The early Catholic Sisters ventured to places where very few women, aside from prostitutes, dared to go alone. In the late s to early s, America had very few if any charitable institutions in settled areas. And, although hospitals and schools are the centerpiece of American communities, men did not have the time and money to build them.
Their habits signified a badge of honor; a license to do good work. And good work they did. Nuns were well respected and welcomed members of their communities. Unfortunately, it's not possible to cover every contribution of women religious in a single blog post.
However, we attempted to pull a few interesting examples while also mentioning some of the broader contributions of Catholic Sisters across American history that aren't specifically related to a particular religious community. Below are some of the religious orders mentioned. The Ursuline nuns are said to be the first women religious in what would become the United States. In July, , they arrived in New Orleans and opened Ursuline Academy , which is the oldest continuously operating school for girls in the United States.
The Ursulines also founded one of the first hospitals and the first school of music in New Orleans. Elizabeth Bailey Seton was a Protestant woman, granddaughter of an Episcopal minister and the wife of William Seton, whom she deeply loved. In , Seton established a religious community in Emmitsburg, Maryland, dedicated to the care of the children of the poor.
This was the first congregation of religious sisters to be founded in the United States , and its school was the first free Catholic school in America. This modest beginning marked the start of the Catholic parochial school system in the United States. The congregation was initially called the Sisters of Charity of St. In , they adopted the rules written by St. Vincent de Paul for the Daughters of Charity in France. In Seton became the first person born in what would become the United States to be canonized by the Roman Catholic Church.
Pierce then decided to become a priest and suggested that Cornelia join the convent. So, in the couple annulled their marriage and dedicated their lives to the church although Cornelia was against the whole idea. Cornelia was sent to a large convent at St. Mary's Church in Derby, England. Soon, she was running a day school for students, an evening school for factory women and a crowded Sunday school program, as well as training novices to her "Society of the Holy Child Jesus".
The institute remains devoted to teaching young women and operates schools primarily in the United States. Catholic nuns had a strong influence on healthcare and nursing education in the US. Nuns are responsible for building over hospitals. At its peak in the s, nuns are responsible for providing one out of every five hospital beds in America. This was made possible through the administration of these hospitals by innovative and educated nuns.
Catholic nuns managed hospitals, orphanages, schools and charitable organizations in America long before these types of jobs were open to women. Because of this, nuns were fearless pioneers that carried out their service work while taking on mobs, riots, war, disease, discrimination and so much more. In the s, Catholics in America faced many attacks, rooted in the anti-Catholic attitudes that British Protestants brought to the American colonies. Mobs burned down schools and other Catholic institutions.
Priests and nuns were attacked and even killed. By the mid s, Catholicism was the largest religion in the United States but still faced attacks.
Blandina Segale , a Sister of Charity. Blandina traveled alone to the unexplored lands of the American frontier on dusty trails and railroads. She spent much of her life as a missionary serving in the Southwest among cowboys, rustlers and land sharks. In New Mexico, she fought against the common practice of lynching. She even had run ins with the famous outlaw, Billy the Kid. But Sr. Blandina isn't the only Nun who faced dangerous situations head on. There have been many others who have suffered the ultimate sacrifice standing up for what they believe in.
At the time, there was not much opportunity for a young girl who was adventurous, spontaneous and had a feeling that she was meant to do something more. The only way out was to join the convent. So, that's what she did. As a Nun, Sr. Maura taught school children in the Bronx and Nicaragua.
Later, she served as a missionary in El Salvador, where a movement was underway to reform the country and there was a lot of political and religious unrest. A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura by Eileen Markey is the true story of the four church women who were killed in El Salvador during the Cold War while fighting for a movement they strongly believed in.
She had lived in the country for nearly four decades and was known as a fierce defender of a sustainable development project for the Amazon forest. She entered the Franciscan Sisters in the Bronx in and has been living at an Atlantic City convent since it opened in On a cold January morning, dozens of people spilled in searching for bagels, doughnuts, coffee and the comfort of the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal and their young missionaries — women who can spend time with the sisters before committing to become one.
Sister Chiara had been awake for more than six hours, with a packed day that would stretch until nearly 11 p. Work like hers is common for the women, especially as their roles have shifted. The number of students attending Catholic schools — where sisters once were an essential part of the faculty — has dropped from 4. Instead of teaching, the women are working with the hungry, with communities decimated by the opioid crisis and with new immigrants.
Sister Lauren and a group of 16 other women in Summit have dedicated their lives to prayer rather than teaching or community service, cloistered from the outside world in the grand, brick Dominican Monastery of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Sister Agnes, the mother superior, slices pizza for the Franciscan Sisters in Atlantic City and their volunteers. Instead, family comes to them, meeting in a parlor where the women and their visitors, who gather in a small room, sit on opposite sides of a gate.
Their days in those walls are busy, filled with periods of silence, prayer and chores, including time to craft souvenirs they sell in their small gift shop.
They use proceeds from the shop to cover costs for their modest lives. Some days, they sit together and peel dozens of pounds of donated carrots and on others they make candles or cards adorned with delicate calligraphy. The women discerning today are older than they once were.
But Sister Mariette Therese of the Benedictine Sisters of Elizabeth , a self-described nun-recruiter, said sometimes older women have trouble foregoing possessions, limiting family time and submitting to authority and rules. Four young women have spent extended time in the Elizabeth monastery over the past 10 years, but three left and another was asked to go. Decades ago, Seton Hall University would host an annual "vocation rally" for all Catholic school students in the Archdiocese of Newark, where kids would hear pitches about becoming a sister, priest or brother.
Now outreach is smaller and more direct to those already feeling a budding interest. In Lodi, Summit and Atlantic City, websites lay out the recruitment and discernment processes, one even offering a step-by-step guide to hearing the call from God. The discernment process, a period of learning and service where a woman takes a series of temporary vows before officially committing to the community, takes six to nine years. Most are over 70, and only seven are in training.
At the university in Lodi, some remember halls once full of habit-wearing hopefuls. No one at the on-campus high school is considering it, either, the sisters say. The Dynamics of Disaffiliation in Young Catholics. For their part, the sisters see a separation between their personal, fulfilling relationship with God and the problems the Catholic Church has faced. She said she loved performing as an actress in musicals, but described missing something, still feeling a deep pang of emptiness, even as she received applause at the close of the curtain.
She visited for three weeks in but was still acting back home and was in a relationship. When she came back two years later, she left both of those. Many women who take religious vows give up cellphones entirely.
The Atlantic City missionaries, who come for nine months to serve without making a commitment, can have them. But many said they only check them about twice a day, keeping them in a drawer. The separation from the outside world helps them to discern, said Connie Boesch, a year-old from Omaha, Nebraska serving in Atlantic City as a missionary.
She previously worked as a speech and life skills specialist in a rehabilitation facility. Last November, after a surprise snowstorm coated the grounds with white, the Summit sisters took a break to sled. The Atlantic City women like to walk on the beach or go to a gym to play sports together weekly. And Sister Anna takes their dog, Bliss, for walks. But as the number of sisters continues to fall, their daily activities will adapt. Kemme was a practicing Catholic and an active member of her home parish in Cincinnati, but had never considered religious life before.
Besides, Kemme was falling in love with a fellow volunteer. When the service trip ended, she moved to El Paso, Tex. The sisters were strong, socially aware and dedicated to their work: a nurse, a massage therapist, a doctor-turned-youth minister.
She wanted to give her relationship a chance. Kemme, 33, is now a Sister of Charity of Cincinnati. She chose a path that few today would associate with possibility. Forty percent of her generation eschews religion altogether. A majority believes religious people are generally less tolerant of others. And as millennials raise children, this generational dismissal of religion seems destined to continue. Millennials devoting themselves to the church is unusual, says Daniel Cox, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who recently studied millennial secularity.
This is a generation that bucks traditional patterns of religious engagement long thought of like the tides — receding as young adults age, then returning as they settle down.
The tide of the Catholic Church is particularly far out. Haunted by the sexual abuse scandal and unyielding stances on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion, the church is facing the biggest decline of any major denomination, according to Cox.
There are currently just over 44, U. Still, for the past decade, roughly women have professed final vows each year, a testament of an enduring faith that receives little attention, says Mary Gautier, a senior research associate at CARA. Some have suggested that the number of women considering religious life has actually increased, but Gautier says CARA did not find this statistically significant. Becoming a nun — a Catholic woman under vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to the church — is an extensive process.
An aspiring sister finds a community in-person or online, seeking either an active life of service work technically considered a sister or a contemplative life of prayer in a cloistered monastery a nun.
After living with the community for a time, the sister-to-be is formally accepted as a member and begins a lifelong commitment of prayer and service; she professes first vows after about two years and final vows another three to nine years after that. Armed with college degrees and work experience, the newly vowed women of today are more diverse than former generations and, as Gautier notes, defined by their commitment to social justice.
But new entrants do not, at this time, outnumber those passing away. More U. And yet, this small cohort of millennial women continues to fight against the grain of their generation to make the church better — and keep it alive — with a level of diversity and adaptability often considered antithetical to the institution they operate in. Then, while working at a bank in her early twenties, Parra met a sister in church and the two struck up a friendship, despite their year age gap.
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