Mother Katharine Drexel
Page 34
Despite this mystery, what has been revealed about Katharine Drexel is still important. Her self-emptying kenotic spirituality perfectly balanced her eucharistic spirituality. It was from her spiritual core that she was able to go forth to do battle with the iniquities of her day, to fight for the rights and education of Native Americans and African Americans. At the same time, her main goal was to bring Native Americans and African Americans to Christ in the Catholic Church. Her great wealth became her great poverty of spirit that allowed her to see Christ in Native Americans and African Americans, where most Americans simply saw “the other.” She was, for the Catholic Church in America, the right person at the right time. Pope John Paul II canonized her as St. Katharine Drexel, a role model, companion, and intercessor for Catholics in the twenty-first century.
1. Email to author, December 6, 2005.
2. Email to author, November 4, 2005.
3. Interview with author, November 19, 2005.
4. Kenneth L. Woodward, Making Saints: How the Catholic Church Determines Who Becomes a Saint, Who Doesn’t, and Why (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 18.
Acknowledgments
How was one to know that a graduate school project would turn into a labor of love? It was a love that went both ways. The more I learned about St. Katharine Drexel, the more I fell in love with my subject. However much I strived for scholarly objectivity, I am sure there are many places in the book where my clear sympathy and affection for Katharine Drexel and her mission come through. Astute readers will notice those places and, I hope, not be distracted by them.
What I did not expect from such an undertaking were the love and support I received from family, friends, colleagues, and even complete strangers throughout the long process. My children, Christine, Robert, and Alexander Hughes, were supportive from the very germ of an idea. They read some of my drafts and made critical suggestions, but it was their enthusiasm for my complete success that was so gratifying and energizing. My husband, William Hughes, has been my constant helpmate, companion, sometimes editor, and fabulous gourmet cook. My brother, Bill Dempsey, and sister, Katherine Lomax, always let me know how proud they were of my accomplishment. It was my brilliant friend Margaret Lee who gave me the idea of pursuing an English university degree, as she was pursuing an Australian doctoral degree. We are conspicuous now in a sea of black as we both wear the red robes of doctors of theology at our community college’s annual graduation ceremonies. It was the constant goading of Martin Letcher and Linda Frazier that kept the idea of such a project alive and before me. So great was the support of my dear friend Martin, that she even traveled to England with me twice. After my family, the first person I wanted to tell of my book contract was Martin, but her life’s thread had been cut short. She would have been so happy for me and I am sad that she will never hold the published book in her hands.
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament were unfailingly helpful in answering my inquiries, making their archives open to me, and granting interviews. Their archivist, Stephanie Morris, was most kind in helping to navigate all the materials there, especially the personal letters of St. Katharine Drexel, her family, and others. The Sisters of the Holy Family of Jerusalem, down the street from the SBS motherhouse in Bensalem, provided me with a week’s hospitality while I worked in the SBS archives. Sister Claire Spellman, SND, my high school principal, mentor, and friend, shared some reminiscences of her novitiate days in the 1940s. Bobbye Burke, who began as a total stranger and ended up a valued friend, provided me with documents and information about nineteenth-century Catholicism in Philadelphia at Old St. Joseph’s Church. Fr. Anthony J. Costa, of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, lent me his thesis on St. Katharine Drexel. Bishop Joseph Martino of Scranton, at the intervention and request of Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, lent me his personal, typewritten copy of the positio for St. Katharine Drexel, which I was able to study under the watchful eyes of Fr. James White in the Diocese of Tulsa archives. Friends Carol Kealiher and Mary Hittinger provided their eagle-eyed editing skills. Dr. Ann Loades and Dr. Sheridan Gilley, my advisers, and Dr. V. Alan McClellan and Dr. Russell Hittinger, my readers, were essential to my success at Durham University in Durham, England. It was really Ann Loades’s enthusiasm for a project on Katharine Drexel that set the entire study in motion; before she signed on, it was just a good idea. Msgr. Gregory Gier has been a booster, along with George Schnetzer, Mary Lhevine, Monica Skrzypczak, Margaret Lee, Russell Hittinger, Mary Hittinger, Steven Wilson, and my entire academic division who were there at the end with toasts and congratulations. And, providentially, who should come along after the fact but the charming Mr. William B. Eerdmans, who saw the possibilities of a book on St. Katharine. He put me into the hands of the capable and ever-patient editor Linda Bieze.
Thank you one and all. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Selected Bibliography
Primary Materials
The following Katharine Drexel collections, correspondence, and publications are in the archives of the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, Bensalem, Pennsylvania:
. A Call from Jesus Dwelling in the Blessed Sacrament. Bensalem, Pa.: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1912.
. Christmas Thoughts.
. Collected Journals.
. Conferences, Counsels, and Maxims of a Missionary Foundress.
. Conferences of Mother Katharine Drexel.
. Directory and Customs of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People: Maxims and Counsels and Excerpts from Conferences of Mother Mary Katharine. Cornwells Heights, Pa.: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1961.
. An Hour with St. Katharine Drexel. Edited by Anthony F. Chiffolo. Liguori, Mo.: Liguorian Press, 1999.
. Letters, Volumes I and II.
. Letters to the Southwest Missions.
. Meditation Slips.
. Memoirs.
. Notebooks.
. Praying with Mother Katharine Drexel. Bensalem, Pa.: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1986.
. Reflections on Life in the Vine. Bensalem, Pa.: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1982.
. Reflections on Religious Life. Bensalem, Pa.: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1983.
. Retreat Notes.
. School Notebooks and Exercises.
. Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament Holy Rule.
. Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Annals.
. Spiritual Conferences.
. Old Annals.
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