The loss to the community of the example of and daily commerce with Francis Drexel was nothing compared to his loss to his daughters. Elizabeth, Katharine, and Louise were now quite literally the “All Three.” They no longer had the guiding hand of either parent. The estate trustees, Uncles Anthony Drexel and John Lankenau, along with George Childs, a close family friend and the owner and editor of the Philadelphia Ledger, were solicitous of the Drexel sisters, looking after and advising them, but all the many kindnesses of relatives and friends could not make up for the loss of their father and mother. For a short period of time they lived with Uncle Anthony and his wife, just as more than twenty-five years before Elizabeth and baby Katharine had stayed with them after the death of Hannah Drexel. Anthony Drexel, by then the single head of the Drexel family banking firm, took his nieces in hand. He no doubt talked with them about their future and security. He found Katharine particularly interested and adept in financial matters. His biographer, Dan Rottenberg, called Katharine the “shrewdest business head among her generation of Drexels,” including Anthony’s three sons. “Kate seemed eager to learn from her Uncle Anthony about the relative value of investments and the creditworthiness of specific bonds. Tony for his part was grateful to find someone of the next generation who responded enthusiastically to his mentoring instincts. But of course Victorian society offered no place in banking for a woman. Some suitable activity would have to be found for her.”71 Eventually, the Drexel sisters moved back into the family home on Walnut Street to plan the rest of their lives. While her uncle Anthony might not have considered the convent a “suitable activity” for Katharine, she would and did.
During the illness of Emma Drexel, both Katharine and Elizabeth seriously considered entering the convent. The religious life had had its attractions for Katharine from young girlhood. She was at home as much in a church or a convent as she was at St. Michel. As a small child she had enjoyed playing in the chapel at Eden Hall while she and Emma waited to pick up Elizabeth at the end of the school day. She had enjoyed the convent parlor when her mother visited with her aunt, Madame Louise. Additionally, the Carthusian monastery in France had provided her with an image of a peaceful life. Becoming a religious was an idea that Elizabeth rejected almost immediately after the death of her mother. Elizabeth confided to her journal: “Sweet it is to weep at the foot of the Cross and there, Thank God! I have found refuge and consolation. But now the finger of the Lord clearly points me the way of the active life. There I will find my cross if I pick it up and follow Jesus. There will the footsteps of my mother mark out for me a well-beaten path.”72 Elizabeth resolved to carry on for her mother and to follow in her footsteps. It was an idea that had come to her at least a year before Emma’s death, when she wrote the following in her journal:
Our meditations on the life of Christ would seem to teach us that to suffer patiently the will of God is even more pleasing to Him than even to accomplish great things for the glory of His name. When I resume in my own mind the edifying life of my darling mother, so full of activity and usefulness, so pure in its intention of pleasing God, all her charities which the world at large dwells on so much — all her devotion to duty — her turning resolutely aside from the influence of the world — all, all beautiful as they are, seem to me less than her final sufferings endured (and so hard to endure) at the hand of God and her surrendering herself to Him at His call in the vigor of her age, and in the very middle of her work.73
While Elizabeth had chosen the active life and Katharine was beginning to long for the peace of the cloister, neither of the sisters was willing to take the decisive steps that would break their circle. Both of the older sisters felt responsible for Louise, who at twenty-one was still quite young. So they stayed together and planned various ways to carry on the charities of their parents and means to promote and honor their memories. They met regularly, as had their mother, with the Dorcas charity, something the sisters would do until duty called them elsewhere or they were no longer able.
Bereft of her own father, Katharine turned more and more to her spiritual adviser and father, Bishop James O’Connor of Omaha. They had written to one another regularly after his departure for the West. Their correspondence flourished as she grew older. Concerning Katharine’s convent thoughts, Bishop O’Connor advised her, “Think, pray, and wait, and all will turn out for your peace and happiness.”74 He was initially adamantly opposed to her joining a convent, believing that she would do more good with her example as a pious woman living in the married state in the world. It took many years of thinking, praying, and waiting by both Katharine and Bishop O’Connor until he would consent to her entering a convent, and then he had very specific ideas about the type of convent she should enter. The development of Katharine’s spirituality and the process of her search for a vocation are the next story to be unfolded through her interactions with her spiritual adviser, her confessor, and her sisters.
In the meantime, the portrait that emerges of Katharine Drexel from her childhood and young adulthood is one of a bright, likeable young woman with a religious seriousness that was a little beyond the norm. She and her family exhibited all the hallmarks of what is termed Catholic devotionalism that became popular in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Their piety centered on the sacraments of the Church, aided by individual and family prayers, including the rosary; devotional readings, including prayer books and guides, as well as lives of the saints; the practice of fasting and abstinence according to the rules of the Church; and the practice of charity.75 She demonstrated remarkable love and loyalty to her family, especially to her parents and sisters. She never seems to have questioned her family’s financial or social standing. Her attachment to her mother was particularly strong, yet she was also extremely close to her father. Indeed, when he died, Katharine suffered a physical and nervous collapse. She lost a considerable amount of weight, became lethargic, and retreated even further into the exclusive company of her sisters. Her condition would have been recognized today as clinical depression and treated accordingly.
The precarious state of her health was one of the reasons Bishop O’Connor would give for withholding his consent for her to enter the convent. Katharine also exhibited a great willingness to adhere to authority. She was the dutiful daughter to her parents and the dutiful spiritual daughter to her religious advisers. Her desire was always to please and never to offend; obedience came naturally to her. Interestingly, in the years ahead, the exercise of authority and leadership would also come naturally to her. The external events of her early years do not begin to tell the entire story of those years or of the years to come. That she learned the lessons her parents sought to teach her about what it means to be Catholic is evident. What those lessons in virtue, spirituality, and philanthropy would lead to will be the subject of the following chapter; the events will tell the story of a remarkable young woman and budding saint as she argued with a bishop of the Church about her vocation; eventually, she argued herself into a convent and the founding of a new religious order.
1. Message for the XXXI World Day of Prayer for Vocations, 1994, 1 and 3, online at the Vatican Web site, www.vatican.va.
2. EBD to ELD, February 26, 1867. Unless otherwise noted, all quoted Drexel letters are in the Archives of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament at the motherhouse in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.
3. The woman known today as St. Katharine Drexel was baptized Catherine Mary Drexel. She signed various legal papers as Catherine or Catharine. As an adult she spelled her name Katharine. When she became a novice, her religious name became Mary Katharine.
4. Sr. Mary Dolores Letterhouse, SBS, The Francis A. Drexel Family (Cornwells Heights, Pa.: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1939), p. 5. None of the Drexel family’s personal papers discusses the lawsuit. The libelous action may have arisen out of a dispute among the trustees of Holy Trinity Church, the bishop of the diocese, and the parish priest over control of
the parish. Catholic churches were sometimes built and paid for by a lay board of trustees, who often expected to control the staffing and the business of the parish, much like the Congregationalist churches were controlled by the laity. Issues of control caused conflicts among all concerned, as happened at Holy Trinity.
5. Dan Rottenberg, The Man Who Made Wall Street: Anthony J. Drexel and the Rise of Modern Finance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. xiv. See also p. 104 on Grant’s offer of public office.
6. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, vol. 1 (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1975), p. 301.
7. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, p. 11; FAD to his cousin, Anthony J. Drexel, December 30, 1858. All quoted materials retain their original spellings, punctuations, and emphases.
8. His brother married an Episcopalian woman and joined her church.
9. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, pp. 42-43; FAD to EBD, January 1, 1863.
10. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, p. 43; FAD to EBD, January 1, 1864.
11. November 1864.
12. Miscellaneous writings of Mother Mary Katharine Drexel, including those before she became a religious, are found in the Archives of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, #3202.
13. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, p. 72.
14. Katharine Drexel, Oral Memoir, November 29, 1935, ASBS.
15. ASBS, vol. 1, p. 117.
16. ASBS, vol. 1, p. 117.
17. MKD, Oral Memoir, November 29, 1935.
18. Emma Bouvier Drexel, Journal, July 29, 1877.
19. See above, n. 9.
20. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, p. 44.
21. MKD to EBD, 1864.
22. MKD to EBD, December 23, 1867.
23. Positio, 1:156.
24. MKD Retreat Notes, vol. 8, pp. 76-77.
25. ASBS, vol. 1, p. 23.
26. MKD to EBD, no date.
27. This doll is in the Visitors’ Center at the Shrine of St. Katharine at the motherhouse in Bensalem.
28. Lou Baldwin, A Call to Sanctity: The Formation and Life of Mother Katharine Drexel (Philadelphia: Catholic Standard and Times, 1987), p. 15.
29. Ellen Tarry, Katharine Drexel: Friend of the Neglected (Nashville: Winston-Derek Publishers, 1990), p. 3.
30. Will of Mrs. Francis Martin Drexel, SBS Archives.
31. ASBS.
32. ASBS, 1872. As Elizabeth Drexel grew older, the family began to call her Lise, deeming it more sophisticated.
33. MKD to Bishop James O’Connor, 1872.
34. MKD, Memoirs, 1873.
35. ASBS, no date.
36. MKD to Miss Cassidy, July 22, 1874, ASBS.
37. MKD, Collected Journals, November 1873.
38. MKD to Cassidy, December 8, 1874.
39. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, pp. 91-92.
40. Katherine Burton, The Golden Door: The Life of Katharine Drexel (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1957), p. 35.
41. ASBS, vol. 1, p. 35.
42. Lou Baldwin, St. Katharine Drexel: Apostle to the Oppressed, ed. Paul S. Quinter, Elena Bucciarelli, and Frank Coyne (Philadelphia: Catholic Standard and Times, 2000), p. 29.
43. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, p. 105.
44. MKD to O’Connor, May 28, 1878.
45. Elizabeth Drexel, St. Michel Journal, May 1878.
46. MKD to O’Connor, January 4, 1879.
47. O’Connor to MKD, January 1879.
48. Elizabeth Drexel, St. Michel Journal, August 12, 1878.
49. MKD to EBD, August 1880.
50. EBD to MKD and ELD, August 12, 1880.
51. MKD to EBD, August 18, 1880.
52. EBD to MKD and ELD, August 17, 1880.
53. FAD to MKD and ELD, August 18, 1880.
54. FAD to MKD and ELD, August 4, 1881.
55. MKD to O’Connor, January 27, 1884.
56. EBD to MKD and ELD, August 9, 1881.
57. Burton, The Golden Door, p. 59.
58. Quoted in Sr. Consuela Duffy, SBS, Katharine Drexel: A Biography (Philadelphia: Reilly Co., 1966), p. 70.
59. Positio, 2:164.
60. MKD to O’Connor, May 21, 1883.
61. MKD, Travel Journal, November 18, 1883.
62. MKD, Travel Journal, November 18, 1883.
63. Letterhouse, Francis A. Drexel Family, p. 223.
64. Baldwin, St. Katharine Drexel, p. 50.
65. MKD in a later oral memoir transcribed in the archives said she was alone with her father at his death and that her sisters were away shopping. Contemporary accounts indicate that all three sisters were at home. Considering Katharine’s severe reaction, it seems more likely that her memory of the circumstances surrounding her father’s death is correct.
66. ASBS, vol. 2, p. 170.
67. According to economist Jim Wadley of Tulsa Community College, this would be worth approximately $218,640,000 in 2002 U.S. dollars.
68. This provision was due to what was called a “Spendthrift” clause in the will. Will of Francis Drexel, SBS Archives.
69. Francis Drexel Correspondence, SBS Archives.
70. Repeated in a letter from MKD to O’Connor, January 27, 1884.
71. Rottenberg, The Man Who Made Wall Street, p. 50.
72. ELD Journal, Good Friday 1883.
73. Baldwin, St. Katharine Drexel, p. 35.
74. O’Connor to MKD, August 5, 1883.
75. Jay P. Dolan, The American Catholic Experience: A History from Colonial Times to the Present (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), pp. 221-40.
Chapter 2
“Make Haste Slowly”:
The Discernment of a Vocation
There was a long epistolary argument between Bishop James O’Connor and Katharine Drexel over whether or not her desire to enter the convent constituted a true vocation. She, quite naturally, insisted that she was called by God to become a nun in a contemplative order. He, on the other hand, did not believe that her vocation was indeed a gift from God, but a distraction from what he thought was her true place in society. In the course of their fifteen-year relationship, Bishop O’Connor counseled her in her growing spiritual quest. For the last six of those years, the question concerned her vocation. It was difficult for Katharine to persist in her desire for a vocation in the face of his opposition, and, eventually, it was nearly impossible for her to accept her specific vocation to found an order of nuns to serve Native Americans and African Americans. Her ultimate moment of defiance of the bishop over her decision to enter the convent could not have been predicted by her previous actions and attitudes, but it followed a time when she developed a more deeply spiritual life and more strength of character. It was a period of turmoil not readily evident to those about her.
Watching a swan glide across a pond, one sees a majestic bird move effortlessly. It is a serene scene, peaceful and calm. However, beneath the water, the feet of the swan are actively working away, sometimes through the muck and mire of the pond. Similarly, what one saw of Katharine Drexel as a young woman in her twenties reflected the serenity of the swan gliding across the pond; her life was unruffled, charmed by wealth and love. It is true that both of her parents had died, but it is the natural order of things for parents to predecease their children. Katharine still had her youth, beauty, wealth, social position, and a long
life before her. She and her sisters enjoyed an intense intimacy that needed no outsiders while, at the same time, they extended their relationships to their large family and close family friends.
Mother Katharine Drexel Page 7
