Not all the women who came to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament persevered in their vocations. Of the forty-one women who entered either at the Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh or at the temporary novitiate at the Drexel family estate, St. Michel, nineteen left. This was an unusually high dropout rate. More established orders saw 17 to 25 percent leave.7 There were many frustrations caused by the newness of the SBS order. They could not move directly into the motherhouse, St. Elizabeth’s, because it was still being built. The day before the celebration to lay the cornerstone for the new motherhouse, a stick of dynamite was found, presumably placed by a neighbor distraught at the thought of a school for black children so near his home. There were rumors that “all the Catholics who were on the platform would be blown to Hell.”8 When they finally moved in, the facility was still under construction, with no heat and no lights. The water froze in the pitchers during especially cold winter nights, and the sisters burned candles for lighting. They could not go immediately to the missions in the West because the community was still in its infant stages and needed to grow more spiritual and sororal bonds before it spread out across the country. It was not until 1894 that the first mission was established, as the sisters took over the mission school of St. Catherine’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Surely a few sisters were frightened away by frustrations and intimidating activity, but this was only one reason that sisters left the order. Some departed due to poor health; others joined congregations that would send them immediately to the West. One wanted a more contemplative order. Only one left after having made her final vows and without being released from the vows. Seven were asked to leave, usually for reasons that, had they been more obedient to their superior, would not have warranted their removal. These reasons included lack of “prudence, discretion, or charity”; being “pettish,” “temperamental,” or a hypochondriac; or, worst of all, for producing “friction” in the community.9 These were infractions of immaturity and lack of obedience on the part of the young sisters. Perfectae Caritatis put the principle of obedience this way: “Religious engaged in the active apostolate . . . must always be imbued with the spirit of their religious community, and remain faithful to the observation of their rule and a spirit of submission due to their superiors.”10 Optatam Totius, in speaking of seminarians, carries the principle of obedience to an even higher level whereby the religious is expected to “accept the authority of superiors from a personal conviction, that is to say from a motive of conscience (cf. Rom. 13:5), and for supernatural reasons.”11 Those asked to leave were lacking in that love that is the surrender of the will. Those who stayed — and after the earliest years most did stay — were bound together by their vows and their individual convictions that each one had been called personally by Christ to become a missionary in the order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament.
The order consisted of Choir sisters and House sisters. The House sisters performed most of the more menial jobs of the convents and missions and taught the domestic arts to students, while the Choir sisters were more educated and performed the academic teaching duties. Choir sisters had priority over House sisters. This division of the sisterhood was common to European orders, but uncommon in the United States. However, it was practiced by the Sisters of Mercy, where Katharine had done her novitiate, and by the Sacred Heart Sisters of Eden Hall, where her aunt had been the superior. All the SBS sisters wore the same habit, and all performed many of the same chores about the convent. No one was exempt from physical labor, except those who were ill or aged. This division of House and Choir sisters was eventually dropped in 1958.
All the earliest sisters were Caucasian. It was not because Katharine believed that African American women were inferior or not capable of being good nuns that they were not originally welcomed into the order. “Why, should they [African American women] not be religious [nuns]? . . . They are sent to do the work of the religious, without the graces or protection of the religious. It is too much work and too exposing a work without spiritual merit and protection the religious life affords. If it be possible — as seems the case — that the Colored girl may live in religion, why should she not do so, and enjoy its advantages?”12 She alluded to a heated discussion on the possibility of a racially mixed congregation in a letter to her brother-in-law, Edward Morrell, and presumably her sister Louise, who “strongly favored” a mixed congregation. Her other sister, Elizabeth Smith, had the opposite opinion. She thought that a mixed congregation would be “sheer madness.”13 Katharine’s decision to maintain a Caucasian-only order was political, not a product of prejudice. Her main fear was that her order, dedicated as it was to the service of “Indian and Colored People,” would be seen as being in competition with the African American orders of nuns for members. The only two orders of black women in the United States at the time of the founding of the SBS were struggling for members and financial support. Both the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore and the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans, the African American orders, received financial support from Katharine, who also promised not to raid their supply of possible candidates. In the early 1890s, Mother Mathilda Beasley of the newly forming Sisters of the Second Order of St. Francis approached Katharine about the possibility of her fledgling African American order of nuns being trained under SBS auspices. Katharine turned her away because her own SBS order was still very young and not yet well formed, and she felt the established black order in Baltimore or New Orleans would better serve Mother Mathilda. However, in 1927, the newly forming African American community of the Handmaids of Mary placed their Sr. Dorothy, who would become their mistress of novices, in Cornwells Heights to be trained under the guidance of the SBS mistress of novices, much the way that Katharine and her first SBS sisters were trained by the Sisters of Mercy in Pittsburgh. The first African American to become a Sister of the Blessed Sacrament would not join for several more decades.
However, about the same time that Katharine was turning down Mother Beasley, Georgianna Burton, a young woman of Seneca Indian background, converted to Catholicism in New York against the opposition of her Native American family. Needing a place to stay, she sought refuge at the SBS mission of St. Michael’s in Arizona. She had hoped to join what would have been the first order of Native American nuns that was being organized by Fr. Francis Michael Craft. When Fr. Craft’s efforts to found the Indian order fell through, Burton turned to the SBS for admission. By a vote of the congregation, she was accepted, and she entered the novitiate at the motherhouse on January 15, 1893. Native American women freely joined the order, while black women could not. The SBS would one day became color-blind in their admission policies, but that day was far distant from the time of Georgianna Burton.
Even before the founding of the SBS, Katharine was besieged by bishops and priests seeking her funds for their schools and missions. She filled those requests as fully as she could, dispensing more than $100,000 while she was still in the Mercy Convent. Her first supplicant visitor after she left Pittsburgh for St. Michel was Archbishop Francis Janssens of New Orleans, and though she gave him funds for the meantime, it would not be until the preparation for the founding of Xavier University in 1915 that her sisters would establish a mission in his city.
One of the Indian missions Katharine had supported before entering the convent was St. Stephen’s in Wyoming, a mission for the Shoshone and Arapaho Indians she had funded since 1885. It was a mission plagued with staffing difficulties from its beginning. Bishop Maurice Burke of Cheyenne wrote to her in 1889:
You certainly cannot be expected to do any more. . . . Our position, however, in Wyoming is not understood, and this fact is to our real disadvantage and embarrassment. . . . I am bishop in name only. . . . I am here in a vast desert without inhabitants and without any means under heaven to accomplish any work in the interest of the Church or of religion. . . . If I had the zeal and the ability of St. Paul, I could accomplish nothing here. I am without people, without priests
, without any means whatever of living or staying here.
. . . Your work among the Indians has been and is indeed a charity so great that words cannot express it. If a little of what you have done for the poor Red Man of this desert, were done by others who had the means and the power to do it, for the poor whites who are scattered here and there throughout this vast territory like sheep without a shepherd, many souls would be saved that are now lost to the faith.14
Bishop Burke kept in touch with her over the years. He could not secure priests or nuns for his mission, which had been built with Drexel money. The Sisters of Charity were to staff the mission in June of 1890, but were recalled to Fort Leavenworth before they could start a school. Then four Protestant women were secured to undertake the school, but they, too, were unable to open it. Katharine sent out letters to other orders of sisters looking for staff for the mission. No sisters were willing or available to undertake the mission. Katharine learned of this last failure at the profession of her vows, where Bishop Burke was present. She secured permission from Archbishop Ryan to make an investigatory tour of the Wyoming mission. In her mind, it would be the first mission of her new order. On her trip, she inspected the buildings and made supply lists of what would be needed to open the school. When she left to return to Philadelphia, both she and the bishop of Cheyenne expected that she would return in the spring with SBS sisters to staff the mission. She was in for a major disappointment, because Archbishop Ryan, perhaps at the suggestion of Mother Sebastian, the superior of the Mercy Convent in Pittsburgh, denied her request to open St. Stephen’s Mission.15 He deemed her community too young and inchoate to undergo such a difficult assignment. At that time, Mother Katharine was the only professed member of the SBS community. This was, however, the only setback that she experienced. If it made her angry or upset, she did not express or record it. Instead, she looked upon the experience as an opportunity to teach her infant order a lesson in humility.
We should, then, Sisters, endeavor to sanctify ourselves during this period of grace which He has given to us. If we desire to build the house of holiness, we must begin by laying a good firm foundation and the firmer the foundation the higher we can build. . . . Humility will carry the super-structure and be sure that your house will not stand unless it is built on the virtue of humility. If we are not humble, tell me — of what use are we in God’s service? It is on condition that we are humble that He will bestow His grace upon us. In bestowing upon us the name of Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament He seems to desire us in a special manner to be humble; for in no act of His life or even in His passion and death, did He show His humility as He did in the Sacrament of His love, not even in the Incarnation. . . . He hides all of His glory even that of His Humanity — under the form of ordinary bread. If we have this virtue we shall also have fraternal charity which is the bond of union, for if we listen to the voice of humility which is truth, we shall see so much imperfection in ourselves that we will not notice the faults of our Sisters much less speak of them. During this time of preparation [before going out to the missions] we will not lack material to practice our future work with the little ones of Christ.16
Years later, she would write about her thwarted plans to open St. Stephen’s with her own sisters: “Oh how audacious I was in those days. Almighty God was certainly good to save us from such a mistake. I see now what a wild scheme it was. It would have been the ruination of our little Congregation.”17
St. Catherine’s, Santa Fe, New Mexico
The first mission the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament founded was to serve Native Americans in the pueblos surrounding Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1894. St. Catherine’s School was built in 1886-1887 with funds supplied by Katharine Drexel. It suffered the same staffing problems as did St. Stephen’s. The Sisters of Loretto opened the school and taught there for two and a half years; the Benedictine fathers served there but withdrew after a year; and then three laywomen were contracted to run the school but were unable to do so. The school closed in June 1893 for lack of teachers. Archbishop Placide L. Chapelle of Santa Fe made the trek to Cornwells Heights, the new name of the area around the SBS motherhouse, to induce Mother Katharine to send SBS teachers to his school. Again, Archbishop Ryan said, “No. Let Archbishop Chapelle try to secure another community for the present.” Mother Katharine again looked upon the delay as an opportunity to teach humility: “Sisters, we can make an act of humility, we are not fit instruments for apostolic labor among the Indians of New Mexico. Do not let this, however, deter us in the work of our sanctification. If we persevere courageously in the uphill work, dying to ourselves and letting God reign in our hearts, He will in His own time choose us to go and work in His vineyard and bring forth fruit that will remain. Let us strive to grow in all the virtues, especially the virtue of humility.”18
When she learned in the spring of 1894 that Chapelle had been unsuccessful in finding teachers for St. Catherine’s, Mother Katharine again approached Ryan for permission to make a trip to Santa Fe to assess the needs of the school. This time Ryan agreed, and Mother Katharine and another sister traveled to Santa Fe. While there, she engaged workmen to repair and alter the buildings of the school. Upon her return to the motherhouse, and with Ryan’s permission, she selected nine sisters to be the order’s pioneer missionaries. The first group of four sisters departed the motherhouse on June 13, 1894. The second group started out a few weeks later, only to be caught up in a national railway strike that more than once threatened mob action and endangered the sisters. The sisters telegraphed Mother Katharine to ask whether they should try to continue their journey. She responded that “if continuing journey seems dangerous REMAIN in La Junta.” There was no consensus as to exactly what Mother’s instructions meant or whether or not there was the possibility of danger ahead, so the group went on anyway. Mother Katharine was upset that her sisters misunderstood her instructions. She wrote to them afterward, “I feared your going despite the danger. . . . I explain this, not to pain you, but that you may know your Mother better on another occasion. I have offered the judgment you formed of me in atonement for the many times I have doubted Our Lord’s love. Indeed a little penance was well merited and made me understand the Sacred Heart better and how want of confidence must grieve Him.”19 The five sisters joined the original four in Santa Fe just as a funeral was under way for an Indian child with the band playing “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”20 The sisters must have wondered what they had gotten themselves into.
Mother Katharine gave the sisters a few weeks to settle in before leaving to visit her first mission. She wrote frequent letters back to the sisters in the motherhouse when she traveled. Even though she was away, she was still mistress of novices, in addition to being the mother general of the order, and their spiritual formation was always on her mind. She wrote the following en route from Kansas:
If we have died to self in life and lived in God’s presence, and near Him and with Him, in union with Him in life, surely on that day when eternity shall commence to us, God’s own beautiful life will glorify all our thoughts, words and actions because His Will and Light will appear in them and thus they will glorify Him for ever and ever. The splendor will not fade as do the golden tints of these clouds that pass when I am writing to you. Oh even now they have assumed a leaden hue and they appear but fleeting clouds! So will self will, self seeking, self-judgment be on our day of eternity. Let us do God’s will and see God and God’s judgment whilst traveling to eternity. Then we need not fear that only the fleeting clouds will remain in our thoughts, words and actions. All these will be laid up in Heaven as a treasure that will not fade.21
When she arrived at St. Catherine’s, only nine students were enrolled in the school. She asked Bishop Chapelle and his priests to visit with the Indian elders to convince them to send their children. When that was done and the school and convent were in good order, she took leave of her sisters, whom she called “My Nine.” She wrote to them not to be discouraged in
their slow start: “I loved you before my visit, more since my visit and during it. . . . As I think of His paternal love, it does not seem improbable to me that He has plucked some of the fruit from you by not permitting the children to come all at once, because He wisely saw that would be too heavy for the slender branches. That is at least now, if they come all at once. Growth must be gradual to be enduring.”22 The first planting was successfully under way. By the end of the first year of SBS direction, St. Catherine’s had enrolled eighty-four children of both sexes. It would grow gradually and endure for more than one hundred years, until 1999.
St. Francis de Sales, Powhatan, Virginia
Because her vocation was to serve both the African American and the Native American peoples, Katharine Drexel, once St. Catherine’s School was secure, looked for ways to introduce her order directly into the service of African Americans. Her sister Louise and her husband had been most interested in the plight of African Americans. Their Virginia school for young men of color was opened in 1895 under the direction of the Christian Brothers. Katharine approached Bishop Augustine Van De Vyver of Richmond about opening a sister school for young black women on an adjacent piece of property. He was more than happy with her proposal and immediately gave his consent. She purchased 600 acres along the James River to construct her new academy, which she called St. Francis de Sales, in honor of her father. It was more informally referred to as Rock Castle, the name of the area. It was the first of many schools for African Americans she would finance. Eventually the bulk of her funds and the efforts of her community would be directed to serving the black community. Her prediction that the needs of the large number of African Americans would overwhelm the needs of Native Americans came true, even within her own order.
Mother Katharine Drexel Page 15
