I could have also subtitled this column: “The Dynamic Duo: the Jewish Priest and the Negro Foundress.”
Pat McNamara has provided a fascinating slice of Catholic American history in his recent Patheos column, “From Savannah to Harlem: Mother Theodore Williams,” which is as inspiring as it is informative. When I read articles such as this I wonder that if liberalism had not infected the Catholic schools and seminaries in America in the mid twentieth century, and if the American episcopate stayed on course in spreading the Faith, educating Catholics in the Faith, and encouraging sanctity rather than getting stalled by political protocol, administrative bureaucracy, and endless building projects, perhaps this country would be Catholic today. That’s a big “perhaps.” Surely, the same could be said of even Catholic countries that have chosen in this modern era of decadence to serve the idols of secularism rather than Christ. But there was a certain fire among the religious in the United States before and for some decades after the War Between the States, that sadly, ever so slowly, was extinguished. Let us pray for its revival.
Pat McNamara: In his highly recommended The History of Black Catholics in the United States, Father Cyprian Davis notes that African-American women were among the country’s first Sisters. In 1829, several Haitian women in Baltimore women founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence. At New Orleans in 1842, two New Orleans ladies, “free women of color,” founded the Sisters of the Holy Family. In 1916, in the Jim Crow South, a French priest named Ignatius Lissner and an ex-nun named Elizabeth Williams founded the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary. Read the full column here.
