Cool Ursuline Stuff

We've been down in southern Ohio visiting my family for a couple of days.  Since a Great Controversy erupted this past fall among the alums of my Catholic boarding school over a new project to eliminate a dam and reclaim a creek on the nuns' property, I thought I'd go over and photograph the project so that I could post pictures on FB.

 

While I was there, I took some other photos on the campus.  The one below is a rendition, made by  a sister/artist/friend, of Julia Chatfield's placing of a cross in the wilderness when she and ten other sisters arrived from France in 1845:

The campus is located about 30 miles north of Cincinnati.  Some history (underlining is mine), for anyone who's interested in women's education, Catholic education, Catholic sisters, and a host of others topics, from the website of Cincinnati's Ursuline Academy:

"[In] 1474 . . .  Angela Merici was born in Desenzano, a small town in northern Italy. Early in her life Angela had a direct indication from the Holy Spirit that she would found, in Brescia, a company of women consecrated to the Lord. Angela established the Ursulines in 1535. It was the first non-cloistered community of women in the history of the church, and the first religious community for women begun by a woman. Inspired by Gospel challenges, Angela and her followers reached out to rich and poor alike with special concern for the development of a strong family life. A true educator, Angela empowered people to reach their full potential and to use their skills in service.

From their foundation in Italy, Ursuline communities were established all over Europe. They came to the "New World" via Canada in 1639. Ursulines established the very first religious community of women in the United States in New Orleans in 1727.

The Ursulines of Brown County were founded by another woman of vision and faith, Julia Chatfield. As an Ursuline of Bologne-sur-mer, her pioneer spirit enticed her to accept the invitation of Bishop John Purcell to come to the newly formed Cincinnati diocese in 1845. The Ursulines of Bologne-sur-mer and Beaulieu joined forces and sent Julia Chatfield and ten other nuns to St. Martin where the diocese had built a seminary and established a parish. The seminary was being moved back to Cincinnati and the sisters were given 400 acres of land to be used for educational purposes.

 

Sister Julia Chatfield became Ohio’s “pioneer nun” whose determination to establish education in the wilderness endures after 165 years. She was inducted into the Ohio Women’s Hall of Fame on June 5, 2001 in recognition of the accomplishments she achieved:

• In 1845 Sr. Julia answered a call to come to Ohio from France;
• Sr. Julia founded the Ursulines of Brown County in Ohio, a congregation of women religious that endures today;
• Sr. Julia established a resident school for young women incorporated in 1846 under the title St. Ursula Literary Institute. After 135 years, the school closed in 1981;
• Sr. Julia instilled her determination to promote education into her successors; for example:
  • 1896 – establishment of Ursuline Academy of Cincinnati, a college preparatory school for young women;
  • 1940s – Ursuline Sisters’ participation in elementary and secondary education in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati and beyond, in higher education, and adult education;
  • 1971 – Chatfield College – St. Martin and Cincinnati campuses serving Appalachian and inner city populations.

Some of the most important things I know about how to be a person, I learned from Ursuline nuns.  From the cemetery, a plaque listing those who came from France: women of faith and courage and determination.

12-18/60

Eight days to go . . .

The basics: These were the girls' boarding school years.  Grades 7-9 with the Ursuline nuns in Ohio and grades 10-12 at Northfield, one of the schools founded by evangelist D.L. Moody in Massachusetts.  No stereotyping allowed! Those were the places in which I gained a grounding in religion that was open-minded, progressive, and scholarly.  The Catholics were just blossoming forth from Vatican II and the Protestants were heavily influenced by Tillich and the social justice movement.  Once I got to Northfield, I seldom went home anymore; I spent my spring breaks in Florida with my grandparents and my summers doing a mother's helper gig for a family on Cape Cod.  Those were influential but impressively unproductive years; I was a terrible student and my extra-curricular activities were unbloggable.

Key phrase: "You are wasting your potential."

Best memories:  Oh, most of those are unbloggable, too.  But there was the music at Northfield, which had an incredible choral program.  Even those of us who otherwise did little more than tunelessly hum Beatles' and Joni Mitchell songs had to participate. 

 

Spring 1970 Sacred Concert, dedicated to Kent State.  Many of us would probably agree that singing the David Stanley York arrangement of "Once to Every Man and Nation" was one of the defining moments of our lives.  It's completely different from the jaunty version found in most hymnals and was powerfully appropriate to that period in our national history.

And, amazingly, I've finally found a recording online ~ from a Presbyterian church in Dayton, of all places.  You have to scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page to 9.5.10 and then click on the title.  I would suggest turning the volume way up and imagining the young voices of 1200 idealistic high school students accompanied by an orchestra on a sunny spring day in western Massachusetts at the height of the Vietnam War.

A little reflection: One of the things one asks at 60 is how on earth she got to be who and where she is.  I did not, at the age of sixteen that afternoon at Northfield, believe for one minute that there was a God standing within the shadow keeping watch above anyone at all. 

 

But everything was in place, wasn't it?  Immersion in the beauty of creation, from rural Ohio to the Atlantic coastline to the foothills of the Berkshires;  a family's terrible suffering; a demanding religious and musical education ~ and a relentlessly skeptical but still hopeful mind and heart. 

 

No WONDER.

 

One could possibly even believe that God engineered all of this.

Here are the James Russell Lowell lyrics as adapted if you want to listen and read what you're hearing:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;
 

By the light of burning martyrs, Jesus' bleeding feet I track,
Toiling up new Calv’ries ever with the cross that turns not back;
 

Though the cause of evil prosper, yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Truth forever on the scaffold, and forever on the throne;

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

 

 

 

 

 

Convent Boarding School Girl

 

The Ursuline sisters showed up in southwestern Ohio in 1845 and began to teach and to construct a massive building for their convent and boarding school. 

My own Methodist family's connection with them  began with my great-grandmother's desire for piano lessons when she was a young girl in the 1890s.  It was her husband who started the business that would become one of our small town's four grain dealers, and it was through business transactions with the sisters and their farm that our connections were solidified.

I spent my seventh-ninth grade years as a boarding student at the school.

In my family's history, those three years were fairly insignificant; other relationships expanded and continued far beyond my time and role as a schoolgirl. My grandparents and my father developed fast friendships with the sisters, solidified by their mutual interests in nature, education, and the arts.  When the small college one of the sisters had founded for the education of new sisters opened to the public, my father became a board member.  When my grandfather died, two of the sisters conducted his funeral service in his living room; when my grandmother died twenty years later, one of them led the service in which I participated in their small chapel.

In the history of the Catholic Church, my three years there represented not even a fraction of a drop in a bucket.  The changes wrought by Vatican II were sweeping the church.  Mass became somewhat intelligible to me as the language was switched from Latin to English, and the younger sisters either vanished altogether from convent life or began to dress like the rest of us. Forty-plus years later, I think that perhaps the latter was the greater change.  The drama was not that many women left, realizing that at 17 and 18 they had made promises they no longer wanted to keep in the face of a world opening to other opportunities.  The drama was that so many stayed, discovering ways of sustaining complete and lifelong commitments to God in a contemporary world no long bound by the exterior trappings of the late Middle Ages.

In my personal history, those three years left an indelible mark.  I've written about it here, so I won't belabor the point, other than to say that the last time I was with Ursulines in person was on October 30, when two of them made the eight-hour round trip to attend my ordination service.  In many ways, the wheels for that service started to turn all those decades ago when I was a twelve-year-old in a navy blue skirt and white blouse surrounded by women who turned their humor and intelligence and wisdom and energy into service to God all day, every day.

I missed this past Saturday's school reunion, but the Facebook pictures have popped up, including this one of a magnificent quilt made by I know not whom.  It's a wonderful reminder of the dedication of generations of gifted women in a small corner of Ohio.

My Sisters

A bit of background: While I was on retreat last week, immersed in silence, the world lumbered on, and numerous concerns on which others were focused made their way into our masses in the form of prayer requests.  One day early in the week, the presider offered prayers for the LCWR in the face of the CDF's newly released critique, and expressed his solidarity with the sisters.  Huh?

Clarification came when the next day's presider explained the the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith (known in earlier centuries as the Inquisition) had issued a report criticizing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious for its over-attentiveness to issues of poverty and social justice and for its failure to focus on the Vatican's priorities in the areas of right-to-life and human family and sexuality issues. The CDF has established a panel of men (?) to oversee the sisters' organization for the next five years. 

There has been extensive coverage of this issue online, some of which raises serious questions about the integrity and competence of the oversight panel.  If you are interested, all you have to do is google "American Catholic sisters."  For today, my focus is on a twitter campaign launched by James Martin, S.J. , "What Sisters Mean to me," which I read about over at my friend Fran's place.  Twitter is not a part of my own communications arsenal, so I'll proceed with a blog post, per usual, and offer some observations about the profoundly Christlike presence of the women religious I know best, the Ursuline Sisters of Brown County, Ohio:

1.  They traveled from France in 1845 to  what was then the wilderness and is now the edge of Appalachia in southwestern Ohio,  and quickly established a school for girls, where I received my 7th-9th grade education 120 years later.

2.  They have been teachers, counselors, partners, ministers, supporters, encouragers, consolers, and I'm sure many other things I don't know about to countless of the people among whom they live, including my own family, for 167 years.

3.  Ursuline sisters taught my great-grandmother to play the piano in the 1890s, conducted or participated in the funerals of my grandfather (in his living room), my grandmother (in their chapel), and my stepmother (in a funeral home).

4.  A few decades ago, having concluded that their massive 19th century convent and school building was exhausting funds that could be better used elsewhere, the Ursulines engaged in one of the few great and unheralded acts of prophetic vision and courage which I've been privileged to witness.  They knocked that beautiful, energy-guzzling edifice down, moved to more modest and efficient quarters, and focused on ministry to people rather than to buildings.

5.  Today, the college that one of the sisters launched in the 1960s so that young nuns did not have to postpone their educations during the early years of their religious lives, years in which they were not at that time permitted to attend local universities, serves the entire region. It provides a warm and friendly setting in which farmers, laid-off workers, homemakers, high-school dropouts, and many others who would never otherwise have been able to imagine the possibility of college are able to earn degrees and embark upon new lives.

6.  While they are busy changing the world through education and attentiveness to those pesky issues of poverty and justice, the sisters are also present to the small but critical moments in the lives of those they care for.  Ursuline sisters have made the ten-hour round trip between their house and mine on several occasions: to bring my grandmother to see her brand-new great-granddaughter, to mourn our son with us, to celebrate an ordination with us.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture. Let me just add the following:

New friends sometimes express astonishment that my then little agnostic-Methodist self spent three years in a Catholic girls' boarding school.  Their general sentiments might be summarized as, "Didn't that ruin you?"

Well, yes: I did spend those formative years there, in a community of women who ran a convent, a school, and a farm.  Women who throw their entire lives of prayer, education, expertise,  presence, intelligence, and humor into the world in service to others.  Women whose every move offers an example of how to live with grace and goodness.  

I guess they did kind of ruin me.  They ruined any capacity I might have had to accept the status quo, to follow conventional rules for women, to ignore the needs of the impoverished and uneducated.  They ruined any possibility that I might have failed to realize that an 80-year-old woman might launch a new community ministry, or that a teacher of Italian and music might bring communion to the dying, or that ecumenical friendship is a priority of the highest order.

Now, what is it exactly that the Vatican does not see?