Charity Alive: Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, Halifax, 1950-1980 by Sister Mary Olga McKenna

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS487 of Bishop Sheen is deserving of a more serious scholarly study—a fascinating story remaining to be told. Kathleen L. Riley Ohio Dominican College Canadian CharityAlive: Sisters ofCharity ofSaint Vincent de Paul, Halifax, 1950-1980. By Sister Mary Olga McKenna. (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, Inc. 1998. Pp. xxvi,376. $54.00.) In her preface to CharityAlive, Mary Olga McKenna notes that her study continues from the period covered in an earlier work which recounted one hundred years of institutional expansion from the 1849 Halifax founding to 1949. McKenna's work focuses on the following thirty years: the renewal experience. While acknowledging the benefits of renewal to the sisters who remained in the community, Charity Alive also contains a sensitive portrayal of the institutional and personal turmoil wrought by the decline in membership and the divestiture of houses and traditional ministries experienced by the Sisters of Charity, Halifax. As such, this book is at times refreshingly candid. The major challenges facing the community during the years of renewal—authority , governance, ministry, lifestyle—are described and analyzed through the administrative terms of Mother SteUa Maria Reiser (1950-1962), Mother Irene Farmer (1962-1972), and Sister Katherine O'Toole (1972-1980). Mother Reiser and the community moved, in response to papal directives, toward decentralization by establishing five provinces within the congregation by the mid1950 's: three Canadian and two American. As renewal accelerated, Mother Irene Farmer and her councfl appeared to bear the brunt of the initial shocks of renewal,including the eruption of the nationaUty issue. Although a Sister Formation Center had been established in 1961 in Halifax, CouncU responded affirmatively to a proposal from the Boston and New York provinces who wished to secure greater autonomy by having a Sister Formation Center in Wellesley, Massachusetts, for the American sisters. McKenna notes that Mother Farmer's goal throughout her term was to preserve the unity and continuity of the community. Historically, the congregation drew its members from Canada and the United States, and more than two-thirds of its foundations were in Canada. However, nationality may have been a smouldering issue within the congregation. In the Chapter of 1968, which re-elected Mother Farmer, the governing council would now include two new categories: a Canadian coordinator and an American coordinator . The governance committee had suggested these to "reconcUe 488BOOK REVIEWS perceived tensions between the American and Canadian membership. . . ." McKenna does not explore the nature of these tensions. Did the Americans feel that their views were being underrepresented in a Canadian-based congregation ? Did the Canadians look at the leadership structure and wonder if too many Americans were in pivotal positions? Mother Reiser and Sister O'Toole were from Massachusetts as was Sister Catherine Wallace, the first director of studies at the Sister Formation Center in Halifax. By 1972, with the election of Sister Katherine O'Toole, only thirty-seven when she assumed office, the formation houses were being converted into retirement centers—a consequence of the fuU impact of declining vocations and withdrawals of some of the community's best-educated women. McKenna concludes by reminding us that modification of the ". . . structures, customs and habits led to a period of breakdown and conflict . . ." and perhaps most poignantly, "aloneness." She writes that while the dignity of the individual person was the main guideline in the movement toward the appropriate renewal of reUgious life, insufficient thought was given to the consequences of dismantling the traditional system. She notes too that "... until Vatican II, women religious were perhaps the most dependable but at the same time the most expendable resources in the Church. . . ." One might conclude from reading Charity Alive, that in view of the limited planning given to the specifics of renewal within the larger Church, the expendability of women religious continued after Vatican Council II. McKenna seems to suggest that during the renewal of reUgious life more could, or should, have been salvaged from a world we may have lost. Elizabeth W McGahan University ofNew Brunswick—SaintJohn Campus Latin American Exporting the Catholic Reformation: Local Religion in Early-Colonial Mexico . By Amos Megged. [Cultures, Beliefs, and Traditions: Medieval and Early Modern Peoples,Volume 2.] (Leiden and NewYork: E.J...