnati’s Italian community. Quickly determining that the best way to serve those to whom they were ministering was through a social settlement, they opened Santa Maria Institute, the first Catholic settlement house in the United States.55 One year later, Thuente and Gurney opened St. Rose’s Settlement, the first Catholic settlement in New York City. Thuente and Gurney feared that the Catholic population living in the neighborhood surrounding the parish was being lured away from the Church by Protestant settlements offering both evangelization and Americanization classes to eager immigrants; and, in fact, many of the neighborhood’s Italian Catholic immigrants were attending a

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 31

Protestant mission.56 Although one could find a Catholic church on the Upper East Side “at least every ten blocks and sometimes much closer than that,” the recently arrived Catholic immigrants needed social and educational programs as well as the opportunity to attend Mass.57 Claiming that their Protestant rivals were so eager to “steal” the children and adults of St. Catherine’s that one mission gave every boy one dollar the first day he attended Sunday school,58 Thuente announced that St. Rose’s would counter this by working especially with “that class of poor who have proven their infidelity to the Catholic birthright, remaining Catholics in name only.”59 The only Catholic social settlement in New York City at the time of its dedication in October 1898, St. Rose’s, located originally at 257 East 71st Street, was an ambitious undertaking. Under Gurney’s direction, the settlement’s staff immediately began to implement a variety of activities designed to meet the physical and spiritual needs of their neighbors. St. Rose’s residents stressed the importance of neighborhood visitation—especially to those who were either sick or poor—because, they claimed, all but two of the Italian families living within the parish boundaries were participating in a local Protestant mission. In addition, the settlement maintained a circulating library and offered sewing and cooking classes on a regular basis. Not wishing to neglect those who worked during the day, a night school offered English classes for men. The workers regretted that “owing to lack of room and teachers, like advantages cannot be given to the girls.”60 Since Gurney believed that settlement work was useless without a religious foundation, classes in religious education and sacramental preparation—for children and adults—were incorporated into the schedule of activities. Not all of St. Catherine’s parishioners supported St. Rose’s. The church basement, for instance, was used for meetings of the boys’ and young men’s clubs, and those desiring to pray in silence were sometimes disturbed by the noise. A group of irate parishioners informed the pastor that if he did not put a stop to the noise, they

32 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

would complain to Archbishop Michael Corrigan. When the pastor refused to abolish the clubs, the group contacted the archbishop, who announced he would personally investigate the situation. Corrigan arrived at the parish unannounced and spent about thirty minutes with the boys meeting in the church basement that evening. Before leaving, he remarked, “God bless you boys and your spiritual directors. You make a good use of the basement of Saint Catherine’s Church.”61 If numbers are any indication, St. Rose’s Settlement was an unqualified success. An article published in Charities in 1904 commented on the settlement’s distinctively Italian program and noted that about 3,500 Italians, primarily of “the artisan and mechanic class,” were taking advantage of St. Rose’s offerings.62 Gurney herself later boasted that within five years of the settlement’s opening, only a few of the area’s Catholic children continued to attend Protestant missions.63 St. Rose’s, however, did not become a place from which residents and neighbors lobbied for either civic reform or better living and working conditions. Unlike secular settlement-house workers such as Jane Addams, Gurney and her colleagues did not look beyond the immediate needs of New York City’s Catholic immigrants. As a result, like most other Catholic social settlement houses, St. Rose’s did not become a center of social reform.64 Gurney resigned from St. Rose’s in 1903 for reasons that are not entirely clear. The official explanation was that her ailing mother required more and more of her time. An unidentified newspaper article insinuated that there was friction between Gurney and other settlement workers but noted that a number of additional reasons had been offered for the “trouble” that ensued after the settlement’s move to larger quarters. “The charwoman says it is because they moved in on Friday,” the paper claimed, “and the matron declared it is because they didn’t carry salt and a broom into the house first. . . . Miss Gurney’s friends assert that it was because a new corps of assistants was appointed. . . . All of these ladies had ideas of their own

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 33

and so did Miss Gurney.” The article reported that one of the new residents, Miss Edith Wilson, who was also a convert, spoke Italian and French, and her friends believed she should assume the position of manager at St. Rose’s. Gurney ought to “take a back seat and allow Miss Wilson to hold the reins.” Others accused Gurney of forcing an employee to nurse Adeline Gurney, who at the time was described as “an invalid.” Whatever the reason, Gurney “declared such friction would destroy any good the settlement work might do or had done. She forthwith sent in her resignation and, packing up all of her belongings, moved away.”65 Edith Wilson was appointed the new head worker. Thuente apparently later regretted his acceptance of Gurney’s resignation, writing to her in 1924, “I wish to state that my feelings toward you have not changed; and if I have in any way wronged you I beg your pardon.”66

A Training School for Catechists

While still serving as directress of St. Rose’s, Gurney and B. Ellen Burke began The Sunday Companion, a weekly periodical for children, in 1899. Published by D. H. McBride and Company, the magazine was intended to supplement the work done in catechism classes at St. Rose’s and surrounding parishes. Devoted as Gurney was to the concept of the social settlement, she remained convinced that their programs should also include both religious education and sacramental preparation.67 Several years before resigning from St. Rose’s Settlement, Gurney began to develop a plan that would eventually lead to the establishment of a new religious community known as the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine. In an effort to standardize the training of religious-education teachers, she founded what would become the New York Normal Training School for Catechists. Under the spiritual direction of Rev. James Connolly, the school was open to anyone

34 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

planning to teach Christian doctrine; mothers wishing to provide their children with a proper and substantial understanding of the Catholic faith received special attention and encouragement.68 Students took four courses a year in order to complete the twoyear program. The first-year course of study consisted of Christian Doctrine, Scripture History, Methods of Teaching, and Catholic Devotions. Second-year students studied Christian Doctrine, Church History, Liturgy, and “Controverted Points” (i.e., refuting Protestants).69 An additional component of the program required practice teaching. Catechists were expected to apply their training in a way that ensured that their students received a solid foundation in the tenets of Catholicism. A 1908 fourth-grade lesson plan, for instance, divided the day’s class into three sections. Students began the class by reviewing the Apostle’s Creed. They then worked on a lesson from the Baltimore Catechism. The third section of the class was devoted to scripture; on this particular day, students studied the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.70 Catechists enrolled in the school not only offered their services to parishes; they were expected to teach wherever Catholics were in need of instruction. In a 1903 commencement address, graduate Louise Teresa Bossong praised the students’ work on Randall’s Island, home to a municipal insane asylum and hospital, calling it “a work of real and true Christian charity.” The island’s inhabitants were distributed among wards labeled “Feeble-Minded,” “Epileptic,” and “Surgical”; of the 941 inhabitants of the wards, Bossong noted, 438 were Catholic. “It is no easy task,” she declaimed, “for these teachers to instill into the hearts of these feeble-minded children the work of God.”71 The catechists studying at the training school were concerned about the lack of religious education classes for Italian immigrants and petitioned Archbishop Michael Corrigan (1885–1902) to establish the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. In May 1902 the CCD was formally recognized in the Archdiocese of New York at Our Lady of Good Counsel parish. Corrigan appointed Rev. James B. Connolly

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 35

as the spiritual director, and Gurney was named secretary general. It was the first official establishment of the Confraternity in the United States and was the beginning of the American church’s formal attempt to provide religious education for children attending public schools.72 To demonstrate their commitment to educating potential catechists, an optional third year of advanced study in Church history was added to the curriculum of the New York Normal Training School, and students completing this course were awarded a certificate. The school later introduced an additional optional fourth year of study during which students received training to prepare future catechists for work in religious education. Although she was still working at St. Rose’s Settlement, Gurney in 1902 agreed to help the Salesian Fathers organize a Sunday school in Transfiguration parish, on Mott Street in New York’s Little Italy. Working with members of the Confraternity, she gathered the parish children for religious instruction, organized classes, and conducted an evening class for women of the parish in order to prepare them for catechetical work.73 In a letter to Archbishop Michael Corrigan, Gurney informed him of the work being done at Transfiguration as well as of the religious education and sacramental preparation classes that the Confraternity and Normal School were offering at St. Lucy’s and St. Monica’s parishes, and she lobbied the archbishop to appoint a priest to direct the two groups.74 “Of course, the work in each locality is under the supervision of the pastor,” she wrote, “but if the enthusiasm of the workers is to be maintained and serious errors of judgment avoided, it is necessary that some one priest should be at the head of the movement and actually direct it, and that this director should be persona grata to the other city pastors.”75 Her greatest desire in life was to help preserve the faith of children and the poor, but she did not think she could accomplish this without “the benefit of priestly direction.” If a solution could not be found, she told Corrigan, she would “place my resignation in your Grace’s hands.”76 During the years she was involved with the New York Normal Training School for Catechists, Gurney began to envision a society

36 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

of consecrated women dedicated to providing “Christian Training” for poor children living within the boundaries of needy parishes and missions. Her original plan called for the women, who would work entirely outside the parochial-school system, to travel in groups of two or three to missions without a resident pastor and prepare children to receive the sacraments over the course of seven or eight weeks. In addition, they would maintain the mission chapels and even lead para-liturgical services on Sunday if a priest was unable to be present. Before leaving for another mission, the women would attempt to train enough interested laypeople to continue the work they had begun.77 Gurney was not yet planning a formal religious community needing either diocesan or papal approval. Each woman would take a private vow of chastity, but it would be renewed every year. She would also take an annual vow of obedience to go wherever sent, and a pledge to live by the rules of the society. Community members would wear a uniform (Gurney was clear that it was not a habit), but it would “not be conspicuous . . . [and could] be worn in any climate.”78 Although Gurney herself was ready to commit to religious life— and had been for some time—she was unable to decide between an active or contemplative order.79 In a note entitled “Whether I should undertake a contemplative life,” Gurney listed four reasons why such a life appealed to her: (1) It would allow her to follow an attraction to a life of prayer and penance; (2) she would not have to “bear the burden of superiority” (if she founded a religious community, she worried about having to spend at least some time serving as the group’s superior); (3) a life of prayer and contemplation would allow her to make reparations for the sins of her family; and (4) she suspected she would find a sense of inner peace. She listed only two reasons against entering a contemplative community. First, she was not sure she was physically able to live such a life; and second, her “spiritual father” (Francis McCarthy, SJ) believed that her desire for this sort of life was actually a temptation to reject an apostolic community.80

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 37

In a second document, entitled “Apostolic Life,” Gurney weighed the pros and cons of choosing a type of religious life involving active ministry. God seemed to have given her the strengths and gifts needed to pursue such a life, and she realized there was a great need for the kind of work she hoped to accomplish. From a spiritual perspective, she claimed, “it is a much more complete crucifixion of self than the contemplative life.” There were only two reasons listed for deciding against a life of active ministry: Such work could have a negative impact on her health and well-being, and she was not looking forward to assuming the position of superior.81 In the end, she decided that some sort of balance between the active and contemplative was necessary if she was ever to find happiness within religious life.

A New Community

On July 16, 1908, a notice in Church Progress announced the newly created “Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine.” Located at 517 West 152nd Street in New York City, the institute was preparing interested women to work in rural parishes without a resident pastor by offering courses in dogma, Church history, scripture, pedagogy, and church music, as well as the language of the people they would be teaching. The members offered catechism classes in Italian, French, Spanish, and German and planned to support themselves by teaching music and foreign languages, translating manuscripts, and fulfilling orders for lace work, embroidery, and needlework. In order to make it clear that they were not available to staff schools or hospitals, the anonymous reporter emphasized that “the society may not undertake any form of institutional work.”82 This announcement is the earliest indication that Gurney was implementing her plan to establish a society of missionary catechists. “It is suggested,” she wrote, “that a general center for catechetical work be established; that this be made the headquarters of the Con-

38 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

fraternity of Christian Doctrine and the Normal School for Sunday School Teachers; [and] that intelligent women, who may feel called to dedicate their entire lives to God in this apostolic labor, be specifically trained as catechists.”83 Those who decided to join Gurney in the work of religious education and sacramental preparation might find themselves responsible for as many as thirteen tasks, seven of which involved teaching. In addition to conducting traditional Sunday-school classes, they were expected to staff evening classes for boys and girls who worked during the day, offer instruction for “foreigners, in labor camps, etc.,” and provide home instruction for those too ill to attend classes. The women were also responsible for teaching advanced classes in “Christian Doctrine, Scripture, Church History, the beauties of the Catholic liturgy, ecclesiastical Latin, etc.,” and facilitating reading circles for women. Those who lived in remote areas or were too far from a local church to attend classes were given the opportunity to complete home study and correspondence courses.84 Understanding that her community could be useful in ways that did not involve either formal classroom teaching or nursing, Gurney hoped the women would be able to assist poor parishes at the same time they were preparing children for First Communion and confirmation. Possible projects included organizing a sewing circle to provide First Communion outfits for boys and girls; developing a lending and reference library for catechists; operating a store selling catechetical material; and publishing literature related to religious education. They were also expected to keep a list of volunteers willing to teach and conduct parish visitations. “By this means zealous persons living in parishes where their services are not needed may be brought in touch with pastors who require assistance.”85 Gurney could not implement her plan without receiving the necessary archdiocesan approval from John Farley, who had succeeded Corrigan as archbishop of New York in 1902. When she presented her plan to him, Gurney reminded the archbishop that it was still

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 39

necessary to develop new ways of counteracting the proselytizing efforts of Protestant women missionaries. Catholic social settlements were one solution, but other avenues of evangelization needed to be endorsed and supported. The group she was proposing to organize planned to work aggressively against non-Catholic missionaries and settlement workers intent on drawing Catholics away from their church. In urban areas, this would be accomplished by “weekday catechesis for public school children, night classes for working boys and girls, classes for neglected adults, especially for Catholic immigrants, normal classes for Sunday School teachers, and systematic visiting.” She formally asked Farley’s permission to organize her group in such a way that allowed them to do this work. If they proved themselves useful to the Church, Gurney hoped he would permit the women “to consecrate themselves entirely to this work and to organize a religious community for its perpetuation.”86 Although Farley’s response is missing, he must have approved of the new endeavor because every Wednesday evening, as was reported in an article in Catholic News in June 1908, Gurney and the women who supported her plan conducted catechism lessons in Italian, with stereopticon views for men, women, and children. Classes began with recitations of the Nicene Creed, Our Father, Hail Mary, and Ten Commandments. An article of the Nicene Creed was then discussed and explained. Following Gurney’s original plan, the women even provided in-home instruction for those too ill to attend classes.87 On September 8, 1908, Gurney and four other future women religious formally began living in community by making a spiritual retreat together. On that day, Gurney signed the following statement: We, the undersigned, have organized the Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine with the intention of remaining in this Institute until death. Pending the approbation of the Institute and the acceptance of our vows by Holy Church we mutually promise and agree to

40 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side live in poverty chastity and obedience for six months, understanding all things according to the Rules and Constitutions of the aforesaid Institute. We further promise that if the officers of the Society shall ask us to withdraw from the Institute we will obey quietly and without complaint, and without asking any compensation for whatever work we may have done or for whatever money or goods we may have given the Society; because we do hereby acknowledge that our board and lodging during our stay in this Institute are all and the full compensation and legal pay we have asked and these we freely agree to take for all said work and duration.

The following day Amelie Merceret signed the statement; over the next fourteen months the document was signed by Margaret Coleman, Julia Foley, and Elizabeth Lammers.88 Not everyone who came to live in the new community remained long enough to participate in its work. “There was also,” Gurney later remembered, “the usual quota of unavailable who besiege all new foundations—persons whose peculiarities or defects of character and temperament had prevented their reception elsewhere . . . but the Five held doggedly to their course.”89 Unlike other young women entering religious life in the early twentieth century, Gurney and her colleagues were not cloistered during their formation period. The Salesian Fathers, who had recently opened Our Lady Help of Christians parish on New York’s Lower East Side, requested that the women help organize and staff their Sunday school. Members of the community agreed, and they served the parish for three years; during this time the religious program grew from twenty to seven hundred students.90 In 1910, Gurney and her sisters were asked to conduct religiouseducation classes for the children of St. Joachim’s parish in the neighborhood of Cherry Hill, “the most forlorn and abandoned district of the entire Lower East Side.” It was clear from the outset that their job was not going to be easy. According to a history of the community dictated by Gurney,

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 41 The Italian element which was very numerous was honest and hardworking but terribly pinched by poverty, and this poverty and simplicity was being shamelessly exploited by the non-Catholic missionaries who abounded. Although the religious census shows that only one-half of one per cent of the district are Protestants, the remainder being Hebrew or Roman Catholic, there are seven large Protestant Missions in the immediate neighborhood all filled with Catholic children and young people.91

The sisters’ initial impression was that they could not even depend on the neighborhood’s parents for support. “The older people had fallen into a profound indifference as to religion and the little ones were sent for temporal assistance from one mission to another. An entire generation was growing up in ignorance of the faith of their Baptism and under influence antagonistic to it.”92 The women valiantly attempted to interest the parish children in religious education and to prepare them for the sacraments of Communion and confirmation. In addition to appealing for parental support, they searched for ways to make the classes interesting. None of their efforts seemed to work; they simply were not attracting children to their program. Many neighborhood residents bluntly told the women they were doing too little, too late. “If you had begun this work thirty years ago,” they heard over and over, “something could have been accomplished, but now the non-Catholics have a firm hold on all who are not absolutely indifferent.”93 Gurney’s experience in social settlements led her to offer an early and confident diagnosis of the problems facing her community. “They were going to the people from afar,” she opined. “They were not a part of the neighborhood life, in touch with all its humble joys and sorrows. Cherry Hill had no desire to be taught, but would it not respond to practical sympathy? Was not this method divinely chosen by Incarnate Love to win the hearts of men?”94 If they were going to succeed at St. Joachim’s, they would have to find a way to meet the spiritual and physical needs of the parishioners.

42 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

The sisters submitted a memorandum to Farley detailing the conditions—temporal and spiritual—they had found in their Cherry Hill neighborhood. After consulting with advisors, Farley permitted the women to establish a day nursery for the neighborhood’s children. Rev. Vincent Jannuzzi, a Scalabrinian priest, who had been appointed St. Joachim’s pastor in 1907, also petitioned archdiocesan officials about the positive impact a day nursery could have on the area’s Catholic immigrants.95 Jannuzzi apparently recommended that the nursery be administered by another religious community, but Farley allowed “Miss Gurney and her associates” to establish and operate what became the Madonna House Day Nursery.96 The sisters never intended to include the care of young children in their apostolate, but, as temporarily professed women whose rule was still pending, they complied with the cardinal’s “request.” Since there was no Catholic day nursery operating in the area, mothers were left with no alternative but to leave their children in facilities operated by Protestant churches and agencies. Often, the sisters believed, nursery administrators agreed to care for Catholic children “only on condition that the older children would attend classes of religious instruction and the parents would be present at the weekly Gospel meeting.”97 A five-story house at 173 Cherry Street was rented, and Farley agreed to pay for most of the necessary repairs and renovations. During the first mass offered in the building’s chapel, on June 29, 1910, the five women who had first come together in 1908, including Gurney, who received the religious name Mother Marianne of Jesus, promised poverty, chastity, and obedience. (They had not yet received permission to make final vows.)98 On August 15, 1910, the Madonna House Day Nursery was formally opened. Gurney, believing that the building could accommodate one hundred children comfortably and still have room for a kindergarten for older children, requested “suitable furniture:—namely, Cribs for the babies. Kindergarten chairs and tables. Bath tub which may be portable. Cooking stove sufficiently large to admit the preparation of soup, porridge, etc., for one hundred children. Kindergarten

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 43

Mother Marianne of Jesus

supplies for thirty children.” The nursery would probably cost about twelve hundred dollars a year; this included a salary of thirty dollars a month for the two workers/sisters assigned specifically to this task.99 The sisters continued their catechetical work despite the demands of staffing the day nursery. Catechism classes for public-school chil-

44 | From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

dren were held three afternoons a week, and classes for working girls and boys took place every evening; adults were offered instruction “at any reasonable hour.” The sisters accompanied children to confession every Saturday afternoon and encouraged them to meet at the nursery on Sunday mornings and attend Mass as a group. They were also conducting catechism classes at San Rocco, a mission of St. Joachim’s, in which about 350 children were enrolled—according to the sisters, these children had been attending non-Catholic missions before their arrival—as well as helping the Salesian Fathers at Our Lady Help of Christians parish prepare children to receive the sacraments.100 In addition, neighborhood visiting quickly became a part of the new community’s daily work. “It is by this means,” they believed, “that the prejudice against the Church instilled by the nonCatholic missionaries may be gently removed and the adults gradually won back to the practice of their religion.”101 The presence of the day nursery and the religious-education classes conducted at various parishes, however, did not meet all of the many needs of the Catholics of the Lower East Side. New York was experiencing a population explosion due to the large number of immigrants flocking to the city during the first decade of the twentieth century. Although many immigrants simply passed through the city on their way to other parts of the country, the city’s population grew from 3,437,202 in 1900 to 4,766,883 in 1910. At that time, 1,900,000 residents were foreign-born (approximately 422,000 of these could not speak English); and about 1,800,000 of the city’s children had parents who were born outside the United States.102 In 1910, Catholic immigrants in the nation’s largest city continued to confront the same problems related to assimilation and economic stability that they had had in 1898, when Gurney helped Father Clement Thuente establish St. Rose’s Settlement. As a longtime supporter of social settlements—Catholic and Protestant—she continued to believe these institutions could be a valuable ally in the Church’s struggle to preserve the faith of the immigrant while attending to their many physical, social, and educational needs. Before

From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side | 45

the day nursery celebrated its one-year anniversary, Gurney would explain to archdiocesan officials why it was vital that a Catholic social settlement be established in the Cherry Hill neighborhood. The response she received allowed the new community to begin work in what would become its major apostolate for the next fifty years.

2

Fighting to Save the City of New York

In a 1910 letter to Rt. Rev. Michael J Lavelle, vicar general of the New York archdiocese, Mother Marianne respectfully expressed her conviction that the day nursery that Farley had permitted the sisters to open and administer was not adequate to meet the many needs of Cherry Hill’s impoverished residents, and she reminded him that she had recommended a “wider development of Catholic activity” in the area. Expanding the day nursery into a social settlement meant the sisters would be able to extend their outreach in the community and interact on a regular basis with the poor and needy of all ages, not just those too young to attend school. “To compete with the proselyting [sic] agencies,” she wrote, “there should be classes for older children, evening classes for young working people, and systematic neighborhood visitation”—in other words, a social settlement. In closing, she assured Lavelle of the new community’s “hearty desire to do everything which is humanly possible for the salvation of these souls.”1 Mother Marianne’s plan for a Catholic social settlement included all of the programs and services found at Protestant and secular institutions, and more. Without archdiocesan approval, however, she would be unable to implement her vision. The sisters had no intention of abandoning the day nursery, describing the area in which they lived as “dotted with tenement baby farms, where some ten or a dozen youngsters would be sheltered during working hours in complete disregard of all laws of hygiene and sanitation.”2 Within days of moving into their Cherry Hill home, the

Fighting to Save the City of New York | 47

sisters discovered, as they had suspected, that neighborhood children were participating in programs offered by “sectarian” settlements. A Catholic settlement house on the Lower East Side, they argued, would provide a ministry to a group many believed was in danger of being lost to the Church: Italian immigrants and their children. Since most Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries entered the United States through New York City, the Archdiocese of New York found itself trying to solve what came to known as the “Italian problem.” Clergy, most of whom were Irish or Irish American, were convinced that the spirituality and religious practices of these new immigrants were “less Catholic” than that of American (i.e., Irish) Catholics. Italian Catholics, it was believed, rarely attended Mass or received the sacraments and often seemed to have little knowledge of Catholic doctrine.3 Astute observers of the situation worried these new arrivals could be easily persuaded to abandon their ancestral church for one of the many Protestant missions springing up around the city. Keeping Italian Catholics in the Church had become a concern of both clergy and lay leaders. Institutional solutions to the general influx of Catholic immigrants focused on adapting the traditional parish model to address the needs of poor, non-English-speaking church members. National parishes, for example, were established to minister to Catholics of a specific ethnic or linguistic group. Unlike their territorial counterparts, national parishes were not determined by geography, and priests assigned to them were expected to be fluent in the appropriate language (if not a member of the particular ethnic group) and comfortable with the group’s cultural traditions. New York City’s first Italian parish, St. Anthony of Padua, was established in 1859 on Sullivan Street, but it was not until Archbishop Michael Corrigan’s episcopacy (1885–1902) that national parishes came to be valued as more than a means for encouraging immigrants to remain committed to their Catholic faith; they could also serve as a vehicle for Americanization. Cardinals John Farley (1902–18) and Patrick Hayes

48 | Fighting to Save the City of New York

(1919–38), Corrigan’s immediate successors, also believed in the benefits of national parishes; and by 1941 more than forty Italian parishes could be found throughout the archdiocese.4

A Catholic Social Settlement on the Lower East Side

Catholic social settlements were neither expected nor intended to be carbon copies of the Protestant and secular institutions on which they were modeled. According to Rev. Thomas Mitchell, “The objective of Catholic settlement work is two-fold in so far as it ambitions the preparation of the client for better life in the community as well as the preparation of the client for eternal life in heaven.”5 Mother Marianne’s vision of a Catholic social settlement did not contradict Mitchell’s thesis but broadened it to include most of the elements contained in progressive secular settlements such as Jane Addams’s Hull House. The community was already administering a day nursery and planned to expand their ministry by offering additional educational and recreational activities such as citizenship classes, recreation programs, Boy and Girl Scout troops, and opportunities for neighborhood residents to learn a skill such as dressmaking.6 The new settlement, known as Madonna House, had a decidedly Catholic bent. Although members of all faiths were welcome to take advantage of its services and the sisters’ charity, the new religious community also planned to prepare children and adults to receive the sacraments and to offer classes in Christian Doctrine for the neighborhood’s children. “We had come,” Mother Marianne reflected in 1936, “not merely to found a social settlement, to advance the temporal interests of our neighbors, to share with them certain cultural advantages, nor even to demonstrate the brotherhood of man founded on the possession of common humanity. . . . We would have all to know that above and beyond them was a Christian zeal which seeks to share the treasures of the spirit, and a Christian solidarity based on membership in the Mystical Body of Christ.”7

Fighting to Save the City of New York | 49

The establishment of Madonna House was structurally problematic for the New York archdiocese because—although it was located within the boundaries of a parish, St. Teresa’s on Henry Street—it was not affiliated with it and, as a result, did not come under the authority of a pastor or other male cleric. The sisters of Madonna House planned to work with the residents of a number of different parishes on the Lower East Side, including St. Joachim’s (an Italian parish on Roosevelt Street, now closed), St. Teresa, St. James (Oliver Street), and St. Joseph’s (Monroe Street). St. Joachim’s parishioners, who were primarily Italian immigrants, were an especially logical constituency for the new settlement house, and the sisters had good reason to believe the pastor, Father Vincent Jannuzzi, a Scalabrinian priest, would support them in their new endeavor. Jannuzzi first met Mother Marianne when she taught catechism to the parish children and was happy to recommend her to Church authorities. “She [Mother Marianne] is especially fitted for work among the Italians,” Jannuzzi wrote, “for her perfect knowledge of the Italian language. During the whole period that she was engaged in teaching catechism in my church, the lessons were well attended. . . . I shall be proud to have her as a steady worker in my church.”8

Madonna House

By May 1, 1911, the sisters had rented a second house adjoining the day nursery on Cherry Street. In addition to classrooms for religious education—children who attended public schools came after school and working boys and girls received sacramental preparation in the evening—the house offered space for a sewing school, and meeting rooms for both a sodality for young girls and a working boys’ club intended to keep its members from the “alluring vices of the street.”9 Religious instruction was offered for the mothers of the neighborhood; on Sunday afternoons the women were invited to gather for a brief lesson, hymns, and prayers, followed by refreshments. The sis-

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ters were especially proud of the fact that their outreach had brought some of these women, many of whom had not received the Eucharist since they had left their country of origin, back to the Church’s sacraments.10 The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine quickly found themselves intimately involved in the day-to-day lives of their neighbors. Visiting and caring for the sick, helping the seriously ill gain admittance to hospitals and institutions, and arranging for the legalization of irregular marriages were all part of a day’s work for the residents of Madonna House. By 1912, they had begun a ministry to the homeless men and women of the area; those who chose to take advantage of the settlement’s invitation received food, clothing, and sometimes even job referrals and temporary shelter. Statistics indicate that the congregation was indeed performing what they believed to be the work of Catholic settlements—offering both material and spiritual support to their neighbors—during the first two years of Madonna House’s existence. In 1911 and 1912, the sisters recorded two adult baptisms, 101 First Communions, ninetythree confirmations, and the blessing of two marriages within the Catholic Church. They also noted that about ninety children attended the day nursery each day; they served 41,238 meals to children and 704 to adults; baskets were sent to 357 families; and night shelter was provided to twenty-one adults and children.11 By 1916, even more of their neighbors were taking advantage of the settlement’s programs. One hundred eighty-five children and forty-eight adults received First Communion, and 201 children and ten adults were confirmed. The sisters served 39,114 meals to children (a slight decrease) and 30,575 adults, who would otherwise go hungry. They had hoped to arrange for the children of the neighborhood to spend two weeks at property the sisters had acquired along the shore in Elberon, New Jersey, but an outbreak of infantile paralysis (polio) brought an early end to this endeavor.12 Mother Marianne and her colleagues were also pleased to report that 138 adults were “induced to receive the Sacraments” after a number of years away; at least

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one had not participated in Catholic sacramental life for forty-three years.13 The settlement’s religious education program was designed to solve the problem that had confronted the women since they first agreed to teach catechism to the children of St. Joachim’s: convincing young men and women (those who attended school and those who were working) of the importance of learning about their faith in order to nourish their spiritual lives. Past experience in social-settlement work had taught Mother Marianne that young men in particular had to be enticed to leave the streets and enter the world of the settlement. The sisters began to form clubs and recreational groups for young men, hoping they would find “settlement gangs” more attractive than street gangs. The plan apparently worked, because chroniclers of Madonna House reported that the St. Aloysius Sodality for young men actually evolved from the “Cherry Blossoms,” a neighborhood gang whose members were permitted to hold their meetings at Madonna House.14 The sisters, along with a layman, worked with the boys and counted it among their successes that many of the group’s members eventually enrolled in catechism classes. The Immaculata Club, designed to appeal to the schoolgirls of the neighborhood, and the “Lambs,” a club for adolescent boys, were also organized during the first years of the Cherry Street ministry.15 Although very few club records survive, the “Constitution and Rules of the Madonna House Girls Club” offers an insight into the activities of the various clubs and sodalities.16 Placed under the patronage of the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Conception, St. Joseph, and the Little Flower, the club was open to all Catholic girls sixteen and older. Members, who paid dues of one dollar per year, were expected to “lead an exemplary Catholic life, to be kind and courteous to all, to cooperate with each other and with the Sisters and Officers.” The goal of the girls’ club was to help its members “become stronger Catholics and better citizens by means of religious, educational and recreational activities.” The range of activities sponsored by the club demonstrated its attempt to meet these goals: Young women were

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able to take classes in dressmaking, millinery, and home nursing, make a retreat once a year, and attend Mass for deceased members during November. They could even learn how to play the ukulele.17 Mother Marianne firmly believed that the settlement’s clubs kept children and young adults off the street and in the Church. The system of clubs was designed, she explained, to offer a combination of social and spiritual activities for every age group. After receiving First Communion, for instance, girls were encouraged to join a Brownie troop, move on to Girl Scouts, and eventually join one or more of five possible clubs for older girls and young women. The goal was simple: to “form good character, the character of the good Catholic who must at the same time be a good citizen and the only way to do that is by the building up of habit.”18 Although the Church had been slow to endorse the concept of social settlements, by 1912, two years after Madonna House opened its doors, many Catholic leaders were concluding that settlement work, when combined with religious-education classes, could provide a valuable service to Catholic immigrants. Despite this growing endorsement of Catholic social settlements, the work of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine was still unknown to many Church leaders. Paulist priest Joseph McSorley demonstrated this when he published an article in 1913 advocating the founding of a religious community dedicated to settlement work.19 One year later, in 1914, Robert Biggs, writing in The St. Vincent de Paul Quarterly, reported that, of the twenty-seven Catholic social settlements found in many cities, all but four were administered by members of the laity. Madonna House was one of a very few operated by a religious community, and the sisters were clearly still unknown to many Catholics, clerical and lay.20

Conflict with Clerical Authority

The nuns’ apparent ability to enhance the spiritual lives of their neighbors caused St. Joachim’s pastor, Vincent Jannuzzi, to worry

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about the new community’s influence among his parishioners. In 1915, he asked Vicar General Lavelle to assign a priest who would not only help the overworked Jannuzzi by celebrating Mass at both St. Joachim’s and its mission, St. Joseph’s, located on Monroe Street, but would also serve as chaplain of the “Madonna Day Nursery.” According to Jannuzzi, the religious societies sponsored by the settlement were holding their meetings and receiving the sacraments at the settlement’s chapel, and “the priests [have] no control whatever over there.” Having a priest from St. Joachim’s assigned to Madonna House as chaplain, he explained, would provide the “Reverend Sisters” with a “more regular service” and would be a “great advantage to the parish church as well.” Referring to the archdiocesan fear that the Italian immigrants were being wooed by Protestant missionaries, he claimed that a chaplain would also “insure better and more faithful work in combating protestant [sic] influence which is particularly felt in this portion of the city.”21 Six months later, the situation was unresolved and Jannuzzi was still expressing concern about the relationship of the sisters to St. Joachim’s parish. Referring to a conversation he had had with Mother Marianne and Lavelle, the pastor claimed that the nuns knew that they were prohibited from organizing sodalities and other religious groups outside of the parish but continued to do so. He accused the community of “organizing other Sodalities and . . . collecting monthly dues”; since the new St. Joseph’s Church—formerly a mission of St. Joachim’s—had already cost $7,200, Jannuzzi believed that any and all collections should pass through him.22 Mother Marianne’s response offered a defense of her sisters and their interactions with some of St. Joachim’s parishioners. Although they sponsored two religious societies, the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, composed of young men who helped with the boys attending Madonna House, and the League of the Sacred Heart, most of the members were not Italian. In addition, neither sodality collected dues of any sort. Other religious organizations with whom the sisters worked, such as the Saint Agnes sodality and

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the Christian Mothers club, had received Jannuzzi’s blessing. Members of the St. Agnes Society had even received Communion once a month at St. Joachim’s Church until “Father Januzzi’s attitude became so antagonistic that it seemed more prudent to the Sisters not to concern themselves with the Sodalities.”23 In addition, Mother Marianne vehemently denied Jannuzzi’s claim that the sisters were collecting money from his parishioners. If some clubs charged dues, it was because the members had decided to do so, and any funds collected benefited that organization. Although the fee for children attending the day nursery was five cents per day, only about one-third of the mothers were able to afford the payment. In fact, the foundress explained, the sisters spent a good deal of their own money helping to meet the needs of their “poor Italian neighbors,” some of whom attended St. Joachim’s. The community’s efforts to offer religious education and sacramental preparation to area Catholics had actually increased the population of “the new church of St. Joseph from twenty to six hundred children,” and this work had not cost the pastor “a penny.”24 Jannuzzi was not mollified by this explanation and continued to express his concerns about the Sisters of Christian Doctrine and their presumed desire to turn the Lower East Side’s Italian Catholics away from the churches of St. Joachim and St. Joseph. In 1917, he asked a Christian Brother assigned to St. Joseph’s for a report on the First Communion class. Brother Francis explained that, in the beginning of the year, four classes from St. Joseph’s were being prepared for First Communion. Within a couple of weeks, however, only fourteen students were still enrolled, because the children had been told by the “Sisters in Cherry Street” to attend catechism classes at Madonna House. After complying with Jannuzzi’s request that he visit Mother Marianne and receive her assurance that the children would stay connected with the parish and not “drift here and there to various Settlement Houses according as they received food, clothing, etc. for attendance,” Brother Francis recounted his conversation with her. Mother

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Marianne again defended the community’s right to provide religious education for Catholic children living on the Lower East Side, informing Brother Francis that, as a national parish, St. Joachim’s claimed no geographical boundaries, and the sisters had received permission from the archdiocese to offer services designed to meet both the spiritual and the material needs of all those living in the neighborhood.25 Jannuzzi enclosed Brother Francis’s report in a formal complaint to Vicar General Lavelle, suggesting that the sisters felt free to disrespect him because “they are upheld by His Eminence and yourself.” “They do not rescue the children from the street,” the pastor explained, “but take the children already formed in my classes and if they do not put a stop to this, I shall be constrained to turn them [the Sisters of Christian Doctrine] out of my Church [sic].”26 Mother Marianne promptly refuted Jannuzzi’s accusation and reminded Lavelle that all of the programs sponsored by Madonna House had the ultimate goal of either bringing people back to or keeping people in the Catholic Church. As a result of the social activities sponsored by the settlement house, children were “drawn from the streets or from non-Catholic missions” and sent to Mass and catechism at St. Joseph’s. Several weeks before Jannuzzi filed his complaint with Lavelle, the sisters had been informed that all children preparing for First Communion were to attend classes at St. Joachim’s, even though they were already receiving instructions from the sisters at Madonna House. The sisters spoke with Father Pasquale Mastropietro, the priest in charge of the catechism classes, and explained “the great need of continued care and vigilance to prevent these children from lapsing into indifference or apostasy.” Mastropietro, according to Mother Marianne, seemed to accept their argument and agreed that the children should continue to attend classes at Madonna House during the week and at St. Joseph’s on Sunday. That some children had also attended classes at St. Joachim’s for a week for two was simply the result of confusion over the schedule. Toward the end of her response, Mother Marianne expressed her frustration with Jannuzzi’s complaints, informing Lavelle, “If it were

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not for our large property interests in this neighborhood and the great spiritual needs of these children I would be in favor of abandoning all catechetical work here and employing our Sisters in other districts were [sic] their services have been vainly sought.”27 Relations between the community and Jannuzzi remained tense throughout the 1920s. Jannuzzi was transferred from St. Joachim’s in 1928 and appointed pastor at St. Joseph’s, but he continued to complain about the sisters’ attempts to entice children to attend religious-education classes at Madonna House. Monsignor Lavelle rose to the sisters’ defense, informing Cardinal Patrick Hayes that the sisters “have worked and are working like slaves in poverty and against obstacles.” Jannuzzi, Lavelle explained, “resents them through [sic] the idea that they are Americanizing the children; their methods are somewhat different from Italian methods, but they are full of the spirit of true obedience to him and to you.”28 In a letter to Monsignor Thomas Carroll, Mother Marianne echoed what she had told Lavelle and reminded Carroll of the 1920 agreement that called for the Christian Brothers and the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart to administer the Sunday school at St. Joseph’s parish; the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were to ensure that the children receiving religious instruction at Madonna House were brought to the parish for the First Communion retreat and the reception of the sacrament. Because Jannuzzi continually tried to induce the children enrolled at Madonna House to transfer to St. Joseph’s, there was a good deal of confusion and repetition of effort. She also offered evidence supporting her accusation that Jannuzzi had tried to turn the neighborhood residents against the sisters. The pastor had requested the sisters to “train the public school children for a procession around the Blessed Sacrament,” she explained. During the procession, Jannuzzi halted the proceedings and cried, “Let the parish Sisters take charge of the procession.” Both groups of sisters were embarrassed by his actions.29 In February 1929, an agreement was reached in which the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were formally placed in charge of the religious-

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education program at St. Joseph’s Church, “with good will on all sides, and without the assistance of any other community of Sisters.”30 A later memorandum noted that the sisters were responsible for the religious education of the public-school children; the “Day School” children would receive instruction from a community of Italian sisters. Jannuzzi was still not happy with the situation, however, and continued to protest the decision. The sisters eventually moved their program, including the children enrolled in it, to St. James’s Church on Oliver Street, where the pastor, Rev. Charles Finnegan, made them welcome and supported their work.31 The controversy was finally resolved when Jannuzzi returned to Italy in 1936.32

Forming Faithful Citizens

Despite Jannuzzi’s efforts to limit the extent of the sisters’ apostolate, Madonna House, within a few years of its founding, was providing a full complement of activities similar to those found in non-Catholic social settlements. In addition to clubs for boys and girls, the settlement offered a sewing school, dressmaking classes, a kindergarten, millinery instruction, music classes, and courses in public speaking and citizenship. By 1926, Boy and Girl Scout troops were meeting at Madonna House, along with mothers’ clubs designed to offer support to English- and Italian-speaking mothers. Members of the St. Aloysius Club for working boys (originally formed to counteract the appeal of local gangs) enjoyed use of a poolroom and gymnasium as well as the opportunity to play organized baseball and basketball, attend weekly dances and summer camp, and enroll in English, civil service, and citizenship classes.33 In May 1916, as the nation was beginning to prepare for the inevitability of war, Mother Marianne and the staff of Madonna House organized the St. Aloysius Club into the Columbus Volunteers as a concrete expression of the young men’s patriotism and preparedness. Members of the CV (as it came to be known) later participated in

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a weekly military drill and target practice, courtesy of New York’s 69th Regiment—the Fighting 69th—and could take advantage of membership in a Fife, Drum, and Bugle Corps. Based on her fervent conviction that the “club ought to take the lead in patriotic work as it is the oldest organization for young men in this neighborhood,” Mother Marianne informed members in April 1918 that an officer would offer military instruction every Tuesday evening. Admission to the weekly Saturday dance was restricted to those who attended the Tuesday drills, unless absentees were able to provide a statement from either a physician or their employer giving a valid reason for their absence.34 Most of the young men who enlisted in the Columbus Volunteers were of Italian descent, but its ranks also included Albanians, Syrians, Greeks, and Spaniards. Leaders of the new organization recruited members from Lower East Side neighborhoods housing large immigrant populations. Potential Volunteers were expected to be of “sound physical health, suitable height and weight, and good moral character,” but only citizens of the United States or those who had filed a declaration of intention to become a citizen were eligible to apply. Mother Marianne hoped the group would develop a sense of “national consciousness” among young men who lived in “congested colonies amid the clash of alien tongues and customs, influenced by varied racial conditions and ideals.”35 Life in a democracy meant one was expected to fulfill certain duties and responsibilities; membership in the Columbus Volunteers would enable young men to understand the sacrifices that were sometimes necessary to preserve the freedoms inherent in the American system.36 Mother Marianne did not agree with the views of some of her more well-known colleagues such as Jane Addams, who identified herself as a pacifist, on issues of war and peace.37 Like most American Catholics, Mother Marianne was not a pacifist, and although she worried about her “boys” serving overseas in the armed services during World War I, she believed all Americans—immigrants or native born—had a sacred duty to answer their country’s call when needed.

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By joining the Columbus Volunteers, “foreign born citizens and their sons,” she wrote, “might prepare themselves for whatever services the country of their adoption might call upon them to render.”38 Almost as soon as they were organized, the Volunteers expressed their willingness to serve as honor guards for special events. After training for only three months, the group was asked to serve as an honor guard for a group of cardinals visiting New York City. In August of 1916, members of the CVs participated in their first military review. Arriving at a home owned by the Sisters in Elberon, New Jersey, they were informed that the nearby town of Long Branch was about to formally notify President Woodrow Wilson that he had received the Democratic nomination to run for reelection. When asked to furnish the military escort on this auspicious occasion, the men proudly offered their services.39 When the United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, civilian members of the Columbus Volunteers were pressed into service. Naval guards were stationed on the bridges and piers of the city’s waterfront, and throughout the winter of 1917–18 the volunteers provided hot coffee and sandwiches to those assigned this duty. Mother Marianne originally hoped the volunteers would be commissioned as a distinct military unit, similar to New York’s famous Fighting 69th regiment, composed primarily of Irish Americans. Notified by the War Department that no volunteer units were being accepted in this manner, the men were required to enlist as individuals. A recruitment brochure for the Columbus Volunteers claimed that 711 members served in World War I, most of them in the army. Four members received the Croix de Guerre, an honor bestowed on foreign soldiers who fought on either French or Belgian soil, and one, John Cuccioli, was awarded the French Cross of the Legion of Honor for distinguished achievement in military service.40 Mother Marianne never failed to reassure her military friends that those at home took pride in their accomplishments, writing to them, “We are immensely proud of all of you and the splendid work you are doing over there.”41 Letters to her “boys” also kept them ap-

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prised of the news from home. In a letter dated August 14, 1919, she apologized that she had not been in New York to welcome the returning soldiers but was busy in “Elberon, some fifty miles from New York . . . with three houses full of wounded boys on my hands.” She assured them that she was looking forward to seeing them on Labor Day, however, and urged them to “wear all the ribbons, crosses and insignia” they had been awarded. In order to keep track of the service records of each Volunteer, she asked them to make sure that Sister Margaret Coleman received a copy of their discharge papers; she would then have a complete record of each man’s service career.42 The community’s belief in the necessity of providing for the spiritual needs of the poor was evident in some of the Columbus Volunteers’ activities. As members of the organization began to return from overseas, the CVs sponsored a requiem Mass on February 22, 1919, at St. Teresa’s Church to remember those who had sacrificed their lives for their country. Almost twenty years later, Mother Marianne could still describe the combination of liturgical and military pageantry that marked the occasion. “Colors bowed low before the uplifted Host, drums and trumpets saluted the Lord of Armies, the roll of the dead was called, and at the end the heart-breaking sweetness of ‘Taps’ spoke a soldier’s farewell to those young citizens who had believed the American dream was worth dying for.”43 Cognizant that the returning servicemen needed jobs, the sisters also attempted to persuade employers to hire veterans.44 On at least one occasion, Mother Marianne attempted to intervene when one of the settlement’s neighbors found himself in difficulty with his superior officers. Learning that Private Charles Scala was under arrest for being absent without leave from his unit, she informed his commanding officer that “he has always borne a good character” and asked that the young soldier be granted clemency. Scala was sentenced to one month and fifteen days’ confinement and ordered to forfeit his pay for this period; it is not clear whether the letter had any effect on the case.45

Fighting to Save the City of New York | 61 Ministering to Veterans

Soldiers and sailors passing through or stationed in New York City during World War I received both care and friendship from the sisters, who often visited wounded soldiers at the makeshift hospital that had been set up in a former department store. Desiring to work with members of the armed forces in a more formalized ministry, they decided to transform a home owned by the community in Elberon, New Jersey, into a convalescent home for soldiers.46 The property had been acquired by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine when Sister (later Mother) M. Joseph Smith, who had been a prominent socialite before converting to Catholicism, entered the community.47 It was her desire, Mother Joseph wrote Bishop James McFaul of Trenton, to “convert my former home on Park Avenue, Elberon, New Jersey, to a Fresh Air Home for the poor and afflicted among whom we are working.”48 Although the sisters originally planned to provide a place for urban children to enjoy time at the seashore during the summer of 1916, a polio epidemic prevented all but forty-seven children from enjoying the community’s hospitality. As the war drew to a close, the sisters decided the house in Elberon could be a place where soldiers could recover from their combat experience.49 When the sisters originally began their ministry to returning veterans, the costs for their care were assumed by the National Catholic War Council (later the National Catholic Welfare Conference). In October 1919, for example, the NCWC issued a check for $1,548.61 to the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, which covered the cost of necessary occupational-therapy equipment and blankets, and it reimbursed the community for items intended to make the soldiers’ lives more enjoyable, including sports equipment and cigarettes.50 The community’s involvement in social-settlement work meant that Mother Marianne and her sisters had experience negotiating with social-service agencies, and they did not hesitate to advocate for their charges with the appropriate military and public-health au-

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thorities. Working with convalescing soldiers at Elberon convinced them that the government was paying insufficient attention to both chronically ill and permanently disabled veterans. One former soldier placed under their care, for example, was left with the reasoning ability of a ten-year-old child after having several pieces of shrapnel removed from his head. Although he was eligible for some monetary compensation, he would need constant care for the remainder of his life. Since his family lived in a section of war-torn Poland, he had no one to care for him. Many returning veterans, the sisters believed, ran the risk of developing chronic health problems if they did not receive proper care and attention. Concluding a letter to Lieutenant Colonel A. E. Anderson on the subject, Mother Marianne wrote, “We feel that every opportunity should be given the disabled service men to recover whatever degree of normal efficiency may possibly be theirs, and that those who are permanently disabled are entitled to sympathetic care in congenial surroundings. This is surely the least that we can do for these men who have given to their country all that makes life sweet.”51 The spiritual lives of the men under their care also concerned the sisters. Only four groups or institutions had obtained government approval to care for incurable and convalescent patients, Mother Marianne informed an unidentified bishop, and St. Joseph’s was the only Catholic home in this group. “But for this house,” she wrote, “our Catholic soldiers would be sent to non-Catholic homes to prepare for death.” She asked her correspondent to consider visiting the recovering soldiers, telling him that the patients felt “very keenly the general indifference to the great sacrifice which they have made and the injustice which many of them have endured from careless and inefficient government bureaus.”52 Realizing that not all of their charges were Catholic—or even Christian—the sisters did not initiate conversations about religion but answered questions when asked. When Mother Marianne became aware that a decision had been made to stop sending convalescing soldiers to St. Joseph’s House because objections had been

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raised about the sisters’ religious beliefs, she emphatically declared that although the home was operated under Catholic auspices, everyone received the same quality of care.53 The sisters’ respect both for diverse religious traditions and for wounded veterans was not always appreciated. During the years St. Joseph’s was operational, the Ku Klux Klan burned a cross on the lawn of the convalescent home.54 In addition, the sisters discovered that not all Americans respected those who had returned from the war with either mental or physical disabilities. A particularly painful incident occurred when a servant at a nearby home shouted at a recovering soldier, “‘Hey, you, get off the beach! The madam is entertaining the Japanese Ambassador and she don’t want to look at any cripples.’ The house in Elberon was closed in 1927, ‘its work accomplished.’”55

Not Just Italians

Neighborhood outreach had been an essential component of the sisters’ apostolate from their first days on Cherry Street. As early as 1913, two sisters were officially serving as “parish visitors,” introducing themselves and their work to neighborhood families whose children were not attending Madonna House’s religious, social, or educational programs. Although many neighbors welcomed the sisters’ efforts, some did not. Sister Pauline Orlando recounted the story of two sisters who arrived at an apartment only to find that the husband of the couple was regularly attending the local Protestant mission. He was not happy to hear that Catholic sisters were visiting, and his wife told them, “Quick go out he have knife in his hands [sic].” Orlando concluded her story by saying, “They ran!”56 Visiting neighbors took on a new meaning when two sisters were assigned to work with the Italians living in Transfiguration parish in 1912.57 The pastor, Father Ernesto Coppo, asked Sisters Margaret Coleman and Pauline Orlando if they would be willing to expand

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their ministry by visiting Chinese families living within the parish boundaries. The sisters agreed and began by introducing themselves to the Catholic Wu family; within a few years they were providing religious instruction to about thirty-five boys and twenty-five girls.58 In accordance with their mission, the two did not neglect the physical and social needs of their students. “The boys played games, etc.,” Mother Margaret remembered, “and Mother Pauline took the girls for sewing in one of the classrooms. We got some religion in between times.”59 The sisters assigned to the Chinese apostolate described the ways in which Protestant missionaries, determined to evangelize the residents of Chinatown, assailed the “Sisters on the streets, with invectives and ridicule.” Although they were willing to continue their work, a desire to live and work in peace with Transfiguration’s Protestant neighbors led the parish priests to ask the sisters to abandon their ministry to the Chinese. The sisters reluctantly complied; but in 1921, when they were no longer officially working for Transfiguration, they again reached out to the Chinese Catholics of lower Manhattan. Rev. John Voghera, Transfiguration’s pastor, allowed the sisters to use the church basement and two classrooms but informed them that he was unable to spend any time developing a Chinese apostolate. This time, Protestant missionaries and Italian parishioners threatened the women’s ministry. Non-Catholic evangelizers continued to promote their missions, but the Chinese attending the weekly activities sponsored by the sisters also complained of being chased to the church by Italians crying, “We want no Chinks here.” In 1923, Mother Marianne appealed to Auxiliary Bishop John Dunn for help, explaining, “The Protestant missionaries are very sure of their hold on these people, and are already taunting our prospective converts with the failure of the Church to make any suitable provision for them.”60 Before Dunn could provide the necessary assistance, however, the Tong wars—a series of battles between rival Chinese gangs—broke out again, and the bishop advised the sisters to abandon the Chinese mission until peace was restored.61

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Immediately following the Armistice in 1918, lower Manhattan witnessed an influx of Spanish Catholic immigrants, as sailors who had been stationed in New York City during the war decided to stay and sent for their families to join them. The sisters living at Madonna House began a program of visitation among Spanish families, hoping to win back those who had left the Church. Although they encouraged parents to enroll their children in St. James’s School, many preferred to send their children to the public schools in the area. The Spanish children were allowed to attend catechism classes at Madonna House, and as a result they received the necessary preparation for First Communion and confirmation. When the sisters discovered that these newcomers were uncomfortable worshipping in the area’s parishes, they received permission for Mass to be celebrated at the social settlement for the Spanish-speaking Catholics of the neighborhood.62 The anonymous chronicler of the first Mass, celebrated by a Spanish-speaking priest from Our Lady of Guadalupe parish on West 14th Street, reported that attendance was discouraging; the congregation consisted of only two people. Attendance gradually increased, however, and the Mass was later moved from the settlement’s small chapel to a larger auditorium.63 The sisters were pleased with the number of Spanish immigrants taking advantage of the material and spiritual programs offered at Madonna House, but they were very disappointed when, after working among their Spanish neighbors for three years, they were informed their services were no longer needed. The archdiocese had decided that the needs of Spanish-speaking Catholics would be better served by Augustinian priests from Manhattan’s Our Lady of Esperanza parish. In addition, a priest was assigned to preach two sermons during one Sunday mass at St. James, one in Spanish and one in English. The Spanish community was still welcome to participate in the activities of Madonna House, but the sisters obeyed the chancery and ceased home visitation among them. The community’s chronicles explain that attendance at the “Spanish” mass

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at St. James’s slowly dwindled—people objected to having to sit through two sermons—and eventually the priest assigned to them was recalled, and the Spanish mission begun by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine came to an end. “It was particularly painful to us,” they noted, “to see some of our lovely Spanish girls who had made their First Communion with us, marching in the Communist May Day parade, carrying red flags.”64 During the 1918 influenza epidemic, home visitations proved crucial, as the sisters joined other communities of women religious moving throughout the neighborhood’s tenements, offering to nurse those too ill to care for themselves. Although nursing was not one of the ministries Mother Marianne envisioned in her plan for a religious community, their neighbors were among those afflicted by the epidemic, and anything that affected the residents of Cherry Street concerned the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. When hospitals and nurses proved unable to care for all of the stricken, the sisters found themselves transformed into practical nurses “overnight.” Sister Mary Rosaria Perri remembered, “The homes we went into were scenes of horror and sadness. The members who were already dead (and at times there would be two, three and more) could not be taken out for burial because of the great number dying in the district and undertakers were inadequate.”65 In addition to nursing the sick and arranging to bury the dead, the women tried to be a positive presence for the living. Despite the risk of infection, they refused to wear masks as they went in and out of tenements tending to the sick, because the masks “terrified the children,” creating a barrier to their work.66 Fear of contagion, however, led to the cancellation of a number of Madonna House activities, including the weekly drills and dances sponsored by the Columbus Volunteers.67 Nursing influenza victims was difficult; consoling the survivors took even more time and energy. When those who had opposed the community’s presence on the Lower East Side came to respect and admire the women and the way they lived and worked among the

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sick poor, the sisters realized that their efforts had not been in vain. “No more would ripe tomatoes fall on passing Sisters from Jewish windows,” wrote Mother Marianne. “No longer would small boys chalk insults on the convent steps, for all Cherry Street and its environs now knew that the Sisters of Madonna House were there for the good of all without respect to race or creed.”68 By 1920, the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine were firmly established on the Lower East Side of New York. Although very few clergy or laypeople outside of the neighborhood knew Mother Marianne and her sisters, the residents of Cherry Street knew exactly who they were and had come to depend on them for material assistance and spiritual sustenance. In addition to offering social and educational activities found at many settlement houses, including clubs for boys and girls and a day nursery, they reached out to their neighbors in a variety of ways. Mindful that they were also there to save the souls of their neighbors, they continually emphasized religious education and sacramental preparation for children and adults. The Great Depression and America’s entry into World War II would challenge the sisters to find new ways to ease the struggle of Cherry Street’s poor, but the following decades would also allow them to expand their ministry beyond the Lower East Side to other parts of New York City and the country.

3

Neighbors and Teachers

Ten years after the fledgling community began its apostolate on Cherry Street, Mother Marianne wrote a lengthy letter to Vicar General Michael Lavelle assessing the sisters’ work over the past decade. Madonna House, she claimed, was the “most completely organized Catholic Community center in the Archdiocese,” and about seven hundred people a day passed through the settlement for either “instruction, relief, recreation or advice.” By offering their neighbors the opportunity to participate in a variety of classes and religious societies, the sisters were able to follow the men and women of Cherry Hill from “the cradle to the grave.” In addition to offering spiritual and material assistance, the sisters were providing religious instruction to the children at St. Raphael’s, Transfiguration, and the Maronite mission of St. Joseph.1 They had also begun visiting the Italians living around Saint Rocco’s chapel, and, as a result of the sisters’ efforts, the congregation had steadily increased to the point where the building had become inadequate and the parishioners were transferred to the new St. Joseph’s Church on Monroe Street.2 The same year in which Mother Marianne evaluated the congregation’s work at Madonna House, she provided a different sort of synopsis for Mary C. Carty, a young woman who had expressed an interest in entering the community. The future Sister Dolores received an honest answer to her inquiry concerning the work of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. “The purpose of our congregation,” Mother Marianne wrote,

Neighbors and Teachers | 69 is to teach the elementary truths of the Catholic faith to children and adults, and to organize and carry on such charitable and social works as may dispose persons to receive such instruction and induce them to persevere in the practice of our Holy Religion. Accordingly, we take charge of Sunday schools and sodalities in various parishes. . . . Also, in our own house we conduct classes, clubs and sodalities by which we keep in touch with our neighbors of all ages. . . . We also have a kindergarten and Day Nursery where the children of working mothers are cared for during the day.

In conclusion, she described the community’s work as “very varied, and [it] is adapted to meet the changing needs of the large population by which we are surrounded.”3 Statistics and personal observations convinced the new community that they were making a difference in the lives of the area’s residents. Before their arrival, the neighborhood’s Catholics were in grave danger of being lost to their Church because of an active Protestant missionary agenda. Twenty non-Catholic “social and missionary centers” were vigorously competing for the souls of Catholic immigrants; one Protestant mission even required its Catholic participants to “kneel down and with uplifted hand take a solemn oath abjuring the Roman Catholic Faith and the Papacy.”4 In addition, Cherry Street’s Catholic residents had been in dire need of religious education. “For the most part, the boys and young men did not go to Church, had never received the Sacraments, and did not know a prayer,” Mother Marianne informed Lavelle. “The condition of the young girls, employed in the sweatshops and factories, was not much better.” The situation had changed dramatically in the ten years since the opening of Madonna House. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine were now a welcome sight on Cherry Street and its environs, and the young men who had been “the terror of the district and the despair of the police” were now members of the Columbus Volunteers.5

70 | Neighbors and Teachers Growing Pains

The future success of Madonna House depended on the sisters’ ability to expand programs and services. Mother Marianne worried about Catholic young people turning to non-Catholic settlements because inadequate space prevented the sisters from offering appealing programs and activities. The community simply did not have the physical and financial resources to accomplish all they desired. “We cannot give our people the attractive meeting rooms, the showers and swimming pools, the domestic science and industrial class equipment, the basketball courts and auditorium provided in the [other] settlements,” she told Lavelle.6 It was clear the sisters would have to receive some monetary assistance from the archdiocese if they were to maintain a comprehensive ministry to the poor of the Lower East Side. “We are, indeed, glad to be numbered among Christ’s poor,” she explained, “but there are necessary expenses which must ultimately be met and we have now reached the point when we must either have more material support or retrench our work and let our people drift back to the neighborhood houses from which we have withdrawn them.”7 Money always seemed to be in short supply. It cost $16,000 to operate Madonna House for the year 1919–20, and the sisters supplemented charitable donations with contributions they received begging door-to-door and with the profits realized from an annual entertainment.8 Each sister was expected to use her talents to improve the financial health of the community. Sister Amelie Merceret, one of the first women to join the community, had grown up around horses, and she assumed the responsibility of taking the settlement’s horse and wagon out every day in order to solicit food from area grocers. Other sisters were assigned a collection route that encompassed businesses and wholesale and retail grocers sympathetic to the work of the congregation. Fundraising events, usually held at a Manhattan hotel, often took the form of either an “entertainment” (e.g., music) or a card party.9

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Most of the money received by the sisters was, in one way or another, given to their neighbors; they did not only beg for themselves, they begged for those in need of assistance. When an increase in milk prices during the year 1919–20 strained the budget of the day nursery, Mother Marianne wrote to Catholic Charities’ Rev. Bryan McEntegart and requested that organization to pay the settlement’s $600 milk bill. Although the archdiocese contributed $100 a month to Madonna House, she informed McEntegert, that money was put toward the rent; it did not cover any other expenses associated with the settlement’s work. The sisters also needed funds to operate a bread line for the neighborhood’s unemployed and poor. Not only were they able to provide bodily nourishment, they also offered their guests the chance to think about the state of their souls. Sister Bernadette Saitta recollected that Mother Marianne started “what we called . . . a ‘Bread Line’ so that all the poor could come any time to take what they needed, beside [sic] that they could have a nice hot bowl of soup and bread on very cold days, and in this way, the Sisters could feed their souls with a spiritual talk and bring them back to the Church and sacraments.”10 Members of the congregation continued to insist that a combination of educational activities, social activities, and religious instruction would transform their neighbors into faithful Catholics and solid citizens. If statistics are any indication, Madonna House was an unequivocal success. The settlement’s 1926 annual report demonstrates that there was a good deal more to the religious program than catechism classes and sacramental preparation. The sisters boasted that 106 adults had returned to the sacraments that year (after an absence of between one and eighteen years); eighty-four businesswomen had attended a “day of recollection”; and 107 teachers had made a three-day retreat. The 1926 report also documented attempts to alleviate the physical sufferings experienced by many of their neighbors. Four hundred eleven quarts of milk had been donated to families; other needy neighbors received a total of 5,500 pounds of coal; and the sisters

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provided 522 neighborhood families with either Thanksgiving or Christmas baskets. In addition, about 1,200 articles of clothing (new and used) were distributed, 91 people received shoes, and 644 pairs of stockings were given out by the Cherry Street sisters. The eight sisters in residence also managed to help eighteen people find work and to obtain legal aid for another eighty-nine. Understanding that both children and adults enjoyed leisure activities, the sisters reported that they had tried their best to entertain their neighbors. They organized three parades, distributed about 1,250 Christmas presents, and sponsored a neighborhood health contest complete with a baby parade and pageant that attracted 1,435 participants and spectators. To demonstrate that reading could be fun as well as educational, the sisters loaned 2,209 library books to children and adults.11 Following the pattern established by settlement-house workers throughout American cities, Mother Marianne willingly lobbied city officials when decisions were being made that affected their neighbors on the Lower East Side. In 1923, the sisters learned that the city intended to lease a section of “unimproved” land to a private citizen planning to build a garage on the property. Although the land might not have seemed important to the bureaucrats involved, they knew that particular piece of property was the only spot in the “most congested and worst housed district in New York” where boys could play baseball or any other games that were “so necessary if they are to develop into healthy men.”12 The city’s decision prompted Mother Marianne to write Mayor John F. Hylan on behalf of the neighborhood’s boys, informing him that if the property was developed for business purposes, the only sources of recreation remaining were “the crap game, and the frequenting of the so called ‘Pool Rooms.’” She reminded the mayor that the settlement’s goal was to decrease the number of neighborhood juvenile delinquents rather than the opposite, and taking away the ball field would diminish the work of the sisters in this regard. In

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closing, she asked Hylan to think of the effect this would have on the boys, “in memory of your own boyhood days.”13

A Motherhouse and a Second Settlement Marydell

On July 16, 1924, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine acquired the title to what would become the Marydell Motherhouse and Novitiate in Nyack, New York, located about thirty-five miles from the Lower East Side. After ministering in lower Manhattan for about sixteen years, Mother Marianne believed it was time to acquire land and a residence in the country. In a letter to the “Friends of Madonna House,” she explained the rationale behind her decision. First, the congested conditions found in the neighborhood where Madonna House was located had necessitated the purchase of a country house. Children and their mothers needed to get away from the city now and then and enjoy “God’s pure air” so they could “renew their powers of resistance.” If the sisters did not provide such a place, she warned, “nonCatholic missions and settlements surrounding us will offer them the necessary relief.”14 The second reason for moving some of the community to the country was the need for both a novitiate and a place where the sisters could rest and make retreats. Madonna House, Mother Marianne wrote, was completely unsuitable for a novitiate; it was too crowded, and the constant activity did not allow the sisters to prepare women hoping to be professed as Sisters of Christian Doctrine. In addition, the sisters had worked for thirteen years “amid the noises, odors and incessant demands of a many sided work in the heart of the congested East Side,” and their only chance of getting away from the city was if they accompanied children or young adults on a field trip.15 The time had come, she informed benefactors, to consider the needs

Sisters Lucilla Beretti, Ursula Coyne, and Cecily Berretti at Marydell

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of the congregation as well as the people to whom they had committed themselves. It was the first time the sisters had ever asked for money for their own needs, but this support was necessary if they were to “continue [their] work for God and for souls.”16 John Whalen, a benefactor of the community, purchased the land in Nyack and presented the deed to Mother Marianne.17 Immediately on taking possession of the property the sisters named Marydell, three members of the community, including Mother Marianne, journeyed to Nyack to take up residence in their new country home. They quickly discovered that the previous owners had left the farm untended. No crops or gardens had been planted, and no arrangements had been made for the hay to be harvested. The sisters had planned to stay overnight at the new motherhouse but found the building completely empty of furniture. Undaunted, they went into town and purchased three cots, three cups and saucers, kitchenware, food, and candles.18 The building’s state of disrepair did not deter the sisters from implementing a plan designed to provide their neighbors on the Lower East Side with some vacation time in the country. By the end of August, they were able to host at their rural retreat both the Christian Mothers group and the novices.19 On January 13, 1925, Sister Immaculata Crosby, Marydell’s annalist, recorded the reception of Sister Loretta Dolan into the community, marking the first religious ceremony held at the new motherhouse and novitiate. On January 25, Sister Dolores Carty became the first novice to enter the congregation at Marydell.20 Although Mother Marianne would commute from Nyack to Madonna House one day a week for many years, she would never again live at the settlement house she and the first sisters established on Cherry Street in 1910. Even after the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, following the pattern of other American religious communities, established a separate motherhouse and novitiate in rural Nyack to be “far from the madding crowd,” Mother Marianne made sure there was continual interaction between the two houses. The Madonna House Annals for September 1929 report that the sisters from the Lower East Side had

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been out to the motherhouse for a visit and “left behind them in the garb of a postulant, ‘little Josephine’ Saitta, who has been loved and tended at Madonna House, as a little daughter of the convent, as it were since she was [a few] years old.” Happy as they were over the vocation of Josephine (later Sister Bernadette) to their community, they rejoiced equally over the wedding of her “inseparable companion,” Antoinette Manuzza, “who is engaged to a lad who has grown up in the organizations of the house, and known her since their boy and girl scout days.”21 The wedding of Antoinette and John Gorman was the talk of Madonna House for weeks. The sisters found themselves serving as Antoinette’s surrogate mother and enthusiastically helped prepare for the nuptial Mass and the reception that was to follow. The Girl Scout troops hosted a “kitchen shower” for the bride to be, and Sister Rosaria Perri helped prepare the newlyweds’ apartment for occupancy. Mother Marianne herself arrived from the motherhouse to attend to the final details, and she and six other sisters observed the ceremony from the relative privacy of the choir loft at St. Teresa’s Church. It had been many years, according to neighborhood legend, since a nuptial mass had been celebrated in the parish, and the sisters hoped that by “teaching the neighborhood how to get married” many more would follow.22 When Mr. and Mrs. Gorman returned from their honeymoon, Mother Marianne decided to visit the newlyweds in order to make sure their apartment contained all of the essentials necessary for setting up housekeeping. Her visit proved somewhat problematic because when the boys involved in the activities of Madonna House learned of her plan, they insisted on inviting Mother Marianne to their homes. The annalist’s notation explained that the boys did not understand that “Antoinette being our own charge, the case was different, and although we do not visit unless in case of need, Reverend Mother had the charity to lend them her encouragement by a few moments[’] visit at as many of their homes as she could reach before dark.”23

Neighbors and Teachers | 77 Ave Maria House

By 1930, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were being asked to conduct religious-education classes throughout New York City and its suburbs. The distance they were often required to travel led Mother Marianne to request formal permission for those traveling to Santa Maria parish in the east Bronx, twenty-five miles from the motherhouse in Nyack and fourteen miles from Madonna House, to live at a house she hoped to rent in St. Raymond’s parish in the borough’s Parkchester section.24 Still worried about the efforts of Protestant missionaries to convert poor Catholic immigrants, she supported her request by informing Cardinal Patrick Hayes that the nearby St. Peter’s Episcopal Church was attempting to evangelize the neighborhood’s Catholic population. Two months later, in November of 1930, Sister Elizabeth Lammers requested permission to purchase a house at 1427 Doris Street in the Bronx. Although the purpose of the house, she assured Monsignor Lavelle, was entirely residential, it was quickly transformed into a second settlement house administered by the community.25 Ave Maria settlement was patterned after the Madonna House apostolate. Since a primary concern of settlement workers, including the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, was to provide safe play areas for children, a campaign was begun in 1936 to raise money for a playground. Although the sisters owned the land on which the proposed playground would be built, the hard economic times resulting from the Great Depression made it difficult for them to secure the necessary funds. Taking matters into their own hands, the sisters and their unemployed neighbors cleared the land and built swings and a shelter out of donated wooden posts. After receiving an additional donation of cement and sand, they were able to have a wading pool built, and the fire department installed a revolving shower on the property. Members of the settlement’s Boy Scout troop were recruited to paint the equipment. The supervised playground operated throughout the summer, and its location served as a day camp for the

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neighborhood’s children. In order to ensure that activities functioned smoothly, children were required to register for the playground, and part of the day’s schedule included catechism class, which allowed the sisters to fulfill their commitment to meeting the spiritual needs of their neighbors. Aware that the area’s older children needed a place to congregate, the sisters allowed them to use the playground in the evening.26 Ave Maria’s playground was clearly one of the settlement’s success stories. In September 1938, the community’s magazine, Mary’s Mission, reported that the playground’s average daily attendance that summer had been 225. The children played in the morning and attended religious-education class in the afternoon. In an attempt to keep older children entertained, the sisters arranged for them to participate in a number of day trips; one group even spent a week camping in the woods of Marydell.27

Hard Times

The poverty and unemployment that characterized the years of the Great Depression meant that the children and adults of Cherry Street needed the Sisters of Christian Doctrine and their settlement house more than ever. During these years, the sisters often found themselves ministering to boys and men, who left their homes in other parts of the country hoping to find work in a major metropolitan area. In January 1930, Sister Antonia Parille approached a boy new to the settlement’s bread line. A conversation with the young man revealed he had traveled from New Hampshire to New York in the hope of finding a way to make a living. She convinced the boy to write his mother and was delighted to report that the boy received a telegram responding to his letter—he was to come home at once.28 Social settlements, including Madonna House, would usually proffer help to anyone in need regardless of race, religion, or country of origin, even those who had been overlooked by traditional relief

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agencies. An article in the January 1931 issue of Mary’s Mission recounted the story of a city firefighter who noticed a woman rummaging in the garbage in the vicinity of Cherry Street. Realizing that this was perhaps her only means of getting anything to eat, he brought the woman to Madonna House. Concluding that there must be others like her, the sisters eventually discovered at least one hundred families who had been overlooked by various welfare agencies.29 The distribution of food assumed a more important place in the sisters’ ministry as the nation’s economic crisis deepened during the early 1930s. The New York Sun reported that in 1931 the Sisters of [Christian] Doctrine were feeding two hundred children a day at the Lower East Side settlement house. In addition, they sometimes fed as many as seven hundred a day in the house’s bread line. According to Sister Elizabeth Lammers, the superior of the settlement, the sisters’ greatest concern was for the families affected by the drastic downturn in the nation’s economy. They especially worried about those whose pride did not permit them to apply for charity “even though it may have taken the combined efforts of the father and several of the older children to keep the rent paid and the larder filled.”30 The staff of Madonna House fed as many of the hungry as they could, but, as conditions on the Lower East Side deteriorated, it became more and more difficult to supply food to all of those in need. In 1932, a new Club for Unemployed, sponsored by the Emergency Work Bureau, was meeting at Madonna House to provide support for those seeking employment. In an attempt to help families find a source of income, the sisters organized women and girls living around the settlement into a class in which they were trained to make rugs. The sisters “paid them steady wages . . . at rates which . . . enabled them to keep their families together and avoid the demoralization of doles.” A shop called The Green Parrot was opened at 147 East 47th Street to sell the rugs produced by the women and girls enrolled in the class. An advertisement explained that the rugs were for sale not to provide charity but because “in design, coloring, and workmanship, the rugs are second to none.”31 The community itself

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was also impacted by the Depression. The sisters had not been able to publish the May issue of Mary’s Mission due to lack of funds; subscribers, many of whom could usually be counted on for additional monetary support, found themselves in desperate financial straits and were unable to help. Despite the harsh economic climate, the sisters continued to prepare children to receive the sacraments and to solicit First Communion outfits for those who could not afford to purchase them. In the spring of 1931, readers of Mary’s Mission were asked to sponsor a first communicant who might not be able to afford the special outfit that marked a very important event in his or her faith development. A year later the magazine, most of which was authored by Mother Marianne, suggested that the number of children making First Communion was important for the future of America. “Surely it is immensely significant for the future of America that at this time all over the land young souls by the thousands are deliberately choosing, almost at the dawn of the age of reason, a life based on the moral and spiritual standards of the Gospel of Christ.” The memory of a child’s First Communion, the article explained, would linger into adulthood and help the child make responsible choices throughout life. “There is the instinctive feeling that the hope of the future for our moral order, for America, for the world, lies in those long lines everywhere converging towards the altar. If society owed no other debt to the Catholic Church it would be under an everlasting obligation to Her for the First Communion class.”32 The presidential inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in March 1933 was viewed with cautious optimism by the sisters living and working at Madonna House. Mary’s Mission noted that although “defeatism [had been] in the air . . . today hope is abroad.”33 It would take more than monetary relief, however, to end the malaise engulfing the nation. “The crisis will be worth all it costs,” the author wrote, “if it leads to a revaluation of our national wealth in terms of spiritual riches rather than bank accounts, not by the number of

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cars in each garage or the frequency of chicken in the family pot, but by the quality of citizenship, to a standard of achievement measured by character instead of possessions.”34 It was imperative that the spiritual dimension of life not be neglected even as the sisters struggled to provide their neighbors with the basic necessities of life. “The Lord Christ fed the multitude,” the author continued, “and by His tender sympathy led them to hunger for the bread of heaven. So also the ministrations of the Catholic neighborhood house, warm and homely, as the helpfulness of the good neighbor ought to be, are but sign posts on the way to the Divine Love.”35

A Silver Jubilee

The Sisters of Christian Doctrine marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of both Madonna House and the community with several celebratory events. The 1935 festivities included a parade of 1,129 children and adults, which began at Cathedral College on Madison Avenue and 51st Street and proceeded past Cardinal Patrick Hayes’s residence to St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The procession’s participants were clothed in either the dress of their native country or the uniform of their organization. National organizations represented included Chinese, Syrians, Greeks, and Italians; members of the Columbus Volunteers, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and Brownies marched alongside some of the former patients of St. Joseph’s in Elberon.36 The parade’s second division consisted of groups representing the settlement’s various clubs and organizations, including the Little Flower Club, St. Gregory’s Choir, Our Lady’s Guild for Catholic Action, Liturgy Class, and the Cecilia Music School. They were followed by the Christian Doctrine classes, the Camp Marydell Alumnae, the Girls’ Clubs, Mothers’ Club, and Evening School for Foreigners. Each group carried a banner, blue with gold figures, topped with a gold cross.37 According to the Catholic News, the New York archdiocesan newspaper, the

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parade, led by the Xavier College Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps, drew thousands of onlookers attracted by the music and the marchers’ colorful costumes.38 Speaking on behalf of the New York archdiocese at the Pontifical Vesper service following the parade, Monsignor William Cashin told the approximately 1,300 in attendance that the Sisters of Christian Doctrine had spent the past twenty-five years laboring “quietly and unostentatiously but effectively.”39 Cashin reminded listeners of Mother Marianne’s unsuccessful search for a religious order whose apostolate combined social service and religious education, while explaining that the sisters did not seek the poor as a sociological experiment. They did not go to them in the position of a superior bestowing favors on an inferior. They became poor. They lived among the poor, and lived the lives of the poor. . . . They were even poorer in worldly possessions than the poor themselves. But they had that which is above all worldly possessions. They had the spirit of poverty which is the Spirit of Christ; They [sic] went to the poor to bring Christ to them.40

Referring to the numbers of congregants dressed in costumes representing their native lands, Cashin praised the community for not limiting its ministry to any one racial or ethnic group. He also expressed his appreciation for a program he believed met the needs of the settlement’s neighbors from childhood through adulthood. “Many families are now scattered throughout the length and breadth of the City [sic],” Cashin explained, “whose fathers and mothers were and are Madonna House boys and girls.” The influence of the sisters would continue through succeeding generations, even as the families to whom they ministered were able to leave Cherry Street for better jobs and housing.41 Toward the close of his sermon, Cashin summarized his understanding of the congregation’s apostolate. Noting that the sisters demonstrated an awareness of the effects of the Depression before either

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public authorities or newspapers did, he reminded his listeners that they “performed the Corporal Works of Mercy to the end that they might also perform Spiritual Works of Mercy.” This, he suggested, was an idea with a great deal of merit, and he hoped young women in the process of discerning whether they were called to religious life would agree. The community, he said, “inspires in its members the ambition to emulate and practice the poverty and penitential spirit of the Poor Clare, the joyous daring of a St. Francis of Assisi and the multiple charitable activities of a St. Vincent de Paul.”42 The report of the celebration, published in the Catholic News, noted that Mother Marianne “occupied an obscure seat well back in a side aisle, surrounded by members of her Sisterhood.”43 During the course of celebrating the community’s silver jubilee, the sisters expressed pride in their ability to provide physical and spiritual sustenance to those in need. Although they reported visiting more than six thousand families and sponsoring approximately fifty social events for adults between 1931 and 1935, they continued to place equal, if not more, importance on the role they played in the faith development of the people among whom they lived and worked. The importance of their apostolate lay in the fact that four adults and eighty-three children had been baptized as a result of those six thousand visits.44 They were as happy that six marriages had been regularized in the church due to the sisters’ ministrations as they were about the forty married couples who had first met at Madonna House.45 None of their spiritual activities were meant to downplay the relief work and educational activities carried out at the social settlement; the relief work, Mother Marianne informed Cashin, was necessary to complete the spiritual work.46 The sisters also rejoiced in the young women who had found their way to either Madonna House or Marydell to begin the process of deciding if they truly had a vocation to be a Sister of Christian Doctrine. Alice Berretti—later Sister Cecily—wrote to Mother Marianne after visiting Madonna House and speaking with Sister Elizabeth Lammers about her religious vocation. “From her [Sister

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Elizabeth’s] explanation of the work of your community, I believe it is the Religious Order I have been trying to find,” she wrote. Informing Mother Marianne that she was twenty-five years old and had completed junior high school (she would have gladly attended high school, but her father had moved the family to Italy), Alice noted she was fluent in Italian (both speaking and writing) and could also speak a little French. She concluded her letter by offering to provide any other information needed and asked for some literature describing the community and its work so she “could better try to understand whether [she was] suited for it.”47

Beyond the Jubilee

In 1937, under the direction of Sister Mary Elizabeth Lammers, Madonna House’s activities illustrated the changing neighborhood and its needs. The settlement’s annual report for that year claimed that a total of 2,185 people were “registered” at the settlement; 668 of these were adults. The sisters were actively involved in relief work and in that year alone had provided 72,628 loaves of bread, 16,116 quarts of milk (reserved for families with babies), and 1,102 baskets of food to hungry neighbors. They were also sending coal, furniture, and clothing to needy families. The breadline continued to operate, and the sisters still visited the sick and arranged doctors’ visits and medication for those unable to pay for treatment. Despite the extra demands placed on them by the poor economy, the congregation did not neglect the work it was called to do: providing religious education and sacramental preparation to children and adults. In 1937, thirty-one children and twenty-two adults received either First Communion or confirmation under the sisters’ tutelage. In addition, they obtained First Communion outfits for twenty-six children. About two hundred fifty children were attending “Christian Doctrine School” on the weekend; forty-five high school students were attending weekly religion classes; and one hundred thirty chil-

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dren were preparing to receive either First Communion or confirmation. The settlement also hosted a number of religious clubs and sodalities, including the Little Flower Club (girls ages eight to ten), the Infant Jesus Sodality (children up to age six), the Immaculata Club (working girls), and the Kings of Constantine and Little Crusaders (for Greek boys and girls). During the later years of the Great Depression, the residents of Cherry Street continued to enjoy the cultural, educational, and social activities sponsored by the settlement. The fourteen sisters in residence held weekly parent meetings for English, Italian, “Young English,” and Greek-speaking neighbors. Classes in pottery, woodcarving, sculpture, dance, and dramatics were offered; and the sisters sponsored Brownie, Girl Scout, and Boy Scout troops. Those hoping to learn a skill leading to eventual employment were invited to enroll in sewing, dressmaking, or leather craft classes. Like other settlement workers, the sisters’ philosophy included the idea that the urban poor should spend some time each year enjoying the world outside of their congested environment. In 1937, 112 children, 33 mothers, and 72 working girls were able to spend at least one week in the country outside New York City.48 The Sisters of Christian Doctrine hoped that the arts would brighten and enliven the lives of the urban working poor. In 1936, Sister Elizabeth Lammers hired Hedi Katz to direct the settlement’s new Cecilia School of Music. The former music director at Lillian Wald’s Henry Street Settlement, Katz claimed she did not know “a more deserving and appreciative neighborhood than this one.”49 Mother Marianne instructed Sister Elizabeth to give Katz a free hand in the direction of the school but not to offer her a ten-year contract. In addition, perhaps because she assumed Katz planned to bring a number of Henry Street teachers with her, Sister Elizabeth was to make sure the school’s faculty was not predominantly Jewish.50 The final agreement stated that a Sister of Christian Doctrine was to be in charge of the music school, but Katz, who would receive a salary of $200 per month, was given the authority to hire her own staff.51

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In 1934, the community made another attempt to reach out to the Chinese of the Lower East Side by opening a Chinese school at Madonna House. When a sufficient number of children were enrolled in Cantonese classes, the sisters visited the students’ parents to explain both their work and their religion. The Golden Star Club for Chinese girls was organized, and the sisters began hospital visits to Chinese neighbors. When Chinese children began to register for other activities sponsored by the settlement, such as the kindergarten, art school, and music school, the sisters hoped baptisms would follow. Their optimism increased when Chinese men and women either enrolled in the settlement’s English school or arranged to be tutored in the language of their adopted country.52 Within a short time, forty Chinese children had enrolled in religious education classes.

Outside of New York City

An article in the March 1938 issue of Mary’s Mission informed readers that Cardinal Patrick Hayes had permitted the congregation to accept an invitation from the Diocese of Syracuse to begin work among the people of St. Bartholomew’s parish in Norwich, New York.53 It was the community’s first foundation outside the New York archdiocese, and the plan called for the opening of a “catechetical and social center” ministering especially to the Italian residents of the parish. On March 7, 1938, the Norwich Sun reported that, along with the pastor, Father Walter Sinnott, and five Dominican sisters from St. Paul’s School, “many of the Italian people” were there to greet the sisters when they arrived at their new home.54 Mother Marianne clearly considered the new mission an important step in the growth and expansion of the relatively new community, but problems developed almost immediately. In a letter dated September 13, 1939, she responded to Sinnott’s concern that the sisters’ teaching was “unpedagogical,” explaining that the methods used successfully by public and parochial schoolteachers were not always

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appropriate for religious-education classes, perhaps because of the children’s fatigue at the end of the day, perhaps because of a lack of enthusiasm for the material. She defended the sisters’ methods as being in “complete conformity with the principles of modern pedagogy and of applied psychology,” and reminded her correspondent that they were probably the first New York catechists to use visual instruction. Had Sinnott visited Madonna House’s School of Christian Doctrine on any Saturday morning, he would see their program of religious education at its finest, “hundreds of children without any sort of compulsion or obligation, voluntarily forego[ing] the dearly loved late sleep that they may spend the entire morning in the study of their religion.”55 The letter clearly did not solve the problem, because in August 1941 the sisters were “dismissed” from St. Bartholomew’s after the situation had gone from bad to worse. Offended by the pastor’s criticism of those assigned to Norwich, Mother Marianne offered a vigorous defense of the sisters and reminded him that Mother Joseph, the superior, was a “distinguished lady from the highest diplomatic circles of our national capital” and that Sister Cecily Berretti, who was sent because an Italian sister was requested, “speaks and writes the purest Tuscan.”56 Sinnott may have been concerned that Mother Marianne would appeal to Bishop Walter Foery and ask him to overturn his decision to remove the community from St. Bartholomew’s. She assured the pastor she had no intention of complaining to his ecclesiastical superior but refused to write a letter accepting responsibility for their withdrawal from the parish. Such a letter would not correspond with the facts, she informed Sinnott, and she did not want the community’s archives to contain any “misleading documents.”57

Settlement Work and the Second World War

A 1942 article published in The Torch, a Dominican magazine, reported that Madonna House was currently serving at least thirteen

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different nationalities: Chinese, Greek, Polish, Czech, Italian, Syrian, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Russian, Armenian, German, and American.58 The day nursery continued to play an integral role in the daily life of the settlement house, and four of the twenty-five rooms were devoted to the care of young children. In order to allow the children to spend some time outside—no easy feat on the Lower East Side—the building’s roof had been converted into a playground, complete with slides, seesaws, and even a shower under which they could find some relief on a hot summer day. English classes, both elementary and advanced, were available to neighborhood residents who had recently arrived in the United States. Convinced that immigrants needed to learn enough about their adopted country to become active and responsible citizens, Madonna House continued to offer courses in American history, civics, geography, economics, and government.59 Stories and notes appearing in Mary’s Mission during the years in which America was involved in World War II demonstrated that those serving in the war were often in the thoughts and prayers of the sisters. In 1943, for instance, the “Tweenies” and Brownies visited the Bronx Zoo; seeing the camels made the girls feel “a little closer to their brothers in Africa.”60 Both residents and neighbors helped cultivate a victory garden, and everyone, of course, prayed for a speedy Allied victory. The Madonna House “Battalion of Prayer” was revived as a devotion in which the entire settlement community could participate by joining together every Sunday at 5 P.M. to spend an hour in eucharistic adoration for the safety of those serving in the armed forces.61 The activities sponsored by Madonna House in 1944 show the community’s willingness to adapt their programs to meet the needs created by a country at war. In addition to catechism lessons (239 children) and classes devoted to sacramental preparation (98 children), the sisters, along with twenty-four paid workers and fourteen volunteers, sponsored and planned a memorial Mass for those who had died during the two world wars. They continued to offer art, music,

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and citizenship classes but also sponsored a special serviceman’s dance once a year—in addition to the dances held every week—that was designed to offer a safe, social activity for military personnel stationed in New York City. Mindful that people suffered from material deprivation even during a time of war, they continued to distribute meals, clothing, and toys for children.62 The fifteen sisters living and working at Madonna House encouraged the area’s residents to participate actively in the war effort. The day nursery and kindergarten, which did not usually accept children under the age of two, lowered the age limit to fifteen months if their mothers were employed in the defense industry. Columbus Volunteers not serving in the military formed a “Home battalion,” offering a rudimentary knowledge of “military science” to those still too young to enlist in the armed forces.63 In addition, each club and organization sponsored by the settlement house was expected to support the war effort. Boy Scout troops acted as messengers for wardens during mandatory blackouts and made rosaries for those serving in the military. Girl Scouts collected books for military personnel, wrote letters to soldiers and sailors from the district, and purchased war stamps and bonds. Brownies, Rangers (boys age 7 to 12), and even the children enrolled in the day nursery and kindergarten gathered scrap and helped sew underwear and aprons for the Red Cross.64 Other clubs sponsored activities that manifested the neighborhood’s patriotism and fervent hope for an Allied victory. The Mothers’ Club assembled packages to be sent to soldiers and sailors serving in Iceland and the Philippines (the contents of which included medals and prayer books), devised ways to keep local servicemen informed of the news of the neighborhood, and knitted sweaters to be distributed among the troops. Students attending the Cecilia Music School were asked to write letters to those serving in the military and also came together as a choir when requiem Mass was sung for the repose of the souls of those killed in battle. The sisters did not forget that some of the Chinese among whom they had ministered since 1934 were also serving in the American armed forces. They

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wrote to them regularly and sent them rosary beads, medals, and religious books and magazines written in both English and Chinese.65 Although the sisters living and working at Madonna House were able to offer educational, social, and religious programs during the war, those ministering at Ave Maria House struggled to provide the activities their neighbors had come to expect. The seven sisters living at the settlement were able to moderate the St. Joseph Stamp Guild (a group founded to sort and sell stamps benefitting the sisters’ work), Social Club, Ave Maria Guild, Immaculata Club, and Ave Maria Basketball Club, which continued to meet weekly. Despite two paid workers and nineteen volunteers complementing the sisters’ work, however, the 1944 “Settlement Questionnaire” claimed that “It [was] impossible to find eligible young men and women to act as leaders in girls’ and boys’ organizations.”66 The need for military personnel and defense workers had depleted the volunteer staff at the Bronx settlement house. The lack of essential workers did not deter the sisters at Ave Maria from supporting the war effort. Some of the settlement’s organizations adopted a United States Coast Guard ship and sent gifts to about one hundred men every month. Sister Immaculata Crosby, Ave Maria’s superior, allowed air-raid wardens to use the building for meetings and drills, and the settlement hosted a dance and buffet supper for servicemen four times a year.67 In 1943, as American forces began bombing Germany and the Russians mounted an offensive to drive Hitler’s forces out of Stalingrad, Mother Marianne reminded readers of Mary’s Mission that wars were fought not only against political powers but over social and moral concerns as well. The role of the Catholic family was pivotal, for instance, if the war against juvenile delinquency was to be won. “We cannot undertake global war against delinquency,” she opined, “but we may properly inquire what the American Catholic home is doing in the matter of the moral training of children. . . . In New York City alone, on home visitation done by our Sisters . . . the number of ‘fallen away’ adult Catholics is alarming, with all the

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Boys playing with model airplanes, Ave Maria settlement house

children in these homes greatly endangered by the bad example of adults, if not, as is usually the case, also lost to the faith.”68 Although an Allied victory was important, true victory would not be won until souls as well as nations had been saved. The social problems facing the Lower East Side remained unchanged during the war, and the sisters persisted in their struggle to improve their neighbors’ quality of life. What will happen, they wondered, “if we win the war against a foreign foe, only to lose on the domestic front in the conflict with moral disorder?”69 By duplicating the values that should be found in the home, a Catholic settlement house could indeed offer a solution to the problems caused by urbanization and industrialization. Settlements offered young people the chance to participate in art, music, drama, and craft classes, befriend other Catholics, and take part in a variety of social activities. Above all, however, one could always find a sympathetic ear at Madonna

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House because the sisters were “always at home to them, never too busy to receive a confidence, to help solve a problem, to share, with ready sympathy, life’s joys and sorrows.”70

The Closing of the Settlement Houses

“Some say the settlement’s finished,” wrote economist Wilbur Cohen in 1958.71 Although Cohen himself did not agree with those who believed social settlements were dying institutions, he claimed many Americans either did not know what a settlement house was or, if they did know, did not think they were effective social-service agencies.72 If one studied the American urban landscape in the post–World War II era, it did seem as if these institutions were disappearing. Although it remained America’s most well-known social settlement, Chicago’s Hull House suffered financial and leadership losses after the death of Jane Addams in 1935. Other settlements now depended on United Way annual campaigns for the bulk of their funding, which required them to avoid controversy and keep a low profile in order to receive financial support. Although Madonna House did not suffer from a lack of leadership, and it had always depended on Catholic Charities and private donations for funding, the community was dealing with a physical plant that was rapidly deteriorating as well as with a changing neighborhood and new government regulations and programs that were impacting the way in which those in need were able to take advantage of social services. Despite less than ideal facilities, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine continued their ministry on the Lower East Side and in the Bronx during the postwar years. In 1946, First Communion and confirmation classes were meeting three times a week at Madonna House with a total enrollment of 133 children, and 271 additional children were receiving religious instruction. In addition, the settlement continued to sponsor activities designed to enrich the lives of their neighbors;

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89 Boy Scouts and 94 Girl Scouts were enrolled in troops led by the sisters and lay workers. During the 1950s, the settlement offered classes in drama, music, art, ballet, English, and military training. A schedule of activities offered during the year 1954–55 shows that social, educational, and religious activities were taking place at Madonna House five days a week during the late afternoon and evening. Catechism classes were held three days a week; children were attending Boy Scout, Cub Scout, Brownie, and Girl Scout meetings; space had been reserved for teenagers (basketball practice was Friday evening); and at least three nights a week were devoted to “adult students.”73 The following year, Sister Dorothea McCarthy, resident director, reported that Madonna House was operating six and one-half days per week.74 That year’s annual report to Catholic Charities noted that a total of seven Scout troops (Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, Brownies, and Cub Scouts) were operating out of the settlement, along with two groups devoted to arts and crafts, and two shop classes. The eighteen nuns and fortyfive volunteers were also leading several mothers’ clubs, including ones for Spanish, Italian, and young Italian mothers. Sixty-six children were enrolled in First Communion classes.75 The Madonna House day nursery was still serving children living in the environs of Cherry Street, but it had changed considerably since its 1910 beginnings and was now emphasizing education rather than custodial care. Children attending the preschool participated in a “carefully planned program under the supervision of a professionally trained staff in accordance with the ideals and standards of the New York Catholic Charities and the New York State Board of Health.” The sisters believed in educating the whole child— physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually. Since their focus was on the entire neighborhood, not just children, a parent– teacher organization now allowed them to get to know the parents of the children attending the school and it also provided a venue for explaining the goals and techniques of the program.76

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The community remained committed to Ave Maria House in the Bronx, reporting in 1952 that “the usual staff of Ave Maria, consisting of ten sisters, was resident throughout the year, assisted by twenty-one volunteer workers, who contribute an average of two and one half hours each per week in connection with playground and scout activities, both for boys and girls.” The sisters taught Christian Doctrine at ten parishes and prepared children to receive either First Communion or confirmation. In addition, they managed the playground—including a wading pool, swings, a sandbox, and basketball courts—and conducted several scout troops. The four sisters responsible for caring for the poor of the neighborhood distributed clothing, milk, food, and toys.77 No decisions were made about the future of either Madonna House or Ave Maria House during the 1950s because of Mother Marianne’s failing health. By December of 1956 she was very ill and unable to participate in either midnight Mass or the community’s traditional “Blessing of the Christmas Tree.” On January 4, 1957, her condition worsened and the doctor placed her on bed rest. Although the sisters hoped for her recovery, by the end of January they “knew the end was near”; she died on February 9, 1957.78 Sister Mary Ursula Coyne, who succeeded the foundress, decided the fate of the community’s first two foundations. By the late 1950s, the residents of Madonna House could no longer ignore the changing neighborhood or the settlement’s deteriorating physical plant. St. Joachim’s parish was closed in 1956 to make way for Chatham Gardens, a housing project, which meant many of the settlement’s neighbors moved either to other areas of the city or to the suburbs. Sister Ursula initially decided to close Madonna House in 1958, when an inspection of the property revealed “hazardous” living conditions that would cost between $300,000 and $600,000 to repair, a sum she determined was “prohibitive.” The New York archdiocese, anxious for the sisters to continue ministering in the area, offered to help find a new location for the settlement. The original proposal called for Madonna House to relocate to a new building

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that would have enough space for the day-care program (no longer called a day nursery) as well as housing facilities for the sisters.79 When this plan did not materialize, the community slowly began phasing out the settlement’s activities. The 1959 annual report to Catholic Charities, however, demonstrates that the Sisters of Christian Doctrine had not forgotten that the purpose of Madonna House was to provide material and spiritual support to their Cherry Street neighbors. Services offered by the seventeen sisters residing at the settlement house included visits to Puerto Rican families, meal distribution to adults, food baskets to needy families, distribution of clothing, visits to area hospitals, recitals, dances, and Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops. Responding to the changing ethnic composition of the neighborhood, the sisters offered a one-day retreat for their Puerto Rican neighbors, who had moved into the area as the immigrants and their children from southern and eastern Europe relocated to more suburban neighborhoods. They continued to teach CCD to the children of the neighborhood: six classes for children between the ages of six and thirteen were meeting weekly at the settlement.80 On November 6, 1960, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine closed the Madonna House settlement. The social and educational activities they had once offered were now being handled by other agencies and organizations, and—perhaps most important—the building was crumbling around them. It was no longer safe to offer childcare services and religious-education classes in the settlement house. Some activities were transferred to surrounding parishes, but the cultural programs (such as music classes) were discontinued. The Children’s Building was closed on June 30, 1960, and the Youth Activities Division of Catholic Charities of the New York archdiocese assumed the childcare services.81 By November 1 of that year, the sisters had relocated to a new residence on East 94th Street. Leaving Madonna House was, for many of the sisters, the end of an era. “It was there that Reverend Mother Marianne and her first band of Sisters labored indefatigably among the immigrants,” wrote annalist Sister Cecily Berretti. “It was there too that many of

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us younger Sisters in later years also labored zealously, happily leading souls to the Sacred Heart.” It was clear, however, that the role of social settlements had changed over the years. “Gradually, as The Music School and the Scout Troops were closed, it hardly felt to some of us as though living there were of much use for we could go to our missions from some other location.”82 The settlement’s neighbors remained in contact with the sisters who had lived and worked among them. In the 1980s, Joseph Toscano reminisced about his days at Madonna House in letters to Sister Angela Palermo, community president. Although it was hard to keep track of the sisters because so many of them had changed their names, Toscano, who had been stricken with polio as a child, did not forget their kindnesses to him. He remembered Sister Elizabeth Lammers, who “took me off the sidewalks and streets and brought me to the Madonna House when I was very, very young,” and Sister Bernadette Saitto, who before she entered the community had prepared him for First Communion. He was especially grateful to Mother Marianne (“the boss herself”), who had allowed him to attend camp (even though it was designed for girls) and spend Christmas vacation at Marydell. Toscano learned a trade, married, and had two children. The sisters cared for his children at the day nursery while he and his wife worked, and Toscano tried to return the favor by directing the settlement’s sports program.83 Other former neighbors remembered when times were bad and the Madonna House breadline came to the rescue. “I remember when poverty was knocking at our door,” wrote Isabelle Gambino in 1985, “[and] how the Good Sisters came to our rescue. . . . I have had association with some of the families that did stand on the Bread Line at Madonna House and . . . they deny this, but I tell them; how can you say that you were not on this line, when you were standing behind me.”84 Because it was the first foundation of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, Madonna House plays a large part in the community’s collective memory. A few months after the settlement house was closed

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and the sisters’ residence relocated, some of them found themselves down in the old neighborhood. “It holds such tender memories of the many, many little things we did for God,” the annalist recorded. “In the early days of Cherry Street the poverty of the place meant nothing to us. . . . We were so very busy ‘about Our Father’s business’ that we barely noticed our surroundings.”85 The closing of Ave Maria House in 1967 was due primarily to the community’s inability to maintain the property. In the summer of 1967, Sister Rose Frazzetta reported that the Bronx settlement house was in dire need of expensive repairs. Meeting in August of that year, Sister Ursula and the community’s governing council, concluding that it was impractical to fix the building, suppressed the convent.86 Later that month, Sister Ursula informed Bishop John J. Maguire that she and Sister Rose Frazzetta, the current superior of Ave Maria, had called a meeting of the settlement workers and explained the reasons for closing the community’s last social settlement in New York City.87 The closing of Madonna House and Ave Maria House did not mean that the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were abandoning their social apostolate. As more sisters began to complete college degrees and receive at least some graduate or professional training, they continued to provide religious education in parishes and to serve as social workers throughout the New York archdiocese. In addition, they had adapted the concept of an urban social settlement to parts of the rural South, and this ministry continued into the 1960s and beyond.

4

Settlements Go South

Mother Marianne’s original vision of a religious community involved women willing to work in struggling parishes. Their presence, she hoped, would help preserve the faith of those living in areas without significant numbers of Catholics, who did not have access to parochial schools, resident clerics, or religious communities. Since establishing Madonna House in 1910, however, most of her time and energy had been devoted to serving the Church in urban areas. The focus of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine was expanded to include poverty-stricken rural Catholics in 1940, when Rev. George Lewis Smith formally invited the congregation to initiate a ministry to the poor of South Carolina. The New Jersey–born Smith, pastor of Our Lady of the Valley mission in Gloverville, learned of the work the sisters were doing on New York’s Lower East Side from New York governor and presidential candidate Alfred E. Smith. The mission where Smith asked the sisters to work was located in the twentymile-long Horse Creek Valley between Aiken, South Carolina, and Augusta, Georgia. Both the mission and its people were poor and struggling, and the pastor hoped to persuade Mother Marianne to send sisters willing to transplant the work of Madonna House—an urban social settlement—to the rural South. “Your experience in so successfully operating the Madonna House at 173 Cherry Street,” Smith wrote, “makes me believe that your Sisters are the best qualified of any I know to tackle our urgent problem down here in the Horse Creek Valley and in the Mill Villages.”1

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George Lewis Smith was appointed pastor of Aiken’s Catholic parish, St. Mary Help of Christians, in 1938. Three years after he arrived, there were only thirty-four resident Catholics living in Aiken; the numbers increased slightly during the winter months when northerners sought out climates that were more temperate.2 At the time Smith extended his invitation to the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, the parish included the city of Aiken as well as the section of Aiken County between Aiken and North Augusta. In 1945, several years after the sisters’ arrival, Our Lady of the Valley mission was established to serve the spiritual needs of Catholics living outside the Aiken city limits, and in 1952 it became a parish in its own right. Horse Creek Valley (today known as Midland Valley) comprised several planned mill villages, including Graniteville, Bath, Langley, Warrenville, Gloverville, Clearwater, and Vancluse. In 1845, in an attempt to replicate the New England mill-town model in the southern United States, William Gregg built the area’s first cotton mill in Graniteville.3 Other planned communities followed, and by the 1930s many had become company towns; the mills owned the homes, the stores, and sometimes even the Baptist churches.4 Approximately 15,000 people were living in Horse Creek Valley in the late 1930s, most from “good, old American stock”; about 5,000 were living in conditions that could be described only as inadequate.5 During the Great Depression, mills located throughout the area were forced to lay off many of their workers, leading one survey to claim that Horse Creek Valley was the most depressed industrial area in the country.6 The region’s socioeconomic problems were aggravated by both the lack of education and the poor health that characterized the situation of many families in the community. Convinced that the methods used by urban-settlement workers would prove successful in rural areas, Smith assured Mother Marianne that he could raise money from wealthy northern “snowbirds” to finance the project. He had, he wrote, already arranged for a “Miss Coleman” to support the sisters during their first year in South Caro-

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lina.7 On a fundraising trip to New York, Smith met with Mother Marianne and boasted of a $1,000 donation he had received from Rev. Joseph McCaffrey, pastor of Holy Cross Church on Manhattan’s West 42nd Street. In addition, Anheuser-Busch had agreed to send one hundred pounds of yeast for distribution to those suffering from pellagra, a disease usually caused by a lack of niacin in one’s diet.8 The pastor estimated it would cost about $10,000 to build a settlement house that would include living space for the sisters as well as a large room for group meetings and classes, and he hoped to secure the support of either a “Philanthropic Foundation or some private Donor” for the building itself.9

A New Foundation

After Mother Marianne, accompanied by Mother Elizabeth Lammers, visited the area, she assented to Smith’s proposition, and in February of 1940 Sisters Dolores Carty, Anne-Marie Bach, and Clare Dennis arrived in what the sisters fondly refer to as “the Valley.”10 Before they arrived, Smith warned Mother Marianne that “the vast majority of ‘poor whites’ are non-Catholic. The problem of helping them is not particularly a Catholic problem—it is a social problem.”11 The sisters’ initial work would not involve teaching religion; they were to focus instead on providing material assistance to the area’s poor. Smith firmly believed that Valley residents, Catholic and non-Catholic, were in truly desperate straits and needed assistance from either public or private agencies. Since no other organizations, government or private, were able or willing to undertake this work, he explained, “we must try to do something ourselves. . . . Although most of these people are not Catholics, they are in need—in dire need—and we must try to help them.”12 He begged Mother Marianne, “Please try to get someone to erect a Settlement House and send the Sisters down here as soon as possible to undertake this humanitarian work.”13

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Smith quickly convinced Charleston’s bishop, Emmet Walsh, that the community would be a valuable asset to the Church in Aiken and its environs. The sisters’ work during their first months in the Valley turned Walsh into a champion of their ministry, and he bought them a used Chevrolet station wagon to make their lives easier. Praising both the pastor and the community, the bishop wrote, “He [Smith] is convinced that their settlement house methods will work wonders in the Valley. He has already brought these sisters to Aiken, and for several months they have done remarkable work in the face of an organized campaign of bigotry.”14 The pastor did not downplay the presence of anti-Catholicism in rural South Carolina. “I am noticing quite a bit of bigotry,” he wrote to Mother Marianne, “but I think we will overcome it when the people see what the Sisters are actually doing.”15 The sisters did experience episodes of anti-Catholicism on their arrival in South Carolina, sometimes with comic results. According to the Aiken Standard, the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan decided to demonstrate its dislike of the women on the very day of their arrival. “As [the sisters] were driving down the street [they] came upon the tail end of a parade, so they followed it. . . . They were very visible because they were dressed in black and white habits. Everyone on the street was laughing and pointing. They asked what all the commotion was about. Someone said, ‘You’re riding at the end of a Ku Klux Klan demonstration. They don’t want you here.’”16 Other community members threatened by the sisters’ presence in the area mounted “The Valley Tabernacle Campaign” to recruit residents willing to help drive the newcomers from the area. One local Protestant church advertised a Sunday service by noting the topic of the week’s sermon: “A Devil Is Loose in the Valley”—the devils were the three Sisters of Christian Doctrine.17 Public displays of anti-Catholicism were, in some respects, the least of the sisters’ problems. Since there were very few Catholics in the area, one of their first tasks consisted of simply introducing

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themselves to their new neighbors, many of whom had never seen a Catholic sister. The lack of knowledge about women religious led to some humorous incidents. “As they entered one cabin, the lady of the house cried to her neighbor, ‘Go get my kids out of school,’ and then, turning to the Sisters said by way of explanation, ‘They ain’t never seen things like you-all before.’” When they called at another home, a member of the family said, “Ladies, won’t you take your hat off? I forgot to ask when you came in.”18 It was obvious to the sisters that Valley residents were not even sure how to converse with them. Shortly after arriving in their new home, they stopped someone to ask directions. The stranger willingly supplied the necessary information, and the sisters politely responded by saying, “Thank you” and “God bless you.” The stranger, at a loss for how to respond, replied, “Yours truly.”19 These stories about the sisters’ first encounters with rural southerners who had had no previous experience with Catholics represent more than humorous anecdotes. They demonstrate the very real cultural differences with which the sisters, most of whom hailed from urban centers in the Northeast, had to contend. In May 1940, for instance, the annalist chronicling their ministry in South Carolina recorded that the April issue of Mary’s Mission could not be distributed to residents of the Valley. Mother Marianne, the writer recounted, added stories and jokes to the article entitled “The Devil Is Loose in the Valley,” and the sisters were afraid southern readers would be offended by the tone of the piece.20 As a veteran of the social-settlement movement, Mother Marianne understood the importance of assessing people’s needs before implementing any sort of formal program. “To go on pouring relief, clothing or what not, into these shacks will never change anything,” she wrote Sister Dolores, the new mission’s superior. “It is like pouring water into a sieve.”21 The ultimate goal was to provide the tools with which Valley residents could raise their standard of living; until that could happen the sisters would do their best to provide the basic necessities to those in need. In later correspondence, Mother

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Marianne reminded Sister Dolores to be patient when garnering information; they had to earn the trust and respect of their neighbors. “If there is any sign of suspicion or antagonism be content to get one item at a time, leading the conversation so that it seems to come in quite naturally and not writing anything down in sight of the people.”22 In subsequent letters to Horse Creek Valley, she advocated the implementation of standard social-settlement methods, reminding the sisters to “take part in local affairs and so come to be known and regarded as members of the community.” She drew the line, however, when it came to supporting endeavors opposed to Catholic teaching, telling them to have no contact with the local birth-control clinic. “That,” she wrote, “would be the non-Catholic solution of the poor white problem.”23 Despite cultural and religious differences, Sisters Dolores, AnneMarie, and Clare, as soon as they arrived at the mission, began the task of accommodating an urban institution to a rural community. Although they were commuting from Aiken to Horse Creek Valley until appropriate living quarters were found, they quickly established a temporary center until a permanent structure could be built. During their first year in South Carolina they were able to visit 232 families, supply 29 families with yeast and 24 others with seeds, distribute 11,172 pieces of clothing, and provide “generous supplies of food” to 446 families. They also addressed poverty on an individual basis by cleaning the house of a blind man (whose home had not been cleaned in about four months), began work with the youth of the area by organizing Brownie and Girl Scout troops, and joined in supporting the larger community by helping to roll bandages in support of the war effort. Since many of their new neighbors had no source of livelihood, they began quilting and rug-making classes for women and taught men and boys how to re-cane chairs.24 The goals set by the sisters for their southern apostolate were not unfamiliar to social-settlement workers. A 1941 article on the future handicraft and welfare center described it as a place “with . . . facilities for health clinics, and follow-up supervision and training in handi-

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crafts (which will lead to manual dexterity and co-ordinated muscular and mental development), and last but not least a program of guided recreation, drawing in all ages of boys and girls, and through them their parents.” The main building was large enough to allow space for a kindergarten, library, craft room, clinic, and laundry. The center would eventually boast, thanks to Smith’s fundraising efforts, a garage, carpenter shop, convent, pool, and playground.25

Staying Connected

Sending sisters to work with the rural poor in South Carolina meant that Mother Marianne was for the first time administering an institution outside the greater New York City area. Through correspondence she maintained contact with those stationed in the South; later there were occasional telephone calls. Her earliest letters to the “southern sisters,” as she often referred to them, are constant reminders that in 1940 the United States was on the brink of war. Several months after their arrival in South Carolina, Mother Marianne emphasized the precarious state of the world by exhorting the sisters to “Pray, very, very hard for the world, in which it almost seems that Christian civilization is to go down in a sea of blood and hate.”26 In another letter written around the same time, she recommended they read Time magazine every week because “history is being made rapidly. These are, perhaps, the most fateful days in the history of the world and suggest abundant matter for instructions in our prayers.”27 To help keep the sisters abreast of current world events, she had the New York Times sent to the South Carolina convent.28 Mother Marianne often reminded those living in South Carolina of the importance of adhering to the rule of the community. In a 1940 letter to Sister Dolores, she instructed the sisters to ride with Father Smith as seldom as possible, presumably to prevent antiCatholics from making any inferences about the relationship between the Aiken priest and the sisters from the North.29 As mother

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general, she sometimes found it necessary to reprimand members of the community from a distance. In 1940, Sister Dolores apparently refused to give the census taker any information about the three sisters now living in South Carolina. Mother Marianne was quite upset and reminded Sister Dolores that her refusal constituted “a violation of federal law.” “We ought to be the first,” she wrote, “to give example of good citizenship and obedience to law.”30 Establishing a new apostolate in another part of the country involved experiences with problems that were unique to their work in South Carolina. The Valley sisters, for example, found their habit hot, cumbersome, and generally unsuited for an active, ministerial lifestyle in a southern climate. Responding to a request that they be able to adapt the required dress to southern summers, Mother Marianne informed the sisters that tunics of lighter material were being made for them. She gave them permission to cease wearing their vests but suggested that they might be uncomfortable wearing a “sticky, clinging tunic, clammy from its inability to absorb moisture.” If they were to discard the vest, their tunics had to be rinsed out every day. A daily bath and clean clothing next to the skin would prevent them from developing prickly heat. The bath water, she explained, should be lukewarm, neither hot nor cold.31 In other letters, the mother general voiced concerns about the sisters’ lifestyle and the negative impact it was having on their health. Mother Marianne worried about the purity of the milk and water they were drinking, for instance, and thought they should consider being immunized against typhoid and diphtheria. She also cautioned them against poor eating habits. “Because you have to cook your own meals,” she wrote, “and probably in a hurry, it may be that your meals are sketchy affairs.”32 In 1945, she was so concerned about the health of the Valley sisters that she instructed Sister Dorothea McCarthy to prohibit them from fasting during Lent so they would remain strong and healthy.33 Although Mother Marianne tried to remain in close contact with her sisters in the Valley, they sometimes felt isolated from their reli-

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gious family. Interaction with other communities allowed the sisters to function, at least at times, as part of a larger group. About two months after their arrival in Aiken, the Sisters of Mercy invited them to attend a performance at the school they administered. The sisters were forced to send their regrets, explaining they were not allowed to go out at night. They were, however, able to attend 7 A.M. Mass at St. Angela’s, a convent and school staffed by the Sisters of Mercy of Our Lady of Charity.34 Grateful for the hospitality shown to the transplanted northerners by these sisters, they were delighted when St. Angela’s Sister Ignatia was able to spend several days at Madonna House, describing her stay as “delightful.”35

A Southern Settlement

The first goals of those ministering in Horse Creek Valley included improving the health of the community, character building, and providing welfare services when needed. The sisters focused on personal hygiene, care of the body and home, and diet—including classes devoted to meal planning, low-cost menus, cooking, and the preparation of nutritious foods—in an effort to teach people how to develop a healthy lifestyle. Character building was aimed at the area’s young people. Older girls received lessons in sewing, caring for babies and the home, and gardening. Older boys were taught carpentry. Welfare work included visits to clinics, referrals to doctors and dentists, and assistance with finding employment and creating a household budget.36 Recognizing the pressing material needs of the people they had come to serve, the sisters distributed food, clothing, and medicine, while advising people to eat fresh greens in order to avoid pellagra. Long-range goals included the building of a settlement house and chapel where they planned to help develop “cottage industries to build up the income of those who are incapable of hard manual work, cooking classes to remedy the inadequate nutrition, and above

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all the inspiration of religion, by which human nature, however degraded, may be lifted up and spiritualized.”37 In February of 1941, ground was broken for the Horse Creek Valley Handicraft and Welfare Center on land donated by the Langley Mill Company.38 The center quickly assumed many of the characteristics of an urban social settlement. The annual report for 1943–44 documents ways in which the programs and services offered by Madonna House were adapted to a rural southern environment. Valley residents were able to enroll in sewing or cooking classes, and active scout troops (Boy, Girl, and Cub) were providing the same service for the children of South Carolina as they were for the children of the Lower East Side. To help support the war effort, the center’s neighbors were encouraged to assist the local Red Cross and participate in civilian-defense courses. The sisters who ministered in the Valley loved their work, and they fell in love with the people. When others demonstrated prejudice based on the residents’ socioeconomic status or lack of education, the sisters defended them in words and action. In 1942, for instance, the Red Cross was invited to offer a class in first aid at the welfare center. The instructor arrived and announced that the course could not be taught if the men insisted on wearing overalls. The sisters, however, “regarded overalls as badges of honorable labor and not only welcomed the men and women of the mills in their working clothes and invited them to make use of the shower rooms before class, but joined the class themselves.”39 People living in the Valley needed basic necessities—food and clothing—as much as the neighbors of Madonna House did. Fourteen Thanksgiving baskets and fifteen Christmas baskets were distributed during 1943–44, along with 435 new and used pieces of clothing, and sixteen layettes. In an attempt to monitor the health of children and adults, the sisters reported treating 400 people at the center’s clinic and administering 115 doses of cod liver oil. Although the sisters could boast of their success in the distribution of material assistance, they struggled to convince people of the importance of

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the teachings of the Catholic Church. In order to enhance the spiritual lives of the children, the annals note that the sisters gathered them together on July 1, 1942, for confession and Mass, followed by cocoa and doughnuts.40 A year later, however, only two baptisms and four First Communions had taken place.41 In 1942, the South Carolina ministry entered a new phase when the community began working with the Irish Travelers. Immigrants from Ireland during the potato famine of the 1840s, the Travelers moved south after the Civil War, preferring the mild winters found in that part of the country. One group settled in Murphy Village, a section of North Augusta, South Carolina.42 The Irish Travelers were Catholic, but many of them, children and adults, had never received the sacraments of First Communion or confirmation. In addition, many of the adults were unfamiliar with the common prayers of the Catholic Church. The sisters began

Kindergarten graduation at the Horse Creek Valley Welfare Center

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visiting the Travelers’ community once a week, offering sacramentalpreparation classes for both children and adults. In one year during the mid-1940s, forty-eight children and adults were confirmed under their tutelage.43 In 1944 the sisters dedicated one room of the welfare center to a kindergarten and modeled the curriculum and activities on its Madonna House counterpart. The graduation ceremony in 1947, for instance, included “The Fair of the Nations.” In a lesson designed to teach children about American diversity, graduates assumed the roles of Uncle Sam, Miss Liberty, Italy, Russia, Spain, England, Ireland, France, China, Germany, and Mexico.44 The kindergarten quickly became a very popular aspect of the center’s program, and similar classes were opened in Aiken and North Augusta.

Growing Friendships

Valley residents eventually embraced the Sisters of Christian Doctrine as both neighbors and friends. In 1945, sisters returning to South Carolina after spending some time away reported that two men helped them with their luggage. “What a difference,” they commented, “compared to the cold reception our Sisters received a few years ago.”45 They rejoiced that, after seven years of ministry in South Carolina, “many, who were our enemies in the early days are now our friends.” Living and working in northern settlement houses allowed the sisters to celebrate and mourn with their neighbors, and this did not change when they began working in the South. During World War II, they worried with their new friends about fathers, sons, husbands, and brothers serving in the war, and they occasionally helped someone write a letter to a loved one stationed overseas in the armed forces. That relatives and close friends of the sisters were also engaged in combat helped to strengthen the bonds between the women and residents of the Valley. In June of 1945, the sisters had recreation

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at dinner, rather than spiritual reading or silence, to celebrate the fact that the brother of Sister Mary of Mercy Pepitone, who had not been in contact with her for five months, was alive and safe. Two months earlier, on April 15, 1945, they attended a service of benediction to ask for the repose of the soul of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and for God’s blessings on his successor, Harry S. Truman.46 In 1942, an in-ground swimming pool was built on the grounds of the welfare center, and many children—and their parents—were soon flocking to the area to enjoy the irresistible combination of sun and water. Families who had hesitated to allow themselves or their children to take advantage of the services offered by the sisters sometimes overcame their distrust of the strange northern Catholic women as they found relief from the hot South Carolina summers. One annalist wryly commented, “When our swimming pool is empty we realize that our popularity is governed by the water.”47 Children enrolled in the center’s scout troops received free admission to the pool; all others were charged five cents.48 Reminiscing to a reporter on the fiftieth anniversary of Our Lady of the Valley in 1991, Sister Rose Vermette, who worked in the Valley in the late 1950s, said the pool “was the only place [in the area] the children had to swim. We would take turns sitting beside the pool and watching over the children. It was a wonderful means of evangelization. It helped people meet us and get used to us.”49 Sisters living in the Valley often expressed frustration that some of those who needed their material assistance were not willing to work to help improve their situation. When they learned that the father of a family had no interest in helping himself, they provided assistance for the sake of the other family members, asking, “What can we do? The children must eat!”50 They were not afraid to refuse help, however, if they deemed the request inappropriate. In 1947 a neighbor asked the sisters for a loan, ostensibly to help a daughter get home from New York. The sisters refused, and one later noted that “it is always interesting to see how many people come to us with their extraordinary requests.”51

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When the Sisters of Christian Doctrine first arrived in South Carolina, Catholics had to travel to Aiken to attend Mass. In order to encourage people to make the trip, they hired a bus to transport residents, especially children, to St. Mary Help of Christians.52 When a temporary chapel was erected in the Valley in 1945, the sisters hoped that numbers at Sunday Mass would increase. Rejoicing that fiftyeight were present for Mass on one Sunday in January 1945, the annalist explained, “Our people in the valley like it much better and more are attending Mass since we started to have it at Our Lady of the Valley Church on the Sisters’ grounds.” Positive signs of spiritual growth could not always be reported; on Christmas Day 1945, only one man and a family attended Mass.53 Even after serving in South Carolina for five years, anti-Catholicism and indifference to religion continued to plague the sisters. In 1946, the community annalist reported, a man refused to remove his hat before the Blessed Sacrament.54 One year later, she expressed concern over three girls who did not go to church on Sunday. When asked why, they responded, “Well, . . . if you really want to know, there is nothing to it.” “These poor children,” the annalist noted sadly, “learn absolutely nothing about God.” The sisters also worried about recent converts and their apparent inability to distance themselves from Protestant concepts and beliefs. When one woman, who had recently been received into the Church, told a sister she was not afraid of death because she had nothing to hide from God, the response recorded in the annals simply said, “We sometimes wonder.”55 In a 1945 appeal for financial assistance, Sister Dorothea McCarthy described the sisters’ ministry in language similar to the rhetoric being used to garner support for America’s war effort. The sisters won their first battle when a few non-Catholics began to allow their children to attend programs in the “Catholic Building,” Sister Dorothea explained. Fighting began in earnest when the children started to attend cooking and handicraft classes at the welfare center because they learned some “Catholic viewpoints and practices.” She concluded by asking for her listeners’ help. “We have come to find

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recruits. Every Catholic is a member of Christ’s Army. As a member, each must take an active part in His Campaigns. To-day you cannot take an active part, but you can help here at home in two ways; by prayer and alms deeds.” She encouraged others to join the Sisters of Christian Doctrine as they worked for “V-C day” (Victory for Christ).56 Mother Marianne echoed Sister Dorothea’s sentiments. Years spent studying the methodology of religious education, along with her knowledge of the area—gleaned from personal visits and reports sent by sisters ministering in the Valley—meant she understood the difficulty involved when trying to impress on people the value of Catholic doctrine, and she was fully aware that the community faced an uphill battle. In a letter to the sisters stationed in South Carolina, she explained that she had told Smith no progress would be made in the Valley until the presence of the Lord was felt there: “That is the lesson of the Incarnation—men’s hearts are won by Our Lord’s coming among them.”57

Valley Catholics

By 1951, the sisters ministering in Horse Creek Valley were able to claim that the spiritual side of their work was beginning to bear fruit. They were conducting religious-instruction classes for thirty adults and fifty-eight children and boasted that eight converts had been received into the Church. The social and educational life of the center was also thriving. The sisters were leading five scout troops with eighty-one members as well as conducting a kindergarten in which forty-five children were enrolled.58 The sisters were especially pleased that two local women had converted to Catholicism and entered the congregation. Since the sisters staffed neither elementary nor secondary schools and were ministering in a predominantly non-Catholic area, the two “southern vocations” were visible signs of the success of their labors.

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In 1947, Lorraine Gosnell left South Carolina to begin her novitiate at the motherhouse in Nyack. Sister Lorraine—who was given the religious name Georgina but reverted back to her baptismal name—was living with her father when two of the sisters came to visit the family. Baptized and raised Catholic, she had been unable to attend Mass because there was no church in the Valley. The sisters invited her to ride the bus to St. Mary Help of Christians Church in Aiken, and she decided to accept their offer. A committed Catholic, Sister Lorraine remembered how welcome the sisters made her feel on her first bus ride to Mass. It was cold that day and she had no gloves. Sr. Margaret [Raphael] Hennessey took her hands, she recounted, “and she put them underneath her cape, and held my hands until we got to Aiken.” The sisters, she said, made her feel special. “I felt like the sisters helped me to feel that God loved me. The sisters really pointed out that God loved me.” When Sister Lorraine discerned that she was being called to religious life, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were the only community she considered; it was “that or nothing.”59 Betty Reames began participating in the activities offered by the center as a second- or third-grader after her mother began work in the mill during World War II. Neither a baptized Catholic nor poor—her father was an overseer in the mill’s carding department— she remembered meeting Sisters Dorothea McCarthy and Margaret Hennessey when shopping with her sister Gladys, who approached the women and began asking questions about their lives and work. Invited to visit the convent by Sister Dorothea, Gladys converted to Catholicism within a year. At the time, Betty neither understood nor condoned her sister’s decision, and she refused to attend her baptism. During this time, the sisters began visiting the girls’ mother, who was dying of cancer. As a result, she came to know the sisters, and, despite her father’s hope that she would wait until she was eighteen to leave her Baptist tradition, Betty was baptized by Father Charles Maloney on May 27, 1950.60

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After she entered the Catholic Church, Betty began to learn about Catholic devotional life and culture from the sisters stationed at the welfare center. Benediction was held every Sunday night, and she sometimes helped prepare the church for the weekly devotion. It was difficult for her to understand the Catholic belief in the Eucharist, and when Sister Margaret, who was putting the monstrance away, told her, “This is where Jesus goes,” she was not sure what that meant. By attending the Catholic high school in Aiken for eleventh and twelfth grades, spending time with the sisters, and participating in the activities for teens held at the welfare center, she began to understand the intricacies of her new religion.61 When Gladys Reames decided to enter novitiate of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine in 1951, Betty, a recent high-school graduate, joined her in Nyack. Gladys left after two months, but Betty, who was given the religious name Angela, stayed. She had been a Catholic for only a short time and was still learning about her new religious tradition. Her reason for joining the community was clear: “I was attracted to the sisters.”62

Maintaining the Mission

When Sister Ursula Coyne succeeded Mother Marianne as mother general of the congregation in 1957, she continued to administer the community’s missions from a distance. Writing to Smith in 1959, Sister Ursula complained that the sisters in South Carolina were suffering from respiratory infections as a result of the lack of moisture in the convent’s air. Smith responded by purchasing a humidifier.63 Local superiors often wrote for advice to the mother general in Nyack. In 1958, Sister Ursula received a letter from Sister Mary of Mercy Pepitone that illustrated the changes beginning to take place within the community. Should the sisters be able to watch television during Lent, Sister Mary of Mercy wanted to know. She usually allowed them to view television programs three nights a week and

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feared a revolt if this privilege was revoked for the duration of the season.64 As in any community living situation, there were among the sisters stationed in South Carolina occasional difficulties that surfaced. Because sisters were assigned to a particular ministry, they were not always happy when they were relocated. In addition, the personalities of the sisters living together in Horse Creek Valley, especially when isolated from other members of the congregation, did not always work well together. In 1959, Sister Mary of Mercy clearly believed that supervising the Valley sisters was an impossible task, and she felt compelled to inform Sister Ursula of the situation with which she was faced. “With all due respect to you Rev. Mother,” she wrote, “you have sent me Sisters who first of all hate the work assigned to them. . . . Then secondly many sisters feel they are put into their works without training which of course makes it doubly hard. Thirdly often and such is the case in this house the partners working together are not congenial or at great odds in character, disposition and will etc.”65 The problem that Sister Mary of Mercy was forced to confront was difficult but not unusual in American religious life: There were sometimes sisters—and brothers and priests—who did not want to be there and others who did not get along with each other. At times, these issues could be resolved only by transferring one or more of the parties involved to another mission. Despite these occasional difficulties, the sisters continued to perform the necessary tasks that would meet the material and spiritual needs of their neighbors. The Horse Creek Valley sisters occasionally interacted with other religious orders ministering in the region. In October of 1960, along with members of several other communities, they presented at a “Conference on Catechetics” at Our Lady of Springbank Retreat House in Kingstree, South Carolina. Conference topics included “A Method of Catechetics,” “The Diocesan Catechetical Program,” and “Problems Encountered in Catechetical Work.” The closing session of the conference consisted of a discussion on the “Value of Coordination of Efforts.” Such events helped sisters separated from their

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congregation feel a part of a larger “ad hoc” community of women involved in similar work in the same region.66

A Problem of Numbers

Although the Sisters of Christian Doctrine came to be loved and respected by the people living in Horse Creek Valley, the size of the congregation made it difficult to provide enough sisters to staff the center. Mother Marianne accepted this situation as early as 1940 when she first assigned three sisters to help fulfill Smith’s plan to bring the residents of rural South Carolina out of poverty. She reflected on this in an early letter to Sister Dolores, writing: “Too bad we cannot send Sisters to all who ask for them, but if these Bishops will send us girls with vocations we will be glad to train them for the southern missions.”67 In June of 1959, Sister Ursula Coyne expressed similar concerns to Bishop Paul Hallinan of Charleston when she told him that, despite the number of programs administered by the sisters in the Valley, they were not reaching many people. There were only forty children enrolled in the CCD program, and the sisters were not doing any catechetical work with adults. They were not even preparing laymen and laywomen to become CCD teachers and leaders. The program of home visitation that the sisters had begun on their arrival in the Valley was continuing, and they sponsored and supported Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops. Only six children, however, were enrolled in the kindergarten. Sister Ursula’s concluding analysis was simple: The congregation was administering a very extensive program, but they were reaching only a moderate number of people. At the very least, the name of the Horse Creek Valley Welfare Center should be changed; such a title “connotes organized social service of a wide variety,” and the fact that such services were not provided was misleading to some. In her letter to Hallinan, Sister Ursula also addressed the delicate subjects of finance and administration. “The people of the parish

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must be educated and introduced to the obligation of supporting their parish,” she wrote. The lack of financial support directly impacted the welfare center; the regular income the sisters depended on was inadequate, and the “irregular” income was both “unstable and uncertain.” Sister Ursula implied that at least some of this problem was due to the odd relationship between Our Lady of the Valley parish and the center. The fact that the welfare center was not a part of the parish structure was creating a “stumbling block,” especially in the financial realm, and she recommended the establishment of a board of directors, one of whom would be the parish pastor. The directors’ “activities would be properly directed and submitted to the authority of the Pastor . . .; and a budget of income and expense could be properly planned and balanced.”68 In later correspondence, Sister Ursula wondered if the time had come to dissolve the welfare center. It was expensive to operate and there was considerable competition from other religious traditions. In addition, times had changed, as had the conditions the sisters found in the Valley on their arrival in 1940. The community, Sister Ursula explained, was now primarily involved in catechetical work, and an active CCD program would serve the needs of several parishes and be less expensive to operate.69 Hallinan vigorously disagreed with the mother general, claiming that the sisters were essential to the work of the Catholic Church in rural South Carolina. If the Religious of Christian Doctrine were to leave the Valley, the archbishop wrote, its residents would view their departure as a betrayal by the Church.70 He did, however, inform the pastor, Rev. Peter K. Berberich, of changes in the work the sisters were conducting in the Valley: Some of the activities of the welfare center would be retained, but most of the sisters’ time would now be spent conducting religious-education classes and house-to-house visitations.71 Sister Ursula assured the bishop that they would remain in the Valley as long as their presence had a positive effect on the state of South Carolinian Catholicism.72 The problem of providing the personnel necessary to staff the center in Horse Creek Valley grew more severe during the 1960s. Lay

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and clerical residents of the area insisted that the sisters were vital to those in need of material and spiritual help. They had become, in the minds of many, a permanent fixture of the area. Pastor Louis V. Tonero informed Sister Ursula that the community was still needed in the Valley. They could not be replaced by lay catechists because everyone, including grandparents, worked in the mills and had no time to devote to religious education. Those who needed information about a family or individual turned to the sisters for help, Tonero claimed, because “they know the history of the Valley and remember names and relationships.”73 In a 1968 letter, Sister Ursula lamented that the membership of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine had not grown since 1957; new members were not exceeding the numbers of sisters who had died or left the community in the intervening years. In 1969, she regretfully informed the pastor that she could supply the parish with only three sisters that year; in earlier times as many as nine sisters had labored in that section of South Carolina.74 Community reports and profiles demonstrate that—despite the problem of declining vocations—the Sisters of Christian Doctrine responded to the events taking place in the south during the 1960s. On May 11, 1968, the sisters noted their support of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign. They went to Charleston, they said, “to bring the Poor People some food. . . . We also marched six miles with them to the place where they were supposed to get the food.”75 In their report for the year 1969, the sisters stationed in the Valley did not sound very optimistic about the spiritual condition of Valley Catholics. They complained that the religious-education program for adults was “non-functional”; parents and “other” adults were apathetic; and the condition and atmosphere of the classrooms was poor. Very little social-service work was being performed, and the facilities themselves were not yet integrated. Home visitation was continuing; one sister was assigned to visit homes in the Valley, and another was visiting black families in the surrounding area. They also noted the need for changing the name of the center—and were

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clear it should no longer be referred to as a “welfare” center—but could offer no suggestion for a new designation.76 In 1970, the Valley sisters reported that they were administering the kindergarten because it helped financially support other programs. Two sisters were currently leading Brownie and Girl Scout troops (which were open to non-Catholics), and they were trying to recruit laypeople to work with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. An integrated sewing class of twenty-five students between the ages of eleven and twelve, taught by Sister Mary of Mercy Pepitone, was offered at the center, and they were actively involved with several programs designed to help the area’s residents solve local problems related to issues such as sewers, roads, and electricity. The sisters occasionally visited people in their homes, and they often ministered to neighbors who had been hospitalized. In addition to supplying bread, food, and clothing to black and white families, they were helping people apply for and receive food stamps. Illustrating their support of the ecumenical movement, the sisters reported attending an interfaith service at Langley Methodist Church.77 Twenty-seven children in grades 1 through 6 and fifteen students in grades 7 through 12 were enrolled in religious-education classes. These were obviously very small numbers, and the sisters also cited a need for a viable religious-education program for adults. In addition, the maintenance costs of the center had become overwhelming and were consuming most of their salaries.78 These concerns prompted Sister Dorothea McCarthy, who succeeded Sister Ursula as president of the congregation, to inform Charleston’s Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler in 1970 that the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were withdrawing from the Horse Creek Valley Mission. Sister Dorothea cited several reasons for her decision, including a lack of sisters to staff the center, “apparent lack of need for the Sisters as evidenced by the very poor attendance at religious instruction,” less need for the kindergarten, and the difficulty she had convincing sisters to volunteer to minister in the Valley. She also

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reminded the bishop of how difficult it was to administer what was essentially a “non-parish project” in the midst of a parish.79 Despite Unterkoefler’s entreaties, the decision was irrevocable. Although two or three sisters returned to the Valley for the year 1970–71, they did not staff the kindergarten. Instead they helped the parish laity design and implement a religious-education program that would be put in place after the sisters’ departure, prepared to close the house, and phased out all other programs the sisters were currently operating. The last Sisters of Christian Doctrine planned to leave the mission by May of 1971. The Catholics of Horse Creek Valley expressed sadness over the sisters’ decision, and some wondered if there was any way to force them to reconsider. Many were especially upset that the kindergarten would cease to exist. Writing to Sister Dorothea in August of 1970, Marigene Washington reminded her, “The Valley area has benefited from this kindergarden [sic] greatly, and we feel that it should continue.” She closed by offering to “send a petition of parents to which this program has benefited.”80 Sister Dorothea’s response was direct and to the point. Although she agreed that the kindergarten had been a positive factor in the lives of many children, there simply were not enough sisters to maintain the program. Petitions would not solve the problem. “No matter how many signatures you might acquire,” she replied, “the fact still remains: we do not have enough Sisters to do all the work that must be done. Therefore, no outside pressure could force us to do the impossible.”81 Sister Dorothea assured Father Tonero that the sisters would return in September of 1970 to teach “the few children who attend religious education classes” and to “get a few ladies ready to carry on after our departure.”82 The pastor believed Our Lady of the Valley parishioners were ready to try to follow in the sisters’ footsteps. Several people, he reported, had expressed an interest in teaching CCD and were willing to receive any training the sisters were able to provide.83

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Sisters Sheila [Christopher] Cronin and Thecla Servidio were sent to Horse Creek Valley to close the community’s first mission outside New York. Although it was difficult, they struggled to make their departure as painless as possible. Sister Sheila met with the parish’s CCD teachers monthly (and sometimes more) to help work out problems and clarify doctrine. She was concerned that the classes were very small, each had between three and eight students, and hoped the program would be able to sustain itself.84 In a letter to Sister Dorothea, Sister Sheila worried about the effect that the closing of the mission was having on the sisters, especially Sister Thecla, who was working with her. “It’s going to be difficult, “she wrote, “& I personally feel this hurts Sr. Thecla more than anyone ever realizes or suspects. In her own quiet manner, she has truly affected the people.”85 The Sisters of Christian Doctrine believed, along with Father George Lewis Smith, that a settlement house could improve the physical and spiritual quality of southern mill towns as well as congested, northern, urban neighborhoods. Lack of personnel and the changing nature of social-welfare work no longer permitted the sisters to carry out their work effectively, however, and they turned the welfare center, now a community center, over to religious communities better able to staff parishes in rural areas where the Catholic population could best be described as sparse. Mindful of their mission to serve where other communities would not, the sisters continued to minister on a smaller scale in other southern parishes, working to meet the needs of those who would become their neighbors.

5

More than Settlement Houses

The primary ministries of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine involved social settlements that stressed the importance of religious education and sacramental preparation as well as social and educational activities, but Mother Marianne was more than willing for her sisters to work in a traditional parish setting if it would help to serve those in need. She continued to stress the importance of understanding the people with whom the sisters worked, however, and expected members of the congregation to minister on a variety of levels. In addition to their work in a number of parishes in Florida, South Carolina, and New York, the sisters also operated a camp for many years. Camp Marydell, located in Nyack, New York, gave children the opportunity to spend some time outside their crowded urban neighborhoods during the hot summer months.

Parish Ministry in the South

The work of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine in New York City and Horse Creek Valley, South Carolina, drew the attention of pastors seeking for their parishioners help that no other religious communities seemed willing or able to provide. Although they were a small congregation focused primarily on the needs of Catholics living in the urban North, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were willing— when available personnel allowed—to minister in both urban and rural southern parishes. Their work in many of these parishes was

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informed by the concept of a Catholic social settlement, and the sisters successfully adapted many of the programs implemented at their northern settlement houses and the Horse Creek Valley Welfare Center to assist needy Catholics in a number of parishes, including St. Rita’s, a black mission in New Smyrna Beach, Florida; St. Mary’s, an African American parish in Rock Hill, South Carolina; and St. Peter’s, located in Beaufort, South Carolina.1 In addition to their work in New Smyrna, Beaufort, and Rock Hill, the sisters also accepted the invitation of several bishops and pastors to teach religious education in parishes in need of their services. Those involved in this work taught religious education and developed and administered programs designed to enhance the spiritual lives of parishioners. This work lasted until the closing years of the twentieth century.

St. Rita’s, New Smyrna Beach, Florida

His goal, Redemptorist pastor J. H. Driscoll, CSsR, informed Mother Marianne in 1940, was to start a “Negro mission” in his parish. Located not far from Daytona Beach, Sacred Heart parish claimed a total membership of only about one hundred whites, but Driscoll hoped to find a way to begin a ministry to black Catholics living within the parish boundaries. Having visited the Sisters of Christian Doctrine at Madonna House and the Horse Creek Valley Welfare Center, Driscoll believed the community would be able to develop successful social and spiritual programs to help evangelize the area’s African American residents. When he asked Mother Marianne to send some of her sisters to work in his proposed mission, Driscoll was not looking for teachers or nurses; he was seeking women religious willing to interact with members of his congregation and at the same time provide other needed services to the area’s struggling residents.2 Intrigued by Driscoll’s proposal, Mother Marianne informed the community’s council that she endorsed the request and “would like a colored mission.” Members of the council agreed it was within the

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spirit of the institute and approved the plan on August 22, 1940.3 On March 28, 1941, Sisters Aimee Healy, who was appointed superior, Helen [Magdalen] Keogh, and Margaret Regina [Raphael] Hennessey were assigned to “open our first mission for the colored people.”4 When they arrived in Florida, the sisters almost immediately began an apostolate of catechesis and home visitation. Sr. Rose Frazzetta, who worked at the mission from 1941 to 1948, remembered that the rooming house that had been turned over to the sisters soon began to “look like a Settlement House” and was known as Little Madonna House.5 In addition to offering classes in religious education, the sisters taught sewing and cooking, offered children the opportunity to participate in arts and crafts, and opened a kindergarten.6 By May of 1941, they had also established Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops.7 Even though the building in which they worked was referred to as “Little Madonna House,” the activities in New Smyrna Beach differed from those of the New York ministry in one very significant way. The Floridian women who learned how to sew and the children who joined scout troops were not immigrants and did not need to be “Americanized.” Cooking classes could help the residents of New Smyrna Beach maintain a healthier lifestyle, and kindergarten prepared children for first grade, but there was no need for the sisters to offer English or citizenship classes. Although the sisters in Florida attempted to replicate some of the work conducted at their New York settlement houses, the southern system of segregation complicated the situation. Settlement work involved living among the people they served; white Floridians would not tolerate white Catholic sisters living in a black community. To counteract these logistical difficulties, a visitation system was instituted through which the northern women attempted to get “in touch with the people.” Contact with the African American community allowed the sisters to alleviate physical distress and to begin to provide for people’s spiritual well-being. Early results were encouraging. “Not a few of the colored are fallen-away Catholics,” readers of Mary’s

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Mission learned, and “others are voluntarily receiving instructions in preparation for Baptism.”8 The societal changes brought about by the civil rights movement led to adjustments in the way the sisters ministered to the people of St. Rita’s. Community members did not journey to Selma in 1965 to participate in the struggle for voting rights, and they did not have the personnel to help staff classes at southern African American colleges; but the sisters living and working in New Smyrna Beach supported the struggle for racial equality and the efforts being made to integrate southern institutions.9 Most community members worked actively, albeit on a local level, to end segregation in public places. In the 1960s, Sister Angela Reames accompanied several black teenagers on a visit to a Catholic high school. Driving through Daytona Beach on the way home, she pulled into a Dairy Queen, intending to treat her passengers to ice cream. One girl returned to the car, she recalled, and said, “Sister, they won’t take our order.” Sister Angela got out of the car, walked up to the counter, and waited for someone to approach her. When asked to place her order, she turned to the teens and said, “Tell her [the waitress] what you want.” The result of her action was the integration of one more southern facility.10 Other sisters found themselves acting in similar ways. Sister Genevieve [Stanislaus] Stachurski remembered that she was so upset with the rigid structure of institutional segregation that she rode with black passengers in the back of the bus.11 In 1963, Sister Ursula Coyne, mother general, congratulated Sister Regina Walsh for bringing African American children to a local park in an attempt to integrate it.12 The sisters ministered to the African American community around St. Rita’s for more than twenty-five years. As the Church followed the nation and integrated its schools, churches, and hospitals, Orlando’s Bishop William Borders asked them to remain at what was now an integrated parish and work with people of all races. In 1969, when Borders made his request, both the Church and religious life had changed, and the community leadership was free to tell the

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bishop that they would not accommodate him. Explaining that since Sacred Heart did not really need them because another religious community was already ministering in the parish, the small congregation decided it was better to allocate personnel to other parishes. The sisters left the people they had come to love “with sorrow . . ., because this was the way the nation and the church were moving.”13

St. Mary’s, Rock Hill, South Carolina

In 1954, Mother Marianne was approached by Father Henry Tevlin, pastor of St. Mary’s, an African American parish in Rock Hill, South Carolina, who requested sisters to work with him and the people of the parish.14 St. Mary’s was administered by members of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri, who also staffed St. Anne’s, a nearby white parish. Although the parish was not officially established until 1946, Edward Wahl, a recently ordained priest, had been assigned to work with African Americans living in the vicinity of Rock Hill one year earlier. After spending several months ministering, listening to and interacting with local teenagers, Wahl informed Charleston’s Bishop Emmet M. Walsh that the black community needed a church and a recreation center, and he requested diocesan assistance to help the church become a viable presence in the area’s black community.15 Mother Marianne promised Tevlin that she would send sisters in September of the following year, and on September 21, 1955, Sisters Patricia [Catherine] Burke, Anne-Marie Bach, and Francis Price arrived to minister to the area’s African American population.16 Since the convent was not yet completed, the three lived for six weeks at the convent of the Sisters of St. Francis, which was nearby and attached to St. Philip’s Hospital. They moved into their new quarters on November 3, 1955, and the parish newsletter reported that the dedication of the building had been a great success. “We are also thankful,” the reporter wrote, “that so many white and Negro per-

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sons attended the blessing and mixed together on this happy occasion. We are convinced that this positive act did more to advance the cause of better race relations in our community than any high sounding words could have achieved.”17 The three sisters, all of whom had ministered in social settlements, wasted no time getting to know their neighbors. Arriving on a Wednesday, they were already helping out at a bargain sale on Saturday. They met parishioners at Mass on Sunday and began conducting religious-education classes that same day. By Tuesday they had organized the first meeting of a Brownie and Girl Scout troop, and on Thursday a Cub Scout meeting was held.18 The sisters decided to open a kindergarten because they believed it would benefit both the children and parents of St. Mary’s. In September of 1956, twenty-two children between the ages of four and six were attending the school from 9 A.M. until 3 P.M. Students were charged two dollars per week and participated in a variety of activities, including religion, dance, art, reading readiness, and number recognition, under the direction of Sister Francis Price, who was succeeded by Sisters Ellen [Imelda] Callahan and Genevieve Stachurski in 1958 and 1959, respectively.19 The number of children attending kindergarten slowly increased, and, by 1976, thirty-five children were enrolled in the school.20 Since the opening of Madonna House in 1910, one of the community’s goals had been to provide a place where mothers employed outside the home would feel comfortable leaving their children. St. Mary’s kindergarten helped struggling parents by offering a secure and loving environment for children too young to attend school. The sisters, reminding parents that one part of their apostolate was religious education, stressed that the kindergarten also had a spiritual purpose: to “promote growth in and knowledge of the Catholic Church.”21 Those sisters not involved in teaching and administering the kindergarten assumed responsibility for a number of parish and community programs and activities. Religious-education classes, a

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vital part of their apostolate, were held on Sunday and Wednesday afternoons. Junior (first to fourth grades) and senior (fifth to eighth grades) Marian Clubs for girls met on Tuesday. Club meetings began with prayers and hymns, followed by a lecture on some aspect of Catholicism. During the second part of the meeting the girls were instructed in a “household art,” such as setting the table, cooking, or cleaning up after a meal. Before adjourning, there was time for games and folk dancing. Boys not old enough to be members of the Scout troop were encouraged to join the Neri Boys Club, which met on Thursday afternoon. Both boys and girls were invited to the Friday recreation program, where they participated in a variety of games, including shuffleboard, dodge ball, and volleyball.22 Many of these programs were similar to those conducted in the community’s social settlements, but, as in New Smyrna Beach, classes in citizenship were not offered. The residents of Rock Hill had other needs. As they had in the northern settlements established by the community, Scout troops played an important role in the sisters’ ministry at Rock Hill. Common Sense, the parish magazine, reported that an investiture ceremony for Brownies and Girl Scouts was held in March of 1956. The seventeen Scouts listened to a sermon, received Scout pins that had been blessed, recited the Scout law and oath, and sang the national anthem.23 Even though most troop members were non-Catholic, many of them attended Mass on that Sunday. At the breakfast following Mass, one girl told the sisters she did not want to eat the scrambled eggs they had prepared. Persuaded to try the eggs, she discovered she liked them well enough to ask for more. “Sister, please give me some more of those Catholic eggs,” she informed the server. “They sure are good.”24 The sisters assigned to Rock Hill did not limit themselves to working with the area’s Catholics. Those not teaching kindergarten spent three mornings each week visiting neighbors in their homes. “‘Home visitation,’ wrote one of the sisters in 1961, “‘gives them [i.e., local black non-Catholics] the opportunity to meet us in the privacy of their homes—to ask us questions about the faith, ourselves, etc.’”25

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The sisters introduced themselves to their neighbors, assured nonCatholics they were welcome at recreational events sponsored by St. Mary’s, invited them to attend services at the church, and offered to pray for anyone in the family. Although they hoped their visits would bring both non-Catholics and those who had left the religion to embrace Catholicism, by the late 1960s the sisters had come to the realization that the focus of their visits was oriented more toward social work than evangelization. They were now helping people take advantage of services offered by secular organizations such as the Red Cross; advising those applying for government services, including welfare and food stamps; and, in some cases, assisting African Americans who had not yet been able to register to vote.26 In an effort to provide opportunities for the area’s children to enjoy themselves during the summer months while not neglecting the spiritual dimension of their lives, the community operated a “religious vacation school.” Each day opened with Mass at 7:45 A.M., followed by a light snack. During classes, which began at 9 A.M., the children sang hymns, completed workbook assignments, were served a snack, and participated in arts and crafts. One 1957 project, reflecting the popular devotions of the era, involved making plastic figures of Our Lady of Fatima.27 Like their counterparts in Florida, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine stationed in Rock Hill supported those working to bring civil and voting rights to black Americans. The 1970 House Profile noted that one sister was currently teaching literature at Friendship Junior College, an African American institution owned by the Baptist Convention of York and Chester Counties.28 Her work at the college was an “indirect way of teaching human values, the basis for Christian living and concern for all men regardless of race, color or creed.”29 By 1971, Extension magazine was referring to the programs offered by the staff at St. Mary’s as a “symbol of viable community service.”30 Sisters Winifred Casey, Anne-Marie Bach, and Rose Frazzetta taught kindergarten (“preparing young minds for the more formal education that they will begin receiving the following year”)

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and arts and crafts (challenging “the innate creative talents of the children by taking commonplace materials and objects and turning them into personal works of art”),31 while continuing to serve as a visible manifestation of Catholicism to their neighbors. Sister Rose Frazzetta, in a 1973 article entitled “Celebrating and Sharing,” reflected that, although the sisters tried to make their neighbors’ lives more comfortable, they did not neglect the spiritual dimensions of the human person. The religious-education activities recounted in the article demonstrated the sisters’ awareness of the liturgical changes implemented in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). After asking the children with whom she worked if they were willing, it was agreed they would attend Mass together as a group every day for one week. The children prepared and served the breakfast that took place before each liturgy, and they assumed responsibility as readers and participants in the Offertory procession. They also offered spontaneous Prayers of the Faithful relevant to events taking place in American society (“for peace in Vietnam . . . for our friends who help black people”), and received Communion under both forms. Sister Rose understood that these daily liturgies would not necessarily serve as a model of “How To Do It,” but she did think that the “memory of the experience of celebrating together; sharing in a common meal; receiving Our Lord, will live in the minds of the children for some time.”32 The Sisters of Christian Doctrine left St. Mary’s in 1978. The pastor, David Valtierra, CO, was willing for the community to continue its work in Rock Hill, but he terminated the contracts of the two sisters currently ministering in the parish. Valtierra had apparently informed Charleston’s Bishop Ernest Unterkoefler and Vicar General Thomas Duffy of his decision before he informed the leaders of the religious community that had served the parish for more than twenty years. In a letter to Valtierra, Duffy explained that Unterkoefler did not object to the pastor’s plan, but he recommended it be discussed with the sisters to determine if the decision to leave was mutual.33

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Community president Sister Marie de Lourdes Considine expressed her displeasure over the decision in a letter to Valtierra. “Decision making in this day and age is rarely a one way street,” she wrote. Termination of services is a delicate and serious step in which one is “led into” not “thrown out of”; and is arrived at only after using all possible avenues of approach. This final decision is . . . never done with out [sic] due process. In a post–Vatican II period, not even bishops and major superiors are expected to dismiss their charges in so authoritarian and undemocratic a way as you have chosen, even for the best of reasons, without attempting arbitration, prayer and continued dialogue.34

Sister Marie de Lourdes, reminding the pastor that any and all of his actions could have repercussions for the future of the Church, expressed concern over the way in which he viewed women religious. “Could sisters (women) have equal freedom to release you or any of your fellow priests for similar or even worse reasons? I doubt it very much. I raise the issue because you and your actions represent the hope or lack of it for the future of the Church and the future of women in the Church.” Although Valtierra was apparently willing to allow the community to replace the two sisters, Sister Marie de Lourdes decided that “under the circumstances [I] would not want any of our sisters to be put in this situation again.”35 The community’s president also wrote a separate letter to Unterkoefler in which she made it clear that women religious were no longer placidly accepting decisions made about their ministries by others. She informed the bishop that she had recently spent two weeks in South Carolina but during that time was not told the sisters had “been fired.” Sister Marie de Lourdes voiced three additional objections to the actions of the Rock Hill pastor. First, she noted that the sisters had spent twenty-three difficult years at Rock Hill and

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would not be around to celebrate the joys they might experience when the effects of their work were finally visible. Second, Sister Marie de Lourdes expressed her disappointment in the way the situation had been handled, noting there had been no “warnings, ultimatums, [or] compromises.” Third, she worried about the impact of the pastor’s decision on the welfare of her religious community. “After 23 years of service in this parish,” she explained, “it is disturbing to me to think what might happen to the morale of my sisters— those presently working in the South and those contemplating it. . . . Only time will tell how much good or how much damage this decision will do to those involved; the sisters, the parish, the diocese and my own congregation.” She did not ask Unterkoefler to reverse Valtierra’s action, because the sisters could no longer feel welcome in Rock Hill.36 Chancery correspondence indicates that Unterkoefler investigated the complaint concerning how the sisters were dismissed from their positions at St. Mary’s. Vicar General Duffy informed the bishop that Wahl and the Oratorian community supported Valtierra and would not veto a decision that had already been implemented.37 The parishioners, however, were not willing to let the sisters leave without voicing their disapproval of the pastor’s actions. In a letter to Unterkoefler signed by more than fifty members of the parish, they expressed their concern that two valuable members of the parish staff had been dismissed. “Many, old and young, Catholic and nonCatholic, have been touched by their services,” the signers claimed. “Their caring will be missed by the young children who had idle afternoons until [a sister] agreed to supervise activities for them; it will be missed by women and children who were turned out by abusive husbands and fathers; it will be missed by Senior Citizens who lacked transportation to doctors and stores.”38 The petition had no effect on the decisions made by Sister Marie de Lourdes, Valtierra, or Unterkoefler, and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine left St. Mary’s, to be replaced by the Trinitarian Sisters.

More than Settlement Houses | 133 St. Peter’s, Beaufort, South Carolina

In October 1961, Sisters Fidelis Hoffman, Grace [Gratia] Healy, and Virginia [Alma] Johnson wrote to the community detailing their arrival as the first Sisters of Christian Doctrine to minister at St. Peter’s parish in Beaufort, South Carolina. They had accepted an invitation from the pastor, Rev. Ronald P. Anderson, and planned to teach in the parish’s religious education program, train lay catechists, “conduct a parish census, and make regular home visits and hospital visitations of the sick.”39 Because the sisters were in Beaufort during the turbulent decade of the 1960s—and because Sister Lucilla Berretti, the annalist for at least part of those years, was a gifted writer—it is easy to get a sense of how they responded to significant national events. Since the sisters also staffed religious-education classes for the children of military men and women stationed at nearby Paris Island and the Marine Corps Air Station, they were especially aware of events that may have impacted national security. On October 22, 1962, for instance, when Americans worried about President John F. Kennedy’s Cuban blockade, the annalist prayed, “We are in the radius of these targets. God protect us all!”40 The impact of the assassination of John Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and the media coverage his funeral received are reflected in Sister Lucilla’s writings during those difficult days. “We remained glued to the television for news,” she wrote on the day America’s first Catholic president was killed. “What had started by being a successful trip to Texas turned out to be the end of the road, the last chapter in his own profile of courage.” On Monday, November 25, the sisters watched the late president’s state funeral on television, and Sister Lucilla reported, “By presidential decree the nation is in solemn mourning. We did not have catechism.”41 The sisters assigned to Beaufort were as disturbed by the southern system of segregation as those who worked in New Smyrna and

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Rock Hill. In a self-evaluation conducted in 1968, they reflected that, although St. Peter’s was a white parish, “The colored could be served more. . . . We don’t know what direction this will take but we feel we should be a part of it. We have started on our own by visiting our Negro neighbors.”42 In April of 1968, the women demonstrated their support of the civil rights movement by attending an ecumenical service honoring the life of Martin Luther King Jr. Sister Virginia Johnson informed Bishop Unterkoefler that the service was “not sponsored by the NAACP, but by the Community leaders and the ministers—both white and negro. . . . Rev. Claude Schuler of the Carteret Street Methodist Church gave an eloquent Memorial address styled in the fashion of Martin Luther King’s own ‘I have a Dream’ speech. Our eloquent Father Burke gave the ‘Call to Worship.’” Although she did not really count the crowd, she estimated attendance was in the hundreds, “the majority Negro but many white people too.”43 The sisters’ ministry on the South Carolina coast came to include the migrant families who spent at least part of the year in Beaufort. In 1964, they went door-to-door among the Latino community, introducing themselves to their neighbors and inviting parents to send their children to a program starting that summer. Although many of the children were unable to attend because they began work in the fields every day at 10 A.M., by June 2 the sisters happily reported that the migrant project was in “full swing.” On that day, twentythree children attended the program, which included prayers, religion class, music, a snack, recreation, a group project, and either a film or participation in a procession; seventeen had been present the previous day. The following summer, the marines with whom the sisters worked at Paris Island and the air station agreed to provide transportation to and from the program for the forty to fifty Latino/a children who participated on any given day.44 In 1969, Sister Ursula Coyne reported to Unterkoefler that Sister Veronica Mendez, who was fluent in Spanish, had been assigned to St. Peter’s to minister to the migrant workers and their families.45

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The sisters who served St. Peter’s and the surrounding area clearly agreed with the changes taking place in Catholic liturgical life during the 1960s. On September 8, 1963, they attended Mass and received Communion at Mepkin Abbey in Moncks Corner, South Carolina, noting that the host “had a very different look and taste. It was very evidently made from wheaten flour, of a mottled tannish look.”46 One year later, they received Communion standing instead of kneeling at the altar rail.47 Whenever feasible, the sisters were active participants in ecumenical events. In 1965, the local Episcopal church invited Catholic teenagers to a service, and they willingly accompanied the high-school students who chose to attend. “I’m sure we were the major subject of conversation at the Episcopalian supper tables in town,” the annalist wryly commented, noting they sang and prayed “with an ecumenical gusto rarely to be seen in these parts.”48 They discovered, however, that not everyone in Beaufort embraced the way the Church was changing in the 1960s. Sister Virginia Johnson found herself apologizing to Unterkoefler after a parishioner apparently complained about the way she explained the sacrament of penance. She informed the bishop that she did not advocate that Catholics emulate the Eastern rite tradition of receiving that sacrament only three or four times during one’s life and assured him that she would correct this “erroneous opinion” as soon as possible.49 The work of the sisters increased when they expanded the ministry begun at St. Peter’s to the parish’s Holy Cross Mission on St. Helena’s Island in 1969. Holy Cross Center, “a rather sturdy wooden building that has one very large storefront room, a kitchen, one room now fixed up as a sitting room, one other large room that has a serving counter and a large ping-pong table in it, a bathroom and two smaller rooms,” was located about twelve miles from St. Peter’s.50 The center was intended to create a visible presence of the Church on the island, and the sisters planned to share their lives and work with

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the people and take an interest in the lives of their new neighbors, goals similar to what their foremothers had hoped to accomplish when they opened Madonna House in 1910. Traveling around the island, the sisters stopped at almost every house, informing people of the center’s opening. Evenings were spent visiting the island’s migrant families who were unavailable during the day.51 The first mass, with about forty people in attendance, was celebrated at Holy Cross Mission on June 1, 1969, the feast of the Blessed Trinity. Included in that small group were St. Peter parishioners, four white Catholic families living in the vicinity of the center, one African American man, a Protestant family who wished them well, a migrant family, and about nine neighborhood children. “The singing was good!” the sisters told readers of their newsletter, Beaufort Beat. “After Mass we attempted to serve coffee, cool-aid and donuts. The coffee didn’t brew so we had cool-aid and donuts.”52 All in all, they thought their work on the island was off to a good start, and Unterkoefler agreed. “From a small beginning,” he wrote Sister Virginia Johnson, “things develop great work for the glory of God.”53 In 1977, Sister Marie de Lourdes, president of the community, wrote to Unterkoefler and explained that the sisters would probably have to leave St. Peter’s and Holy Cross Mission because there was not adequate housing for three sisters to live together in community. Several days later in a letter to Rev. Albert Faase, pastor of St. Peter’s, Sister Marie de Lourdes informed him that, since Unterkoefler had assured her that housing was available, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine could continue their ministry in the area. In a subsequent letter to the bishop, she assured him of the community’s willingness to remain in Beaufort, confirming that they “do not as a Congregation, appoint sisters to a mission. It is on a voluntary basis. All of the Sisters have chosen to live, work, and dedicate themselves to this mission” (emphasis in original).54 Unlike the sisters assigned to Florida in 1940, those living in Beaufort in the 1970s had chosen that particular ministry. By 1986, however, the community had closed its Beaufort apostolate. A shortage of vocations, an aging and retiring

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staff of sisters, and a lack of willing volunteers meant the community could no longer continue its work at St. Peter’s.

Other Parish Ministries

The congregation’s religious education work in New Smyrna Beach, Florida, drew the attention of area pastors seeking women religious to work in their parishes, but, as a small community, they simply could not accommodate all of the requests. The women who succeeded Mother Marianne as mother general, a title later changed to president, of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine—Sister Mary Ursula Coyne (1957–70, 1980–84), Sister Dorothea McCarthy (1970–76), Sister Marie de Lourdes Considine (1976–80, 1990–94), Sister Angela Palermo (1984–90), Sister Virginia Johnson (1994– 2002), Sister Agnes O’Connor (2002–2010), and Sister Rose Vermette (2010–)—would have to make difficult decisions concerning how the community could best serve the American Catholic Church. These difficult choices were complicated by a decision made in the 1960s allowing community members to choose their own ministry in consultation with the president and her council. As a result, sisters began working in parishes up and down the Florida Coast. While still insisting that successful evangelization mandated an involvement in the lives of the people among whom they worked, much of the sisters’ formal work in these parishes involved religious education, and, although they could not honor the request of every Floridian pastor, they were able to teach religious education and work with youth in several parishes in that state.55 In 1960, according to Sister Ursula Coyne, there were three convents housing Sisters of Christian Doctrine ministering in Florida: St. Joseph, New Smyrna Beach (ministry to St. Rita and Sacred Heart); St. Mary of the Lake, Eustis (ministry to St. Mary of the Lake; St. Paul’s, Leesburg; and Blessed Sacrament Mission); and St. Ambrose, Elkton (ministry to St. Ambrose; Our Lady of Good Counsel,

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Bakersville; St. Monica, Palatka; St. John the Baptist, Crescent City; and St. Stephen, Bunnell).56 The story of the community’s ministry in Elkton is representative of their work in Florida parishes. Arriving at St. Ambrose parish in 1950, the sisters began conducting religious education classes and visiting neighbors but did not attempt to replicate the programs found at either the New York settlement houses or the welfare center in South Carolina. Some of their neighbors, they discovered, were no longer practicing Catholics. In 1952, the sisters visited a woman who informed them she was “a baptized Catholic who belongs to the Baptist church. From her speech we decided she is a dyed-in-the-wool one [Baptist] too.”57 A number of “back-sliders,” however, attended a parish mission in January 1953.58 The sisters stationed in Elkton, like those ministering in other areas, were actively engaged in American life. In November of 1952, the community annalist recorded that “three of the Sisters voted; and, we hope, for the right man . . . Eisenhower.” A few years later, the annals illustrated the sisters’ concern that Catholic children attending public schools were required to read from a Protestant version of the Bible. “The children told us the teacher wanted them to read a verse of the Bible which is all right but not from the Protestant Bible. They must read it from their own (Catholic Bible).”59 Although the sisters in Elkton tried to adapt to southern culture and customs, it was not always easy. On February 12, 1953, the chronicler commented on how little attention was paid to Lincoln’s birthday by Floridians. “Just another day for the southerners,” she wrote, “so we had to follow suit and just give Uncle Abe a passing thought.”60 Despite the differences between northern and southern cultures and lifestyles, the sisters developed relationships with their neighbors, Catholic and non-Catholic, and taught religious education classes at St. Ambrose until 1969. They would officially terminate all ministries in Florida when Sisters Agnes O’Connor and Anne Gargan left St. Mary of the Lake parish in Eustis in 1997.

More than Settlement Houses | 139 Northern Apostolates St. Brigid’s, New York City

Founded in 1848 in New York City’s East Village to serve Irish immigrants fleeing famine, St. Brigid’s faced financial challenges from its inception. When the Sisters of Christian Doctrine began ministering in the parish in 1933, only a few hundred people were attending Mass on Sunday, and the economic hardships caused by the Great Depression were severely impacting the parish. During the years following World War II, new housing projects in the parish neighborhood contributed to an increase in parish membership and activities.

Religious education class, St. Brigid’s, New York City

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In the 1960s, inspired by the work of the Second Vatican Council, the priests serving St. Brigid’s began to “support the working poor of the area—mainly Puerto Ricans by 1960—and to announce the Church’s relevancy to the area’s unchurched youth.”61 When the Archdiocese of New York designated St. Brigid’s an experimental parish in 1967, several members of the congregation, along with the Sisters of Charity, began working collaboratively in the parish’s religious education and outreach programs. In 1968, 429 students were registered for the parish CCD program, and the sisters had developed a good relationship with St. Brigid’s staff and parishioners. In order for the religious education program to be successful, they contended, there should be (1) more creative teaching throughout the program, (2) better training of catechists, (3) student participation in parish liturgies, (4) active recruitment of students and catechists, and (5) more contact between the sisters and parents.62 Their suggestions were not very different from those voiced by Mother Marianne in 1908 when the fledgling community began to minister among the children of St. Joachim’s on the Lower East Side. A parish progress report echoed the sisters’ comments, noting that the weaknesses of the parish religious education program were too many students, too few “apostles,” and a poor curriculum. These problems would be addressed by increasing teacher training, revising the curriculum, and recruiting parents to help prepare children for First Communion.63 The key to a successful parish evangelization campaign, the sisters maintained, was their active presence in the lives of parishioners. An important aspect of their work was “visibility and involvement in neighborhood parish life. . . . We are seen and known in the neighborhood,” the annalist wrote, and “are available for emergencies and contingencies that arise in the parish either on the team or parishioner level.”64 It was hard to describe the benefits that accrued from the sisters’ involvement in the joys and sorrows of the neighborhood. “One cannot see, count or truly evaluate the benefits of such an open presence, yet it is an important aspect of our work here.” Those living at St. Brigid’s claimed they had developed positive relationships

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with both the Spanish and “American” communities of the parish, but their contact with the Americans was “not as spectacular.”65 Faithful to their community’s commitment to religious education and sacramental preparation, the sisters taught CCD; unlike most traditional parish religious education programs, however, St. Brigid’s classes were interfaith. Non-Catholic children as well as those being raised in no particular religious tradition were welcome. Many classes met on Saturday morning, and those preparing children to receive the sacraments of Communion and confirmation met after school two days a week. Children who had received both sacraments were placed in advanced sections, which met for one hour a week after school, “to increase their fundamental religious knowledge and develop sound Catholic habits.”66 Sister Rose Frazzetta was involved in a vibrant ministry to the elderly of the parish between 1981 and 1984. Her work consisted of visiting homebound senior citizens and offering assistance as they negotiated the various social-service programs available to the elderly. This included helping them obtain better housing, assisting in completing applications for food stamps, and visiting them on a regular basis.67 The Sisters of Christian Doctrine remained at St. Brigid’s until it closed in 2007.68 Sister Joan Anzalone, who served as music director at the parish until it closed, was the last Sister of Christian Doctrine to minister at the parish.

Camp Ministry

Mother Marianne’s experience with the urban poor had convinced her of the importance of giving children—and adults—a chance to get away from their congested, urban neighborhoods during the summer. Writing to the “friends of Madonna House,” she explained the importance of a camp operating under Catholic auspices. “This indecent crowding of persons of all ages and of both sexes, without air, quiet or privacy entails very evident dangers to health, life and

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morals, and of course the children are the first to suffer. . . . If we do not protect our Catholic children, the non-Catholic missions and settlements surrounding us will offer them the necessary relief.”69 The sisters solicited money from friends and supporters of Madonna House to purchase the first camp, Ladyfield, located in Peekskill, New York, in 1924. Potential patrons, reminded that “neither of the children [pictured on the brochure] has ever seen a tree, and milk is known to them only as a dubious fluid sold at the corner store. Lack of food and sleep has . . . robbed them of the joyous activity of childhood, but they have no organic disease—as yet,” were asked to make a generous contribution that would allow the sisters to administer a camp for needy children.70 In 1928, the community opened a second camp in Nyack on the property where the novitiate and motherhouse were located. Known initially as Save-a-Life Farm, the name was later changed to Marydell.71 During the camp’s early years, the sisters received some financial support from Catholic Charities; in return, they reserved one hundred places for children receiving assistance from that organization.72 In addition to funds from Catholic Charities, donations from wealthy supporters of Madonna House helped to finance Ladyfield and Marydell. Money raised to support the camps gave children the opportunity to spend two weeks in the country every summer. Marydell was designed to be primarily a camp for girls, but groups of boys occasionally spent a week participating in a variety of outdoor activities. Sisters involved in camp activities believed that time in the country might help set some of their Cherry Street friends—especially adolescent boys—on the right path in life. Away from city life and all of its negative influences, boys might come to enjoy the feelings derived from physical exertion in country air. Camp workers, sisters and laypeople, did their best to help them see the dangers present on the Lower East Side. Eating cherries with a group of boys from Madonna House one day, Sister Dolores Carty asked, “Don’t you think this is lots more fun than robbing pushcarts, boys?” The boy’s an-

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swer was not recorded. On that same occasion, determined to prove she was a good sport, Sister Dolores agreed to hold a lizard for a few minutes. “No mortification before or since,” she wrote, “has ever cost me quite what those squirming things did that day.”73 In addition to enjoying traditional camp activities, children were given the opportunity to strengthen their faith. A variety of ways were developed to “teach” religion at camp, including one used by Sister Dolores: We had a way of spiritualizing our “hikes” with the children, according to Rev. Mother’s teaching and principle of “making people good through making them happy.” . . . We would stop in the middle of, or rather at the height of, deliberately created happiness and adventure, over & beyond the pleasure of just being in the open, and say simple, appealing things such as . . . Say—isn’t God wonderful! I couldn’t even make a blade of grass if I stayed up all night trying.74

An article in Mary’s Mission describing Marydell’s closing ceremony was constructed as a dialogue among campers seated around a fire discussing their experience. When the “Spirit of Marydell” asked Mary what gifts she had received during the summer, the young girl replied, “I have come to know that God is very near, not only in our dear little Chapel, but up here on the hilltop where the stars seem almost close enough to touch. . . . Here I have seen all His creatures working for me, . . . the dear Sisters and Counselors who care for me all day long. All have told me of the love of God for me.”75 Although Marydell was clearly operated under the auspices of a Catholic religious community, the sisters involved in this ministry spent a good deal of time making sure the campers enjoyed themselves. In 1933, determined to have the children leave Marydell with smiles on their faces, the sisters told them they could choose what would be served at all three meals on the final day of camp. The last day was filled with activities, including a puppet show, an ice-cream treat, and a final campfire, but “the day began with Holy Mass and a

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general Communion. For the last time, the children of Mary . . . gathered about her shrine to bid farewell to Our Lady of Marydell and to beg her protection for the coming winter.”76 Marydell campers remembered their days in Nyack with fondness and reiterated the Catholic nature of the camp. According to one former camper, “[Marydell] was not only a summer camp for girls but also a training center for young women who wished to become nuns.” Most of the sisters lived in the convent, located just down the hill from the camp, but one was always in residence. One former camper described the sisters as “advanced as far as being able to function in a modern world and yet their mode of convent life was very traditional.”77 Camp Marydell alumnae often remembered one or two sisters who had impressed them more than others; many especially remembered Sister Michael D’Andrea, supervisor of the camp for many years. One camper described an occasion on which she had been sent to Sister Michael to be punished for a long-forgotten infraction. Sister Michael put her in the car and drove her into town to run some errands. While she was driving, the camper hung out the window yelling, “Help, crazy nun,” in a very loud voice. After returning to camp, she concluded her story, “we later talked about who God was.”78 In 1974, the sisters began to operate Marydell as a year-round facility, utilizing the property and buildings when camp was not in session. “For this year [1974],” the annals note, “the Camp was used for [sic] many local groups for picnics. One or more weekends a month were given to usage by weekend guests for retreats and other type [of] weekends.”79 During these years, the sisters continued to demonstrate their commitment to offering to needy children, many of whom were from single-parent families and members of minority groups, a chance to enjoy a week of summer camp. By 1987, congregational leaders decided it was time to examine the place of Camp Marydell in the community’s apostolate. Decisions involving the camp were especially difficult because Marydell held a

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special place in the congregation’s memory, and no other central missions of the community were still in operation—Madonna House and Ave Maria House were closed, and the sisters had withdrawn from the Valley. In addition, the camp held an important place in the personal stories of community members; some sisters had attended the camp as children and teenagers, and others had spent many summers in camp ministry. During a community meeting held that year, the sisters concluded that the camp was in a “crisis situation,” caused by a shortage of personnel, and agreed that Marydell should be closed. The specific details were to be worked out by congregational leaders (the president and general council) and camp personnel.80 In a letter written in February 1989, Sister Angela Palermo informed campers and staff that, for the first time in sixty-six years, Marydell Camp would not be opened that summer. Rising costs and diminishing numbers made it impossible for the community to continue operating a camp ministry.81 After the camp closed, the sisters decided they would continue to use the property and its outbuildings, and they opened the Marydell Faith and Life Center, which is used for prayer, retreats, conferences, and workshops. When the community decided to open the center, they agreed to allow outside groups to use the buildings and property but were clear they did not want their “name associated with things that may go against the Catholic Faith.”82

Changes in Ministry

As their numbers decreased and the sisters themselves recognized their limitations as a small religious community whose members were growing older, they gradually withdrew from ministries requiring a staff of more than one sister. This required them to make difficult decisions to leave parishes and ministries—even Camp Marydell— while finding new ways to minister effectively with fewer resources. In 1980, fifty-one professed sisters constituted the community; their

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median age was 60. One member was between the ages of 20 and 29; five were between 30 and 39; and seven were between 40 and 49. The remaining 38 were between 50 and 90.83 There were simply not enough sisters to minister in all of the parishes and communities in need of their services. The ways in which the sisters ministered to the people among whom they lived was also affected by their response to the Second Vatican Council. As modifications in both community governance and lifestyles were implemented during the 1960s and 1970s, each sister was now expected to determine how she could best serve her community’s apostolate. The result was that a congregation founded to work in areas other than teaching and nursing began to include a few teachers and nurses among its members, but the changes sweeping Church and society during the second half of the twentieth century did not lead the community away from the vision of its foundress. Whenever possible, they would continue to serve those in need of material and spiritual sustenance.

6

Changes and Continuities

The mood at Marydell was somber in February 1957, Sister Virginia Johnson reported. “Thursday morning at conference,” she wrote, “Mother Elizabeth told us that Reverend Mother was not expected to live. She told us, if we heard a bell ring at any hour of the day or night to assemble in the hall.”1 On February 9, 1957, Mother Marianne of Jesus, foundress and mother general of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, died. Although New York City newspapers, including the New York Times, published formal obituaries, the report of her death in the Wellesley Alumnae Magazine may have captured Mother Marianne’s life best. According to the notes for the class of 1888, members of the class had spent a number of years trying to learn something about “their beautiful, gifted classmate.” They knew that she had converted to Catholicism, and “under the name Mother Marianne of Jesus had been serving at the settlement on Cherry St.,” but the anonymous Wellesley reporter concluded, “It is a great satisfaction to those of us who are left to know what eminent service she rendered to the church to which she belonged. Even in her younger days in College, she showed a spiritual awareness and fervor which were most unusual.”2 Mother Marianne’s death marked the beginning of a number of changes that transformed the lives and ministry of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. The community not only had to adjust to the loss of the woman who had governed their congregation for forty-seven years, it also had to respond to larger transformations taking place within the Church and American society during the latter half of the twentieth century.

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The Second Vatican Council (1962–65) has often been viewed as the catalyst leading to the upheavals experienced by communities of women religious during the 1960s and ’70s, but it was actually the sixth in a series of events defining the context in which the Sisters of Christian Doctrine had lived and worked. The first incident that began to change religious life took place in 1929, when Pope Pius XI (1922–39) issued The Christian Education of Youth and encouraged women religious to reach the level of education necessary to staff the Church’s burgeoning parochial school system. His successor, Pius XII (1939–58), reiterated his predecessor’s concern at an international meeting of male and female leaders of religious communities and suggested that women religious receive the professional training appropriate for all of the ministries in which they were involved.3 For the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, who were neither teachers nor nurses, this would mean pursuing degrees in social work and religion or theology in order to enhance their ability to both serve the poor and teach religious education to public-school students. The pontiff later went a step further and called for the second step, a “spiritual renewal [of religious communities] in light of the foundress, and adaptation [of the community] to contemporary needs.”4 Third, the movement to educate sister-teachers gained momentum when Sister Madaleva Wolff, CSC, founder of the graduate school of theology at St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, at the 1949 convention of the National Catholic Education Association presented a paper entitled “The Education of Sister Lucy.” Sister Madaleva issued a direct challenge to the leaders of religious communities: “Because Lucy becomes a sister, does that mean she does not need to get her degree?” The answer, the paper concluded, was that religious communities were responsible for providing their members with adequate education and training.5 The tremendous expansion of the parochial school system in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century often meant women religious were sent into classrooms before receiving college degrees, an exigency sometimes referred to as the “twenty-

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year plan.”6 In an attempt to rectify this situation, the Sister Formation Conference (SFC) was founded to respond to Pius XII’s statements on religious life; this was the fourth event impacting American women religious. The roots of the conference can be traced to the late 1940s, when a group of American sisters “began working toward an organization that would help provide for the updating and professionalization of all sisters.”7 When it was formally established in 1954, the SFC “inaugurated the beginning of a carefully planned education and formation of women religious for their ministries.”8 Fifth, although the SFC’s original concern was to promote the education of women religious preparing to teach in either elementary or secondary schools, by the 1960s the conference’s focus had shifted from education and become an “organization [dedicated to] the spiritual formation needs of the pre-service sister.”9 Sixth, the promulgations of the Second Vatican Council were affecting the ways women religious viewed themselves and their world. Lumen Gentium (1964) and Gaudium et Spes (1965), in particular, called them to work with the poor in cooperation with both clergy and laity. When combined with a third document, Perfectae Caritatis, issued just two months before Gaudium et Spes in 1965, it was clear the Council was encouraging women religious to consider ways in which they could both return to the original inspiration behind the founding of their communities and infuse that spirit into their contemporary lives and ministries. Every American community of religious women would find themselves responding to this mandate in one way or another, and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were no exception.

Adjusting to the Loss of Mother Marianne

Mother Marianne had influenced every member of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, and many had strong memories of their association with her. She was “gifted with an intelligent and brilliant

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mind,” Sister Assumpta Zuppullo, who entered the community in 1918, recalled. “She made herself simple and one with them all, from the highest to the simplest poor and ignorant individual.”10 Patricia Leonard Anderson—whose religious name was Sister de Sales— entered the community in 1953. She left in 1960 but retained vivid memories of her two encounters with the foundress, one of which changed the course of her life. After visiting her brother, who had been badly beaten by his father, Anderson requested a meeting with Mother Marianne. Explaining what had happened, she informed her superior of her plans to leave the community in order to care for her brother. Much to Anderson’s surprise, Mother Marianne offered an alternative. The former sister continued, “My brother moved into the barn on the Marydell grounds, attended Nyack High School and worked in Woolworth’s after school. He graduated from Nyack High School and went into the Air Force. God bless Mother for what she did for two frightened children.”11 Mother Marianne’s successor would continue to respond to situations affecting individual sisters, but she also assumed responsibility for keeping alive the vision that had drawn women to a religious community with a particular apostolate. Mother Marianne’s health had been declining for some time, but her death still came as somewhat of a shock to the sisters, who began to experience changes in the community almost as soon as Sister Mary Ursula Coyne was appointed her successor by the vicar of religious for the Archdiocese of New York. The foundress had never designated a successor. In a 1955 letter to Monsignor Joseph A. Nelson, she explained that the community had never held elections and members of the council were appointed by the superior general. Cardinal Patrick Hayes had appointed Mother Marianne to be the community’s mother general “for life,” and this decision had been announced to the congregation on February 23, 1931. In response to a direct question from Nelson concerning the purpose of the community, Mother Marianne explained that its work had not changed since its founding in 1910. “The purpose of the Institute,” she wrote,

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“is to bring to the knowledge and observance of the Catholic faith those who by ignorance, prejudice, tepidity, bad environment, or anti-Catholic propaganda, have never known or have departed from the Catholic way of life. As a means to this end centers of cultural, social, and religious activity are established . . . where many souls are induced to receive Catholic teaching and to accept the guidance of Catholic principles in their lives.”12 Although community members understood and embraced the vision of their foundress and mother general, the younger sisters did not really feel as if they had known Mother Marianne. One later wrote, “I wish that I could say that I can remember her [Mother Marianne] sharing her dreams for the community, its apostolate and missionary work. I only knew Mother as a novice. She rarely spoke to any of us, so she would not have shared her innerself [sic] with me.”13 During Mother Marianne’s long tenure as mother general, the congregation never held a general chapter, and the council did not meet on a regular basis. Sister Ursula was initially appointed for a one-year term, with the stipulation that the community convene both a general chapter and a chapter of elections at the end of that year.14 She would be elected to a total of three terms, serving as congregational leader from 1957 to 1970, and again from 1980 to 1984. Reflecting on her appointment, Sister Ursula wrote to community members: “‘Who could fill her [Mother Marianne’s] place?’ was a question which caused anxiety perhaps not only to us but to all our families, our friends, acquaintainces [sic], in short to all who had in any capacity whatever come in contact with our Reverend Mother Marianne of Jesus.” Sister Ursula believed God would give her the grace and strength necessary to continue the implementation of Mother Marianne’s vision. Her confidence, she continued, “came as the fruit of long and patient guidance on the part of my confessors, the maternal influence of long years close to Mother, the abundance of the prayers of all of you and so many others.”15 Sister Ursula understood that no one could truly take the place of Mother Marianne; no individual, she reminded the congregation

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“could measure up to [her] in any one talent, or grace, found so abundantly in her.” Nor would it be possible for any one sister to assume all the responsibilities Mother Marianne had shouldered; the community would now share these burdens.16 At the first council meeting following Mother Marianne’s death, held on February 21, 1957, responsibilities for community leadership were divided among several sisters. Since Sister Ursula had been serving as director of novices, council members—Mother Elizabeth Lammers and Sisters Immaculata Crosby and Dorothea McCarthy—appointed Sister Beatrix Pergola as her replacement, and Sister Helen [Magadelen] Keogh as prefect of studies. Sister Helen’s responsibility, echoing the concerns of the Sister Formation Conference, was to form and educate postulants, novices, and junior sisters.17 Sister Alix Barbato and Sister Angela [Redempta] Palermo were appointed to the positions of vocation director and assistant mistress of novices. In her first letter to the community as mother general, Sister Ursula suggested the sisters ought to “pray much.” She enclosed a list of suggestions for prayers to be offered in all of the community’s houses from March 16 to March 25, 1957. Each convent was to have ten masses offered for the repose of the soul of Mother Marianne; the novena for the feast of the Annunciation on March 25 was to be recited daily during this nine-day period; and community members were to offer Mass and Communion for the intention of the general council’s work every Thursday until told otherwise, so that “their consultations and deliberations may be guided by our Lady of Light, Immaculate Spouse of the Holy Ghost.”18

Moving Forward

Archival sources indicate that meetings of the General Council began in 1931, but it did not play much of a role in community affairs until after Sister Ursula’s appointment as mother general. During the forty-seven years Mother Marianne led the community, coun-

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cil meetings were concerned primarily with four areas of business: (1) approving candidates for postulancy, first vows, and final vows; (2) financial issues, including property acquisitions and repairs; (3) personnel “problems” (with respect to sisters who asked to leave the community as well as to those being dismissed); and (4) issues related to the world outside. In 1950, council minutes reported that the sisters had been approached by the Tappan Zee Association, a group trying to “help stop the building of a bridge across the widest part of the Hudson River.” Members of the council agreed to join the association in protesting the proposed bridge.19 Special council meetings were held if deemed necessary, such as when the issue of the swimming pool at Marydell Camp demanded an immediate decision.20 During Sister’s Ursula’s first administration, the council began to meet more frequently, prompted by changes taking place in religious life. Although the Sisters of Christian Doctrine had no intention of staffing and administering parochial schools, conducting religious education classes and preparing children and adults to receive the sacraments did involve teaching, and this led the community to take an active interest in the work of the Sister Formation Conference. On May 19, 1957, the minutes note that, even though community members were not involved with the parochial school system, they did teach Christian Doctrine; this meant their education should be subsidized by the New York archdiocese. In addition, Sister Ursula agreed to ask Fordham University officials about an undergraduate program appropriate for catechists.21 In January 1958, the Chapter of Elections and Affairs endorsed the work of the SFC, noting: “We feel that the Sister Formation [Conference] should get priority and that the Community should be informed to expect and urged to be willing to make sacrifices for this most important duty [of sister education]. If it is at all possible, postulants should not be accepted without a completed High School course.”22 In 1959, two sisters were accepted at St. Bonaventure University, and three others planned to attend the Catholic University of America.23

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Under Sister Ursula’s leadership, the council was authorized to make decisions concerning a variety of issues. In 1958, the minutes noted that the headgear worn by the sisters was altered to provide better peripheral vision, especially for those whose ministry in rural areas required them to drive.24 At the same meeting, the congregation’s membership in the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women’s Institutes of the United States of America was confirmed.25 Other council meetings reflect decisions involving the safety of the community. “It is becoming quite evident to all the diocesan officials and to ourselves that our continued residence at Madonna House is unsafe,” wrote the recorder for a meeting held on August 7, 1958.26 Madonna House closed in 1960, but discussions—both at council meetings and with archdiocesan officials—began two years before the settlement’s doors were locked for the last time. Sister Ursula needed assistance determining how best to implement the decisions being made because she had had no experience in community governance, and Mother Marianne had neither chosen a successor nor confided in those around her. Along with her assistant, Sister Dorothea McCarthy, she began to seek out ways to learn how best to govern a religious community in an era when church and society were on the brink of major changes. She quickly realized the importance that canon law should play in community governance. “I got myself involved,” she remembered in a 2004 interview, “with a bunch of communities . . . they had a series of lectures on canon law for religious. . . . And so I went to that. . . . And we tried to put some of that into operation.”27 One of the first problems confronting the new mother general was financial; a significant amount of money was needed to maintain the Marydell convent and grounds as well as to support the congregation’s missions. “We were not schoolteachers,” Sister Ursula said. “We did not want to be schoolteachers. . . . We had to get along by ourselves [i.e., they did not have a steady source of income as teaching sisters did]. We were forever, it seems to me, collecting [begging]. . . . As I understand the spirit of my own congregation itself, it was

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not always . . . Christian Doctrine flat by the book,” she continued. “The spirit of the congregation is in the meeting of people.”28 Sister Ursula began to investigate ways to bring in financial resources that would still allow the sisters to tend to people’s spiritual lives not simply by teaching catechism but by relating to them as human beings. An idea for a capital campaign was rejected as unrealistic because the community had worked primarily among the urban poor of the Lower East Side, and many of their neighbors had moved away and lost contact with the sisters. When she realized that Mother Marianne had accepted whatever amount was offered for sisters’ work in either religious education classes or in parishes, Sister Ursula was able to increase the community’s annual income by negotiating with pastors and bishops to raise the stipends paid to community members. The sisters would continue to “collect,” however, until the late 1960s, when Auxiliary Bishop John J. Maguire told Sister Ursula to “get your sisters off the streets.”29

Responding to Transformations

By January of 1958, some minor changes affecting the spiritual practices and lifestyle of the sisters had been implemented. Following the approval of the general chapter, all community prayers, with the exception of the Divine Office, began to be recited in English, and the practice of sisters asking permission for a glass of water was discontinued.30 Sister Ursula was not ready to institute other proposed changes and refused to discontinue the tradition of asking permission to leave the house in order to perform an assigned task.31 Perhaps understanding that radical changes would soon transform the lives of women religious, she warned the community to “be careful the democratic spirit does not enter into the religious life. It is necessary for elections of course but the religious life is not a democracy, the religious life is a theocracy, meaning God rules and the superiors just uphold the place of God.”32

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Despite Sister Ursula’s cautionary note, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine responded to changes in the Catholic Church and American society in the 1960s by revising many rules that had long been a part of the community’s culture. Recognizing that the more active lifestyle of many sisters sometimes prevented their presence at community prayers, she suggested that each sister could only do her best to participate in the congregation’s spiritual exercises. “I said you are to aim at 100% attendance at all exercises,” she is reported to have said. “Note I said ‘aim.’ I did not say ‘if you have to commit murder you have to obtain 100% attendance.’”33 In 1963, reflecting the emphasis being placed on the importance of higher education by the American Catholic Church and women’s religious communities, it was decided that no one without a high-school diploma would be accepted into the congregation. In order to demonstrate one’s readiness for college, candidates were to have completed the college-preparatory track while in secondary school. Certain applicants—the council minutes do not provide more details about this—were required to complete two years of college before entering the community.34 As early as 1951, Pope Pius XII had expressed his belief that religious communities should choose a habit expressing their “interior lack of affectation, [their] simplicity, and religious modesty,” but modifying a habit was easier said than done.35 By 1964, some members of the community were suggesting that the habit they had worn for many years needed to be changed; it was impractical, expensive, and uncomfortable, and the rosary that was a part of the “official” garb often got caught and tangled as the sisters went about their work.36 Sister Ursula remembered that community leaders never wanted to force any sister to change her mode of dress, but there were disagreements over what constituted an appropriate look for a Sister of Christian Doctrine.37 Like most other American religious communities, the congregation moved from the traditional habit to one that had been modified to reflect their involvement in various active ministries in twentiethcentury America. Writing to the community in 1964, Sister Ursula

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informed them of some minor changes in the sisters’ dress, including removal of the blue sleeves between May and October, optional wearing of the black apron, and removal of the collar when at work. The sisters were still expected to wear the complete habit when attending a public function of “some importance.”38 Some community members worried that Sister Elizabeth Lammers, the sole remaining member of the group that joined Mother Marianne in 1910, would have difficulty accepting the modified habit, especially since she had designed the original dress worn by the sisters. Sister Dorothea McCarthy remembered trying to explain the community’s decision to Mother Elizabeth. According to Sister Dorothea, her response was, “‘Well, if it’s to be, it’s to be. Bring it to me.’ And she took that habit and that headpiece and put it on.”39 The congregation later decided a short veil and the community’s cross and ring were sufficient to identify one as a Sister of Christian Doctrine. At a meeting of the special general chapter held in 1968, it was decided that each sister could choose to wear the traditional habit, modified habit, or contemporary clothing. Those who chose not to wear either habit were expected to demonstrate an awareness of appropriate dress for a woman religious.40 The 1964 general chapter addressed several issues regarding the community’s lifestyle. Although sisters continued to be discouraged from eating or drinking outside of their place of residence “unless necessity requires it,” the definition of when it might be necessary to do so was broadened and “applied to those instances when charity or the needs of our social and apostolic apostolate makes eating and drinking in public the more useful, and appropriate thing to do.” To allow for evening work, the rule requiring sisters to return before dark was changed to “the appointed hour.”41 In addition, sisters were now allowed to visit relatives and were expected to refrain from asking permission to do so unless “necessity, charity, or apostolic zeal shall require it.”42 Recognizing that social settlements were a part of the community’s legacy, the same chapter endorsed a ministry of professional

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social work, claiming it was in keeping with Mother Marianne’s original idea for a religious community; she had not only organized sodalities and taught religious education but had also tried to offer material assistance and opportunities for socialization and education to those in need. Those sisters who were asked to work in either recreation or camping, however, were expected to understand the significance of that particular apostolate. “In camping, for instance: is it to provide a Catholic atmosphere for the child during the summer? Is it just recreation? Is it only to raise money? Certainly it isn’t to give religion classes.”43 It was important for the sisters to understand that children needed to be in a Catholic environment at all times, not just during the school year. Although the focus of the community continued to be the teaching of Christian doctrine, the chapter decided to allow sisters to “engage in any of the other activities of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. Related works designed purposely to win to instruction or to encourage those interested in the practice of their religion, may be undertaken at the request of the pastors.”44 Two years after the close of the 1964 general chapter, Sister Ursula and members of the General Council met with those serving as superiors of local convents to announce further changes in the rules regulating the community. All mail would now be distributed unopened to professed sisters and outgoing mail to family members would be sealed; mail being sent to others would continue to remain unsealed. In addition, unless living in a dormitory, an individual sister could decide when she would turn off her light to go to sleep, and a limited amount of “worthwhile” television would be allowed. An attempt was also made to begin to equalize the relationship between sisters and their respective superiors by abolishing the custom of having a sister kiss the floor when she was late for meals, chapel, or spiritual exercises.45 At the 1968 special general chapter, mandated by Pope Paul VI in Ecclesiae Sanctae (norms for implementing the Council’s decrees on the renewal of religious life), which was promulgated in 1966, the sisters began to revise their constitutions; they also considered propos-

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als for renewal and adaptation according to the criteria stated in the motu proprio. The final results instituted more changes throughout the congregation. Chief among them were those related to apostolate and identity. At this time, the congregation consisted of sixty-three women who had made perpetual vows, four who had taken temporary vows, and one novice; there were no postulants. The community was scattered among four houses located in the New York archdiocese, two in the Diocese of Orlando, three in South Carolina, one in New Hampshire, and three “experimental” apartments in New York City.46 Like most other American religious communities, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine had had very little—if any—choice in the work they were assigned. At the end of every year, usually in June, when sisters left their place of residence for retreat and relaxation, they were expected to pack as if they were not returning to that apostolate.47 Sisters unexpectedly reassigned were usually not allowed to return to their convent to gather their belongings; someone would make sure their possessions were sent to their new address. This situation changed when it was decided to allow sisters to request work in a particular apostolate, and community leaders promised to do their best to honor their members’ wishes. In addition, they were encouraged to become involved in service and works “concerned with the human condition of man.”48 Issues connected to apostolate and identity also held implications for spirituality and community life. Although members of the community were expected to make time for prayer, meditation, and liturgy, the new guidelines discontinued a specific allotted time for spiritual reading and shortened the annual retreat to five days. Sisters’ mail was no longer censored, and they were now able to take yearly vacations and visit family members at their homes.49 One change that significantly impacted some members of the community was the chapter’s decision to allow sisters to revert back to their baptismal names.50 Unlike some religious congregations, a Sister of Christian Doctrine had no say in the religious name assigned

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to her when she first professed vows. Sister Rose Vermette, who was deeply devoted to St. Thérèse of Lisieux—the Little Flower—was delighted to have received the name Sister Mary Teresa of the Holy Spirit, but others would probably not have selected the name bestowed on them. Sister Rose loved her name, and when the sisters were first given the choice of either retaining their religious names or reverting to their given—and legal—names, she decided to keep the name that Mother Marianne had given her. Two years after the deadline for changing one’s name had passed, Sister Rose found herself immersed in a study of the sacrament of baptism. Recognizing the importance of being “called by name,” she decided to try and return to her baptismal one. She wrote to Sister Dorothea McCarthy, who had succeeded Sister Ursula as president in 1970, asking permission to change her name from Sister Teresa to Sister Rose; it was easily granted.51 As the community grappled with issues related to their congregational identity, some sisters expressed their dissatisfaction with the lifestyle demanded by the culture of a traditional convent. Sister Ursula supported decisions made by sisters to move out of convents and into apartments in order to better serve the people with whom they worked, believing they were remaining faithful to Mother Marianne’s vision of Catholic social settlements that allowed sisters to minister to their neighbors on a variety of levels. In 1967, she wrote to archdiocesan officials requesting permission for several sisters to reside in an apartment on Grand Street on the Lower East Side. She listed several practical reasons for this particular living arrangement: The sisters would be close to their work, which meant the catechetical programs in which they were involved would be more effective; and the apartment’s location would allow the sisters to attend Mass easily. She also stressed the community’s commitment to living among the people, writing that “it has been our aim to live among those whom we seek to serve, identifying ourselves with them in all that is appropriate to us.” Her request was approved.52

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In 1969, a number of community members began living in small groups in apartments and parish convents. In a letter to the congregation, Sister Ursula noted which sisters were taking part in the experiment, along with their addresses and phone numbers, including the president herself, who was living with Sister de Chantal Brown at St. Pius X convent in the Bronx. She reminded them that archdiocesan officials had reluctantly granted permission for this living arrangement. “Indeed,” she wrote, “the permission is to be considered temporary and we are to have in August 1970 (or before the summer vacations) a sincere and honest evaluation of this mode of living with particular concern for the welfare of ‘community’ as well as effectiveness for the Apostolate.” She asked those involved in the experiment to take some time to reflect on their experience and to dialogue on the subject with those with whom they were living, so they could meet the deadline set by the archdiocese.53 In 1970, the community completed an exercise evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of living in small groups rather than in traditional convents. The participating sisters examined this way of living in community from personal, interpersonal, social, financial, spiritual, congregational, and “other” perspectives. Advantages included the fostering of independence, resulting in a more mature lifestyle, more opportunities for sharing, the ability to practice poverty in a more realistic environment, the possibility for better shared prayer experiences, and the belief that small-group living made it easier for the sisters to adapt to the Church’s apostolic needs. In addition, small numbers, an aging congregation, and financial and maintenance concerns meant that it was easier for community members to live in apartments rather than in large convents, which were expensive to maintain. Examples of disadvantages listed by the sisters were a possible lack of privacy, isolation from the larger community, the possibility that this lifestyle could be very demanding, the need to earn a certain amount of money in order to be financially selfsufficient, no place for the Blessed Sacrament to be reserved, and the breakdown of congregational unity.54

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Subsequent chapters continued to discuss the life and work of the community. In 1972, the sisters formally acknowledged that there were ways to serve their apostolate without ministering in a parish or mission. Some sisters were laboring in a “Hidden Apostolate,” praying, caring for the sick, cooking and serving meals, making sure members of the community had appropriate clothing, and tending the Marydell grounds. This apostolate was considered as important as those that involved working in a parish, teaching religious education, or working directly with the poor. Although living in community was still considered a very important part of the sisters’ lifestyle, it was determined that a sister might even be given permission to live alone if circumstances warranted it.55

Challenging Times

At the same time that the Sisters of Christian Doctrine were being encouraged to choose individual ministries and were experimenting with small-group living, they found themselves making very difficult choices as a community. First, they did not have the personnel needed to continue staffing all of their parishes and missions. Demonstrating their commitment to the elimination of racial injustice, they agreed to keep the “colored missions” but closed the kindergarten in Aiken, South Carolina, and their ministry in Elkton, Florida.56 Second, some sisters began to advocate for the implementation of a new model of community governance. Was there a more collegial model for administering the congregation, they wondered? In July of 1969, they agreed to some adjustments in governance, when it was decided to allow each house to select its local superior annually and to experiment with allowing sisters—following community guidelines—to manage personal and household budgets.57 As women religious in the United States began to leave their communities, those who remained, including the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, grew concerned about the decreasing number of women

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interested in religious life. In 1974, they reported fifty-two professed sisters and one novice—a decrease of six from figures compiled two years earlier. Three sisters had died in the intervening years, and three had left the community. The one novice, however, was expected to take the “next step” on June 22 of that year, and she did. In order to develop a plan to attract new members, the sisters elected a vocation team. Sister Doris Sayhonne, who lived and worked in New York City, was named director of vocations.58 Realizing that, when they staffed neither schools nor hospitals, it was difficult to make themselves known to women who might be considering religious life, in 1978 the Sisters of Christian Doctrine placed an advertisement in Sign, a monthly magazine published by the Passionists. Young women who dreamed “of a better world where one person who cares can make a difference” were invited to think about joining a small religious community “who work together to bring love and the Good News of Christ to people they serve.” Readers learned that the community was involved in religious education, parish visiting, nursing, counseling, recreational work, social work, and pastoral ministry. Interested young women were encouraged to consider the community and reminded that they could “make the world a better place!”59 The decline in religious vocations meant the congregation was unable to send sisters to all of the parishes in need of their services. Between 1972 and 1974, the community received ten new requests for parish co-coordinators of religious education, but they were able to send sisters only to two. At the same time, the changing nature of parish religious education greatly affected a community whose focus was primarily on catechesis rather than on staffing parochial schools. Sister Dorothea McCarthy reported that, although some pastors were willing to hire more than one sister to work solely in the area of religious education for children attending public schools, most were not. “He solves his problem,” she wrote, “by getting volunteer help for a Religious Education Program and leaves the administration of that program to the co-coordinator.” This meant, she concluded, that the

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sisters, especially those not interested in working as a co-coordinator, had to find other venues for spreading the gospel message, including parish ministry, conducting the parish census, ministering to those suffering from mental or emotional illnesses, or working in some area of social service.60 Although sisters still taught in religious education programs—especially within the Archdiocese of New York— many sought out other ministries where their talents could best be utilized. In addition to there being fewer women expressing an interest in religious life, some sisters were deciding they were not called to be members of a religious community. In the past, sisters who left American religious communities, including the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, had little to no contact with those who stayed. In a letter to local superiors, written in 1960, Sister Ursula informed them that two sisters had decided to leave the community. “From henceforth let there be no discussion concerning these two young women nor any correspondence with them except for some pressing necessity for which the local superior will be responsible,” she wrote.61 By the mid-1960s, however, when a woman chose to leave the community, the situation was quite different. The loss of members was “not like a flood,” Sister Ursula explained, because the community was so small there were simply fewer sisters to lose. Community leaders, she said, tried to give sisters “a chance to figure it all out. It was really what they wanted to do for themselves. . . . You didn’t want to stand in their way.”62 Not standing in someone’s way could be difficult. Sister Dorothea McCarthy recalled taking one sister who wanted to leave the community to the vicar for religious for the New York archdiocese on Christmas Eve. “I said, ‘Why don’t you wait until after Christmas,’” but the sister was determined to leave “right now.” Although some who left never contacted the community again, many kept in touch with one or more of the sisters, informing them of significant events in their lives and maintaining friendships.63

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During the chapter of affairs and elections, held in December 1989, President Sister Angela Palermo addressed the “state of the congregation.” The median age of the forty-five-member community was 64; nineteen were over the age of 70. Eight sisters were serving as full-time directors of religious education; five were employed as social workers; three were involved with ministry on a diocesan level; four were active in community service; three were ministering in schools; and three were working as pastoral associates. In addition, two sisters were employed as nurses and three were working as home health aides. Nine sisters were considered retired or semiretired, and one sister was listed as a student.64 The numbers and median age of the community made it clear that the sisters would have to make hard decisions about their future. The council annually reviewed and endorsed each sister’s ministry, whether she was actively involved in a parish or social service agency or retired and practicing a ministry of prayer. Sister Marie de Lourdes Considine explained that this procedure had been the custom “since ‘Personal Options’ became a part of our lifestyle. It is our way of practicing ‘Obedience.’ . . . It is our connectedness with the Congregation, remembering that we do not operate as ‘sole proprietors’ of our own likes/lifestyles but are in union with the Congregation.” Although they were now expected to choose their ministry and living arrangements, sometimes sisters were asked to move to help the larger community. In 1991, Sister Rose Frazzetta “graciously offered to move to the Madonna House [constituting two apartments] on Grand Street.” Because that particular community needed another person to “validate keeping . . . both apartments open,” Sister Rose, who was retired, agreed that it was easier for her to relocate than for some other members of the congregation.65 During the closing years of the twentieth century, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine continued to connect their ministry to events tak-

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ing place in the world around them. Writing to New York senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Alfonse D’Amato and Representative Benjamin Gilman in 1989, for instance, Sister Angela Palermo expressed her outrage over the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter in El Salvador.66 Several years later, in 1991, Sister Rose Vermette, who was ministering in Charleston, South Carolina—she would be the last Sister of Christian Doctrine to work in that diocese—documented the outbreak of war in the Persian Gulf and reflected on its relationship to race in America. It was an amazing experience, she explained, to arrive at Our Lady of Mercy parish for religious education classes and find herself among people all of whom, except for the white people, have a loved one overseas.”67 In the 1990s, other sisters, including President Sister Marie de Lourdes and her council, examined ways in which the community could become more involved in ministry to the poor. Because the congregation was financially viable, Sister Marie de Lourdes encouraged sisters to request congregational funds to support ministries in which they would be otherwise unable to participate due to monetary constraints. “What we are attempting to do,” she wrote, “is to expand our ministries and commitment to ‘ministry and service’ while at the same time exercising more collegiality in the dispensing of the funds for our ‘option for the poor.’”68 This policy allowed individual sisters to enter into ministerial projects that reflected the historic work of the sisters but were not sponsored by them, such as working in shelters and soup kitchens, ministering to those who were HIV-positive, and becoming involved with organizations devoted to issues of peace and justice. There were not enough sisters to establish shelters for the homeless or afterschool programs for inner-city youth, and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine realized they could not continue to implement the original ideas of Mother Marianne on an institutional level; they could, however, encourage each sister who was able, through her own ministry, to keep Mother Marianne’s vision alive.

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The revised Constitutions of the community, approved by New York’s Cardinal John O’Connor in 1989, reflect the sisters’ desire to remain faithful to the original charism and vision of Mother Marianne. The history prefacing the Constitutions notes two main facets of the foundress’s charism: a “loving concern for the poor,” and a “fidelity to prayer.”69 The ministry developed by Mother Marianne around the work of Madonna House was now manifested in ministries—in the Archdiocese of New York and the dioceses of Charleston, South Carolina; St. Augustine and Orlando, Florida; and the Dominican Republic—that “have been carried on with the determination that those on the fringes of society would come to recognize their personal worth in and through the good news of Christ.”70 The community also recognized that Mother Marianne “accomplished great things because she knew that, of herself, she could do nothing. ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Be it done to me according to your Word.’ These words of Mary, so familiar to us, were the rule of life for Mother Marianne and for those of us who are called to carry on that vision.”71 Since settlement work was no longer a part of the American landscape, Mother Marianne was referred to as a “pioneer social worker,” who had founded St. Rose’s Settlement House “in the midst of teeming tenements.” The settlement had become a “thriving, vital place of learning and growth.”72 Mother Marianne’s commitment to Catholic social settlements, combined with her strong belief in the necessity of religious education for children attending public schools and for those who had been away from the Catholic Church, “are the roots from which the Congregation of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine sprang.”73 The congregation was determined to remain faithful to their heritage and to the vision of Mother Marianne, and “stands ready to meet the needs of the people of God by proclaiming the gospel message through Christian doctrine and through related ministries within the Church.”74 The community continues to remember that prayer and the Eucharist were an essential part of Mother Marianne’s life and work

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and that she intended her sisters to embrace the idea that “the Gospel, the celebration of the Eucharist, [and] morning and evening prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours is the basis of our union with God.” The Constitutions urge the sisters both to participate in “the liturgical life of the Church” and to find time for personal reflection and prayer.75 As the twentieth century drew to a close, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, like other groups of religious women, reflected on themselves and their community in light of both their history and the needs of the American Catholic Church. They treasure their heritage and remember the importance of serving the material and spiritual needs of those among whom they lived and worked. Although they no longer had the personnel either to go where no other sisters would go or to begin new missions, the sisters still ministered in a variety of ways, including teaching religious education, while remaining aware of the need to plan for a future that would not only care for the community’s older members but offer support and encouragement to those still actively carrying out the congregation’s mission.

Epilogue

On January 17, 2011, Sister Dorothea McCarthy, who had entered the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine in 1936, died peacefully at the age of 93. Friends and members of the community remembered Sister Dorothea as someone who had been a community leader—she had served as president of the congregation for six years—as well as a tireless worker in the ministries established by Mother Marianne. She had worked, for example, at Madonna House, Our Lady of the Valley in South Carolina, and at Ave Maria House in the Bronx as well as at a number of parishes. Several sisters credit their decision to enter the community to the example provided by the life and work of Sister Dorothea. Although illness prevented Sister Dorothea from participating in the festivities, she rejoiced with her community as it celebrated the hundredth anniversary of its founding on June 5, 2010. After attending Mass celebrated by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan at St. Anne’s Church in Nyack, approximately 700 people helped the sisters continue the festivities at a reception held on the grounds of Marydell. Despite the heat, the guests—including sisters and their families, former campers, counselors, and their children, neighbors from houses surrounding the camp and convent, family members of deceased sisters, former community members and their families, and those who had known the sisters from their days at Madonna House— rekindled friendships and shared stories as they moved about the grounds that for many years had housed both excited campers and anxious novices.

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Visitors who had not returned to Marydell for a decade or more discovered that significant changes had been made to the grounds and buildings. A portion of the property, including a parcel of land bordering the Hudson River, had been sold, but the sisters still retained about fifty-four acres. Recognizing the need for a convent that could house both sisters ministering in Rockland County and those retired from active ministry, Sister Virginia Johnson, who served as community president from 1994 until 2002, supervised the design and building of a residence overlooking both Camp Marydell and the river. When Bishop John McCarthy dedicated the new Marydell Convent on October 2, 1999, visitors were able to view three doubleoccupancy units and six studio apartments, each consisting of a living room, kitchen area, bathroom, and sleeping quarters. In addition to an office and laundry facilities, common space includes a central kitchen, dining area, gathering space—complete with gas fireplace— and chapel. Although Marydell Convent does not serve as the official motherhouse of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, its location on the site of the original motherhouse and camp is a constant reminder that the community has been a presence in the Archdiocese of New York for more than one hundred years. Although they have not operated a summer camp since 1988, the sisters are involved in various ministries on the property under the aegis of the Marydell Faith and Life Center. The lodge is available to parish and nonprofit groups interested in hosting retreats or staffdevelopment days and to “Sunday to Sunday,” a scripture program meeting one morning each week. One building now houses the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, a religious formation program for children, modeled on the Montessori system. A smaller unit served as an office for Sister Lorraine Gosnell’s counseling practice, and other buildings were used for spiritual direction, bereavement ministry, and other activities focused on prayer and spirituality, including private retreats. In 2008, the community voted to discontinue overnight programs, but it still hosts day camps for inner-city children.

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Despite the activities taking place on the grounds of the former camp, the sisters believed the property could be used more and still remain faithful to the vision of Mother Marianne. In 2008, they began to share the facilities with One to One Learning, Inc., a ministry sponsored by the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, New York. Dedicated to meeting the needs of the immigrant population of Rockland County, One to One offers the opportunity for recent immigrants to learn English and provides other educational programs, including GED preparation and classes related to information literacy. In April 2008, the program’s administrative offices relocated to Marydell, and in September of that year English and computer classes began meeting on the grounds of the former camp. Members of the congregation were pleased that One to One was interested in the Marydell property, remembering that Mother Marianne originally acquired the land to provide needy children and their families, many of whom were immigrants, the opportunity to enjoy life outside their congested, urban neighborhoods. In April 2008, Sister Cecilia La Pietra, OP, One to One’s director, noted the similarities between the center’s mission statement and that of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. Believing that “language empowers, language unites,” she wrote, “the mission of One to One Learning is to provide English classes and other supportive services to immigrants to empower them to reach their full human potential and to lead meaningful lives within their communities. Interactions that occur between persons of different cultures build bridges of understanding.”1 The community’s mission was clearly compatible with that of One to One: “We [Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine] are called to host programs that foster a holistic integration of body, mind and spirit, and nurture the gifts of each person to live a fuller life. Our program will be consistent with our option for the poor, and the needs that impact faith and human development.”2 In a letter to the community, Sister Virginia Johnson described the changes One to One had implemented throughout Marydell’s

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buildings. Many of the cabins, she reported, were now serving as classrooms. “Owaissa is set up for the little children . . . while their parents are in class sessions. . . . Minnehaha has turned into a computer lab with ten computer tables completely set up. Tek is used for G.E.D., and the more advanced students. Mondomin, Wawa and the Dining Hall now have long table[s] in them to accommodate the students. The dining hall is not changed, but is now the welcoming and initial gathering place and the space used for some classes.” Although One to One is sponsored by the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, New York, three members of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine—Sisters Agnes O’Connor, Eileen O’Farrell, and Angela Palermo—were involved in the program’s work. “To date,” Sister Virginia continued, “there are 113 students and that number will most likely increase as time goes on.”3 As they celebrate their centenary, the sisters, like other American women religious, are discussing the congregation’s future in light of declining numbers and an aging population. Three major points of discussion concern the care of elderly and infirm sisters, the eventual disposition of community property, and the question of whether the Sisters of Christian Doctrine should merge—in some way—with one or more religious communities. Although no decisions of any kind have yet been finalized, the discussions, formal and informal, reflect the community’s concern with their mission, the spirit of Mother Marianne, and their commitment to those in need of either physical or spiritual sustenance. Sisters in need of skilled nursing care or assisted living are evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The community’s goal is to allow sisters to remain where they live—whether in New York City or Nyack—as long as possible. Those who require more comprehensive care have been placed in nursing facilities throughout the area, including those administered by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Cabrini Sisters) and the Dominican Sisters of Blauvelt. The sisters are developing a comprehensive plan that ensures that all of their

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members will receive appropriate medical and personal care for as long as necessary. The community has held several meetings focused on the eventual disposition of the fifty-four acres they still own in Nyack. The property includes part of Hook Mountain and a large meadow, which has been kept in as close to a pristine state as possible. Although no final decisions have been made, the sisters are clear the land should be preserved in its natural state. They are hoping it will remain “open space,” at least in some form, and are examining various possibilities that involve using the land in a way that is environmentally responsible. The property is prime acreage, but the sisters are not currently exploring opportunities involving any sort of development, including residential building, even though homes in the vicinity of Marydell are selling for around one million dollars. The most important issue confronting the Sisters of Christian Doctrine concerns the very future of the community. Because they are a small congregation, the sisters could have chosen to merge with either a larger community or one or more smaller congregations. Some religious orders, having decided that joining forces with other likeminded women religious allows them to share talents, resources, and apostolates, have chosen this option. In April 2009, seven communities of Dominican Sisters—the Dominican Congregation of St. Rose of Lima (Mississippi); Dominican Sisters, Congregation of St. Mary (Louisiana); Dominican Sisters of Great Bend (Kansas); Dominican Sisters, St. Mary of the Springs (Ohio); Dominicans of St. Catharine (Kentucky); Eucharistic Missionaries of St. Dominic (Louisiana); and the Sisters of St. Dominic of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Ohio)— gathered in St. Louis to formalize their existence as a “new foundation of the Dominican Order.”4 The new community, known as the Dominican Sisters of Peace, is composed of more than 650 sisters working in twenty-nine states and five countries. The merger of these seven communities, formerly known as the Dominican Cluster, allows all of the members to collaborate more closely in shared

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apostolates and to share expenses more efficiently, including consolidating retirement centers for senior sisters. The situation of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine is somewhat different from that of the communities that now constitute the Dominican Sisters of Peace. Those seven communities shared a common history and charism; they were all a part of the larger Dominican family. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine are not part of a larger religious group such as the Dominicans or Franciscans, but they have developed cordial working and personal relationships with religious communities located in the greater New York City area, especially those working and living in Rockland County. Before they merge or enter into partnership with another community, a process that could take ten years, questions about financial resources, property, community governance, and ministries would have to be settled.5 A second option is one recently implemented by a group of formerly cloistered Visitation sisters that became an active apostolic community in 1955, when some sisters began to leave the convent each day to administer an elementary school and academy. At the time of the community’s transition, it numbered about sixty members. During the 1960s, the community experienced a number of transitions that a member describes as “traumatic,” many of which resulted from sisters’ decisions to leave religious life.6 This fact, coupled with rising expenses, resulted in the closing of both the elementary school and the academy. Like the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, members of this community asked serious questions whenever the subject of recruiting new members arose during meetings. “Would it be fair,” both groups ask, “to [encourage] a young person to join a community of so few members?”7 The Sisters of Christian Doctrine are also asking a more complex question: What does it mean if there is no one to “carry on the work and spirit . . . of the community?”8 Is there a positive answer? Does it mean “the work which was given [to them] to do on the earth to further the Kingdom was accomplished?”9 Is it possible that Mother Marianne of Jesus and those who shared both her vision and her

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belief in feeding bodies and saving souls have done what they had set out to do? Is it now time for others to take on the task—perhaps using other methods—and let the sisters’ work serve as their legacy in the annals of American Catholicism? There is, of course, another very practical question: If young women are not entering the community, who will speak for it and its members when they can no longer speak for themselves? The Visitation Sisters have chosen to form a covenant with larger communities located in their vicinity. The premise is quite simple: Other congregations are to speak for the sisters when they “can no longer speak for themselves.”10 This covenant, they hope, will allow the Visitation Sisters to continue their ministry in the Church for as long as they are able. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine have not yet decided on a specific course of action. Whatever they do will be done as a community, with the hope that all members will accept and endorse the final outcome. They are especially concerned that younger members of the community are comfortable with any and all decisions made concerning the future disposition of property, the care of aging and infirm sisters, and the possibility of mergers or covenants with other women religious. As the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine look back on their one hundred years of ministry in religious education and service to the poor, it is clear that their contributions are remembered by those among whom they ministered. Letters—and emails—from those who knew the sisters on Cherry Street, or in South Carolina or Florida, or their children or grandchildren, routinely arrive at the sisters’ residences in Nyack and New York City. All of them, offering anecdotes that describe ways in which the sisters helped those in need, remind the community that, as Mother Marianne taught in the early days of the sisters’ work on the Lower East Side, it was the relationships with their neighbors that enhanced their ministry and allowed them to reach people on more than a superficial level. Even though the social settlements have been closed for many years, and

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the programs and services at Our Lady of the Valley are currently administered by the Daughters of Charity of Emmitsburg, the accomplishments of the sisters live on in the men and women who have passed through their doors, whether to be cared for while their parents worked, to receive religious instruction, or to attend scout meetings, English classes, or music lessons. It is perhaps in this way that their contributions to the Catholic Church in the United States can best be viewed: not in the institutions they built and maintained— for they were not builders—but in the lives of those among whom they lived and worked.

Notes

Introduction 1. Sister Dorothea McCarthy, RCD, interview with author, 24 March 2004. The issue of how to refer to individual women religious in the twentieth century is somewhat problematic. If a sister reverted to her baptismal name, I have consistently referred to her that way but noted her religious name in parentheses or brackets. I use last names to distinguish sisters from other members of the community who may have had the same first name. 2. Barbara Misner, SCSC, “Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies,” in Catholic Women Religious in America, 1790–1850 (New York: Garland, 1988), 14. Carmelites are a contemplative order of nuns. Their ministry is one of prayer for the world and its people. Several sisters involved in this foundation, including Mother Bernardina Teresa Xavier of St. Joseph, left Maryland to enter a convent on the European continent because British law restricted the ability of women to join religious communities. 3. Ibid., 15, 20ff. 4. The original name of Seton’s community, which was modeled on the French Daughters of Charity, was the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph. In 1850, the Emmitsburg community united with their sisters in France, becoming the Daughters of Charity. 5. This model was begun by the Visitandines in Georgetown and would be used many times by women religious dedicated to teaching children from all socioeconomic backgrounds. 6. Eileen Mary Brewer, Nuns and the Education of American Catholic Women, 1860–1920 (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987), 8. In 1727, Ursuline sisters in New Orleans (not yet part of the United States) began operating a school, enrolling 24 boarders and 40 day students. See Emily

178 | Notes to pages 3–7 Clark, Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007). 7. The Filippini sisters, for instance, were asked by Pope Pius X to work among the Italian immigrants in New Jersey. Arriving in August 1910, they began almost immediately to register children for kindergarten and first grade. They opened their school by September of that year. 8. See Brewer, 14. 9. Carlan Kraman, OSF, “Women Religious in Health Care: The Early Years,” in Pioneer Healers: The History of Women Religious in American Health Care, ed. Ursula Stepsis, CSA, and Dolores Liptak, RSM (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 22. 10. See Karen Kennelly, CSJ, “Leadership of Women Religious,” in One Hundred Years of Catholic Education: Historical Essays in Honor of the Centennial of the National Catholic Educational Association, ed. John Augenstein, Christopher J. Kauffman, and Robert J. Wister (Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Educational Association, 2003), 76. 11. See Stephen M. DiGiovanni, Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants: The Relationship Between the Church and the Italians in the Archdiocese of New York, 1885–1902 (Rome: Pontifical Universitas Gregoriana, 1983), 116; and Margaret M. McGuinness, “Body and Soul: Catholic Social Settlements and Immigration,” U.S. Catholic Historian 13 (Summer 1995): 63–75. 12. A number of historians have written on social settlements. See, for example, Allen F. Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967); Judith Ann Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987); and Mina Carson, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). 13. Quoted by Davis, 14. 14. Quoted by Davis, 15. 15. Deborah Skok, More Than Neighbors: Catholic Settlements and Day Nurseries in Chicago, 1893–1930 (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007), 8.

Notes to pages 7–19 | 179 16. Ibid., 9. 17. See Anna C. Minogue, The Story of the Santa Maria Institute (Cincinnati: Santa Maria Institute, 1922). 18. According to Sister Virginia Johnson, RCD, archivist of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, McCarthy suggested the name of the community. 19. Quoted by Dorothy M. Brown and Elizabeth McKeown, The Poor Belong to Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997), 128. 20. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “The Nature and Function of a Catholic Social Settlement,” in How Well Do We Know Our Story (Nyack, N.Y.: Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 2002), Archives of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, Nyack, N.Y. 21. Ibid. 22. Constitutions of the Congregation of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine (Nyack, N.Y.: n.p., 1958), 1. 23. Ibid., 2. 24. “The Nature and Function of a Catholic Social Settlement.” 25. Sister Ursula Coyne, RCD, interview with author, 20 May 2004. 26. Sister Regis Beck, RCD, interview with author, 20 July 2006. 27. Mary L. Kennedy, “My Favorite Sister,” 1988, “Apostolate” file, Religious of Christian Doctrine Papers (hereafter RCD Papers), Fordham University Archives (hereafter FUA).

1. From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side 1. “Miss Gurney a Catholic,” New York Times, 1 December 1897. 2. Marion Frances Gurney, “Dates,” “Search for Faith” file, RCD Papers, FUA. Very little is known about Gurney’s early education. These autobiographical notes are the source of information about her time at Friends Seminary. Founded in 1786, the school is still located on East 17th Street in New York City. 3. Ibid. 4. Quoted by John P. Rousmaniere, “Cultural Hybrid in the Slums: The College Woman and the Settlement House, 1889–1894,” American Quarterly 22 (spring 1970): 51.

180 | Notes to pages 19–23 5. Patricia Ann Palmieri, In Adamless Eden: The Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 145–46. 6. Ibid., 146. 7. Ibid., 148. It is interesting to note that one member of the class, Sophonisba Breckinridge, became a founder of the University of Chicago’s School of Social Work. 8. Ibid. According to Gurney’s Wellesley College transcript, there is no evidence that she completed any social science courses. 9. I am grateful to Wilma Slaight, archivist (retired), Wellesley College, for providing me with a list of Gurney’s courses at Wellesley. 10. Anne Eugenia Moran, “Bible Study at Wellesley College,” The Old Testament Student 7 (June 1888): 308. 11. Ibid., 308–9. 12. Ibid., 309. 13. Marion Gurney to My dear Mamma, 28 February 1886, Gurney Letters, RCD Papers, FUA. 14. Marion Gurney to My Dear Mamma, 14 March 1887, Gurney Letters. 15. Ibid. 16. Marion Gurney to My Dear Mamma, undated (ca. 1886), Gurney Letters. 17. Marion Gurney to My dear Mamma, 14 March 1886, Gurney Letters. 18. Marion Frances Gurney, “Dates.” 19. Marion Gurney to My dear Mamma, 6 December 1885, Gurney Letters. 20. Marion Frances Gurney, “Dates.” It is not known what, if anything, transpired between Gurney and her parents as a result of the letter from the Wellesley faculty. 21. Marion Gurney to My Dear Papa, 8 October 1889, Gurney Letters. 22. Ibid. In this same letter, Gurney informed her father, “If I were a man I should long to be a priest, but this is what is assigned to woman.” 23. Adeline Gurney to My Dear Husband, 3 December 1889, Gurney Letters. In a letter dated 26 March 1889 (eight months earlier), Adeline Gurney expressed a very different opinion on what her daughter would choose. “I think,” she wrote, “she has given up the sisterhood.” Adeline Gurney to My Dear Husband, 26 March 1889, Gurney Letters.

Notes to pages 23–28 | 181 24. Marion L. Gurney to Dear Girls of ’88 (1890–91), “Marion Gurney Wellesley Years” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 25. Sister Agnes O’Connor, “The Foundress” (unpublished paper), 8, “The Foundress” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 26. Marion Gurney to My dear little Sweetheart (Adeline Gurney), 26 September (no year), Gurney Letters. 27. Quoted by Mina Carson, Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 1. For more about Toynbee Hall and Barnett, see Standish Meacham, Toynbee Hall and Social Reform 1880–1914: The Search for Community (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987). 28. See Judith Ann Trolander, Settlement Houses and the Great Depression (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975), 10–11. 29. Daphne Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 63. 30. Carson, 36. 31. The classic autobiography of a settlement worker is, Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House with Autobiographical Notes (New York: Macmillan, 1923). 32. Spain, 27. 33. See Trolander, Settlement Houses and the Great Depression, 13. 34. Carson, 56–57. 35. Quoted by Carson, 57. 36. Charles R. Henderson, Social Settlements (New York: Lentilhon, 1899), 68. 37. Ibid., 67. 38. “A Church Settlement,” New York Times, 5 May 1895. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid. 41. Unidentified clipping [December 1897], RCD Papers, FUA. 42. Ibid. 43. Gurney to My Dearest Mamma, 30 October 1897, Gurney Letters. 44. Ibid. 45. Gurney’s experience was not atypical among women converts to Catholicism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According

182 | Notes to pages 28–30 to historian Patrick Allitt, they were often of Anglo-Saxon descent, better educated, and more socially and politically connected than many who had been born into the Catholic Church. Of English ancestry, Gurney attended Wellesley College, where she established friendships and contacts who, if she chose, could open doors as she moved through life as either a career woman or the manager of a family. See Patrick Allitt, Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), 127. 46. Unidentified clipping (December 1897). 47. Clement M. Thuente, OP, “America’s Pioneer Catholic Settlement House,” Rosary Magazine 63 (October 1923): 2. The article’s title is rather misleading. The first Catholic social settlement, Cincinnati’s Santa Maria Institute, was founded in 1897. St. Catherine of Siena was originally a mission of St. Vincent Ferrer parish. See Thomas J. Shelley, The Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of New York, 1808–2008 (France: Editions du Signe, 2007), 276. 48. Quoted by Mary Elizabeth Brown, “‘. . . The Adoption of the Tactics of the Enemy’: The Care of Italian Immigrant Youth in the Archdiocese of New York during the Progressive Era” (hereafter “Adoption”) in Immigration to New York, ed. William Pencak, Selma Berrol, and Randall M. Miller (Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1991), 112. 49. James B. Curry, “Settlement Work,” in The First American Catholic Missionary Congress, ed. Francis C. Kelly (1909; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1978), 159, 162. See also Theodore Abel, Protestant Home Missions to Catholic Immigrants (New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1933), 103–4. 50. See Thuente, “America’s Pioneer Catholic Settlement House,” 3. 51. Katherine Burton, “Story of a Work That Began Forty Years Ago: The First Catholic Settlement house in the United States,” Catholic News, 3 December 1938, 20. 52. A good deal of work on the nature and scope of Catholic social settlements remains to be done, but see Margaret M. McGuinness, “Response to Reform: The History of the Catholic Social Settlement Movement, 1897–1915” (Ph.D. diss., Union Theological Seminary, 1985); and Deborah Skok, More Than Neighbors: Catholic Settlements and Day Nurseries in Chicago, 1893–1930 (DeKalb, Ill.: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007).

Notes to pages 30–33 | 183 53. Thuente, “America’s Pioneer Catholic Settlement House,” 3. 54. Quoted by Rudolph J. Vecoli, “Prelates and Peasants: Italian Immigrants and the Catholic Church,” in The Other Catholics, ed. Keith R. Dyrud, Michael Novak, and Rudolph J. Vecoli (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 226n35. 55. See Anna C. Minogue, The Story of the Santa Maria Institute (Cincinnati: Santa Maria Institute, 1922). 56. See Abel, 103–4. 57. See Shelley, 275. 58. Burton, 20. 59. Clement W. Thuente, OP, “Charity in New York,” St. Vincent de Paul Quarterly 40 (May 1910): 164. 60. Laurence Franklin, “The Italian in America: What He Has Been; What He Shall Be,” Catholic World 81 (April 1900): 68. See also Aaron I. Abell, American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Social Justice, 1865–1950 (Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1960), 163. 61. Thuente, “America’s Pioneer Catholic Settlement House,” 2. 62. Charlotte Kimball, “An Outline of Amusements Among Italians in New York,” Charities 5 (18 August 1900): 7. 63. Mother Marianne (dictated by), The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, ca. 1919, 3–4. 64. See Allen Davis, Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement 1890–1914, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1984), 15. Davis claims that “the Catholic settlements, which in 1915 numbered 2500 by one count, were more like missions than settlements and contributed very little to social reform.” 65. “Thorns in St. Rose’s Mission Hurt Mission Work So That Miss Gurney Has Quit” (unidentified clipping, 1903), “Fortieth Anniversary of St. Rose Nature and Function of Catholic Settlement” (hereafter “St. Rose’s Settlement”) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 66. Clement Thuente, OP, to Miss Gurney (Mother Marianne of Jesus), 9 February 1924, “St. Rose’s Settlement” file. 67. O’Connor, 36. On April 26, 1903, Burke purchased the magazine and placed it under the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine; Gurney continued to serve as managing editor for a time.

184 | Notes to pages 34–36 68. “New York Normal Training School for Catechists” [1903], “Normal Training School” file, RCD Papers, FUA. One year later, in 1904, classes were being held at Cathedral High School. Very little is known about the Training School. I was unable, for instance, to find a closing date for it. As the CCD became a fixture of the American Catholic landscape, it may be that there was simply no longer a need for the program. 69. “Course for Catechists—Two Years” [1903], “Normal Training School” file. 70. “Fourth Primary Grade,” 27 September 1908, “Normal Training School” file. 71. Louise Teresa Bossong, “Essay Delivered on the Occasion of The Commencement Exercises of the Graduating Class of 1903 of The New York Training School for Catechists,” 28 May 1903, “Normal Training School” file. 72. For a discussion of the development of the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in the United States, see Joseph B. Collins, SS, “Religious Education and CCD in the United States: Early Years (1902–1935),” American Ecclesiastical Review 169 (January 1975): 48–67; and John Bieter, “‘Lay People Can Teach’: Rural Life, Edwin O’Hara, and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1920–1960,” American Catholic Studies 120 (Summer 2009): 53–69. 73. O’Connor, 37–38. 74. St. Lucy’s is located at 344 East 104th Street, and St. Monica’s is on East 79th Street. 75. Quoted by O’Connor, 39. 76. Ibid., 40. 77. [Marion Gurney], “Practical Plans for a Society of Missionary Catechists” (ca. 1908), “Gurney Family” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 78. Ibid. 79. Active religious communities are involved in a variety of ministries, including teaching, nursing, and social work. The ministry of contemplative communities is prayer. 80. [Marion Gurney], “Whether I should undertake a contemplative life,” “Early Correspondence from Marion Gurney to Fr. McCarthy, SJ” file, RCD Papers, FUA. It is not at all clear what “sins” her family had committed.

Notes to pages 37–42 | 185 81. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “Apostolic Life,” “Letters of Mother to Fr. McCarthy after the Establishment of the Congregation” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 82. “Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine,” Church Progress, 16 July 1908. 83. [Marion Gurney], “mem. In re house of christian doctrine,” “Thoughts on the Early Days by Mother Marianne” (hereafter “Thoughts”) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 84. See an untitled note in Gurney’s hand, n.d., “Thoughts” file. 85. Ibid. 86. Mother Marianne to Most Reverend Dear Archbishop [1908], “Two Letters to Archbishop Farley” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 87. “Institute of Christian Doctrine,” Catholic News, June [1908]. 88. It is not clear how each of the four women came to know Gurney, but there is some indication they were involved with the training school for catechists. Only two people signed the document when they first began to live in community. The women who came together clearly wanted to make sure they were ready to make a commitment for life before they signed. I have not been able to locate the names of the women who did not stay in the community. 89. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “Looking Backward: Silver Jubilee Reminiscences,” Mary’s Mission 5 (November 1935): 2. Mary’s Mission, a magazine published by the congregation, was originally entitled Pathfinder but, when the sisters discovered another magazine publishing under that name, they changed the title. They noted that the new title was appropriate even though the sisters were bringing Christ “not to the Chinese of Canton, but to the Chinese of Doyle Street.” See “Nomen vel Nomina,” Mary’s Mission 1 (January 1931): 1–2. 90. The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 16. 91. Ibid., 18. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid, 19. 94. Ibid. 95. The Society of St. Charles, also known as the Scalabrinians, was founded in 1887 by Italian bishop Giovanni Battista Scalabrini to work

186 | Notes to pages 42–47 with Italian immigrants. For a discussion of Leo XIII’s approval of the community, see Mary Elizabeth Brown, Churches, Communities, and Children: Italian Immigrants in the Archdiocese of New York, 1880–1945 (hereafter Churches) (Staten Island, N.Y.: Center for Migration Studies, 1995), 36. 96. Msgr. M. J. Lavelle to Rev. Vincent Jannuzzi, 26 January 1910, St. Joachim’s Church, 035 Box 1, Center for Migration Studies (hereafter CMS), Staten Island, New York. It is probable that Jannuzzi wanted the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, an Italian community founded by Mother Frances Cabrini, to administer the nursery. 97. The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 25. 98. Ibid., 24. In the remaining chapters, I will refer to Marion Gurney as Mother Marianne, a name she used until her death in 1957. 99. Marion Gurney to Rt. Rev. M. J. Lavelle [1910], “Madonna House Day Nursery Kindergar” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 100. “The Madonna House Day Nursery” (typescript), “Madonna House Day Nursery Kindergar” file. 101. Ibid. 102. See Florence D. Cohalan, A Popular History of the Archdiocese of New York (Yonkers, N.Y.: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1983), 182.

2. Fighting to Save the City of New York 1. Marian Gurney to [Rt. Rev. M. J. Lavelle], 17 January 1910, “Madonna House Nursery Kindergar” file. 2. Quoted by Sister Mary Catherine Burke, “Social Welfare Services: A Study of the Social Welfare Services of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine in the Light of the Conceptual Framework Proposed by Harriett M. Bartlett in Analyzing Social Work Practice by Fields: Madonna House, New York City, 1910–1960” (MSW thesis, Fordham University, 1963), 66. 3. See Brown, “Adoption,” 109–25. On Italian immigrants and Catholicism, see, for example, Mary Elizabeth Brown, Churches, Communities, and Children: Italian Immigrants in the Archdiocese of New York, 1880–1945 (hereafter Churches) (Staten Island, N.Y.: Center for Migration Studies, 1995); Nicholas John Russo, “The Religious Acculturation of the Italians in

Notes to pages 47–52 | 187 New York City” (Ph.D. diss., St. John’s University, 1968); and Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1890–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). 4. Brown, “Adoption,” 111. Farley and Hayes were named to the cardinalate in 1911 and 1924, respectively. 5. Quoted by Burke, 8–9. 6. In 1910, when Madonna House opened, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were in the very early stages of their development—Juliette Low would not officially begin the Girl Scouts until 1912. The early scout troops at Madonna House were probably some of the many forerunners of scouting in the United States. See, for example, Edward L. Rowan, To Do My Best: James E. West and the History of the Boy Scouts of America (Exeter, N.H.: Publishing Works, 2007). 7. [Mother Marianne of Jesus, RCD], “Looking Backward: Silver Jubilee Reminiscences,” Mary’s Mission 6 (September 1936): 2. 8. Rev. Vincent Jannuzzi to [?], 18 May 1909, “Correspondence—History St. Rocco’s 1910–1917, St. Jos & Joachim Controversy” file (hereafter “St. Joachim”), RCD Papers, FUA. 9. The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 25. 10. Ibid., 26. 11. Ibid., 28–29. 12. “Statistics—January 1, 1916–January 1, 1917,” “Madonna House 1925–” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 13. “Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 173 Cherry St., from Jan 1st 1915 to Jan 1st 1916,” “Madonna House 1925–” file. 14. For a description of Cherry Street and its environs, see Herbert Asbury, The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld (1927; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008). 15. [History of Madonna House], typescript [1960], “Madonna House Nursery Kindergar” file. 16. It is difficult to determine how Mother Marianne differentiated between clubs and sodalities. It appears that clubs emphasized social and educational activities and that sodalities focused more on religious activities. 17. “Constitution and Rules of the Madonna House Girls Club,” n.d., “Madonna House Early Days” file, RCD Papers, FUA.

188 | Notes to pages 52–56 18. Mother Marianne, “Apostles of Charity,” Catholic Mind 24 (22 April 1926): 158. 19. Joseph McSorley, CSP, “The Church and the Italian Child: The Situation in New York,” Ecclesiastical Review 48 (March 1913): 268–82. An article entitled “Wanted; A Social Settlement Sisterhood,” New Century 20 (4 August 1906), had called for religious communities to get involved in social settlements seven years earlier, four years before Mother Marianne founded the community. 20. Robert Biggs, “What We Are Doing in Settlement Work,” St. Vincent de Paul Quarterly 19 (November 1914): 237–45. Biggs’s list is at least somewhat inaccurate. At this time, for instance, two Catholic settlements in Philadelphia were operated by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary; they are not included in his article. 21. Rev. Vincent Jannuzzi to Right Reverend Mons. M. J. Lavelle, 23 January 1915, “St. Joachim” file. It is not clear why Jannuzzi, a Scalabrinian priest, would ask the archdiocese for an assistant. He may have thought the American Sisters of Christian Doctrine needed a chaplain who spoke English. 22. V. Jannuzzi to Reverend and dear Mother, 18 June 1915, “St. Joachim” file. 23. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “Errors in fact contained in the enclosure” [26 June 1915], “St. Joachim” file. It may be that Jannuzzi, who served as pastor of both St. Joachim’s and St. Joseph’s, resented the sisters’ success with Italian Catholics living on the Lower East Side. This would explain his dislike for Mother Marianne and the community. I am grateful to Mary Elizabeth Brown for this suggestion. 24. Ibid. 25. Brother Francis to Reverend Father Jannuzzi, 16 April 1917, St. Joachim Church (hereafter SJC), 035 Box 1, CMS. 26. Rev. Vincent Jannuzzi to Rt. Rev. and Dear Msgr. Lavelle, 20 April 1917, SJC, 035 box 1, CMS. 27. Marianne of Jesus to Right Reverend dear Monsignor, 26 April 1917, “St. Joachim” file. St. Joseph’s became a parish in 1924. See Shelley, Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of New York, 234. 28. M. J. Lavelle to Patrick Cardinal Hayes, 1 December 1928, Archives of the Archdiocese of New York (hereafter AANY). Mother Marianne wrote in

Notes to pages 56–60 | 189 her diary, “It seems that he [Jannuzzi] has resigned and gives us as his reason that we have made it impossible for him to succeed in his parish. How I do not know.” See [Diary, Mother Marianne], 1929, RCD Papers, FUA. 29. Sister Marianne of Jesus to Monsignor Thomas G. Carroll, 26 January 1929, AANY. It is not clear whether Mother Marianne is referring to the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, founded by Frances Cabrini, or the Missionary Zelatrices of the Sacred Heart, the religious community that staffed and continues to staff St. Joseph’s School. Jannuzzi worked with both communities. 30. [Agreement], 21 February 1929, AANY. 31. Sister Mary Elizabeth to Right Reverend Michael J. Lavelle, 18 April 1939, “St. Joachim” file. 32. Brown, Churches, 158. Jannuzzi died two years after returning to Italy. 33. Mother Marianne of Jesus to the Members of the St. Aloysius Club, 12 April 1918, “Madonna House St. Aloysius Club” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 34. See untitled typescript [Columbus Volunteers], [ca. 1916], “Madonna House Columbus Vol.” file, RCD Papers, FUA; and the untitled brochure recruiting members, [ca. 1918], “Madonna House Columbus Vol,” file. 35. [Columbus Volunteers], [ca. 1916]. 36. “C.V.N.Y. Columbus Day, 1917,” [October 1917], “Madonna House Columbus Vol.” file. 37. Jane Addams wrote extensively on peace, and this adversely affected her reputation. See, for example, Newer Ideals of Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1907); and Peace and Bread in Time of War (New York: Macmillan, 1922). For further discussion, see Allen F. Davis, American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams (London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford, 1973), 223, 228–31. 38. “C.V.N.Y. Columbus Day, 1917.” 39. Ibid. 40. Untitled brochure recruiting members, [ca. 1918]. 41. Sr. Marianne of Jesus to “My dear Boys,” 29 October 1918, “Madonna House Columbus Vol” file. 42. Ibid. 43. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “Looking Backward: Silver Jubilee Reminiscences,” Mary’s Mission 8 (June 1938): 5.

190 | Notes to pages 60–64 44. Ibid., 6. 45. Sister Marianne of Jesus to “Commanding Officer,” 14 March 1918, “Correspondence Concerning Work of M. Gurney & Assoc. at Institute of Christian Doctrine” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 46. See [Mother Marianne of Jesus, RCD], “Looking Backward: Silver Jubilee Reminiscences,” Mary’s Mission 8 (May 1938): 1. 47. A clipping from an identified newspaper entitled “Mrs. Charles Emory Smith Renounces Society and Prepares to Become Nun” documents the story of Henrietta Nichols Smith’s conversion to Catholicism and her desire to enter the Sisters of Christian Doctrine. See Sr. M. Joseph, Necrology, RCD Papers, FUA. See also “Noted Beauty Now Worker among Poor,” [New York Evening World], 27 May 1920, Sr. M. Joseph, Necrology. 48. “Declaration of Sister M. Joseph,” “Elberon” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 49. St. Joseph’s House, Elberon, Annals, “Elberon” file. 50. National Catholic War Council to St. Joseph’s House, Elberon, N.J., 10 November 1919, “Elberon” file. 51. Mother Marianne of Jesus to Lt. Colonel A. E. Anderson, 12 July 1920, “Madonna House Columbus Vol” file. 52. Sr. Marianne of Jesus to Right Reverend dear Bishop, 26 June 1920, “Elberon” file. 53. Sr. Marianne of Jesus to John J. O’Brien, 9 February 1921, “Elberon” file. 54. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “Looking Backward: Silver Jubilee Reminiscences,” Mary’s Mission 8 (May 1938): 3–4. 55. Sr. Marianne of Jesus to John J. O’Brien, 9 February 1921. 56. [Sister Pauline Orlando, RCD], “Open[ing] of Madonna House 173 Cherry Str New York June 29, 1910,” “Madonna House Opening Day” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 57. The Church of the Transfiguration is located on 29 Mott Street, New York City. At the time, its parishioners were primarily Italian and Italian American, but Chinese immigrants also lived in the area. 58. [Sr. Pauline Orlando, RCD], [Chinese Apostolate], 1912, “Madonna House Chinese Apostolate” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 59. [Mother Margaret, RCD], “Parish Visiting in Mott St. for the Chinese,” “Madonna House Chinese Apostolate” file.

Notes to pages 64–70 | 191 60. Mother Marianne of Jesus to Right Reverend John J. Dunn, 10 December 1932, “Madonna House Chinese Apostolate” file. 61. “Summary of Work among the New York Chinese by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine,” n.d., “Madonna House Chinese Apostolate” file. 62. Mass, of course, was celebrated in Latin. The homily, however, was preached in the language of the congregation. 63. See “Summary of Work among the Spanish of the Lower East Side Water Front,” “Madonna House Spanish Ministry” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 64. Ibid. 65. Sr. M. Rosaria, RCD, [Reminiscences], “Sisters’ Writings about Rev. Mother” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 66. [Mother Marianne of Jesus, RCD], “Looking Backward: Silver Jubilee Reminiscences,” Mary’s Mission 8 (February 1938): 2. 67. Ibid.; Sr. Marianne of Jesus to My dear Boys, 29 October 1918, “Madonna House Columbus Vol” file. 68. [Mother Marianne of Jesus], “Looking Backward,” Mary’s Mission 8 (February 1938): 3.

3. Neighbors and Teachers 1. Mother Marianne to Right Reverend Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle, 6 December 1920, “St. Joachim” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 2. Ibid. 3. [Mother Marianne] to Miss Mary Carty, 19 December 1920, Sister Delores, Necrology, RCD papers, FUA. 4. Mother Marianne to Right Reverend Monsignor Michael J. Lavelle, 6 December 1920. It is hard to know, of course, what the success rate was for Protestant home missionaries working to convert Italian Catholics. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. See, for example, “Concert under the Patronage of His Grace the Most Reverend Archbishop of New York for the Benefit of the Charitable and So-

192 | Notes to pages 70–75 cial Activities of the Madonna House,” 28 November 1919; and “Madonna House Bridge,” 7 March 1947. Programs for these events are located in the financial files of the Archives of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, Nyack, New York. The practice of collecting was continued until the late 1960s. I am indebted to Sister Angela Palermo and Sister Virginia Johnson for their explanation of the circumstances under which the sisters collected. 10. [Sr. Bernadette Saitta, RCD], to Mother Elizabeth, 10 March 1957, “Sisters Writings About Rev. Mother Attestations” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 11. “Statistical Report, 1926,” “Madonna House 1925–” file, RCD Papers, FUA. Pageants played an important role in settlement-house programs. “Advocates presented pageants as a way to bring art and democracy together—creating vibrant and progressive communities by uniting citizens in public dramatizations of American ideals.” By the 1920s, church leaders were also intrigued with pageants, viewing them as a means of religious education. See Tisa J. Wenger, “The Practice of Dance for the Future of Christianity: ‘Eurythmic Worship’ in New York’s Roaring Twenties,” in Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630–1965, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 229. 12. Mother Marianne to Honorable John F. Hylan, 13 June 1923, “Ladyfield Peekskill NY” file, RCD Papers, FUA. Hylan served as mayor of New York City from 1918 to 1925. 13. Ibid. 14. [Mother Marianne of Jesus] to The Friends of Madonna House, [ca. 1924], “Ladyfield Peekskill, NY” file. 15. “Memo. Re Proposed Country House, Sisters of Christian Doctrine,” “Letters to Msgr. Lavelle from Mother re: Marydell Prop” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 16. Ibid. 17. Whalen died before he had finished paying for the property, and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine assumed the mortgage payments. Sister Angela Palermo, RCD, interview with author, 5 August 2009. 18. Marydell Annals, 17 July 1924, RCD Papers, FUA. 19. Marydell Annals, 30 August 1924.

Notes to pages 76–82 | 193 20. See Marydell Annals, 13 January 1925, 25 January 1925. 21. “Annals Madonna House, Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine” (hereafter AMH), 12 September 1929, RCD Papers, FUA. 22. Ibid., 5 November 1929. 23. Ibid., 13 November 1929. 24. Mother Marianne of Jesus to Patrick Cardinal Hayes, 15 September 1930, “Ave Maria House Early History” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 25. “Memorandum for Monsignor Carroll,” 17 November 1930, “Ave Maria House Statistics” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 26. “The Evolution of a Playground,” Mary’s Mission 6 (September 1936): 5–9. 27. “Field Notes,” Mary’s Mission 8 (September 1938): 8–9. 28. AMH, 10 January 1930. 29. “Shadows,” Mary’s Mission 1 (January 1931): 10. 30. “Children Line Up for Hot Lunch,” New York Sun, 21 July 1931, n.p. This article was found in a file labeled “Newspaper Clippings,” RCD Papers, FUA. The community is erroneously referred to as the Sisters of Divine Doctrine. 31. [Green Parrot], n.d., “Other” file, RCD Papers, FUA. According to the Madonna House Annals, about twelve women were employed in the shop in early 1930. MHA, 13 February 1930. 32. “The Social Value of the First Communion Class,” Mary’s Mission 2 (April 1932): 1–3. All of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine with whom I spoke agreed that Mother Marianne wrote most of the articles appearing in Mary’s Mission. 33. “Men and Machines,” Mary’s Mission 3 (March 1933): 1. 34. Ibid., 2. 35. Ibid. 36. “Catholic Order Marks 25th Year,” New York Times, 11 November 1935, 3. 37. “Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine Jubilee,” Catholic News, 16 November 1935, 7. 38. The High School of the College of St. Francis Xavier is now Xavier High School. 39. “Catholic Order Marks 25th Year.

194 | Notes to pages 82–87 40. “Delivered by the Very Rev. William Cashin at St. Patrick’s Cathedral—Nov. 10, 1935—for our Silver Jubilee,” “Various Liturgies: Vows, Jubilees, Deaths” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 41. Ibid. 42. Ibid. 43. “Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine Jubilee,” Catholic News, 16 November 1935. 44. “December 1931 to November 1935 [Madonna House Statistics],” “Madonna House, 1925–” file. 45. “December 1931 to November 1935 [Madonna House Statistics],” “Madonna House, 1925–” file; Marianne of Jesus to The Very Rev. William Cashin, 3 November 1935, “Correspondence Msgr. Cashin” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 46. “December 1931 to November 1935 [Madonna House Statistics].” 47. Alice Berretti to Rev. Mother Marianne of Jesus, 5 May 1935, Sister Mary Cecily, Necrology, RCD Papers, FUA. 48. “Catholic Settlement 1937,” “Madonna House 1925–” file. 49. [Hedi Katz, Memorandum], [1936], “Madonna House—Music School” file, RCD Papers, FUA. It is interesting to note that there is no record of any correspondence between the Sisters of Christian Doctrine and Lillian Wald and the Henry Street Settlement. Neither the RCD Papers nor the Lillian Wald Papers, housed at Columbia University, contain any indication of communication between the two groups. 50. Sister Elizabeth to Mother Marianne, 14 April 1936, “Madonna House—Music School” file. Mother Marianne’s instructions are written on the back of Sister Elizabeth’s letter to her. 51. “Cecilia Music School of Madonna House, Agreement between the House and the Director untill [sic] June 1937,” “Madonna House—Music School” file. 52. “Summary of Work among the New York Chinese by the Sisters of Christian Doctrine,” “Madonna House Chinese Apostolate” file. 53. M. J. Lavelle to Mother Marianne, 10 February 1938, “Norwich” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 54. “We Go West,” Mary’s Mission 8 (March 1938): 11. 55. [Mother Marianne of Jesus] to Reverend and Dear Father, 13 September 1939, “Letters in Defense of our Srs.” file, RCD Papers, FUA. Her correspondent’s letters are unfortunately lost.

Notes to pages 87–93 | 195 56. [Mother Marianne of Jesus] to Reverend Walter A. Sinnott, 2 August 1941, “Norwich—Assisi House St. Bartholomew’s 1938–1941” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 57. Ibid. Very little is known about the problems the sisters faced in Norwich; apparently a number of accusations were made but never validated. 58. Mary Fabyan Windeatt, “Our Lady’s House on Cherry Street,” The Torch (July–August 1942): 16–17, 29. The article claimed eighteen nationalities were represented, but only thirteen are listed. 59. Ibid. 60. “A Day at the Zoo,” Mary’s Mission 13 (December 1943): 11. 61. “Field Notes,” Mary’s Mission 12 (October 1942): 11–12. 62. “Settlement Questionnaire 1944,” “Catholic Charities 1925–” file, RCD Papers, FUA. Paid workers at Madonna House included coaches, cooks, dishwashers, a nursery-school teacher, and a secretary. 63. “SISTERS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE, War Activities—1942–43,” “Madonna House 1925–,” file. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. “Settlement Questionnaire,” 1944, “Ave Maria House Statistics” file. 67. Ibid. 68. [Marianne of Jesus], “Juvenile Delinquency,” Mary’s Mission 13 (January 1943): 2. 69. Ibid., 3. 70. Ibid., 9. 71. Quoted by Judith Trolander, Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 154. 72. Ibid. 73. [Afternoon and Evening Schedule], 1954–55, “Madonna House 1925–” file. This document is untitled. Other schedules exist for various years. 74. See “Settlement Questionnaire, 1946,” “Settlement Questionnaire, 1947,” “The Greater New York Fund—1950 Yearly Report of Participating Agencies on Operations and Standards,” and “Settlement House Annual Report for Catholic Charities—1956,” “Catholic Charities 1925–” file. 75. “Settlement House Annual Report for Catholic Charities—1956,” “Catholic Charities 1925–” file. For the number of sisters and volunteers

196 | Notes to pages 93–98 working at the settlement see “Settlement House Annual Report for Catholic Charities 1953,” “Catholic Charities 1925–” file. 76. “Institute of Christian Doctrine, Inc.,” n.d., “Madonna House” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 77. “Annual Report, Ave Maria House, 1952,” Ave Maria House Statistics file. 78. Sister Mary Alma [Virginia Johnson], “A Few Remembrances of Reverend Mother Marianne of Jesus,” [11 September 1957], “Notes on Mother Marianne’s last illness” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 79. Sister Ursula Coyne, RCD, to Dear Sisters, 24 September 1958, “1957–1963 Mother Ursula Cong. Correspondence” (hereafter “Ursula 1957–1963”) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 80. “Settlement House Annual Report for Catholic Charities—1958,” “Catholic Charities 1925–” file. For a discussion of Puerto Rican Catholics and the Archdiocese of New York, see, for example, Ana-Maria DiazStevens, Oxcart Catholicism on Fifth Avenue: The Impact of the Puerto Rican Migration upon the Archdiocese of New York (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993). 81. Sister Ursula Coyne, RCD, “Reports of the Mother General,” Sister Ursula Coyne Papers, RCD Papers, FUA. 82. AMH, 1 November 1960. 83. Joseph Toscano to Sister Angela [Palermo], RCD, 27 August 1985, “Madonna House Written Remarks” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 84. Isabelle J. Gambino to Sr. Regina, 30 May 1985, “Apostolate file,” RCD Papers, FUA. 85. MHA, 8 November 1960. 86. Council minutes, 4 August 1967, Mother General Ursula Coyne, Minutes—Council Meetings 1957–1970, RCD Papers, FUA. 87. Mother M. Ursula to Most Rev. John J. Maguire, 29 August 1967, “Various Offices of the Archdiocese” file, Sister Ursula Coyne Papers.

4. Settlements Go South 1. George Lewis Smith to Very Rev. Mother-General Marianne, 14 December 1939, “Horse Creek Valley Mission, 1940–1971” (hereafter HCVM) file, RCD Papers, FUA.

Notes to pages 99–102 | 197 2. Emmet M. Walsh, “Horse Creek Valley,” Mary’s Mission 11 (February 1941): 6–7. 3. For a discussion of textile mills in South Carolina, see G. O. Robinson, The Character of Quality: The Story of Greenwood Mills: A Distinguished Name in Textiles (Columbia, S.C,: R. L. Bryan, 1964). 4. See Rev. John J. Lawlor, CM, “Women, Evangelists to a Valley,” Miraculous Medal (Spring 1999): 4–6. 5. “Break Ground for Settlement House,” [February 1941], scrapbook entitled “Catholics Building Welfare Center in Horse Creek Valley” (hereafter “Welfare Center”), RCD Papers, FUA. 6. James Dotson, “Church Softened Painful Grip of Depression in Poor Valley,” Augusta Chronicle, 25 May 1991. 7. Msgr. George Smith to Mother Marianne, 19 January 1940, “St. Mary’s Aiken South Carolina” (hereafter SMASC) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 8. Rev. George Smith to Mother Marianne, 10 July 1940, SMASC file. In a subsequent letter, Smith informed her that the archdiocese refused to approve McCaffrey’s donation. See Rev. George Smith to Mother Marianne, 19 August 1940, SMASC file. 9. George Smith to Mother Marianne, 14 December 1939, HCVM file. 10. “Our Lady of the Valley Catholic Church Fiftieth Anniversary: Our History 1946–1996.” See also a clipping from an unidentified newspaper entitled “Sisters Have Left for Horse Creek Valley,” [February–March 1940], in scrapbook entitled “Mary’s Mission and Our former Maryknoll Seminarians at the Valley now Maryknoll Priests” (hereafter Maryknoll scrapbook), RCD Papers, FUA. 11. George Smith to Mother Marianne, 14 December 1939, HCVM file. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. “Excerpt from Report of Bishop Walsh to the American Board of Catholic Missions. 1 July 1940,” Clipping, Maryknoll scrapbook. 15. Smith to Mother Marianne, 10 August 1940, SMASC file. 16. Nina J. Nidiffer, “Catholic Church Has 50-Year Anniversary,” Aiken Standard, 19 May 1991, 3–4. 17. “A Devil Is Loose in the Valley,” Mary’s Mission 10 (April 1940): 6. 18. “N.C.C.S.,” [n.d.], “Horse Creek Valley, South Carolina” (hereafter HCVSC) file, RCD Papers, FUA.

198 | Notes to pages 102–6 19. “A Devil Is Loose in the Valley,” 11. 20. Our Lady of the Valley Annals, 2 May 1940, RCD Papers, FUA. It is not clear whether the sisters thought Mother Marianne had invented the stories or simply included some true vignettes the sisters thought would offend the people with whom they were working. See “A Devil Is Loose in the Valley,” 9–12. 21. [Mother Marianne to Sister Dolores], [1940], Sister Dolores, Necrology. 22. Mother Marianne to Sister Dolores, “Monday Night” [1940], Sister Dolores, Necrology. 23. Mother Marianne to Sister Dolores, 17 February 1941, Sister Dolores, Necrology. 24. “Handicraft and Welfare Centre Being Erected,” [February 1941], “Welfare Center.” 25. “Article for N.C.C.S.” 26. Mother Marianne to My Dears, 4 June 1940, “Correspondence, Mother Marianne” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 27. Mother Marianne to Sister Dolores, “Monday Night” [1940]. 28. Mother Marianne to Sister Dolores, 2 May 1940, Sister Dolores, Necrology. 29. Ibid. 30. Mother Marianne of Jesus to My Dear Child [Dolores], 26 May [1940], Sister Dolores, Necrology. 31. Marianne of Jesus to My Dears, 4 June 1940, Sister Dolores, Necrology; and Mother Marianne of Jesus to My Dear Child [Dolores], 26 May [1940]. 32. Marianne of Jesus, RCD, to My Dear Child [Sister Dorothea McCarthy], 4 November 1944; and Mother Marianne of Jesus to ex-Invalids, [January 1945], both in “Correspondence from Mother Marianne 1941–54” (hereafter MM 1941–54) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 33. Marianne of Jesus, RCD, to Sister M. Dorothea, 18 February 1945, MM 1941–54 file. 34. See St. Mary’s Aiken Annals, 4 April 1940, and 8 April 1940, RCD Papers, FUA. The annals regularly refer to the sisters’ presence at Mass at St. Angela’s. After Mass, they had coffee and sometimes shared a light breakfast with the sisters living in the convent.

Notes to pages 106–10 | 199 35. Horse Creek Valley Mission Annals, 31 July 1946, RCD Papers, FUA. 36. “Break Ground for Settlement House.” 37. Mother Marianne, “Looking Forward,” Mary’s Mission 9 (November 1939): 10–11. 38. “History of St. Mary Help of Christian Church and the Aiken Missions” (Aiken, S.C.: n.p., 1942), 89. Smith convinced the mill owners to donate ten acres of land for the welfare center. 39. “Field Notes,” Mary’s Mission 12 (September 1942): 12. 40. See Our Lady of the Valley Annals, 12 November 1940, 1 July 1942, 5 July 1942, and 1 October 1942. 41. “Horse Creek Valley Mission, Warrenville, S.C. Report: April 1943– February 1944,” HCVSC file. 42. Jo Ann Harpring, “Irish Traveler Says ‘Words Stronger Than Walls Can Ever Be,’” Catholic Banner, 28 April 1983, 5, 12. Murphy Village was named after Rev. Joseph J. Murphy, the first pastor of Our Lady Queen of Peace parish. 43. Rev. George Lewis Smith, “From Generation to Generation: Colorful Story of the Irish Travelers,” The Bulletin of the Catholic Laymen’s Association of Georgia [1943–1947], Scrapbook, Horse Creek Valley Center, RCD Papers, FUA. The other clippings in this section of the scrapbook are from the mid-1940s. See also, “The Irish Travelers,” Mary’s Mission 13 (December 1943): 8–9. 44. “Horse Creek Valley Kindergarten Tots Receive ‘Diplomas,’” clipping [1947], Scrapbook, Horse Creek Valley Center. 45. “Horse Creek Valley Mission Annals,” 18 September 1945. 46. See Our Lady of the Valley Annals, 1 January 1945 and 15 April 1945. 47. Our Lady of the Valley Annals, 24 June 1947. 48. “It was hot over in Horse Creek Valley, but kids have merry time in nuns’ pool,” Augusta Chronicle, [2 August 1953], n.p., clipping in Maryknoll scrapbook. 49. Nidiffer, 4. The pool was filled in 1979 when it was determined that the repairs needed were too expensive. 50. Our Lady of the Valley Annals, 15 October 1946. 51. Ibid., 20 February 1947.

200 | Notes to pages 111–17 52. See Ibid., 3 December 1942. On that day, the annalist noted sixteen were on the bus for Sunday Mass. 53. Ibid., 2 January 1945, 26 December 1945. 54. Ibid., 30 December 1946. 55. Ibid., 24 February 1947, 5 March 1947. 56. “Address by Sr. M. Dorothea to Schools in So. Carolina—1945,” HVCSC file. 57. Mother Marianne to My Dear Children, 12 February 1945, MM 1941–54 file. 58. “Horse Creek Valley Mission, Langley, S.C. Jan. 1–Dec. 31, 1951,” HCVSC file. 59. Sister Lorraine Gosnell, RCD, interview with author, 25 September 2005. 60. Sister Angela Reames, RCD, interview with author, 21 November 2004. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid. 63. See Mother M. Ursula, RCD, to Rt. Rev. Msgr. George Lewis Smith, 26 August 1959, and his reply dated 10 October 1959, HCVM file. 64. Sister Mary of Mercy to Rev. Dear Mother [Ursula], 20 February 1958, HCVM file. 65. Sister Mary of Mercy to Rev. Dear Mother [Ursula], 19 January [19]59, HCVM file. 66. “Conference on Catechetics,” 24 October 1960, Scrapbook, “Mixed Valley, Rock Hill etc.,” RCD Papers, FUA. 67. Mother Marianne to Sister Dolores, [1940], Sister Dolores, Necrology. 68. Sister Mary Ursula Coyne, RCD, to Most Rev. Paul J. Hallinan, “Memorandum Concerning Horse Creek Valley Welfare Center, Our Lady of the Valley Parish,” June 1959, HCVM file. 69. Ibid. See also her letters to Hallinan dated 27 February 1961 and 15 May 1961, “Diocese of Charleston, S.C.” (hereafter DCSC) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 70. Most Rev. Paul J. Hallinan to Mother M. Ursula, 14 March 1961, DCSC file. 71. Most Rev. Paul J. Hallinan to Rev. Peter K. Berberich, 24 February 1960, DCSC file.

Notes to pages 117–23 | 201 72. Mother M. Ursula, RCD, to Most Reverend. Paul J. Hallinan, 23 March 1961, HCVM file. 73. Father [Louis] Tonero to Rev. Mother Ursula, RCD, 25 February 1966, HCVM file. 74. See Mother M. Ursula, RCD, to Rt. Rev. Msgr. George Lewis Smith, 23 August 1968 and 22 August 1969, HCVM file. 75. “Highlights for the Year Sept. 1967–June 1968,” HCVSC file. 76. “Our Lady of the Valley Convent-House Profile,” 1969, HCVSC file. 77. “Our Lady of the Valley Convent, Langley, SC,” House Profile 1970, “House Profiles (Short Annals),” RCD Papers, FUA. 78. Ibid. 79. Sister Dorothea McCarthy, RCD, to Most Reverend Ernest L. Unterkoefler, 6 July 1970, HCVSC file. 80. Marigene Washington to Dear Reverend Mother [Dorothea McCarthy], 13 August 1970, HCVSC file. 81. Sister M. Dorothea, RCD, to Mrs. Marigene Washington, 17 August 1979, HCVSC file. 82. Sister M. Dorothea, RCD, to Reverend Louis V. Tonero, 5 August 1970, HVCSC file. 83. Father Tonero to Reverend Mother Dorothea, RCD, 25 August 1970, HCVSC file. 84. See Sr. Christopher [Sheila], RCD, to S. Dorothea, 25 September 1970, 19 October 1979, 17 March 1971, and 22 March 1971, “Correspondence from Srs.” file, Sister Dorothea McCarthy Papers, RCD Papers, FUA. 85. Sr. Christopher [Sheila], RCD, to Sr. Dorothea, 11 September 1970, “Correspondence from Srs.” file.

5. More than Settlement Houses 1. St. Rita’s merged with Sacred Heart in 1969. The church was used as a day-care center and neighborhood clinic by the Diocese of Orlando until 1980, when the building was condemned. 2. The RCD Papers contain a number of letters from bishops and pastors inviting the Sisters of Christian Doctrine to minister within their dioceses. Small numbers meant that Gurney could respond in the affirmative to very few requests. It appears she found a way to help Driscoll because

202 | Notes to pages 123–28 she had desired to begin a ministry among African Americans for some time prior to the pastor’s request. 3. “Minutes of General Council Meetings Feb. 1931–July 1950,” 22 August 1941, RCD papers, FUA. 4. Noted on letter from Rev. J. H. Driscoll, CSsR, to Mother Marianne, 22 January 1941, “New Smyrna, FLA. 1941–1965” file, RCD papers, FUA. 5. Sr. Rose Frazzett[a], RCD, “New Smyrna” “Diocese of Orlando” file, RCD papers, FUA. 6. Ibid. 7. “Field Notes,” Mary’s Mission 11 (May 1941): 12. 8. “A Southern Madonna House,” Mary’s Mission 11 (September 1941): 10. 9. I have found no documentation that would shed light on why the sisters did not go to Selma. 10. Sister Angela Reames, RCD, interview with author, 21 November 2004. 11. Sr. Genevieve Stachurski, RCD, “New Smyrna,” “New Smyrna, FL” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 12. Mother M. Ursula, RCD, to Sr. Rose [Frazzetta], 16 April 1963, “New Smyrna, FLA. 1941–1965” file. 13. Driscoll to Mother Marianne, 22 January 1941 (note on letter). 14. Tevlin presumably knew about the Sisters of Christian Doctrine because they had been ministering in Horse Creek Valley for more than a decade. 15. See Michael Rukstelis, “Bringing iT aLL bACK hOME [sic]: a brief history of st. mary’s catholic church rock hill, south carolina,” 3–5, St. Mary (Rock Hill) Parish Files, Diocese of Charleston Archives (hereafter DCA). 16. Ibid., 54. 17. “Our Friends,” Common Sense (December 1955): 3. 18. “Sisters Arrived,” Common Sense (October 1955): 1. 19. Rukstelis, 54. 20. “Rock Hill St. Mary’s Parish,” St. Mary (Rock Hill) Parish Files, DCA. 21. Rukstelis, 54–55. 22. Ibid., 56. 23. “Grand Success,” Common Sense (March 1956): 3–5.

Notes to pages 128–34 | 203 24. “44 Years,” Common Sense (April 1956): 6–8. 25. Quoted by Rukstelis, 57. 26. Ibid., 57–58. 27. “Religious Vacation School,” Common Sense (May–June 1957): 6. 28. For information on Catholic women religious teaching at African American colleges and universities, see Amy Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), especially chapter 6. It is not clear how this sister came to teach at Friendship Junior College. I have found no indication that she was involved with the National Placement Bureau described by Koehlinger. 29. “House Profile,” [1970], House Profiles (Short Annals) file. 30. George Lundy, “A Smile from Bannon Hall,” Extension (June 1971): 6. 31. Ibid., 9. 32. Sr. Rose, RCD, “Celebrating and Sharing,” Educating in Faith (January 1973): 10–13. 33. Very Rev. Thomas R. Duffy to Reverend David D. Valtierra, CO, 8 February 1978, folder TC1-51, DCA. 34. Sr. Marie de Lourdes to Rev. David Valtierra, CO, 22 March 1978, folder TC1-51, DCA. 35. Ibid. 36. Sr. Marie de Lourdes to Most Reverend Ernest L. Unterkoefler, 22 March 1978, folder TC1-51, DCA. 37. Memorandum, 29 March 1978, folder TC1-51, DCA. 38. [Parishioners of St. Mary’s] to Most Rev. E. L. Unterkoefler, 10 May 1978, folder TC1-51, DCA. There is no indication that Unterkoefler responded to this letter. It is marked “file.” 39. “Contract between the PARISH OF ST. PETER’S, BEAUFORT, SOUTH CAROLINA AND THE CONGREGATION OF THE SISTERS OF OUR LADY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE,” 1961, St. Peter (Beaufort) Parish Files, DCA. 40. Annals, Beaufort, 22 October 1962, RCD Papers, FUA. 41. Ibid., 22 November 1963, 25 November 1963. 42. “Self-Evaluation St. Peter’s Convent, Beaufort, SC,” [1968], “St. Peter’s Beaufort, SC” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 43. Sister Mary Alma, RCD, to Most Rev. Ernest L. Unterkoefler, 8 April 1968, St. Peter (Beaufort) Parish Files, DCA.

204 | Notes to pages 134–38 44. Annals, Beaufort, 24 May 1964, 2 June 1964, 31 May 1965, 16 June 1965. 45. Mother M. Ursula to Most Reverend Ernest L. Unterkoefler, 10 June 1969, folder 721.40, DCA. 46. Annals, Beaufort, 8 September 1963. 47. Ibid., 20 September 1964. 48. Ibid., Beaufort, 10 January 1965. 49. Sister Maria Alma, RCD, to Most Reverend Ernest L. Underkoefler, 8 April 1968. 50. “Beaufort Beat,” 1 June 1969, St. Peter (Beaufort) Parish Files, DCA. 51. Ibid. It is clear that the sisters understood the plight of the area’s migrant workers. The writer of this newsletter said: “Thus far this is one of the most promising years for the tomato and cucumber crops and hopefully the harvesters will reap some of the benefits. It is very important that we have no real heavy rain for the next three weeks. (Only light ones, Lord, please!)” 52. Ibid. 53. Most Reverend Ernest L. Unterkoefler to Sister Virginia, 4 June 1969, St. Peter (Beaufort) Parish Files, DCA. 54. See Sister Marie de Lourdes, RCD, to Most Reverend Ernest Unterkoefler, 17 April 1977; Sr. Marie de Lourdes to Rev. Albert Faase, 20 April 1977; and Sister Marie de Lourdes, RCD, to Most Reverend Ernest L. Unterkoefler, 6 May 1977, Folder TC1-51, DCA. 55. The Sisters of Christian Doctrine sometimes administered religiouseducation programs in parishes because the sisters responsible for staffing the school refused to teach CCD. In 1969, sisters teaching CCD at St. Ursula’s parish in Mount Vernon, New York, for instance, contended that the school sisters showed little concern for the CCD program. “Facilities begrudgingly given. Conflict of activities usually means CCD forfeits room space, auditorium, etc. No priority given to Religious Education Program.” See “St. Ursula’s Parish,” [1969], “St. Ursula’s Mt. Vernon, NY” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 56. Sister Ursula to Msgr. Harold F. Jordan, 24 June 1969, “Mother Ursula’s Correspondence St. Ambrose, Elkton, FLA” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 57. [St. Ambrose, Elkton, FL Annals], 15 September 1952, RCD Papers, FUA.

Notes to pages 138–42 | 205 58. Ibid., 22 January 1953. 59. Ibid., 23 September 1957. 60. Ibid., 12 February 1953. 61. David Gibson, “St. Brigid’s Parish: A Pilgrim Church For An Immigrant People,” in Catholics in New York: Society, Culture, and Politics, 1808–1946, ed. Terry Golway (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 66. 62. “Profile St. Brigid’s Apartment,” [1968], “St. Brigid’s NYC” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 63. “St. Brigid’s Experimental Parish Progress Report 1967–1968,” “St. Brigid’s NYC” file. 64. “Report of Sisters of Christian Doctrine on St. Brigid’s Parish,” May 1969, “St. Brigid’s NYC” file. 65. “House Profile St. Brigid—Apt. 1968–1969,” “House Profiles (Short Annals)” file. 66. See “Report of Sisters of Christian Doctrine on St. Brigid’s Parish,” “House Profile St. Brigid—Apt. 1968–1969,” and “Religious Instruction Parish Program at St. Brigid’s” (n.d.), “St Brigid’s NYC” file. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, the Sisters of Christian Doctrine ministered in several other locations, including Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Concord, New Hampshire, where they administered the religious-education program and served as members of the parish staff. In 1987, Sisters Joan Anzalone, Agatha Cullen, and Maria Magdalena Fontan began what would become a five-year ministry in the Dominican Republic. A trained nurse, Sister Agatha established a pharmacy and offered medical care to those in need; the other sisters were involved in pastoral ministry. 67. See the Service Record of Sister Rose Frazzetta, “Service Records of Deceased Srs” file, Archives of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, Nyack, NY. 68. The parish was finally closed in 2007. See Gibson, 66. 69. “Save-a-Life Farm,” 1924, “Ladyfield, Peekskill, NY” file. 70. Save-a-Life Farm, brochure, n.d., “Ladyfield, Peekskill, NY” file. 71. The motherhouse and novitiate were named Marydell, and it was logical that the camp would be known by the same name. 72. Mother Marianne to Rev. Bryan T. McEntegart, 15 June 1929, “Ladysfield, Peekskill, NY” file.

206 | Notes to pages 143–48 73. Sister M. Dolores, “(Personal) Interesting Experiences in the Life of a Sister of Christian Doctrine—written to wile away time in a hospital,” June 1936, Sister Dolores, Necrology. 74. Ibid. 75. “The Seven-Fold Flame: The Camp Marydell Closing Ceremony,” Mary’s Mission 2 (September 1932): 9. 76. “Camp Memories,” Mary’s Mission 3 (September 1933): 11. 77. Helen DiRienzo Blackshaw and Toni DiRienzo Simpson, “Camp Marydell” (n.d.), “Camp Marydell Miscellaneous” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 78. Doris Ann Cheehotka McQuade, “Marydell Alumnus Update Sheet,” “Camp Marydell Memories Sister Michael” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 79. Annals, Camp Marydell, September 1974, RCD Papers, FUA. 80. “Minutes of 1987 Chapter of Affairs and Election” [1987 Chapter], RCD Papers, FUA. 81. Sister Angela Palermo to Friends, Staff, and Patrons of Marydell, February 1989, General Correspondence 1989–1990, Sister Angela Palermo Papers, RCD Papers, FUA. 82. “Minutes of the Council Meeting of March 10, 1991,” Gen. Council Minutes Sr. Marie de Lourdes, Pres. 1990–94, RCD Papers, FUA. 83. “Council Meeting Minutes,” 18 July 1980.

6. Changes and Continuities 1. Sister Maria Alma [Virginia], RCD, to Sr. Hildegard, “Notes on Mother Marianne’s Last Illness,” 17 February 1958, “Notes on Mother Marianne’s last illness” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 2. “Class Notes,” Wellesley Alumnae Magazine, May 1957, 232. 3. Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993), 19. 4. Sister Judith Ann Eby, “‘A Little Squabble Among Nuns’? The Sister Formation Crisis and the Patterns of Authority and Obedience among American Women Religious, 1954–1971” (Ph.D. diss., St. Louis University, 2000), 40. 5. Quoted by Marjorie Noterman Beane, From Framework to Freedom: A History of the Sister Formation Conference (Lanham, Md.: University

Notes to pages 148–54 | 207 Press of America, 1993), 7. For a full discussion of the significance of Sister Madaleva’s address, see Beane, 7ff. 6. Ibid., 4. 7. Ibid., 3. 8. Margaret Fitzer, SSL, foreword, in Beane, n.p. 9. Ibid., 97. 10. Sr. Mary Assumpta, “Attributes to [sic] Rev. Mother,” [1957], “Sisters’ Writings About Rev. Mother Attestations” file. 11. [Patricia Anderson], [Thoughts on Mother Marianne], n.d., “Information Recorded on Sisters’ Remembrances of Mother Marianne” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 12. Mother Marianne to Right Reverend Monsignor Joseph A. Nelson, 23 April 1955, “Response to Msgr. Nelson re Nature of Work of Community . . .” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 13. [Anderson], [Thoughts on Mother Marianne]. 14. Ibid. 15. Mother Mary Ursula, RCD, to Dear Sisters, 26 February 1957, Ursula 1957–63 file. 16. Ibid. 17. Minutes, 21 February 1957, “Minutes—Council Meetings 1957–1970, Rev. Mother Ursula Coyne” (hereafter Council 1957–1970), RCD Papers, FUA. There were ten novices at this time. See Register of the Novitiate, RCD Archives, Nyack, N.Y. 18. Minutes, 21 February 1957, Council 1957–1970. 19. “Minutes of Meetings of the General Council,” 12 November 1950, RCD Papers, FUA. The group—and the sisters—lost their fight to prevent the Tappan Zee Bridge from being built. 20. “Minutes of Meetings of the General Council,” 28 April 1952. 21. Minutes, 19 May 1957, “Council 1957–1970.” 22. Minutes, 21 January 1958, Chapter of Elections and Affairs 1958, RCD Papers, FUA. 23. Minutes, 15 August 1958, Council 1957–1970. 24. Ibid., 4 June 1958. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 7 August 1958. 27. Sister Mary Ursula Coyne, RCD, interview with author, 20 May 2004.

208 | Notes to pages 155–59 28. Ibid. 29. Sister Angela Palermo, RCD, and Sister Virginia Johnson, RCD, interview with author, 5 August 2009. 30. Mother Mary Ursula, RCD, “Office of the Superior General,” 30 January 1958, Ursula 1957–63 file. 31. Minutes, 21 January 1958, Chapter of Elections and Affairs 1958. 32. Ibid., 18 August 1959. 33. “General Chapter Meeting 1964,” Friday, 29 May 1964 2 p.m., RCD Papers, FUA. 34. Minutes, 9 July 1963 and 30 October 1963, Council 1957–1970. 35. Quoted by Elizabeth Kuhns, The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 139. The Sisters of Loretto were the first American religious community to abandon the habit completely in favor of a simple business suit. See Kuhns, 156. 36. Several sisters have remarked to me that the debate over changing the habit was the most contentious discussion on the subject of adapting to the modern world. I do not doubt this, but have found no written records to confirm their opinions. 37. Sister Mary Ursula Coyne, RCD, interview with author, 20 May 2004. 38. Mother M. Ursula, RCD, to Dear Sisters, 3 July 1964, “Mother Ursula’s Corresp. to Cong. 1964–1969” (hereafter Ursula 1964–1969) file, RCD Papers, FUA. 39. Sister Dorothea McCarthy, RCD, interview with author, 24 March 2004. 40. Minutes, 31 December 1968, “Special Gen. Chapter 1968–69” (hereafter 1968 Chapter), RCD Papers, FUA. 41. “General Chapter Meeting 1964,” Friday, 29 May 1964, 2 p.m. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. “Meeting of the Local Superiors with Mother Ursula and the General Council,” 14 August 1966, Council 1957–1970. 46. Minutes, 2 August 1968, 1968 Chapter. 47. Sister Rose Vermette, RCD, interview with author, 22 July 2004. 48. Minutes, 9 August 1968, 1968 Chapter.

Notes to pages 159–65 | 209 49. See Minutes, 6 August 1968, 8 August 1968, and 9 August 1968, 1968 Chapter. 50. Minutes, 12 August 1968, 1968 Chapter. 51. Sister Rose Vermette, RCD, interview with author, 22 July 2004. 52. Memorandum, “To: His Excellency Bishop Cooke,” 24 September 1967, “Correspondence–Chancery” file, Sister Ursula Coyne Papers, RCD Papers, FUA. 53. Sister Mary Ursula to Dear Sisters, 3 October 1969, Ursula 1964– 1969 file. 54. “Advantages and Disadvantages of Small Group Living,” 13 June 1970, “Small Group Living” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 55. [Addenda], [24 June 1970] and “Minutes Voting June 29, 1972,” Minutes of 1970 Chapter of Elections 1972 Chapter of Affairs, RCD Papers, FUA. 56. Minutes, 12 August 1968, 1968 Chapter. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of the closing of the missions in New Smyrna, Florida, and Rock Hill, South Carolina. 57. Minutes, 23 July 1969, and 31 July 1969, 1968 Chapter. 58. [Submitted by Sister Dorothea McCarthy], “Report on Congregational Matters from June 1972–May 1974” (hereafter Congregational Matters), “Addresses to Cong. 1968–1974” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 59. Sign 57 (March 1978): 54. I was unable to determine if there was any response to the ad. 60. Congregational Matters. 61. Mother Mary Ursula, RCD, to Dear Sisters, 24 October 1960, Ursula 1957–63 file. 62. Sister Mary Ursula Coyne, RCD, interview with author, 20 May 2004. 63. Sister Dorothea McCarthy, RCD, interview with author, 24 March 2004. 64. Sister Angela Palermo, RCD, “State of the Congregation Message December, 1989 Chapter,” minutes of 1989 Chapter of Affairs and Elections, RCD Papers, FUA. 65. To All Sisters, from Sister Marie de Lourdes, 5 June 1991, “Marie de Lourdes Memorandums to Srs.1990–1992” (hereafter “Marie de Lourdes Memorandums”) file, RCD Papers, FUA. In 1971, several sisters of Chris-

210 | Notes to pages 165–73 tian Doctrine moved into an apartment building on Grand Street in Manhattan—not far from where Madonna House was located. 66. Sister Angela Palermo to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Alfonse D’Amato, and Benjamin Gilman, 29 November 1989, “Newsletters,” Sister Angela Palermo Papers. 67. [Sister Rose Vermette], Annals, 16 January 1991, “Rose Vermette Annals 1991” file, RCD Papers, FUA. 68. Sister Marie de Lourdes and Council, Memorandum, 18 October 1991, “Marie de Lourdes Memorandums” file. There are many sources to consult for a discussion of the option for the poor, but see, for example, Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1971), and Daniel G. Groody, ed., The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). 69. Congregation of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, Constitutions and Directory (n.p.: Congregation of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, [1989]), 2–3. 70. Ibid., 2. 71. Ibid., 3. 72. Ibid., 1. The booklet erroneously claims that St. Rose’s was the first Catholic settlement in the United States. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 6. 75. Ibid., 22–23.

Epilogue 1. “We have a new home,” One to One Learning Newsletter (April 2008), 2. For more information on One to One, see www.one2one-learning .org. 2. Ibid. 3. [Sister] Virginia [Johnson] to Dear Sisters, 22 September 2008, “Marydell Faith & Life Center Collaboration with Sparkill Dominicans,” Archives of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, Nyack, New York. 4. See their website, Dominican Life USA, http://www.domlife.org/ 2009Stories/FoundingEvent_Peace.html (9 October 2009).

Notes to pages 174–75 | 211 5. At present, there are no plans to merge with either one larger community or several smaller groups of women religious. 6. See Ruth Jackson, SVM, “Becoming Smaller: Making Decisions as Numbers Decrease in Religious Life,” Occasional Papers, LCWR [Leadership Conference of Women Religious] (Winter 2009): 22. 7. Ibid., 23. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid.

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Selected Bibliography

Archives Center for Migration Studies, Staten Island, New York Diocese of Charleston Archives, Charleston, South Carolina Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine Papers, Fordham University Archives Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine Archives, Nyack, New York Wellesley College Archives, Wellesley, Massachusetts

Books and Articles “A Church Settlement,” New York Times, 5 May 1895. Abel, Theodore. Protestant Home Missions to Catholic Immigrants. New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1933. Abell, Aaron I. American Catholicism and Social Action: A Search for Justice, 1865–1950. Garden City, N.Y.: Hanover House, 1960. Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House, with Autobiographical Notes. New York: Macmillan, 1923. ———. Newer Ideals of Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1907. ———. Peace and Bread in Time of War. New York: Macmillan, 1922. Allitt, Patrick. Catholic Converts: British and American Intellectuals Turn to Rome. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977. Anderson, M. Christine. “Catholic Nuns and the Invention of Social Work: The Sisters of The Santa Maria Institute of Cincinnati, Ohio, 1897 through the 1920s.” Journal of Women’s History 12 (Spring 2000): 60–88. Asbury, Herbert. The Gangs of New York: An Informal History of the Underworld. 1927. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008.

214 | Selected Bibliography Augensein, John, Christopher J. Kaufman, and Robert J. Wister, eds. One Hundred Years of Catholic Education: Historical Essays in Honor of the Centennial of the National Catholic Educational Association. Washington, D.C.: National Catholic Educational Association, 2003. Beane, Marjorie Noterman. From Framework to Freedom: A History of the Sister Formation Conference. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1993. Bieter, John. “‘Lay People Can Teach’: Rural Life, Edwin O’Hara, and the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, 1920–1960.” American Catholic Studies 120 (Summer 2009): 53–69. Biggs, Robert. “What We Are Doing in Settlement Work.” St. Vincent de Paul Quarterly 19 (November 1914): 237–245. Bisceglia, John. Italian Evangelical Pioneers. Kansas City, Mo.: BrownWhite-Lowell Press, 1948. Brewer, Eileen Mary. Nuns and the Education of American Catholic Women, 1860–1920. Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1987. Briggs, Kenneth. Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns. New York: Doubleday, 2006. Brown, Dorothy, and Elizabeth McKeown. The Poor Belong To Us: Catholic Charities and American Welfare. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Brown, Mary Elizabeth. Churches, Communities, and Children: Italian Immigrants in the Archdiocese of New York, 1880–1945. Staten Island, N.Y.: Center for Migration Studies, 1995. ———. “‘. . . The Adoption of the Tactics of the Enemy’: The Care of Italian Immigrant Youth in the Archdiocese of New York during the Progressive Era,” in Immigration to New York, ed. William Pencak, Selma Berrol, and Randall M. Miller (Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1991). Burke, Sister Mary Catherine. “Social Welfare Services: A Study of the Social Welfare Services of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine in the Light of the Conceptual Framework Proposed by Harriett M. Bartlett in Analyzing Social Work Practice By Fields: Madonna House, New York City, 1910–1960.” M.S.W. thesis, Fordham University, 1963. Burton, Katherine. “Story of a Work That Began Forty Years Ago: The First Catholic Settlement House in the United States.” Catholic News, 3 December 1938.

Selected Bibliography | 215 Carson, Mina. Settlement Folk: Social Thought and the American Settlement Movement, 1885–1930. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. “The Christian Doctrine Convention.” Catholic News, 1 January 1910. “The Church and Social Work.” The Catholic World 66 (December 1897): 393–404. Clark, Emily. Masterless Mistresses: The New Orleans Ursulines and the Development of a New World Society, 1727–1834. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. Coburn, Carol K., and Marth Smith. Spirited Lives: How Nuns Shaped Catholic Culture and American Life, 1836–1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Cohalan, Florence D. A Popular History of the Archdiocese of New York. Yonkers, N.Y.: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1983. Collins, Joseph B., SS “Religious Education and CCD in the United States: Early Years (1902–1935).” American Ecclesiastical Review 169 (January 1975): 48–67. Cummings, Kathleen Sprows. New Women of the Old Faith: Gender and American Catholicism in the Progressive Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009. Curran, Robert Emmett. Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Shaping of Conservative Catholicism. New York: Arno Press, 1978. Davis, Allen F. Spearheads for Reform: The Social Settlements and the Progressive Movement, 1890–1914. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. ———. American Heroine: The Life and Legend of Jane Addams. London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Diaz-Stevens, Ana-Maria. Oxcart Catholicism on Fifth Avenue: The Impact of the Puerto Rican Migration upon the Archdiocese of New York. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. DiGiovanni, Stephen M. Michael Augustine Corrigan and the Italian Immigrants: The Relationship between the Church and the Italians in the Archdiocese of New York, 1885–1902. Rome: Pontifical Universitas Gregoriana, 1983. “Diocesan Bureau For the Care of Italian, Slave, Ruthenian, and Asiatic Catholics in America.” Ecclesiastical Review 48 (February 1913): 221–22.

216 | Selected Bibliography Dolan, Jay P. The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985. Dotson, James. “Church Softened Painful Grip of Depression in Poor Valley.” Augusta Chronicle, 25 May 1991. Dryud, Keith R., Michael Novak, and Rudolph J. Vecoli, eds. The Other Catholics. New York: Arno Press, 1978. Eby, Sister Judith Ann. “‘A Little Squabble among Nuns’?: The Sister Formation Crisis and the Patterns of Authority and Obedience among American Women Religious.” Ph.D. dissertation, St. Louis University, 2000. Ebaugh, Helen Rose Fuchs. Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993. Ellis, John Tracy. American Catholicism. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969. Fitzgerald, Maureen. Habits of Compassion: Irish Catholic Nuns and the Origins of New York’s Welfare System, 1830–1920. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Franklin, Laurence. “The Italian in America: What He Has Been: What He Shall Be.” Catholic World 81 (April 1900): 67–80. Gavin, Donald P. The National Conference of Catholic Charities, 1910–1960. Milwaukee: Bruce Press, 1962. Golway, Terry, ed. Catholics in New York: Society, Culture, and Politics, 1808–1946. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. Groody, Daniel G., ed. The Option for the Poor in Christian Theology. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Gutiérrez, Gustavo. A Theology of Liberation. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1971. Harpring, Jo Ann. “Irish Traveler Says ‘Words Stronger Than Walls Can Ever Be.’” The Catholic Banner, 28 April 1983. Henderson, Charles R. Social Settlements. New York: Lentilhon, 1899. Hennesey, James, SJ. American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Holden, Arthur C. The Settlement Idea: A Vision of Social Justice. New York: Macmillan, 1922.

Selected Bibliography | 217 Jackson, Ruth, SVM. “Becoming Smaller: Making Decisions as Numbers Decrease in Religious Life.” Occasional Papers, LCWR [Leadership Conference of Women Religious] (Winter 2009): 22–23. Kelly, Francis C., ed. The First American Catholic Missionary Congress. 1909. New York: Arno Press, 1978. Kerby, William J. “New and Old in Catholic Charity.” Catholic Charities Review 3 (January 1919): 8–13. ———. The Social Mission of Charity: A Study of Points of View in Catholic Charities. New York: Macmillan, 1924. Kimball, Charlotte. “An Outline of Amusements among Italians in New York.” Charities 5 (18 August 1900): 1–8. Koehlinger, Amy L. The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the 1960s. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007. Kuhns, Elizabeth. The Habit: A History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns. New York: Doubleday, 2003. Lawlor, Rev. John J., CM. “Women, Evangelists to a Valley.” Miraculous Medal (Spring 1999): 4–6. Linkh, Richard M. American Catholicism and European Immigrants (1900– 1924). Staten Island, N.Y.: Center for Migration Studies, 1975. Maffly-Kipp, Laurie F., Leigh E. Schmidt, and Mark Valeri, eds. Practicing Protestants: Histories of Christian Life in America, 1630–1965. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. Marianne, Mother. “Apostles of Charity.” Catholic Mind 24 (22 April 1926): 151–60. McAvoy, Thomas T., CSC. A History of the Catholic Church in the United States. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. McGinley, A. A. “A New Field for the Convent Graduate in the Social Settlement.” Catholic World 71 (June 1900): 396–401. McGuinness, Margaret. “Body and Soul: Catholic Social Settlements and Immigrants.” U.S. Catholic Historian 13 (Summer 1995): 63–75. ———. “Response to Reform: The History of the Catholic Social Settlement Movement, 1897–1915.” Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1985. ———. “Urban Settlement Houses and Rural Parishes: The Ministry of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine, 1910–1986.” U.S. Catholic Historian 26 (Winter 2008): 23–42.

218 | Selected Bibliography McSorley, Joseph, CSP. “The Church and the Italian Child: the Situation in New York.” Ecclesiastical Review 48 (March 1913): 268–82. Meacham, Standish. Toynbee Hall and Social Reform, 1880–1914: The Search for Community. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Miller, Randall M., and Thomas D. Marzik, eds. Immigrants and Religion in Urban America. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977. Minogue, Anna C. The Story of the Santa Maria Institute. Cincinnati: Santa Maria Institute, 1922. Misner, Barbara, SCSC. “Highly Respectable and Accomplished Ladies:” Catholic Women Religious in America 1790–1850. New York: Garland, 1988. Moran, Anne Eugenia. “Bible Study at Wellesley College.” Old Testament Student 7 (June 1888): 308–11. Nidiffer, Nina J. “Catholic Church Has 50-Year Anniversary.” Aiken Standard, 19 May 1991. Oakes, Sister Mary Paulinus, RSM, ed. Angels of Mercy: An Eyewitness Account of Civil War and Yellow Fever by a Sister of Mercy: A Primary Source by Sr. Ignatius Summer, RSM. Baltimore: Cathedral Foundation Press, 1998. Oates, Mary J. The Catholic Philanthropic Tradition in America. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1995. O’Grady, John. Catholic Charities in the United States: History and Problems. New York: Arno Press, 1930, 1971. ———. The Catholic Church and the Destitute. New York: Macmillan, 1929. ———. “The Catholic Settlement Movement.” Catholic Charities Review 15 (May 1931): 1934–44. Orsi, Robert. The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1890–1950. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985. Palmieri, Patricia Ann. In Adamless Eden: the Community of Women Faculty at Wellesley. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Pencak, William, Selma Berrol, and Randall M. Miller, eds. Immigration to New York. Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1991. Picht, Werner. Toynbee Hall And the English Settlement Movement. London: G. Bell and Sons, 1914. “The Religious Conditions of Italians in New York.” America 10 (21 March 1914): 558–59.

Selected Bibliography | 219 Riis, Jacob A. How the Other Half Lives: Studies among the Tenements of New York. Rev. ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1957. Robinson, G. O. The Character of Quality: The Story of Greenwood Mills: A Distinguished Name in Textiles. Columbia, S.C.: R. L. Bryan, 1964. Rose, Sister, RCD. “Celebrating and Sharing.” Educating in Faith (January 1973): 10–13. Rousmaniere, John P. “Cultural Hybrid in the Slums: the College Woman and the Settlement House, 1889–1894.” American Quarterly 22 (Spring1970): 45–66. Rowan, Edward L. To Do My Best: James E. West and the history of the Boy Scouts of America. Exeter, N.H.: Publishing Works, 2007. Russo, Nicholas John. “The Religious Acculturation of the Italians in New York City.” Ph.D. dissertation, St. John’s University, 1968. Seager, L. B. “A Plea for Social Settlements.” America 16 (11 November 1916): 118–19. Schuler, Paul J. “The Reaction of American Catholics to the Foundations and Early Practices of Progressive Education in the United States, 1892–1917.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 1970. Shelley, Thomas J. The Bicentennial History of the Archdiocese of New York, 1808–2008. France: Editions du Signe, 2007. Skok, Deborah. More Than Neighbors: Catholic Settlements and Day Nurseries in Chicago, 1893–1930. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2007. Spain, Daphne. How Women Saved the City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001. Stepsis, Ursula, CSA, and Dolores Liptak, RSM, eds. Pioneer Healers: The History of Women Religious in American Health Care. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Scudder, Vida. “Experiments in Fellowship Work with Italians in Boston.” Survey 22 (3 April 1908): 47–51. Taylor, Graham. “Social Settlement, The Church and Religion,” Survey 30 (5 July 1913): 453–54. Thuente, Clement M., OP, “America’s Pioneer Catholic Settlement House.” Rosary Magazine 62 (October 1923): 1–5. ———. “Charity in New York.” St. Vincdent de Paul Quarterly 40 (May 1910): 160–64.

220 | Selected Bibliography Tomasi, Silvano M. Piety and Power: The role of the Italian Parishes in the New York Metropolitan Area, 1880–1930. Staten Island, N.Y.: Center for Migration Studies, 1975. Trolander, Judith Ann. Professionalism and Social Change: From the Settlement House Movement to Neighborhood Centers, 1886 to the Present. New York: Columbia University Press, 1987. ———. Settlement Houses and the Great Depression. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1975. Tucker, Margaret. “Catholic Settlement Work—An Analysis.” Catholic Charities Review 3 (December 1918): 304–8. Von Drehle, David. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003. Wall, Barbra Mann. Unlikely Entrepreneurs: Catholic Sisters and the Hospital Marketplace, 1865–1925. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2005. “Wanted; A Social Settlement Sisterhood.” New Century 20 (4 August 1906): 4. Ware, Ann Patrick, ed. Midwives of the Future: American Sisters Tell Their Story. Kansas City, Mo.: Leaven Press, 1985. Watson, William. “The Sisters of Charity, the 1832 Cholera Epidemic in Philadelphia and Duffy’s Cut.” U.S. Catholic Historian 27 (Fall 2009): 1–16. “We have a NEW HOME,” One to One Learning (April 2008): 2. Woods, Robert A., and Albert J. Kennedy, eds. Handbook of Settlements. New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1911. ———. The Settlement Horizon: A National Estimate. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1922.

Index

active life, Gurney on, 37 Adams, Henry A., 26 Addams, Jane, 6–7, 58, 92 administration: Gurney and, 104–6; Horse Creek Valley and, 116–17 advocacy: Horse Creek Valley and, 119; Madonna House and, 50, 72–73; St. Joseph House and, 61–62; St. Mary’s parish and, 129 African Americans: and Gulf War, 166; in Horse Creek Valley, 118–19; Oblates of Providence and, 3; in St. Mary’s parish, 126–32; in St. Peter’s parish, 133–34; in St. Rita’s parish, 123–26 Allitt, Patrick, 182n45 Americanization: Madonna House and, 56–60, 88; national parishes and, 47–48; One to One Learning and, 171–72 Anderson, Patricia Leonard (de Sales), 150 Anderson, Ronald P., 133 Andover House, 25 Anheuser-Busch, 100 anti-Catholic bigotry, 63, 101, 104, 111 Anzalone, Joan, 141, 205n66

Archer, Annunciata, 13 Arnold, Anna (Mrs. William), 26–28 arts, Madonna House and, 85, 192n11 Ave Maria Basketball Club, 90 Ave Maria Guild, 90 Ave Maria House, 10, 77–79, 90, 91f, 94, 97 Bach, Anne-Marie, 100, 103, 126, 129 baptismal names, 159–60 Barbato, Alix, 152 Barnett, Samuel, 24 Beck, Regis, 12–13 Berberich, Peter K., 117 Berretti, Cecily (Alice), 74 f, 83–84, 87, 95–97 Berretti, Lucilla, 74 f, 133–34 Besant, Walter, 24 Biggs, Robert, 52 birth control, 103 bishops: and national parishes, 47–48; and settlement houses, 7, 30. See also clerical authority; dismissals Blauvelt, Dominican Sisters of, 172 Borders, William, 125 Bossong, Louise Teresa, 34

222 | Index Boy Scouts, 187n6; Ave Maria House and, 77; Horse Creek Valley and, 110, 119; Madonna House and, 57, 93; St. Mary’s parish and, 128; St. Rita’s parish and, 124; and World War II, 89 bread line. See food aid Breckinridge, Sophonisba, 180n7 Brown, de Chantal, 161 Brownies: Horse Creek Valley and, 119; Madonna House and, 52, 88; St. Mary’s parish and, 127–28; and World War II, 89 Burke, B. Ellen, 33 Burke, Patricia (Catherine), 126 Callahan, Ellen (Imelda), 127 Camp Marydell, 10, 12, 85, 122, 141–45 canon law, 154 Carmelites, 2, 177n2 Carroll, John, 2 Carroll, Thomas, 56 Carty, Dolores (Mary C.), 68, 75; and Camp Marydell, 142–43; and Horse Creek Valley, 100, 102–3, 105 Casey, Winifred, 129 Cashin, William, 82–83 Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, 170 Catholic Charities, 71, 92, 142 Catholic Church: and integration, 125; and settlement houses, 5–8, 28–30. See also bishops CCD. See Confraternity of Christian Doctrine Cecilia School of Music, 81, 85, 89

census, 105 Chatham Gardens, 94 Cherry Hill, 40–42, 51 Chicago Commons, 25 Chinese immigrants, 64, 86, 89–90 Christian Brothers, 56 Church Settlement, 26 civil rights movement, 125, 129, 134 clerical authority: Madonna House and, 49, 52–57. See also bishops; Catholic Church; dismissals clubs: Madonna House and, 51–52, 79, 85–86; St. Mary’s parish and, 128; term, 187n16; World War II and, 90 Cohen, Wilbur, 92 Coit, Stanton, 6, 24 Coleman, Margaret, 40, 60, 63–64 collecting, 12, 53–54, 70, 154–55, 192n9 Columbus Volunteers, 57–60, 89 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD), 158; establishment of, 34– 35; Gurney and, 4; Horse Creek Valley and, 120–21; St. Brigid’s parish and, 140–41; teacher refusals and, 204n55 Connolly, James B., 33–35 Considine, Marie de Lourdes, 131–32, 136–37, 165–66 contemplative life, Gurney on, 36 converts: in Horse Creek Valley, 112; women, characteristics of, 181n45 Coppo, Ernesto, 63 Corrigan, Michael, 18, 32, 34–35, 47 costs. See finances

Index | 223 Coyne, Mary Ursula, 12, 74 f; and Ave Maria House, 97; and governance, 154; and habit, 156–57; and Horse Creek Valley, 114, 116–18; and housing, 161; and St. Rita’s parish, 125; succession of, 94, 137, 150–52 Cronin, Sheila (Christopher), 121 Crosby, Immaculata, 75, 90, 152 Cuban missile crisis, 133 Cub Scouts: Horse Creek Valley and, 119; St. Mary’s parish and, 127 Cuccioli, John, 59 Cullen, Agatha, 205n66 curriculum: New York Normal Training School and, 34; St. Brigid’s parish and, 140 Curry, James B., 29 D’Amato, Alfonse, 166 D’Andrea, Michael, 144 Daughters of Charity, 176, 177n4 day nursery: at Madonna House, 42–43, 46–47, 50, 88, 93. See also kindergarten Dennis, Clare, 100, 103 dismissals: from St. Bartholomew’s, 87; from St. Mary’s parish, 130–32; from St. Rose’s Settlement, 33 Dolan, Mary Loretta, 13, 75 Dolan, Timothy M., 169 Dominican Republic, 205n66 Dominican Sisters: of Blauvelt, 172; merger possibilities, 173–74; of Sparkill, 16, 171–72 Dooley, Ethyll, 8–9

Driscoll, J. H., 123 Duffy, Thomas, 130, 132 Dunn, John, 64 Durant, Henry Fowle, 19 East Side House, 6, 25 ecumenical movement, 119, 135 education: Horse Creek Valley and, 108, 108f; Madonna House and, 93; Wellesley and, 19; for women religious, 148–49, 153, 156. See also religious education Elberon house. See St. Joseph’s House Elder, William, 30 elderly sisters, care of, 172–73, 175 Emergency Work Bureau, 79 entertainments, 70, 191n9 environmental issues, and disposition of property, 173 Faase, Albert, 136 Farley, John, 38–39, 42, 47 Filippini sisters, 178n7 finances: and clerical authority, 53–54; Coyne and, 154–55; Horse Creek Valley and, 100, 116–17; Madonna House and, 70–71; St. Brigid’s and, 139; and settlement houses, 7 Finnegan, Charles, 57 Foery, Walter, 87 Foley, Julia, 40 Fontan, Maria Magdalena, 205n66 food aid: Horse Creek Valley and, 107; Madonna House and, 71–72, 79, 84, 96 Fordham University, 153

224 | Index Frazzetta, Rose, 97, 124, 129–30, 141, 165 Friends’ Seminary, 19, 179n2 fundraising, 70, 191n9. See also collecting Gambino, Isabelle, 96 Gargan, Anne, 138 Gavit, John, 6 Gilman, Benjamin, 166 Girls Club, 51–52 Girl Scouts, 187n6; Horse Creek Valley and, 110, 119; Madonna House and, 52, 57, 93; St. Mary’s parish and, 127–28; St. Rita’s parish and, 124; and World War II, 89 Golden Star Club, 86 Gordon, Clarence, 6 Gorman, John, 76 Gosnell, Lorraine (Georgina), 113, 170 Great Depression, 77–87 Greek immigrants, Madonna House and, 85 The Green Parrot, 79 Gregg, William, 99 Gulf War, 166 Gurney, Adeline, 19, 21–23, 33, 180n23 Gurney, Asa, 19, 21–22 Gurney, Marianne of Jesus (Marion), 18–45, 43f; and administration, 104–6; background of, 19; Cashin and, 82; conversion of, 18, 27–28; death of, 94, 147, 149–52; education of, 19–21; and Horse Creek Valley, 100, 102–3, 116;

and Madonna House, 46–67, 75; and mission, 4, 9, 68–69, 150–51; and St. Bartholomew’s, 86–87; and St. Rita’s parish, 123; and St. Rose’s Settlement, 7, 28–33; and settlement houses, 7, 23–28; Toscano and, 96; and vocation, 36–37; and wedding, 76 habit, 105, 154, 156–57, 208n35 Hallinan, Paul, 116–17 Hayes, Patrick, 47–48, 56, 77, 81, 86, 150 Healy, Aimee, 124 Healy, Grace (Gratia), 133 Henderson, Charles, 25 Hennessey, Margaret Regina (Raphael), 113, 124 Hoffman, Fidelis, 133 Holy Cross Center, 135–36 homeless, Madonna House and, 50 Horse Creek Valley, 10, 98–121; Handicraft and Welfare Center, 107; legacy of, 120; numbers served, 103, 107, 119; staffing difficulties at, 116–21 hospital administration, 3 housing issues: reforms and, 160–61; and retirement, 165; St. Peter’s parish and, 136 Hull House, 6–7, 24, 92 Hylan, John F., 72 Immaculata Club, 51, 85, 90 Immaculate Conception club, 53 Immaculate Heart of Mary parish, 205n66

Index | 225 immigrants: Catholic Church and, 5, 28–29; Madonna House and, 47; in New York City, 44; One to One Learning and, 171–72; Protestant settlements and, 30–31; service to, 3, 8; settlement houses and, 24–25. See also Americanization industrialization, settlement houses and, 6, 24 Infant Jesus Sodality, 85 influenza epidemic, 10, 66–67 Institute of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 37–38 integration, in Horse Creek Valley, 118–19 Irish immigrants, St. Brigid’s and, 139 Irish Travelers, 108–9 Italian immigrants: Catholic Church and, 5, 29; and Chinese, 64; and Columbus Volunteers, 58; Madonna House and, 47; at St. Bartholomew’s, 86; Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine and, 41 Jannuzzi, Vincent, 42, 189n32; and Gurney, 49, 186n96, 188n21, 188n23; and Madonna House, 52–57 Johnson, Virginia (Alma), 16, 133–35, 137, 170–72 Katz, Hedi, 85 Kennedy, John F., 133 Keogh, Helen (Magdalen), 12, 124, 152 kindergarten: at Horse Creek Valley, 108f, 109, 119–20; at St. Mary’s parish, 127, 129

King, Martin Luther Jr., 118, 134 Kings of Constantine, 85 Ku Klux Klan, 63, 101 Ladyfield, 142 Lambs Club, 51 Lammers, Elizabeth, 40, 85, 96, 152; and Ave Maria House, 77, 79; and Berretti, 83–84; and habit, 157; and Horse Creek Valley, 100 Langley Mill Company, 107 La Pietra, Cecilia, 171 Latino community, St. Peter’s parish and, 134 Lavelle, Michael J., 46, 53, 55–56, 68 League of the Sacred Heart, 53 legacy: of Camp Marydell, 144; of Horse Creek Valley, 120; of Madonna House, 96–97; of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 175–76 Leo XIII, pope, 5 Lincoln, Abraham, 138 Little Crusaders, 85 Little Flower Club, 81, 85 Little Madonna House, 123–26 living as neighbors: Barnett and, 24; Cashin on, 82; Marianne of Jesus on, 9; reforms and, 160–61; St. Brigid’s parish and, 140–41; St. Helena’s Island and, 135–36; St. Rita’s parish and, 124; settlement houses and, 25; Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine and, 9–10 Low, Juliette, 187n6

226 | Index Lower East Side, 91; Cherry Hill, 40–42, 51 Madonna House, 10, 46–97; activities of, 8, 57, 68, 88–89; closing of, 92–97, 154; day nursery, 42–43, 46–47, 50, 88, 93; establishment of, 9, 49–52; Great Depression and, 78–87; legacy of, 96–97; need for, 46; numbers served, 50, 68, 71–72, 79, 83–84; silver jubilee of, 81–84 Maguire, John J., 97, 155 mail, 158–59 Maloney, Charles, 113 Manuzza, Antoinette, 76 Marian Clubs, 128 Marianne of Jesus. See Gurney, Marianne of Jesus (Marion) marriage, Madonna House and, 50, 76, 83 Marydell, 150, 169–70; Convent, 170; establishment of, 73–76; Faith and Life Center, 170; One to One Learning, Inc., 171–72. See also Camp Marydell Mary’s Mission, 80, 102, 185n89, 193n32 Mastropietro, Pasquale, 55 McCaffrey, Joseph, 100 McCarthy, Dorothea (Veronica), 1, 137; changes and, 152, 154, 157, 160, 164; and community name, 179n18; death of, 169; and Horse Creek Valley, 111–12, 119–20; and Madonna House, 93; and religious education, 163; and vocations, 113

McCarthy, Francis, 7, 36 McCarthy, John, 170 McEntegart, Bryan, 71 McSorley, Joseph, 52 Meehan, Thomas, 29 Mendez, Veronica, 134 Merceret, Amelie, 40, 70 merger possibilities, 172–74 Midland Valley. See Horse Creek Valley migrant families, St. Peter’s parish and, 134, 204n51 military personnel: Madonna House and, 89; St. Joseph’s House and, 60–63; St. Peter’s parish and, 134 ministries: changes in, 145–46, 166; choice of, 137; decline in vocations and, 163–64; of early American women religious, 3; at Horse Creek Valley, 111–12; at Madonna House, 68; professional social work, 157–58 Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, 56, 172 missions, versus settlement houses, 25 Mitchell, Thomas, 48 mothers: catechism training for, 34, 49; Madonna House and, 81, 93; St. Mary’s parish and, 127; and World War II, 89 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 166 names, changes in, 159–60 National Catholic War Council, 61 national parishes, 5, 47–48, 55 Neighborhood Guild, 6, 24

Index | 227 neighborly living. See living as neighbors Nelson, Joseph A., 150 Neri Boys Club, 128 New York City: Cherry Hill, 40–42, 51; immigration and, 44; Lower East Side, 91 New York Normal Training School for Catechists, 33–35 New York state, ministries in, 86–87 novitiate, 73, 144 numbers served: Camp Marydell, 85; Horse Creek Valley, 103, 107, 119; Madonna House, 50, 68, 71–72, 79, 83–84; St. Mary’s parish, 127; St. Rose’s Settlement, 32 nursing, 3; Horse Creek Valley and, 107; influenza epidemic and, 66–67 Oblates of Providence, 3 O’Connor, Agnes, 16, 137–38, 172 O’Connor, John, 167 O’Farrell, Eileen, 172 One to One Learning, Inc., 171–72 Oratory of St. Philip Neri, 126, 132 Orlando, Pauline, 63–64 Our Lady of Guadalupe parish, 65 Our Lady of Springbank Retreat House, 115 Our Lady of the Valley church, 111 Our Lady’s Guild for Catholic Action, 81 Palermo, Angela (Redempta), 96, 152, 165–66, 172; and Camp Marydell, 145; succession of, 137

Palmieri, Patricia Ann, 19 parades and pageants, 81–82, 101, 192n11 parent-teacher organization, Madonna House and, 93 Parille, Antonia, 78 Pathfinder. See Mary’s Mission Paul VI, pope, 158 pedagogy, Gurney on, 86–87 pellagra, 100, 106 Pepitone, Mary of Mercy, 110, 114–15, 119 Pergola, Beatrix, 152 Perri, Mary Rosaria, 66, 76 physical plant issues: Horse Creek Valley and, 103–4; Madonna House and, 70, 92, 94–95 Pius X, pope, 178n7 Pius XI, pope, 148 Pius XII, pope, 148, 156 playgrounds: Ave Maria House and, 77–78, 94; Madonna House and, 88 polio, 50, 61 poor, service to, 3; Cashin on, 82; Catholic Church and, 28; settlement houses and, 5–8; Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine and, 8, 10, 41 Poor People’s Campaign, 118 Price, Francis, 126–27 Protestant churches: and Chinese immigrants, 64; and civil rights movement, 134; ecumenical movement, 119, 135; Gurney and, 22–23, 27; and immigrants, 30–31; and settlement houses,

228 | Index Protestant churches (continued) 6–7, 25, 28–29, 69; Sisters of St. Margaret, 21, 23; in South, 101, 111, 138 Puerto Rican immigrants: Madonna House and, 95; St. Brigid’s parish and, 140–41 Randall’s Island, 34 Rangers, 89 Reames, Angela (Gladys), 113–14, 125 Reames, Betty, 113–14 recreation: Ave Maria House and, 77–78, 90; Madonna House and, 72, 88; as ministry, 158; St. Mary’s parish and, 128 Red Cross, 107 religious education: Camp Marydell and, 143; Carroll and, 2; changes in, 163; Gurney and, 4, 20; Horse Creek Valley and, 108, 116–21; Madonna House and, 43–44, 48–49, 51; St. Brigid’s parish and, 139–41, 139f; St. Mary’s parish and, 129–30; St. Rose’s Settlement and, 31; settlement houses and, 30; Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine and, 9–10. See also Confraternity of Christian Doctrine religious names, 159–60 retired sisters: care of, 172–73, 175; convent for, 170; and housing, 165 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 80, 110 rug-making classes, 79, 103 rural poor, ministry to, 98–121

sacramental preparation: Horse Creek Valley and, 108–9; Madonna House and, 44, 48, 50; St. Rose’s Settlement and, 31; settlement houses and, 30; Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine and, 9–10 St. Aloysius Club, 57 St. Aloysius Sodality, 51 St. Ambrose convent, 137–38 St. Angela’s convent and school, 106 St. Anthony of Padua parish, 47 St. Bartholomew parish, 86–87 St. Brigid’s parish, 139–41, 139f St. Gregory’s Choir, 81 St. Helena’s Island, 135–36 St. James parish, 49, 57 St. Joachim parish, 40–41, 44, 49, 53, 94 St. Joseph parish, 49, 53–54, 57, 137 St. Joseph’s House, 50, 59–63 St. Joseph Stamp Guild, 90 St. Mary Help of Christians parish, 99, 111 St. Mary of the Lake convent, 137 St. Mary’s parish, 126–32 St. Peter’s parish, 133–37 St. Rita’s parish, 123–26, 201n1 St. Rose’s Settlement, 7, 28–33 St. Teresa parish, 49, 76 Saitta, Bernadette (Josephine), 71, 76, 96 Salesian Fathers, 40 San Rocco, 44 Santa Maria Institute, 7–8, 30, 182n47 Save-a-Life Farm. See Camp Marydell Sayhonne, Doris, 163 Scala, Charles, 60 Scalabrini, Giovanni Battista, 185n95

Index | 229 Scalabrinian order, 42, 185n95 Schuler, Claude, 134 Second Vatican Council, 11, 148–49; and ministry, 146; and religious education, 130; St. Peter’s parish and, 135; and women religious, 131–32, 159–60 Segale, Blandina and Justine, 7, 30 segregation: St. Peter’s parish and, 133–34; St. Rita’s parish and, 124–25 Servidio, Thecla, 121 Seton, Elizabeth Ann, 2–3 settlement houses: Ave Maria House, 77–78; Catholic, 5–8, 28–30; closing of, 92–97; Gurney and, 4; history of, 23–28; Horse Creek Valley, 98–121; programs of, 8. See also Madonna House sewing class, at Horse Creek Valley, 119 Sinnott, Walter, 86 Sister Formation Conference (SFC), 11, 149, 153 Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, 3 Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy, 3 Sisters of Charity (of St. Joseph), 2–4, 177n4 Sisters of Loretto, 3, 208n35 Sisters of Mercy, 106 Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine, 8–11; centenary of, 11, 169–70; changes in, 145–68; death of Gurney and, 147, 149–52; demographics of, 159, 165; founding of, 1, 4–5, 7–8, 37–45; future of, 165, 172–75; governance of, 152–54,

162, 165; historiography of, 12–17; legacy of, 96–97, 120, 144, 175–76; mission of, 4, 7, 9, 68–69, 145–46, 150–51; property of, disposition of, 172–73; rule of, 104–5, 155–59, 167; silver jubilee of, 81–84 Sisters of St. Francis, 126 Sisters of St. Margaret, 21, 23 Skok, Deborah, 6 Smith, Alfred E., 98 Smith, George Lewis, 10, 98–101, 114 Smith, Henrietta Nichols, 190n47 Smith, M. Joseph, 61 Social Club, 90 social settlements. See settlement houses Society of St. Charles, 42, 185n95 sodalities. See clubs South: Horse Creek Valley, 98–121; ministries in, 10, 122–38 Spanish immigrants, 65–66 Sparkill Dominican Sisters, 16, 171–72 Stachurski, Genevieve (Stanislaus), 125, 127 Stover, Charles B., 24 summer activities: Camp Marydell and, 10, 12, 85, 122, 141–45; Madonna House and, 50; St. Mary’s parish and, 129 The Sunday Companion, 33 swimming pools: at Horse Creek Valley, 110; at Marydell, 16, 153 symmetrical womanhood, ideology of, 20 Tappan Zee Association, 153 television, 114–15, 158

230 | Index Tevlin, Henry, 126 Thuente, Clement, 28, 30, 33 Tonero, Louis V., 118, 120 Tong wars, 64 Toscano, Joseph, 96 Toynbee Hall, 24 Transfiguration parish, 35, 63–64, 190n57 Trinitarian Sisters, 132 Truman, Harry S., 110 Tucker, William Jewett, 25

66–67; Madonna House and, 50, 63–65; St. Helena’s Island and, 135–36; St. Mary’s parish and, 128–29; St. Rita’s parish and, 124; St. Rose’s Settlement and, 31 vocations, 1, 12–13; Berretti and, 83–84; decline in, 11, 118, 162–64; future of order and, 174; in Horse Creek Valley, 112–13 Voghera, John, 64 voter registration, 129

unemployment, 78–79 United States Coast Guard, 90 United Way, 92 University Settlement, 24 Unterkoefler, Ernest, 119–20, 130–32, 134, 136 urbanization, settlement houses and, 6, 24 urban poor: Catholic Church and, 28; settlement houses and, 25; Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine and, 4, 8, 41 Ursulines, 2, 177n6

Wahl, Edward, 126, 132 Walsh, Emmet M., 101, 126 Walsh, Regina, 125 Washington, Marigene, 120 Wellesley College, 18–20, 147 Whalen, John, 75, 192n17 Wilson, Edith, 33 Wilson, Woodrow, 59 Wolff, Madaleva, 148 women religious in America: changes and, 148–49, 153, 155–62; and dismissal, 131–32; history of, 2–5; leaving communities, 162, 164; reception of, 63–64, 102 working poor, St. Brigid’s parish and, 140 World War I, 57–60 World War II, 87–97, 107, 109–10 wounded veterans, St. Joseph’s House and, 60–63

Valtierra, David, 130–32 Van Rensselaer, Henry, 27–28 Vatican II. See Second Vatican Council Vermette, Rose (Mary Teresa), 110, 137, 160, 166 veterans, St. Joseph’s House and, 60–63 Visitation, convent of, 2 visitation: Horse Creek Valley Center and, 10; influenza epidemic and,

Xavier College Fife, Drum and Bugle Corps, 81 Zuppullo, Assumpta, 150