Cover
story
Blessed Sacrament Sisters in the news and among the poor
By ARTHUR JONES NCR
Staff Bensalem, Pa.
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
in the past few months have been on 60 Minutes, (women religious in
corporate responsibility work), in U.S. News and World Report (the
canonization process for an extremely wealthy founder who chose to live in
poverty), and are in a recently filmed but not yet broadcast ABC World
News Tonight segment on how women religious today use modern means --
E-mail, web sites, videos -- to get out their message.
The sisters have videos on founder Mother Katharine Drexel, their
work among African-Americans and Native-Americans and about their two sisters
in Haiti.
Sr. Faith Okerson works on internal and external communications
full-time. Full-time, as any active sister in any congregation
these days knows, means one full-time job among many responsibilities.
The word around Rome is that Mother Katharine, who already draws
18,000 visitors a year to her shrine here, may be canonized as part of the
churchs millennium celebrations. Pope John Paul II wants to raise up a
saint on each continent to mark the new era, and Drexels cause is quite
far along among U.S. candidates. Or the canonization could come on its own this
year.
The publicity and pending canonization though are not the work.
They are adjuncts to what Drexel set out to do in 1891 -- create an order of
women religious that would dedicate itself to working with blacks and
Indians.
This congregation is not for sissies. The orders history
tells of some Southern Catholic bishops intransigence when sisters
pressed to march on Selma, Ala., and integrate their schools.
Drexel didnt back down. Whether it was supporting the NAACP
in antilynching campaigns, or Roy Wilkins trying to change the almost
slave-like conditions for blacks working on 1930s federal
projects, or sisters in the 1960s pushing integration and attempting to swing
the church behind the black power movement, these women stood
firm.
Katharine Drexel was a remarkable woman with possibly one of the
most thoroughly documented lives of any U.S. congregation founder. From her
years of letters to Fr. (later Bishop) James OConnor -- who knew her
first as a 14-year-old -- agonizing over her vocation, to her voluminous
(literally) retreat notes and letters to sisters, Drexels 96-year-long
life (she died in 1955) is known.
But for many U.S. womens congregations in fields as distinct
as education and medicine and inner-city work with the poor, the impact of
their contribution to U.S. education, health, social development and justice,
and their place in U.S. history, has barely been noted, let alone charted.
The Blessed Sacrament sisters (who have a daily requirement of an
hour in prayer, 30 minutes of which is before the Blessed Sacrament) not only
are a good historical case in point, they are frank enough to talk publicly
about todays difficulties -- the traumas of trying to shrink, consolidate
and survive without relinquishing the work and the vision.
The leadership teams priorities, set by their assembly,
includes improving recruitment, mission effectiveness, and internal and
external communications. Not the big splash, said President Sr.
Monica Loughlin, thats not important, but getting out the mission
message and getting folks to buy into it is.
The message has always been the same, she said: Its
how do you read what Jesus said. Do you believe in the equality of all people?
And if so, how do you live that out in your life. And how do you act that out
in your life.
Recruitment? In 1964, said Loughlin, I was
looking to cure the world of racism. Id probably do that in a few years
and then off to Tanzania. The reality now is that any young woman who wants to
cure the world of racism isnt going to be looking at the sisters as the
means to do it. Necessarily.
If youre looking for a deeply religious and spiritual
life, hungry for a group you want to commit to, said Loughlin,
thats a whole different angle.
At present, with one novice, two sisters in temporary vows and no
candidates (we get one every other year), the question goes
deep.
With so many elderly sisters, why would a young woman commit?
Shed need to be part MBA, part gerontologist and major wunderkind.
We do have to be very clear what their future might look
like, admitted Loughlin, and they dont have to be with us
long to figure it for themselves. The more important thing is that we have to
be astute in who these women are -- we cant go by earlier models. If
theyve got rings in their eyebrows we cant right away say no. We
need to listen clearly or wed reject everyone. Society has changed, we
need to hear what theyre looking for.
At the same time, she said, the sisters cant appear so
tired, so struggling with what we must do, that theres no
appeal.
The congregation is downsizing, pushing subsidiarity and local and
personal decision-making while the leadership concentrates on the big
items and plans for the future. And those big items can be
nightmares.
Loughlin, vice-president for academic affairs at SBS-founded
Xavier University in New Orleans until her 1955 election, said, Our
missions always been clear. But with fewer and fewer sisters -- and we
have not always been pro-active -- what do we do and how do we do it?
She gave two examples, one ahead, and a tragedy in the near
past.
Work with the Native Americans in a white society has always been
as problematic as work with the black community for the sisters, but in a
different way. It has called for a different type of endurance, a different
understanding.
Were mistakes made in both? Drexel had to start with single-race
schools in the South. Out West, the argument for residential Indian schools can
be seen in the Western reality -- the distances were so great between
settlements, even for bands within the same tribes, that local schools
werent possible.
Those same distances create unique problems now as the sisters
seek to hand over their Indian schools to their natural constituency. Said
Loughlin, of the lay-run future for St. Michaels College in St.
Michaels, Ariz., Its a hard transition. Just to get a board
named is difficult. People travel 100 miles and 200 miles just to come to the
board meeting. This is not a community where people live close
together.
Loughlin explains, using the fate of St. Catherines Indian
School for Pueblo Indians in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to illustrate the dilemma.
Theres not a whole lot of models out there for these types of
institutions. In cities its easy to find people who have experience with
boards, with administration.
St. Catherines runs deep in congregation history. Drexel
helped build and maintain it before she even founded the order. It was the
first Indian school the new sisters staffed once they came into existence.
Closing it was an extremely painful experience, said
Loughhlin, and some of it was our naivete as a leadership group in
thinking there was leadership present to work with us and wed make this
transition. It didnt work.
In 1992-95 and 1996-97 we tried at least two models of
governance, she said. We had real critical questions, too, in terms
of physical plant maintenance, preventive maintenance, funding; real
uncertainty about the dormitory model.
Finally, we said we dont think this can
continue. The lovely but rundown buildings have been leased to another
school that belongs to the Pueblo people -- not the Bureau of Indian Affairs --
but it is not touching on values or religious education, she
said.
We didnt even do a satisfactory job of letting the
Pueblo people know early enough on that this was our reality. Were still
working with them, looking at what the future can be. With
St. Catherines as backdrop, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament now look
to St. Michaels, which has the largest number of sisters, many of them
elderly, of any SBS foundation outside Philadelphia. There is a small endowment
and an active development program. Yet planning for its future is a slow
and difficult struggle, said Loughlin.
But the issue is to be faced, and face it the sisters will, as
with every other challenge. Including the aging and diminishing numbers.
We dont talk a lot about what its going to be like when
nobodys here, said Loughlin. We do talk a lot about what
its going to be like when were smaller.
Across the range of most U.S. congregations for women religious,
that remains the issue of the hour. That and forthrightly continuing to take
the vision and mission to all who will listen -- in any way they can.
The Sisters of the Blessed
Sacraments |
Founded: In 1891 in
Bensalem, Pa., by Mother Katharine Drexel. Membership: 265 sisters, 179 (68 percent) over 65, and
only 30 sisters are under 50. Nineteen sisters are African American; six are
Native American. One novice; two sisters in temporary vows. There are 108 SBS
associates, from 29 in Los Angeles to three in St. Martinville, La. Each is
required to go through almost a year of orientation and conversation with
Blessed Sacrament groups for individuals before membership. Apostolates: Opened schools for African-Americans and
Native-Americans, including Xavier University, New Orleans. In 1955, there were
501 sisters at 65 sites, in 21 states; today the sisters staff 48 sites in 12
states. |
National Catholic Reporter, March 5,
1999
|