Catherine McAuley
Sisters
of Mercy founded by Catherine McAuley
When
Catherine McAuley was born in 1778 in Dublin, Catholics were considered
vulgar. There were few priests and no religious schools for Catholic youth.
Church bells and steeples were banned and the Church did not even hold
title to its own cathedrals.
Despite this climate of bigotry, Catherine's
father, James McAuley, managed to become an apprentice in the building
trades and ultimately became a landowner. But the persecution he witnessed
as a child apparently remained with James McAuley. He welcomed the poor
of Dublin at his own door, cared for them and taught them their religion,
to the dismay of his wife, who feared that James' faith could threaten
her social status.
James McAuley died when Catherine was a
child, leaving a legacy of faith and generosity. Unable to manage the
family's finances, Catherine's mother died some years later, leaving her
children without financial support. Catherine, her brother, and her sister
were taken in by distant relatives--virtuous people of high principle
and contempt for anything Catholic. In biographies of Catherine McAuley,
one senses the desolation, confusion, fortitude and increasing faith of
a girl who held vivid memories of her father. Catherine became self-effacing
and introspective and eventually she looked for guidance about her faith
from people outside her family circle.
Catherine's gentle manner won for her loyal
friends and when she was 40, she inherited a fortune from a childless
couple that she had befriended--its value today would be about a million
dollars.
Catherine was "remarkably well-made,
attentive to good grooming and conservative in her dress," according
to an artist of her time who is quoted in "Mercy unto Thousands."
She "lived in what is usually called good style. . .went into society."
But Catherine spent the greater part of her time helping others, "especially
in the instruction of poor children. . ." She "fasted rigorously.
. .arose very early, prayed much and was most assiduous in her attendance
at sermons and at the public offices of the Church."
With her fortune, Catherine bought property
on Baggot Street in an elite Dublin neighborhood. She hired an architect
to design a building with classrooms and children's dormitories, work
rooms where young women who came to Dublin from outlying farms could learn
to work as dressmakers or domestics, rooms where those who volunteered
to help with her work could sleep, and a chapel.Upon sight of the completed
building, Catherine was dismayed. It looked like a convent, yet she had
not intended to establish a vowed community. Rather, she had hoped to
create a corps of Catholic social service workers. Women who joined her
work would contribute financially to its support and their own maintenance.
They would, necessarily, be recruited from upper social levels.
But in 1820s Dublin, women did not live
in community without canonical vows, free to come and free to go! The
House of Mercy became the subject of gossip and opposition in lay and
clerical circles for its "unorthodox" character, even though
its residents practiced daily prayer and meditation.
Dublin's Archbishop Murray suggested that
Catherine establish a religious community that would ensure that her work
would continue after her death. But Catherine feared the establishment
of a congregation would not serve her needs, since religious women traditionally
lived a cloistered life.
The archbishop concurred and obtained permission
from Rome that Catherine and her followers would, even as religious, be
permitted to move among the poor. When Catherine then took this proposal
back to Baggot Street, the House of Mercy community agreed unanimously
to enter religious life. Thus, on Dec. 12, 1831, after living for a year
with Presentation nuns, Catherine and two companions pronounced perpetual
vows and returned to Baggot Street as the first Sisters of Mercy. They
were joined so quickly in their work that "it became a matter of
general wonder," according to one of Catherine's letter's. The Mercys
soon were dubbed "walking nuns"--the first to go out from their
convent to visit and care for the poor. Bishops throughout Ireland requested
Catherine's sisters for other houses of mercy. Within 10 years, Catherine
established 12 foundations in Ireland and two in England, the first convents
to be built in England since the Protestant Reformation.
The physical demands took their toll and
after only 10 years, Catherine died. Self-possessed and generous to the
end, she is said to have instructed from her deathbed, "The sisters
are tired; be sure they have a comfortable cup of tea when I am gone."
By 1854, Sisters of Mercy from Ireland
had settled in New York, Pittsburgh and San Francisco and from these cities,
the Mercy order spread throughout the nation. By twos, threes and fours,
sisters traveled. When they arrived in a city, they lived in whatever
space was available, sometimes in stables, railway cars and pest houses,
while they nursed victims of cholera, earthquakes and floods. In some
towns, anti-Catholic feeling ran high and they were driven out, but more
often, they were able to survey the needs, establish a school or a hospital,
and welcome new members to the order.
By the end of the Civil War, throughout
the Northeast, down the Atlantic seaboard, in the South, the Midwest and
along the Gold Coast, the name of Mercy was linked with the Church's mission
to care for the poor, the sick and the uneducated. By 1928, almost 140
convents had been established and in 1929, 39 of the then 60 motherhouses
in the United States formed the Sisters of Mercy of the Union. But mutual
interests in education issues, healthcare, prison ministry or social justice,
united sisters whether or not they were Union members. During this century,
another movement flowered, one that established a network of Sisters of
Mercy in the Latin American/Caribbean region.
In 1965, all of the Mercy congregations
in the United States became aligned within a federation. This federation
facilitated communication and common goal setting and evolved into the
new Institute of The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, which was formally
established July 20, 1991.
Catherine McAuley founded an order that
has spread throughout the world. In April, 1990, in completion of one
stage of the process by which the Catholic Church defines sainthood, Pope
John Paul II declared Catherine McAuley Venerable.
Recommended for further
reading:
A Woman Sings of Mercy by Sister
Mary Carmel Bourke
Morehouse Publishing, 1987
Catherine McAuley and the Tradition
of Mercy by Sister Mary C. Sullivan
University of Notre Dame Press, 1995
Praying with Catherine McAuley, by
Sisters Helen Marie Burns and Sheila Carney
St. Mary's Press, 1996
The Friendship of Florence Nightingale
and Mary Clare Moore
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999
