One thing more in answer to your letter. I have not had “everything to tempt me to take a very different course from what I have taken.” It has been altogether the result of surrounding, controlling circumstances, viz: — the mother whom God gave us. She plainly saw the vanitas vanitatis, and did not hide the fact from us. . . . We plainly saw and now how we can rejoice that she spent every moment of her life in the service of God! — Please do not think, however, that Mamma directly influenced me to think of becoming a nun. . . . I remember her saying ever since I was a mere child, “I do hope God will not give you . . . a religious vocation. If He does I must submit, but I shall never permit you to enter a convent until you are 25 years of age.” And in her last illness when she spoke of leaving us, I used to playfully threaten her with “You had better not go away from us, darling, or else I shall run off to a convent.” . . .
. . . I have overdone the case at the end of page 3 in saying that I have no longer “any dislike” to being under the rule of a woman. Under the rule of some women I should love to be. . . . Suppose I were to be under the rule of a cranky superioress. I should not like it; but don’t you think Our Lord would give me the grace to bear all things . . . ? — And now, good bye to self. I am sorry for occupying so much of my good Father’s time.24
This is an uncharacteristically emotional letter. Katharine was not pleading and begging to get her way or laying out rational reasons in favor of her desired course of action. She was opening a wound to Bishop O’Connor, pouring out her heart. These are not new discoveries she had made. She had known from childhood that drums were hollow and dolls were stuffed with ugly things. Nonetheless, the analogies of the discoveries of childhood are cleverly linked to the realities of the rise and fall of cities, states, and empires, the leavings of which are now found only in museums for the curious to gawk at. The lessons of vanitas vanitatis learned at her mother’s knee were reinforced by her trip through Europe. For a young woman who had witnessed the centennial of her own young nation, the antiquity and history of Europe had greater import than the fact of its age. Europe represented for her an object lesson in the teaching of Christ: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away” (Mark 13:31). She reacted with horror to this reality and naturally desired to become part of that which was permanent, that which would tie her, while she was in this world, to the permanence of a life in Christ in the next world. This letter is linked to the journal entry of the fourteen-year-old whose meditation for the day was on death and her realization that all she would do in life would be preparation for death. Desiring a “good death,” with the secure hope for a heavenly reward, the now more mature Katharine Drexel sought the permanent things through the life of a professed religious. She discounted her previous comments about not wanting to serve under the rule of women, even that of a “cranky superioress,” and she was willing to submit even to such a woman because it would be God’s will and God could be depended upon to grant her the necessary grace to endure whatever hardships would come her way.
That she should be worried about the transitory nature of the created world and the things that men and women value is perfectly understandable given her background and inclinations. What is surprising about this letter is the degree to which she is concerned about her concupiscence. She continues to fret about her eating habits as a gourmand, but her references to her fear of men and of her “inferior nature” and its passions, which “must be kept under control,” are truly surprising. Aside from her repeated vows to increase within herself the virtue of purity, her letters and journals provide no specific accounting for her fear of men and her obvious fear of her own sexuality. It was easier to deal with the problem of food, which is an external temptation, than to deal with passions that arise from within, unbidden and unwanted. One suspects that in her scrupulosity and the relative innocence of her time, Katharine did not recognize her attraction to men as a normal phenomenon. She does not appear to have had any experience with the opposite sex, other than of the most benign sort. In her social position, she was always chaperoned. She had the one proposal of marriage, but the young man’s name rated nary a mention in her journal. Whatever desires she experienced, she most likely never spoke of them to anyone, including her sisters. What was hidden became something shameful and something to fear. The convent may have represented safety, and this may have colored her decision to enter the religious life.
In his response to Katharine’s impassioned letter, Bishop O’Connor made no reference to her fear of men, except to point out that while there may be cranky superiors, there are also cranky wives and cranky husbands. He did say he was glad she made her vow in Venice and that the Lord “has already begun to enrich [her] with His gifts.” He wrote, “You appreciate [the gifts], for now, more clearly than ever before, you see and feel that ‘Quod aeterna non est nihil est’ [That which is not eternal is nothing at all]. Rag-babies, or dolls filled with sawdust, are all things earthly compared with those of eternity! Happy are they who are convinced of this in youth . . . and regulate their lives accordingly!” He urged her to continue with the rules he had given her and to add no additional mortifications. As to her toilette, he advised her to dress according to her station, with “due limitations.” In reference to her comments about a cranky superior, he reminded her that “only great saints can do this.”25 With present-day hindsight, O’Connor’s remarks carry considerable irony, but in truth, Katharine never had to serve under women who were cranky or inept. For most of her religious life, she was the superior who demonstrated competence and holiness, not crankiness.
Clearly Bishop O’Connor saw Katharine as a very religiously serious young woman, but he worried about her excesses. He reminded her of the devil, who “knows he cannot induce such as you to do what is evidently evil. Hence he changes himself into an angel of light and tries to get [people] to do good inordinately. He urges them to do more than they will be able to perform, in hope that they will grow weary of well doing. Though it is an old device of his, beginners in God’s service are constantly deceived by it. Indeed, very few are able to detect it for themselves. This is why in your acts of self-denial I have called your attention to the well known rule, ‘Festina Lente.’ ”26 Katharine, for her part, did not tire of her attempts to do good. She often failed in her own eyes, as is witnessed by her annual lists of voluntary table deprivations and daily devotions, but she never showed any inclination to give up or even scale back in order to take an easier route to heaven. She always asked to be able to deprive herself more and to devote more time to her devotions. Hers was a spiritual pride and vanity that would not admit the possibility of any interference from the deceiving “angel of light.”
After their father’s death in 1885, Elizabeth and Louise worried about Katharine’s complete lack of appetite and her general lack of interest in life, even life within the family among the “All Three.” Naturally Louise and Elizabeth were distraught over the sudden and therefore unexpected loss of their father, but it must have seemed to them that Katharine was slipping away as well.
The one thing that held Katharine’s attention was the plight of the Native Americans and blacks, or in the lexicon of her day, the Indians and the colored people. Though as a teenager she had taught Sunday school for black children in Philadelphia, her initial philanthropic thought after receiving control of her share of the interest from her father’s estate was to help the missions for the Native Americans. Her first personal philanthropy had been the purchase of the statue of the Immaculate Conception for Fr. Hylebos’s Indian mission. No doubt Bishop O’Connor’s letters describing the needs of the Indian missions in his diocese also spurred her interest in Native Americans. Her sisters concentrated their philanthropy for the benefit of black Americans, yet the efforts and interests of each of the Drexel women complemented and overlapped with the interests of the “All Three.” They worked together to honor their father’s memory by donating $50,000 to endow the Francis A.
Drexel Chair of Moral Theology at the new Catholic University in Washington, D.C. They also cooperated on Elizabeth Drexel’s initial project, the development of the St. Francis de Sales Industrial School for Boys to teach young orphaned boys technical skills that would enable them to earn a living. It remains today as a monument to Francis Drexel and his patron saint. Louise’s largest project would be St. Emma’s Industrial and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, a military-style school where young black men could learn employable skills. It was called St. Emma’s Military Academy, in honor of Emma Bouvier Drexel.27 Katharine built a school for the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in Philadelphia for the education of poor black children. Katharine would eventually turn more of her efforts to the very pressing needs of black people, but her initial philanthropic sympathy and endeavors were primarily for the Native Americans.
As a young girl under the tutelage of Mary Cassidy, Katharine had written a story based on the heroic work of the Ursuline nuns with seventeenth-century Native Americans in Quebec. “These ladies born to the mild climate of France, brought up amid all the luxury that wealth with rank could procure, had come to the wilderness to spend a life of unimaginable hardship among poor Indian children in order that these darkened souls should receive that gift of faith which these generous women burned to impart.”28 It is fascinating to conjecture that the fifteen-year-old Katharine had somehow foreseen her own future. She could not have, but her comments about the Ursulines leaving luxury and wealth to impart the gift of faith under great hardships in a western wilderness did in fact foreshadow her future.
After her father’s death, Katharine’s thoughts turned even more to that future, one more inclined toward the convent. Her desire was for a contemplative order. “To tell the truth, it appears to me that God calls me to the religious life. But when is it prudent for me to obey the call? Next week? This Fall? This Winter? In what religious order? Please tell me, dear Father, what I shall do to save my own soul, to save as many souls as possible, to devote myself and all that I have to God and to His Church. You know that I have a leaning to the contemplative life, but you and Father Ardia [her confessor] both say no to that; you know that I yearn to bring the Indian into Mother Church.”29
Bishop O’Connor was not swayed by Katharine’s repeated attempts to get him to change his mind, nor would Katharine be put off indefinitely. In this letter, she asserted that entering the religious life was not for her a question of “if” but of “when.” Her mind was made up. Bishop O’Connor used everything in his arsenal of logic to dissuade her from the convent, including her health.
The conclusion I have come to in your case is, that your vocation is not to enter a religious order. The only order to which I could have thought of recommending to you, is the Sacred Heart; but you do not have the health necessary to enable you to discharge the duties that would devolve on you as a member of that society. God cannot be presumed to wish us to do what he has not given us the means to perform. You cannot count on health, and a long life, in the world, as your late restoration proves, but the nature of the disease from which you suffered, is such that the restraints and duties of religious life would be almost sure to bring about a relapse, and perhaps, permanent disability. Then, your inclination to that sort of life is not strong enough to justify me in recommending you to give it a trial, especially in view of your physical disqualifications for it.30
He added that God’s mission for her was to remain in the world and live her life as she had been doing: giving aid to the poor, the blacks, and the Native Americans; being an example to the rich, whom he called “the poorest of the poor”; and helping her sisters and influencing them for their temporal and spiritual good. It appears that Katharine had expressed a fear of being alone after her sisters married, but he assured her that God and his angels and saints would be with her as well as himself and other spiritual guides who would come her way throughout her life.
Not only did she fear being alone, but she also feared that she might give in to the temptations of the world and somehow turn from God and the happy death she so desired. O’Connor responded in the same letter to her concern. “The very fear you have of the world, and your inclination to fly from it, are an earnest of your safety in the midst of its dangers. . . . If you did not fear the world, and yourself, then, indeed, I should greatly fear for you.”31 His last recommendation to her in this same letter was to renew annually her vow of virginity, not only for the merit it would bring her, but also for its strength and consolation. It was one way to keep the flesh constantly under the control of the spirit. Every temptation overcome made the next temptation easier to overcome, and to do so because one had dedicated herself to God would further strengthen her conviction. In his next letter to Katharine, Bishop O’Connor recommended a few books for spiritual reading, but admonished her to stay away from reading “mystic or ascetic fare without letting me know what it is. And, under all circumstances, try to possess your soul in peace. Excitement and unrest do not come from God. Pause and reflect, and pray whenever you are inclined to be impetuous and disturbed by any matter.”32
Apparently Katharine was not taking seriously the motto Festina Lente, for the bishop had to tell her that in “practicing your present devotions, you are far from standing still. You are advancing, and as rapidly as prudence will allow. Growth in holiness, is, like all other growth, gradual and orderly. When forced it is not healthful. You are going after Our Lord, and traveling under direction, you are going as He would have you go.”33 Of course, nothing, if desired, comes quickly enough for a young person. She had written that she wanted to go on regular retreats, but the bishop held her to one annually. She wanted to try out a convent, which he would not permit. She wanted to practice a more ascetic form of living, including more fasting, and this at a time when she was still ill following her father’s death. She did not want to make haste slowly; she wanted to make haste, period.
Katharine’s listlessness and loss of appetite, combined with her fasting, far beyond what her spiritual adviser allowed, brought on jaundice and internal complications from severe weight loss. Today she would be diagnosed as suffering from the eating disorder called anorexia combined with clinical depression. How very different she was at this time from the young woman who worried about entering a convent because the refectory fare did not live up to her standards as a “gourmand.” Her sisters were alarmed at her failing physical condition and took her to Europe seeking a cure at famous spas. The trip was also undertaken so the three sisters could view various European schools upon which to model their St. Francis de Sales Industrial School. The “All Three” sailed for Europe on July 31, 1886, with the first order of business being the restoration of Katharine’s health. They took her to the doctors at Schwalbach, a German spa town. Katharine took the five-week cure: “daily [mud] baths, one half glass of the Weinbrunner Spring waters twice daily, quantity to be gradually increased.”34 Katharine wrote to Miss Cassidy, “I have gained eight pounds, honest weight. All my clothes are beginning to be too small. Dyspepsia much better.”35 She was perhaps a little premature in her assessment of her physical progress. Elizabeth wrote to Miss Cassidy, “Our stay [in Schwalbach] certainly benefited Kate; her face has fattened, her color is better — but the main trouble still remains, along with a delicate digestion. We had hoped for a more decided cure. The doctor says she will feel the good of the waters after leaving them and sends us onward our way.”36
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