Mother Katharine Drexel Read online

  Nihil Obstat:

  Rev. Msgr. Daniel H. Mueggenborg, S.T.L.

  Pastor of Christ the King Parish, Tulsa, Oklahoma

  May 7, 2014

  Imprimatur:

  Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, D.D.

  Bishop of the Diocese of Tulsa

  May 9, 2014

  In accordance with Canon 824, permission to publish was granted on May 9, 2014, by His Eminence, the Most Rev. Edward J. Slattery, D.D., Bishop of the Diocese of Tulsa. Permission to publish is an official declaration of ecclesiastical authority that the material is free from doctrinal and moral error. No legal responsibility is assumed by the grant of this permission.

  Katharine Drexel

  The Riches-to-Rags Story of an

  American Catholic Saint

  Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

  Grand Rapids, Michigan / Cambridge, U.K.

  © 2014 Cheryl C. D. Hughes

  All rights reserved

  Published 2014 by

  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

  2140 Oak Industrial Drive N.E., Grand Rapids, Michigan 49505 /

  P.O. Box 163, Cambridge CB3 9PU U.K.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hughes, Cheryl C. D., 1945-

  Katharine Drexel: the riches-to-rags story of an American Catholic saint /

  Cheryl C. D. Hughes.

  pages cm

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8028-6992-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-1-4674-4216-9 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4674-4182-7 (Kindle)

  1. Drexel, Katharine Mary, Saint, 1858-1955.

  2. Christian saints — United States — Biography.

  I. Title.

  BX4700.D77H84 2014

  271′.97 — dc23

  [B]

  2014012174

  www.eerdmans.com

  Contents

  Cover

  Abbreviations

  Introduction to the Mystery of Katharine Drexel

  1. Simply Katie: Katharine Drexel’s Family Life

  Family Background

  Academic and Religious Education

  Girlhood

  Early Travels

  Coming of Age

  The Deaths of Her Parents

  2. “Make Haste Slowly”:The Discernment of a Vocation

  Keeping Spiritual Accounts and Early Religious Impulses

  The Beginning of Discernment

  Crisis in Discernment

  Vocation Acknowledged

  Founding a New Order

  3. Growth of the Order

  St. Catherine’s, Santa Fe, New Mexico

  St. Francis de Sales, Powhatan, Virginia

  St. Michael’s, St. Michael’s, Arizona

  Immaculate Mother, Nashville, Tennessee

  Xavier University, New Orleans, Louisiana

  Social Justice/Social Action in the 1930s

  The Retirement of Mother Katharine

  By the Numbers: Peak and Decline

  Photo Gallery

  4. The Kenotic and Eucharistic Spirituality of Katharine Drexel

  Kenotic Spirituality

  Eucharistic Spirituality

  5. The Pope, the Times, and the Saint:“Be Not Afraid!”

  Signs of the Times

  Pope John Paul II Comes into Dialogue with Katharine Drexel

  Mission and Hope

  6. A Coda: The Mystery Revealed

  Acknowledgments

  Selected Bibliography

  Index

  Abbreviations

  ASBSAnnals of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

  EBDEmma Bouvier Drexel

  ELDElizabeth Langstroth Drexel

  FADFrancis Anthony Drexel

  LBDLouise Bouvier Drexel

  MKDMary Katharine Drexel (before entering the convent), born Catherine Mary Drexel. Mother Mary Katharine Drexel (after entering the convent)

  NANocturnal Adoration

  OASBSOld Annals of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament

  PositioCanonizationis Servae Dei Catherinae Drexel, Fundatricis Congregationis Sororum A SS. Sacramento Pro Indis et Colrata Gente, (1858-1955): Positio super virtutibus

  SBSSisters of the Blessed Sacrament

  SJSociety of Jesus (The Jesuits)

  Introduction to the Mystery of Katharine Drexel

  On October 1, 2000, Pope John Paul II proclaimed Katharine Drexel a saint of the Roman Catholic Church. She became the second American-born saint of the Catholic Church and its answer to the relative social, political, and economic disadvantages of African American and Native American people.1 Katharine Drexel lived a life of virtue, of even the heroic virtue required for sainthood, and through her inspiration and effort she improved the lives of untold numbers of Native Americans and African Americans; her life, work, and example are appropriate mirrors for Catholic Christians at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

  Everyone’s life is a mystery of sorts. My project with St. Katharine Drexel was to uncover, as much as possible, her mystery, those personal, intellectual, and religious motivations that helped her to become a saint. Not all philanthropists or workers in the field of social justice are considered saints, but Katharine became a saint, in her own terms and in her own time, and her canonization illuminates her importance as saintly exemplar early in this third millennium. I will explore what I believe Pope John Paul II wished to teach by canonizing this particular American woman. It will become apparent that she was a worthy candidate for sainthood, but many worthy people never become saints of the Church. John Paul II was able to look at Katharine and see a woman who was necessary to his pastoral project, particularly in what he referred to as the superdeveloped countries, like the United States.

  Most people are naturally inquisitive sorts who enjoy hearing about the lives of the rich and famous. The case of Katharine Drexel (1858-1955), who turned away from a wealthy and socially elite family background to embrace the poverty and hardship of the veil, the habit, and the convent, is perplexing. Her chosen life, in style and substance, runs counter to everything most people hold dear. She turned her back on marriage, family, and society. To flout all that was opposed to the American ideal of womanhood in the late nineteenth century. It was not modern. It did not seem natural. However, if by “American,” “modern,” and “natural” one means living a life of individuality and action with great practical ability, then Katharine perfectly exemplifies it. True, her interests did not bend toward mammon; her goals were of both this world and the next. She became a mystic with a kenotic, or self-emptying, and deeply eucharistic spirituality that called her to a very difficult vocation. In the midst of ease and plenty and wealth, it is most singular to flee to poverty. It is, however, natural — and modern — to follow one’s inner voice.

  Moved by her Catholic Christianity to see the face of Christ in each person, she took up the causes of Native Americans and African Americans. She founded the order of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People, the only order so dedicated.2 She formed and supported almost sixty missions and schools, mostly in the American West and South, as well as in and around her own Philadelphia. Her first mission was opened in 1894 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for the Pueblo Indians, who were at the time completely unschooled. She met with their chiefs, and bearing gifts of friendship, she won their confidence and support
for St. Catherine’s School and Mission. Later, in 1917, outside of New Orleans, she founded Xavier University to train young African Americans to teach in the segregated black schools of the day. The university was, and remains, the only Catholic institution of higher education in America founded to educate predominantly African American Catholic young men and women.3

  For over forty years, while she was physically able, Katharine paid annual visits to all her missions. She traveled six months out of each year, not only to check on the health and progress of the missions, but also to succor her sisters and to lead them in retreats to refresh their souls and renew their enthusiasm. Personally, she engaged in mortification of the flesh and spent hours prostrate on her face with arms outstretched in prayer before the consecrated Host of the eucharistic Sacrament. She kept a daily journal for most of her life and kept separate prayer journals, which are especially poignant at the end of her life, when the Sacrament was exposed to her at all times. Within forty-five years of her death, she was credited with the miraculous cures of a child deaf from birth and a young man who had lost his hearing through illness.

  St. Katharine’s eucharistic spirituality and mysticism came together to make her an American ideal, in the best sense of the word. Orson Welles once said, “The ideal American type is perfectly expressed in the Protestant, individualistic, anti-conformist.”4 This type was portrayed in classic films by Bette Davis and Katharine Hepburn in the golden age of Hollywood; they were self-confident, forthright, and smart. The nonconformist Katharine Drexel got it right, except for the “Protestant” part. She was a loyal Catholic in a very Protestant country. In the great democratic poem “Song of Myself,” Walt Whitman wrote,

  And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,

  And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,

  And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers.5

  To Katharine Drexel, all were her brothers and sisters.

  Her individuality and action were turned from seeking personal fame and wealth to benefiting others less fortunate. And while she is not the only member of her class to devote her life to this cause, she is, to date, the only canonized saint and mystic from among America’s socially prominent families. It is this, as well as her relative obscurity, that makes her such a compelling subject. How ironic that she, who eschewed the transitory fame of social privilege, is remembered and celebrated on her feast day by a church of a billion people. In canonizing Katharine Drexel, the Catholic Church is not merely honoring her memory as a saintly person; it is holding her up as a role model for others to emulate.

  I have known about Katharine Drexel since the 1960s. I learned that she had come from a very wealthy and socially prominent family and that she had become a nun, but that was all I knew until I started looking into her life. Everyone I had ever encountered had seen money and prestige as the only routes to personal happiness. But in Katharine I found a compelling and fascinating countercultural example. She did not fit into any of my known categories. Initially, it was her rejection of wealth and social position that drew me toward her; what kept me interested in her was what she did with her life after she gave up her ball gowns and put on a habit, and, more importantly, why she chose the life she led and what sustained her throughout. Her inner beliefs and spirituality moved to the foreground to illuminate what she did over her long and productive life. Hers was a life of contemplation in action, the results of which are still being felt today. In my adopted hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Katharine financed the building of the first Catholic school and church. The school, St. Theresa’s for Creek Girls, was opened in September 1899, the day after the first mass was said in the new church. Today they are known as Holy Family Cathedral School and Holy Family Cathedral. As an inner-city parish school and church, they still serve a multiethnic population, including a large percentage of African Americans and Native Americans.

  Each chapter of this book elucidates a different aspect of Katharine’s story, beginning with her family life. It was within the family that she began to develop her understanding of not only what it means to be a Catholic Christian, but also how to be a Catholic Christian, how to put her Catholic Christianity into action. Chapter 1, “Simply Katie: Katharine Drexel’s Family Life,” is mainly historical in nature, rather than psychological or even theological, and addresses the origins of Katharine’s spirituality and social concern.

  Chapter 2, “ ‘Make Haste Slowly’: The Discernment of a Vocation,” describes the long and difficult process of her vocational discernment, entered into with ardor in 1883 and not resolved until 1889, when she finally entered the convent. The process involved an internal struggle as well as a struggle with church authority, in the person of her spiritual director, the Reverend James O’Connor, who for a long time discouraged her from entering a convent.

  Chapter 3, “Growth of the Order,” covers the development, growth, and ultimate decline of her order, the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for Indians and Colored People. A number of missions are investigated as case studies of the challenges faced by Mother Katharine.

  The essence of Katharine’s spirituality is the topic of the next chapter. It is ultimately not what she did in her lifetime, though that is incredibly interesting, but her motivations that make her so compelling, so unique. What stands out about Katharine is her spirituality, which was profoundly eucharistic and deeply kenotic, that is, self-emptying. By filling herself with the Eucharist and by emptying herself at the same time, Katharine was able to transform herself into a missionary dedicated to the least fortunate in the United States. Her kenotic spirituality was made evident in her ascetic practices and her great poverty, both of which may appear extreme to modern readers. Chapter 4, “The Kenotic and Eucharistic Spirituality of Katharine Drexel,” reveals her deep spirituality as essential to nourishing her apostolic works. It was her spirituality, linked to her singular mission, that made her a saint in her own time.

  The next chapter demonstrates how well Katharine fit into Pope John Paul II’s pastoral program. It establishes the pope’s analysis of the late twentieth century as morally threatened by materialism and secularism, thereby elucidating how Katharine served his purpose as an example of one who turned from material wealth to spiritual perfection, making her a viable candidate for sainthood by the Catholic Church. Chapter 5, “The Pope, the Times, and the Saint: Be Not Afraid,” interrogates the writings of John Paul to demonstrate why Katharine was deemed worthy of sainthood by the Roman Catholic Church.

  The canonization of saints belongs to the pope’s teaching authority within the Church. Pope John Paul II was teaching something very specific when he made Katharine a saint. David Tracy argues in The Analogical Imagination that individuals can become as classic texts, to be read fruitfully over and over again by people of different times and different places. By recognizing an individual as a classic, “we recognize nothing less than the disclosure of a reality we cannot but name truth.”6 The truth that is Katharine Drexel, by her canonization, is held up for all to read. It is my contention that the canonization of this saint was intended to teach those in the developed countries, particularly Western countries, and especially in the United States, to value spiritual goods over material goods; to develop the spirit, if not the reality, of poverty; to end all forms of discrimination, especially racism; to work for social justice for all peoples; to see Christ in every individual; and, moreover, that the path to these moral goods is found in the imitation of the eucharistic and self-emptying Christ. John Paul II was teaching his flock and, by extension, the entire world not to be afraid in the face of the ills of modern societies, because personal sanctity and social justice are possible, as witnessed by Katharine and her works, and because, despite evidence to the contrary, God is still in charge. If there were indeed more like Katharine Drexel in the world, according to the pope, one need not be afraid. In knowing Katharine Drexe
l, one would know the truth.

  What will not be found in this story are malicious tales of strife between Mother Katharine and various priests and bishops or between Mother Katharine and her sisters. There is no written or even anecdotal evidence that Katharine ever argued with a bishop. Archbishop Joseph McShea said of her, “I never heard of any controversy that she had. . . . Mother Katharine, I never heard of any dissent or any disagreements with bishops.”7 Her sisters were, to her, “my dear daughters,” and though mother-daughter relationships can be fraught with conflict, none is recorded in the annals or collected letters. When I asked the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for anything controversial about Mother Katharine, the only implied criticism I heard was that she did not challenge her father’s will in order to endow the congregation.

  An essential primary source for the sanctity of Katharine Drexel is the positio,8 the main legal document presented to the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in support of her canonization. It consists of three volumes. The biographical section of the positio, volume 1, was written by Bishop Joseph Martino when he was a young priest; it is by far the longest volume. His authorial job was to sell the canonization of Katharine Drexel to the officials in Rome. Martino’s biography is compelling and positive. The second volume contains the transcripts of interviews conducted with thirty-four witnesses to her heroic virtues and life of holiness (the necessary qualifications for sainthood, along with two authenticated miracles). The witnesses were chosen because they were “either collaborators of Mother Katharine, close observers of her work, or among those who benefited from her apostolic zeal.”9 All witnesses responded to the same ninety questions. Many of the questions would constitute “leading questions” in an American court of law, even though a positio is often likened to a legal brief that states the case for or against someone. Some typical questions: “What do you know of the spiritual activities of Katharine Drexel?”10 “How did Katharine Drexel exhibit her outstanding love of God?”11 “Do you consider Katharine Drexel a saintly person?”12 The only question that may have elicited a negative response was “Did Katharine Drexel ever display herself in such a way as to show loss of self-control?” The most damaging example was by Sr. Mary Frances McCusken, who recalled that Mother Katharine once “tossed a badly shrunken woolen garment at the Sister who had laundered it.”13 The third volume is the shortest. It presents, and often repeats, the most pertinent testimony of the witnesses by way of a summation of the cause for the canonization of Katharine Drexel.