dummies
 

Suchen und Finden

Titel

Autor/Verlag

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Nur ebooks mit Firmenlizenz anzeigen:

 

Anything of Which a Woman Is Capable - A History of the Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States, Volume 1.

Anything of Which a Woman Is Capable - A History of the Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States, Volume 1.

Mary M. McGlone

 

Verlag BookBaby, 2017

ISBN 9781543918809 , 578 Seiten

Format ePUB

Kopierschutz DRM

Geräte

11,89 EUR


 

INTRODUCTION
No one is born of her own power or volition; we enter the world as the fruit of a history of human relations and the long course of ongoing creation. Not only do we evolve from the life of our ancestors, but from the moment of our birth, we are conditioned by the environment in which we live. Our environment, beginning with our families, our mother tongue and our communities, teach us how to understand the world and our place in it. Our biography is simply the history of our relationships with the people, the cultures, and the world that surround us. At one and the same moment, we are created by and creators of history. This is our collaboration in God’s ongoing creation.
The history of the Sisters of St. Joseph is a story of relationships. Born in seventeenth century France, the life of the Congregation was interwoven with the Spirit’s movement in the Tridentine Reformation and its French expressions. Through the course of more than three and a half centuries, following the inspiration of the Spirit, the Sisters of St. Joseph have grown in relationship with their neighbors in diverse historical and religious contexts. We cannot fully appreciate who we are today without an awareness of the travelers and trajectories that have brought us to this moment.
The consensus statement of the Sisters of St. Joseph says, “Stimulated by the Holy Spirit of Love and receptive to the Spirit’s inspiration, the Sister of St. Joseph moves always toward profound love of God and love of neighbor without distinction…” We believe firmly that the Holy Spirit played the major role in inspiring the hearts of our sisters and their collaborators in the activities that have created this moment of our history. This story is about thousands of individuals, Sisters of St. Joseph, their collaborators, church leaders, and the ordinary People of God who called them forth. We know the names of many of our founders and their first collaborators. They and some other sisters who played an outsized role in our history are among the people whose names are listed in the “Cast of Characters” that begins each chapter of this book. A large part of the importance of their story derives from the fact that others were attracted to join with them because they shared their passion for God and neighbor. Therefore, as we get to know our founders and other “famous characters” we are somehow also getting to know thousands of others who didn’t bequeath us diaries or documents.
In East of Eden, Ernest Hemingway tells us, “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.” This story is about us – as Sisters of St. Joseph, as women of the Church, as part of the long procession of saints and sinners who strive to collaborate with God’s great design for the life of the world. This story is true as far as the facts can be verified. It is also true insofar as we recognize ourselves and others who share this charism in the love and the humble audacity that made our predecessors capable of doing anything necessary to serve their neighbor.
The more I have delved into this story, the more I have been inspired and have felt proud to be a part of it. I hesitate to call this book the history of the Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States. Our history does not fit in books but it can be glimpsed in the multiple ways through which our sisters have carried forward what Father Médaille called the Little Design. Our history lives in each person our sisters have touched, taught, healed and loved. I hope this volume helps us deepen our understanding of who we are called to be by introducing us to the women who were called forth by their times and circumstances to undertake all the spiritual and corporal works of mercy of which women are capable and thus to further God’s work of bringing all into one. This book is written for Sisters of St. Joseph and everyone who shares our passion for weaving unity of neighbor with neighbor and the entire universe with God.
We may have once thought that the task of the historian is simply to relate what happened in the past, more or less reporting the on past as an objective journalist reports on current events. Today we are aware that what one sees depends on where one stands; one’s point of view or vantage point determines what she can see and what remains invisible. A Marxist writes history very differently from a monarchist. A Sister of St. Joseph will understand this story differently than will a scholar of feminist studies or a sociologist of religion. I have approached the task of telling this story as a Sister of St. Joseph and a historical theologian.
Historical theology, as I have used it to produce this work, includes serious research and contemplation. Historical theology is not dogmatic; while it understands reality through a lens of faith, it makes no proclamation about God’s will or the ultimate meaning of events. It tries to discover the theological-historical context in which things happened and to describe how spiritualties and movements of grace have created the unique texture of events. It seeks to capture what was evolving in the complex interactions of peoples and their environment, all oriented and flavored by grace and faith in God. It assumes faith rather than professing it. This is not a book about our spirituality, but about how sisters lived our spirituality in service of God and the dear neighbor. It describes some of the mission journeys, bedside care, educational and other works that expressed these women’s love of God, the daily activities that incarnated God’s great love.
As I worked through our foundation stories, it became clear that they constituted a story in themselves. Thus, what was planned as one book that could be completed in three years has become Volume 1 of a two-volume work. The second volume will narrate ways in which the members of our congregations have participated in the mission of building up the People of God in the United States and how our vision has been stretched beyond our borders and boundaries. The stories of our foundations are not presented here in equal length. That is not because of any favoritism, but because of the wealth of the material available. Additionally, some communities continue to play a role in the stories of others, most particularly Brooklyn (Brentwood) Carondelet, and Philadelphia. Their histories weave through the rest rather than being told discreetly in only one section.
I have done my best to find credible resources to tell us what Sisters of St. Joseph were doing at a given time and place. When there have been conflicting opinions or reports, I have tried to represent the different points of view. I have endeavored to frame the events of our sisters’ lives within the setting of larger stories, sketching the context within which various episodes took place so that we can recognize the larger movements of grace, the sinful social structures and the institutional, social and spiritual currents that gave shape or direction to events in which individuals and groups exercised their own creative influence. This is an attempt to describe something of the tangible reality that has housed particular dimensions of the in-breaking of the kingdom of God during the past three and a half centuries. I hope this work makes a contribution not only to our history, but to the study of the Catholic Church in the United States and the history of women religious.
Not surprisingly, the contexts that have shaped us as Sisters of St. Joseph are quite diverse. We first came together in France in the mid-1600s, a time of suffering for the poor and an era of great spiritual dynamism demonstrated by the enormously energetic mission of the Society of Jesus and the influences of saintly personalities including Francis de Sales and Jane de Chantal, Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, John Francis Regis and Jean Pierre Médaille. All of them were shaped by and contributed to the spiritual currents of their day. This historical and spiritual atmosphere gave birth to the Little Design that blossomed into congregations of Sisters of St. Joseph throughout the world.
When the violence and chaos of the French Revolution endangered individual lives and the very existence of our congregations, there were women whose passion for God and neighbor could not be extinguished. Inspired by belief in their unique style of religious life, they were energized to reinstate and restructure their communities to serve the changing needs of their times.
The missionary zeal of the Church in France sent religious and priests throughout the world in the early 19th century. Under that influence, and with the help of the Countess de Rochejacquelein, Mother St. John Fontbonne sent the first eight Sisters of St. Joseph to America. They and the sisters from Moutiers, Bourg, and Le Puy who followed them in the mid-nineteenth century, were the first wave of missionary Sisters of St. Joseph to establish themselves in the United States. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, other sisters would respond to persecution of the Church in France and rejection of their own ministries by becoming missionaryexiles. French anti-clericalism turned out to be the precipitating cause of an ever greater spread of the mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph in other parts of Europe as well as in America and India. That wave brought sisters from Chambéry and second waves from Le Puy and...