Sisters Of Charity Research Articles

Sisters of Charity

Sisters of Charity

‘There is so much involved…’ The Sisters of Charity of Saint Charles Borromeo in Indonesia in the Period from The Second World War

Palembang, 17 April 2603. I am here together with sister Catherinia, sister Timothée, sister Paulie, sister Rumolda and sister Theresetta. The others live in the camp of Bengkoelen. We are all happy and healthy. There is plenty of work. We help the women and the children. Life is always beautiful and worthwhile, but especially the present time is praiseworthy. There are so many causes for gratitude, if one manages to keep considering things in a transcendental way. We have no information about the sisters on Java. Yours sincerely, Sister Laurentia, women’s camp, Palembang.

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

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...

Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography by James Pereiro

472BOOK REVIEWS Catholic culture," effecting "changes in both the religious attitudes and the normative behavior of the larger Irish Catholic population" (p. 106); and finally, that by the 1860's, and despite their efforts to retain appropriate authority over their own organizations, women religious in Ireland lost much of the semiautonomous self-direction that had characterized their respective foundings and became increasingly subject to episcopal and clerical control and supervision , as an integrated part of the centralized Catholic establishment. In a book that rightly seeks to discover, in the records of the women religious themselves and in as much detail as possible, the actual data about the emergence, development, and public reception of Irish religious congregations, the opportunities for factual error, misinterpretation, and over- or underemphasis are understandably numerous and to some extent unavoidable. In the treatment of Catherine McAuley and the Sisters of Mercy each of these problems occasionally occurs. For example, some biographical information about McAuley is incorrect; her attitude against "particular friendships" was expressed in relation to communal charity, not in relation to chastity; and the motive for the 1864 assembly of Mercy superiors, from which the Mercy Guide was issued, was preservation of the charism and spirit of the Institute in diverse settings, not resistance to episcopal or clerical control. This reviewer is not in a position to question the accuracy of data and interpretations related to the other religious congregations discussed in the book: the Presentation Sisters, the Irish Sisters of Charity, the Sisters of St. Louis, the Sisters of the Holy Faith, the Brigidine Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, and the Ursuline Sisters. The book leans heavily toward certain generalizations that, as stated, probably do not exactly fit each of the religious congregations: for example, that the Irish women who entered these communities were primarily middle class and wealthy; that altruistic devotion to the service of the poor was not their decisive characteristic; that they were supported financially and politically by those eager to develop the middle class and maintain class divisions; and that by and large the Irish clergy and bishops restrained rather than assisted them. The chapter on "Intimate Boundaries" (the longest in the book) is particularly puzzling in its suggestive treatment of "sexual intimacy" as the real fear behind the respective superiors' injunctions against "close and exclusive relationships" between women in their communities. Mary C. Sullivan, R.S.M. Rochester Institute ofTechnology Cardinal Manning: An Intellectual Biography. By James Pereiro. (Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1998. Pp. xiii, 360. £45.) Shortly following the death of Manning in January, 1892, Charles Gatty wrote in The Catholic Times that "whilst Cardinal Newman was busy building a BOOK REVIEWS473 fortress of philosophical theology for students and men of letters, Cardinal Manning was wrestling in the open with polticians and philanthropists. ... He led his timid phalanx into the thick of the fight and made them feel that they were Englishmen as well as Catholics. . . ." This manner of pitting the man of philosophic habit against the man of practical achievement has prevented attempts to arrive at a balanced appreciation of Manning's intellectual talents and acumen. With one or two notable exceptions, there has been a tendency among historians to ignore him as theologian, to dismiss his intellectual capability as being of the second order, and to consider his writings as little more than ephemera "written for the moment," as Sheridan Gilley has put it "and, like the moment, quickly gone." James Pereiro's study of Manning's religious development is thus of singular importance. Essentially, Manning's theological journey received a major stimulus from the nature of his early pastoral ministry at Lavington. There he learned to question his sacerdotal rôle and to consider the authority by which he received and maintained it. Referring to this period, he was to reflect: "I was as one manu tentans, meridie coecutiens but a divine Guide, as yet unknown to me, always led me on." The necessity for a divine commission for his life and his life's work remained an omnipresent need. He began to perceive "the principle of Christian tradition as an evidence of the truth" and "the visible unity of the...

Milestones in Australian Nursing

Nursing has come a long way in Australia in the past 160 years when, in 1839, five Sisters of Charity arrived in Sydney to work in the Female Factory at Parramatta. Since then there have been many milestones, as the profession has grown and changed along with the country. Australian nurses have served in theatres of war, have overcome the tyranny of distance by working and caring for those in isolated areas, and now are moving into the new millennium as a highly professional and educated group. Dr Bob Bessant looks at the beginnings of nursing and the following milestones.

Using the Balanced Scorecard to Align Strategy and Performance in Long Term Care

The Sisters of Charity of Ottawa Health Service (SCOHS) is a Canadian health care corporation that has adapted Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard to enhance strategic management and measurement in a multisite health care facility comprising long term care, continuing complex care, rehabilitative services, palliative care and ambulatory care. This article discusses how the SCOHS has incorporated the following principles into the balanced scorecard: demonstration of cause and effect; inclusion of outcomes and performance drivers; linkage to fiscal and utilization indicators; and integration of the mission and values of the organization. Examples of corporate level outcomes and performance measures are provided in the form of lead and lag indicators.

From care of the soul to care of the body--a new understanding of the history of nursing

This study relates to the birth and the development of the Company of the Sisters of Charity of São Vicente de Paulo in France since 1633. This study has as its objective historically rebuild the process of creation of the Company of the Sisters of São Vicente de Paulo and the role of Luiza de Marillac and Father Vicente de Paulo in this process, and discuss the importance of this Company for the proposal of a pre-professional nursing care, imposing the bases of what would be called later the nursing techniques. It is a study of social and historical nature, to which I will use Michel Foucault preconceived ideas, regarding the analysis and discussion of the documents under the light of the genealogical analysis. This study focuses mainly the aspects that concern to implementation of a nursing practice towards the care of the sick body, and to the catechisation of the poor and the sick people. It focuses also the importance of Luiza de Marillac as a nurse, master and guide to the other Sisters.

"Field Found!" Establishing the Maryknoll Mission Enterprise in the United States and China, 1918-1928

"FIELD FOUND!" ESTABLISHING THE MARYKNOLL MISSION ENTERPRISE IN THE UNITED STATES AND CHINA, 1918-1928 BY Paul R. Rivera* After an exhausting transcontinental and trans-Pacific journey of three and one-half months, the first group of American Catholic missionaries to China reached the French Catholic mission station at Yeungkong (Yangjiang) in Kwangtung (Guangdong) province on December 21, 1918 (see map).1 The four American priests were members of the Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America or Maryknoll, and their journey marked the beginning of the American Catholic mission enterprise in China. The Maryknoll newcomers soon were joined by contingents of priests, Sisters, and Brothers from fifteen American Catholic mission organizations including the Passionists, the Vincentians , the Franciscans, and the Sisters of Charity. While never approaching the numbers ofAmerican Protestant missionaries in China, the total ofAmerican Catholic missioners reached 240 in 1928 and 562 in 1946. The Maryknollers' tenure in China spanned the tumultuous years of the Nationalist Revolution of 1925-1927, the Nanking Decade, the SinoJapanese War, and the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists . Soon after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, *Dr. Rivera is adjunct professor of history in Florida Gulf Coast University and Edison Community College in Fort Myers, Florida. This essay is based on research conducted at the Maryknoll Mission Archives in Ossining, New York, the Mullen Library of the Catholic University of America, and the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. The author is grateful for the guidance of Ka-che Yip and Warren I. Cohen ofthe University of Maryland Baltimore County and John Wltek, S.J., of Georgetown University, and the assistance of Ellen Pierce and Charles Huegelmeyer of the Maryknoll Mission Archives and Jean-Paul Wiest of the Center for Mission Research and Study. 'Yeungkong is the Chinese Postal Atlas place name for the city that is transcribed as Yang-chiang in Wade-Giles and Yangjiang in Pinyin. During the 1920's Maryknoll diaries and correspondence and Western newspapers and periodicals used the Chinese Postal Atlas system for place names and the Wade-Giles system for names of individual Chinese. To remain faithful to my primary sources, I have used the Maryknoll spelling for the Society 's mission stations and for place names in China. Pinyin transcriptions for place names are indicated in parentheses the initial time the term is used. 477 ó Maryknoll\in Kayj :r"'"8'h'"««•«¦»"I ti KONCHOO« VlCMtIATC ACSIbEHT MISSIONEN PAILWAY i B KONGMOO^ VlCARIATE Kongmoon i» an overnight trip by tteamer from Hongkong. Oa the above map the Vicariate it defined by ? heavy black line. The Kongmoon Vicariate in the 1920's. Source:"Kongmoon Vicariate," General Report, MFBA Kongmoon Reports, 1931. BY PAUL R. RIVERA479 Maryknoll missioners left China, although Bishop James E. Walsh, one of the original group sent to Yeungkong in 1918, chose to remain in Shanghai. Arrested and tried in 1958, Walsh was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment for espionage and conspiracy. Upon his release in June of 1970, Walsh left China and brought to a close this chapter in United States-China relations.2 While American Catholics had displayed limited interest in the foreign missions prior to 1900, American Protestant missionaries had long been active in bringing Christianity to China. Banned from evangelizing in China until 1844, Western Protestant and European Catholic mission societies took advantage of the Sino-French treaties of the 1860s to launch an invasion of the cities and countryside of imperial China. Within thirty years, Western missionaries had established mission stations in all the provinces of imperial China except Hunan, and by 1918, 94 percent of the 1,704 counties of the Republic of China reported Christian missionary activity.3 The Protestant presence in China was part of the interrelated system of evangelistic activities, charitable and humanitarian efforts, property and facilities, financial resources, and administrative infrastructure—called "the missionary enterprise" by John Fairbank—which emerged from the endeavors of nineteenth-century American Protestant mission groups to spread Christianity to Asia, the Near East, and Africa. World-wide in scope, the Protestant mission enterprise , according to Fairbank, "became institutionalized as big business ," and mission Boards constituted "the first large-scale transnational corporations."4 To support...

As One Sent. Peter Kenney S.J., 1779-1841. His Mission in Ireland and North America by Thomas Morrissey, S.J.

356book reviews enment theology. This Hooke attempted by a "revitalized theology of reUgion" that distinguished him both from the conservative apologists and the antichristian Deists or Atheists. His major importance and contribution lay therefore in the domain oftheological method, its problematics, its typology. In the author's eyes this approach deserves to be taken seriously, despite the fact that the "Modernizer ways" Hooke opened were not followed in the aftermath of the French Revolution that destroyed the world in which they were developed. An important study, therefore, that might have been more forceful in its original state with a scholarly apparatus. The first part, particularly, suffers from a number of approximations, minor errors, and lack of references that, at times, make it dUficult to grasp the nuances of an admittedly complex historical and intellectual context. Some of the judgments and Interpretations could be disputed , as they must have been during the defense of the dissertation. A few recent works have been overlooked, among them Philippe Lefebvre's important Les Pouvoirs de laparole. L'Église etRousseau 1762-1848 (Paris, 1992). Jacques M. Gres-Gayer The Catholic University ofAmerica Late Modem European As One Sent. Peter Kenney SJ., 1 779-1841. His Mission in Ireland and North America. By Thomas Morrissey, SJ. (Washington, D.C: The CathoUc University of America Press; Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 1997. Pp. xii, 529. $54.95.) In his foreword Emmet Larkin welcomes this biography as worthy of the historical importance of its subject as a maker of the modern Irish church. Peter Kenney was a key figure Ui the early nineteenth-century reorganization of the Society ofJesus Ln Ireland and the United States. He was an outstanding orator. Archbishop Murray of Dublin declared that "the only other orator whom I ever thought of comparing him to was Daniel O'ConneU." He moved easUy among the movers and shakers of Irish Catholicism. Murray, Archbishop MacHale of Tuam,"J.K.L." Games Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin), and other bishops were his friends. He was the trusted adviser of Blessed Edmund Rice in the foundation of the Irish Christian Brothers, of Teresa Ball with the Loreto sisters, and of Mary Aikenhead with the Irish Sisters of Charity. He served as superior of the Irish Jesuit mission and later as provincial of the Irish vice-province. He was twice the Jesuit general's official visitor to the missions of Maryland and Missouri and helped put both on a firm footing. He dealt successfully with conflicts between "nativist"American-bornJesuits and the Europeans who had joined them. In Ireland he had been vice-president of Maynooth and he opened Clongowes Wood College. In America he helped set Georgetown CoUege on a steady course and was involved with the problems of getting permission to charge tuition at St. book reviews357 Louis University, contrary to then-standard Jesuit practice. Other issues were Jesuit slave holding and the growing controversy between proponents of an urban apostolate and those who wished to retain the emphasis on rural ministry characteristic of the Maryland mission since its foundation. Kenney was party to the overaU startup of the restored Jesuit order as one of the first novices in England, as a scholastic in SicUy, and as a delegate of the Irish Jesuits to meetings in Rome, where he died. On one occasion during his SicUian sojourn he accompanied a British naval cruiser on an abortive mission to rescue Pope Pius VII from Napoleon. AU these tales Morrissey has told weU in a readable and valuable book. James Hennesey, SJ. Christ the King Seminary EastAurora, New York 'By WhoseAuthority?'Newman, Manning and the Magisterium. Edited by V Alan McCleUand. (Bath: Downside Abbey Press. 1996. Pp. x, 290. $44.00.) This collection consists of fourteen essays by eight weU-known scholars of nineteenth-century religious history in Great Britain. A couple of the essays are very similar to work previously published, and two of the essays are about lesser-known Tractarians, Robert Wilberforce and T. W AUies. Thus, the title of this volume is a bit misleading, especiaUy since the theme of magisterium is scarcely evident in several of the essays. Manning,WUberforce, andAUies came into the Church...

Women and philanthropy in Argentina: from the society of beneficence to Eva Perón

This article focuses on the history of voluntary associations in Argentina over the past 200 years. Argentine voluntary associations have their roots in the alliance of the Catholic church, the state and the country's elites, in which women played major roles. The charitable stage can be divided into two phases: the first (1600–1899) was encouraged mainely by the church, in particular through the Sisters of Charity; the second (1820–1940) took shape under state patronage in a period of centralisation and secularisation. TheSociety of Beneficence, a quasi-public institution run by wealthy women, emerged as the most important institution for public assistance until the formation of the Eva Peron Foundation, which became the paradigmatic form of social assistance in the 1940s. Nevertheless, the approach adopted by the Foundation differed very little from those of its precursors. Within this framework the current social development model attempts to reconfigure the relationships between the public institutions and civil society.

Religious Investors Ask Health/Hygiene Products Giant to 'Kleen' Out of the Tobacco Business

TWO RELIGIOUS groups that own a large number of shares in Corporation are asking the manufacturer of health, hygiene, and hospital products to get out of the tobacco The groups, the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, in Houston, Tex, and the Redemptorists of St Louis, Mo, are sponsors of a shareholder resolution calling on the company's management to spin-off all tobacco business. Tobacco Program Project In addition to the 70000 company shares owned by the two groups, hundreds of thousands of additional shares are owned by other religious organizations that are members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), New York, NY. As part of its Tobacco Program Project, the center has been conducting a Kleen Out Tobacco From Kimberly-Clark campaign to persuade the corporation to retire from the tobacco business, says ICCR's executive director Timothy Smith. Well known for its popular

Havoc in Hunan: the Sisters of Charity in Western Hunan 1924–1954. By Mary Carita Pendergast, S.C.Morristown, N.J.: College of St. Elizabeth Press, 1991. xvi + 251 pp. $14.95.

Havoc in Hunan: the Sisters of Charity in Western Hunan 1924–1954. By Mary Carita Pendergast, S.C.Morristown, N.J.: College of St. Elizabeth Press, 1991. xvi + 251 pp. $14.95.

Mother Mary Aikenhead, the Irish Sisters of Charity and Our Lady's Hospice for the Dying.

Mother Mary Aikenhead, the Irish Sisters of Charity and Our Lady's Hospice for the Dying.

Book Review: Havoc in Hunan: The Sisters of Charity in Western Hunan, 1924–1951

Book Review: Havoc in Hunan: The Sisters of Charity in Western Hunan, 1924–1951

Sisters of Charity's clinic starts epidemic of caring

Sisters of Charity's clinic starts epidemic of caring

Matronized nursing service at Mobile City Hospital in the mid-19th century: a paradigm of altruism and indigent patient care.

Influences upon the development and evolution of nursing groups and the profession have been multifactorial: cultural, economic, political, and social. Although monastic and chivalric orders throughout antiquity provided the beginnings with hierarchical organizations and a sense of voluntarism and vocation, it was not until the mid-19th century that the concept of a nursing service became codified and more hospital-oriented. The inception of a matronized nursing service in the Mobile City Hospital under the tutelage of the Superintendent, Dr. Willis Roberts, antedated the rapid expansion of nursing education and service recommended and instituted by Florence Nightingale. The former served as a paradigm of altruism as "women attendants" became formally associated with a hospital-based "nursing service," initially under the directorship of a lay matron, Mrs. Sarah Dubois, and subsequently under a succession of Sisters of the Roman Catholic Order of the Sisters of Charity (America). Although ostensibly instituted to render care to "female paupers," the matronized nursing service was readily expanded, and subsequently delivered care to the entire, predominantly indigent patient population. The paradigm was worthily perpetuated during the latter half of the 19th century in vitually all hospitals as nursing education and services continued to become more secularized and technologically sophisticated.

Sisters of Charity and the ailing poor.

Sisters of Charity and the ailing poor.

John Dubois, Founding Father. The Life and Times of the Founder of Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg; Superior of the Sisters of Charity; and Third Bishop of the Diocese of New York. By Richard Shaw. Yonkers, New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1983. xviii + 200 pp. $14.95 cloth; $9.95 paper.

John Dubois, Founding Father. The Life and Times of the Founder of Mount St. Mary's College, Emmitsburg; Superior of the Sisters of Charity; and Third Bishop of the Diocese of New York. By Richard Shaw. Yonkers, New York: United States Catholic Historical Society, 1983. xviii + 200 pp. 9.95 paper. - Volume 55 Issue 1

Comment on Lerner's "Sarah M. Grimké's 'Sisters of Charity'"

Previous articleNext article No AccessLetters/CommentsComment on Lerner's "Sarah M. Grimké's 'Sisters of Charity'"Gerda LernerGerda Lerner Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 10, Number 4Summer, 1985Communities of Women Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494193 Views: 2Total views on this site Copyright 1985 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Two veteran nurses of World War I days (Sister Mary MacDonald, Sister Mary Vianney).

Medical Journal of AustraliaVolume 140, Issue 13 p. 782-784 Medical History Two veteran nurses of World War I days Catherine O'Carrigan, Catherine O'Carrigan Religious Sister of Charity The Sisters of Charity, St Vincent's Convent, Potts Point, NSW, 2011Search for more papers by this author Catherine O'Carrigan, Catherine O'Carrigan Religious Sister of Charity The Sisters of Charity, St Vincent's Convent, Potts Point, NSW, 2011Search for more papers by this author First published: 01 June 1984 https://doi.org/10.5694/j.1326-5377.1984.tb132598.xCitations: 1 Reprints: Sr O'Carrigan. AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article.Citing Literature Volume140, Issue13June 1984Pages 782-784 RelatedInformation