Response to Need<\/em> kept coming to my mind.\u00a0 The Mercys were responding to a need, in 1846 and through 2008.\u00a0 They are still doing it today.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/251\/2013\/08\/Chicago_plaque_1846drop-300x233.jpg\" "\\"Chicago_plaque_1846drop\\"")
<\/p>\n
The sisters both past and present were with me, floating about my brain as I thought about how to be respectful and honest about their history.\u00a0 I must confess I am sympathetic to the history of women religious like the Chicago Mercys.\u00a0 I like them. I could give you a list a mile long as to why I do, but I recognize that there are many who have hard feelings about their time in Catholic parochial schools and can share a story or two about the demon nun who terrorized her students. It\u2019s a complex history.\u00a0 Sometimes, however, the stories are straightforward examples of women who buoyed by their faith in God and the support of their sisters in community responded to a need regardless of the consequences<\/strong>.<\/p>\nOne example I keep coming back to is that of Mother Agatha O\u2019Brien, the first Reverend Mother of the Chicago South foundation.\u00a0 She entered the Sisters of Mercy in Ireland at sixteen as a lay sister, because she had a rudimentary education and no dowry.\u00a0 Lay sisters tended to be responsible for domestic duties and did not have the same status and voting rights as choir sisters, who brought dowries and had better educations. When the first Sisters of Mercy came to the United States to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1843, O\u2019Brien went too as novice.\u00a0 O\u2019Brien made her full profession as a choir sister right before a second foundation in Chicago was made. Her talents had elevated her in the eyes of her superiors and she was chosen to lead the new foundation, which consisted of four other sisters. O\u2019Brien was only twenty-four.\u00a0 Under her leadership, the community opened a female academy, a handful of parish schools for poor immigrant children, and took over the only hospital in Chicago by 1852.<\/p>\n
In these years, Chicago faced deadly cholera epidemics, usually hitting in the summer. \u00a0In the summer of 1854, a cholera epidemic claimed the life of Mother Agatha O\u2019Brien.\u00a0 She walked into a cholera ward in early July and the next day she died.\u00a0 Cholera was and is a terrible sickness.\u00a0 In the 1850s in Chicago, it was very deadly and the sister-nurses who operated Mercy Hospital knew this.<\/p>\n
That month, the Mercys lost three other sisters and a parish priest to cholera.\u00a0 Why would anyone walk into a cholera ward, knowing they could contract the disease and die?<\/strong>\u00a0 Why did Mother Agatha?\u00a0 We could say she was a fool, or maybe she thought she was immune \u2013 it wasn\u2019t the first cholera epidemic after all. Was she determined to help her fellow countrymen, the immigrant Irish, as she was also an ardent champion of a free Ireland? Maybe she was swept up in a romantic notion of religious life and dying in the course of her duty would be glorious? \u00a0Maybe her faith in God carried her into that ward?\u00a0 Or was it her dedication to the charism of the Sisters of Mercy, her community\u2019s foundress Catherine McAuley, and the vows she professed \u201cto serve the poor, sick, and ignorant?\u201d\u00a0 (The Mercys use \u201cuneducated\u201d these days.)\u00a0 There was a need, and Mother Agatha and her sisters in religion filled it.<\/strong><\/p>\nThis is a dramatic example and it is very easy to accept as an example of a good religious sister.\u00a0 Heck, she died while serving the poor and sick!\u00a0 There are other stories like this one \u2013 maybe not so deadly, but dramatic nonetheless.\u00a0 Other types of stories abound of sisters negotiating episcopal authority to achieve what they wanted.\u00a0 Reverend Bishop said no, the sisters found a way around him.\u00a0 The Mercys saw a need, they filled it.\u00a0 It is easy to admire these women for their strength, their championing of the poor, of women and children, in the face of patriarchal authority.<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/251\/2013\/08\/notb-banner-300x145.jpg\" "\\"notb-banner\\"")
<\/a>We all like a good story and in the light of recent news of Nuns on the Bus<\/a>, Network<\/a>, and LCWR<\/a>, seeing mature women of faith standing up to male authority \u2013 both ecclesial and state \u2013 it is very, well, satisfying.\u00a0 Look there; see how the good sisters are leading the way?<\/em> Yes, we like that.\u00a0 Over the course of my research and writing, while compelled by the drama, I also marveled at the consistent presence of the Sisters of Mercy and how they keep faith with their founding charism.\u00a0 The sisters, who fed their students, gave them clothes, visited neighborhoods, nursed, taught, and spent time with those needing an ear, or a shoulder, did so without cameras and newspaper reporters.<\/strong>\u00a0 They don\u2019t do it now for the press or accolades, but they are smart, savvy women who know how best to reach people and to respond to need where they see it.\u00a0 These are human women, not perfect, but human faithful women, dedicated to God, their church, their neighbors, and each other<\/strong>.<\/p>\nYes, I like these Sisters of Mercy, these women of faith.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many good people live and work at the intersections \u2026 of feminism and Christianity, of ministry and justice, of religion and politics, of gender and society, of race and inequality, of everything and then some.\u00a0 I\u2019ve invited a few people to tell a story from their intersections, and will be sharing their stories from time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,5],"tags":[544,547,545,546,548],"class_list":["post-1668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-intersections","category-christianity","tag-chicago-sisters-of-mercy","tag-lcwr","tag-mary-beth-fraser-connolly","tag-network","tag-nuns-on-the-bus"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/251\/2013\/08\/womenfaith.jpg\" "\\"womenfaith\\"")
<\/a>In 2006, I was hired to research and write the Chicago Sisters of Mercy\u2019s history.\u00a0 The result of the project, Women of Faith: The Chicago Sisters of Mercy and the Evolution of a Religious Community<\/a><\/em>, will come out in February 2014 from Fordham University Press.\u00a0 In the early days of the project, the Mercy editorial committee and I kicked around some titles until we landed upon one that ultimately was rejected by Fordham.\u00a0 We had everything from The Fourth Vow<\/em> (the Sisters of Mercy unofficially have a fourth vow to service to women and children), to Response to Need<\/em>, and to Led by Mercy<\/em>.\u00a0 One should not underestimate the importance of a good title and Women of Faith<\/em> works.\u00a0 Oddly enough the rejected titles may not work for bookselling or library cataloging, but they are not off the mark \u2013 thematically.\u00a0 Response to Need<\/em> was particularly meaningful to me as I dove into the archives and attempted to pull together a thread or narrative of the Chicago Sisters of Mercy history from 1846 to 2008.<\/p>\n