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

Neighbors and Missionaries

Neighbors and Missionaries

A History of the Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine

Margaret M. McGuinness

Copyright © 2012 Fordham University Press

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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

Introduction

American Women Religious and the Sisters of Christian Doctrine

The Catholic Church, the Poor, and Catholic Social Settlements

The Sisters of Our Lady of Christian Doctrine

Writing the History of the Sisters of Christian Doctrine

1. From Wellesley College to the Lower East Side

Education for Service

A Church Settlement

A Catholic Settlement in New York City

A Training School for Catechists

A New Community

2. Fighting to Save the City of New York

A Catholic Social Settlement on the Lower East Side

Madonna House

Conflict with Clerical Authority

Forming Faithful Citizens

Ministering to Veterans

Not Just Italians

3. Neighbors and Teachers

Growing Pains

A Motherhouse and a Second Settlement

Hard Times

Settlement Work and the Second World War

The Closing of the Settlement Houses

4. Settlements Go South

A New Foundation

Staying Connected

A Southern Settlement

Growing Friendships

Valley Catholics

Maintaining the Mission

A Problem of Numbers

5. More than Settlement Houses

Parish Ministry in the South

Northern Apostolates

Changes in Ministry

6. Changes and Continuities

Adjusting to the Loss of Mother Marianne

Moving Forward

Responding to Transformations

Challenging Times

Coming toward the End of a Century

Epilogue

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

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.

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 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, 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 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 daughter-in-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.

Neighbors and Missionaries

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, 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 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, 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 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 non-Catholic 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 settlement 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