Heart Magazine, Spring 2005

Spring 2005 A Journal of the Society of the Sacred Heart, U.S. Province

…to Heart

2 Heart SPRING 2005

And so it began. Concern for our sisters, all of them safe,became a minor fugue in a much larger symphony of caring.Across the Society, prayer held the victims and survivors in our hearts. Some volunteered to go where they were needed.RSCJ, alumnae/i, parents and friends of the Society madeoutright donations, often at considerable sacrifice.

As students returned to school after Christmas vacation,the traditional Christian disciplines of prayer, fasting, andworks of mercy bound together a variety of responses. To onelarge anonymous gift were added the proceeds of bake sales,fun runs, Christmas gifts of money, desserts denied. Oneschool made heart signs, inviting a donation but functioningas a kind of visual prayer to show solidarity with the heart ofSoutheast Asia. Another prayed with pictures of survivors andreminded themselves of the words of St. Paul: “When onemember of the body suffers, we all suffer.” Coin drives, crazy socks, crafts for a cause, chores for change, car washes, a variety of entertainment, including a student/facultybasketball shoot out, the creation and sale of a CD – even “the battle of the bands” – were some of the ways SacredHeart students stood in solidarity with their sisters andbrothers across the globe.

As a result of so much generosity and care, the SacredHeart family in the United States was able to transfer in late January nearly $100,000 to the Indonesian Crisis andReconciliation Commission, established by the IndonesianBishops Conference, for relief and reconstruction efforts there.

Recently a commentator noted that when something isrebuilt, it is never the same. Perhaps the same is true for thosewho make it possible. N

Kathleen Hughes, RSCJProvincial

T he e-mails and phone calls started well before the fullscope of the tragedy was known. Had we heard from

the Religious of the Sacred Heart in Jakarta? Were they caughtup in the devastation? What of their families and friends? Was there any word from India? Were our sisters safe?

Of the twelve countries devastated by the tsunami, theSociety of the Sacred Heart calls two of them home. As sooften when disaster strikes somewhere on the globe, our sisters,spread across forty-five countries, are in the midst of it. Tragedyhas a human face for us: sisters we’ve met, sisters we’ve workedwith, sisters whose names we know – members of our extendedfamily who draw us as one in response.

Almost at once we had a letter from Sister Clare Pratt,Superior General of the Society of the Sacred Heart in Rome,calling on us, “each person, in every community in the Society,in every one of the institutions where we are working and in allthe groups with whom we share our mission, to be in solidarity… with the sorrow of our brothers and sisters in Asia.”

Tsunami

The waves washed over us from radios and bulletinsinterrupting carols hanging on for dear life:December 26.

Surfing the net, we were engulfed by wavesof numbers in a rising tide that swept awaythe holiday.

But then, when pictures followed, tears of griefflowed freely to mingle with an ocean half a world away,receding.

And in its wake the world’s response rose from the depths of hearts, broken first, then mended by the grace of solidarity.Tsunami.

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SPRING ‘05 • Vol. 3, No. 1

CONTENTS

Heartlines4 News Notes

Society receives bequests; new book by Mary McGann, RSCJ, explores music in black Catholic worship; AASH gives awards.

In Memoriam

5 Kathleen Conan, RSCJ, to be Next ProvincialHer term begins in August.

6 Spotlight on Indonesia Society’s mission to young nation often in the news is marked by the spiritof St. Philippine Duchesne.

Features9 All-boys Schools in Line with Founding Mission

Education based on brain research and Network goals helps boys to thrive.

12 Working Magic with Hands and HeartGin O’Meara, RSCJ, artist and spiritual director, integrates religion, psychology and art in work and life.

Departments16 Spirituality: Making the Right Connections

Sally Furay, RSCJ, finds joy in supporting institutions whose missions

she respects.

19 Essay: Catholic or catholic? Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ, traces the uneven history of Catholic biblical scholarship.

24 From the ArchivesBoys at Barat Hall, the first Sacred Heart school for boys in the United States,

play outdoors.

Articles in this issue are by Pamela Schaeffer, editor of Heart,except where otherwise noted.

ON THE COVER: Photo: © Peter Darcy, ShutterStock.com

Society of the Sacred HeartEditor: Pamela SchaefferConsulting Editors: Claire Kondolf, RSCJTrudy Patch, RSCJDesigner: Peggy NehmenCopy Editor: Frances Gimber, RSCJ

HEART is published three times a year by the Society of the Sacred Heart, U.S.Province. Please send address changes andrequests for additional copies to Editor,HEART, at the address below or [email protected]. Article ideas, letters and unsolicited manuscripts are welcome. Please include a self-addressed, stampedenvelope for materials that are to be returned.The editorial staff reserves the right to editsubmitted materials.

U.S. Provincial Team: Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ, ProvincialEllen Collesano, RSCJJoan Gannon, RSCJSheila Hammond, RSCJPaula Toner, RSCJ

For more information about the mission andministries of the Society of the Sacred Heart,U.S. Province, please visit www.rscj.org.

Society of the Sacred Heart, U.S. Province4389 West Pine BoulevardSt. Louis, MO 63108-2205314-652-1500Fax: 314-534-6800

A Precious Fountain “The streams from which music

flows into the Our Lady of Lourdescommunity run very deep. They wellup as a great river of sound that reachesback to the earliest days of Africanpresence on American soil … throughthe hush-harbors of slavery … into thehearts and voices of this community.”

So begins an in-depth look at themusic and liturgy of Our Lady ofLourdes parish in San Francisco in anew book by Mary McGann, RSCJ.Sister McGann, an expert in blackCatholic worship and a member of theLourdes choir, is assistant professor of

liturgy and music at theFranciscan School ofTheology/ GraduateTheological Union,Berkeley, California. Herhighly readable book, A Precious Fountain, and a companion volume,

Exploring Music and Worship andTheology, were published by LiturgicalPress, Collegeville, Minnesota.

AASH AwardsRosemary Dowd, RSCJ, is the

2005 recipient of the Women ofConscience award given by theAssociated Alumnae/i of the SacredHeart at the organization’s nationalconvention, to be held April 21-24 in Chicago. Sister O’Dowd works with about five hundred incarceratedmen in Chicago. Recipients of theorganization’s 2005 Cor Unum awardsare Mary Clark, RSCJ, professoremeritus at Manhattanville College,and three alumnae: Anne FenechFranco of Grosse Pointe, Michigan;Janie O’Driscoll Hoffner of San Diego,and Irene Ernst Mackenroth of NewOrleans. More information is availablein the Winter 2005 issue of Esprit deCoeur, available at www.aash.net.

Bequests strengthenSociety’s mission

The U.S. Province was notifiedrecently of two major bequests: $1million from the estate of Jasper Kane,brother of Evelyn Kane, RSCJ, and$750,000 from the estate of HelenDawson, mother of Barbara Dawson,RSCJ.

“We are overwhelmed by these giftsand deeply grateful to Barbara Dawsonand Ev Kane and their families,” saidSister Shirley Miller, director of missionadvancement. “These bequests help toensure our mission into the future, andwe hope other families and friends willconsider including the Society in theirwills.”

Sister Miller noted that theprovince’s newly formed financialadvisory committee is reviewing theSociety’s policies regarding bequests.

“The committee will help usdetermine the best use of these gifts, so that the province’s elderly and itsministries will benefit,” she said.

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Heart Lines

In MemoriamPlease see www.rscj.org

for biographical information on RSCJ who have died.

May they live in the fullness of God’s love.

Marilou ClarksonFebruary 16, 2005

Marguerite Seymour March 4, 2005

Beatriz SalgadoMarch 6, 2005

Dolores Van Antwerp March 16, 2005

Ruth CunninghamMarch 16, 2005

Virginia O’MearaMarch 22, 2005

The author with women from Lourdes.From top, left to right: Irma Dillard, RSCJ;Shirley Valmore; Mary McGann, RSCJ;Judy Brown; Pat Goodall; Rose Isles; Jean Alexander.

Sisters Kathleen Hughes (left) and ShirleyMiller hold a check from Jasper Kane’s estate.

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Kathleen Conan, RSCJ,appointed to succeedKathleen Hughes, RSCJ,

as provincial of the United StatesProvince, acknowledges that she willface major challenges after she takesoffice in August. At the same time,Sister Conan said she is hopeful aboutthe future of the province and “themany signs of renewal in our lives.”

“I lookforward tocontinuing thedirection takenby SisterHughes andthe currentprovincialteam and tocalling on the

gifts and vision of all the members ofthe province, as well as the gifts andvision of our lay colleagues, as we goforward in carrying out our mission of bringing God’s love to the verychallenging world of the twenty-firstcentury,” she said. She noted that she is especially encouraged by theparticipation of province membershipin a two-year-long planning process.Recently, that process moved into itsimplementation stage.

Sister Conan will serve for arenewable three-year term. SisterHughes will complete her second three-year term in August.

One of the major challenges Sister Conan will face is carrying outdecisions aimed at ensuring quality care

for elderly RSCJ in the context ofrapidly rising health care costs and acontinuing need to adequately fund themission and ministries of the province.For the past year, Sister Conan hasheaded an elder care task force chargedwith assessing financial implications ofvarious proposals for the future of eldercare and making a recommendation tothe U.S. provincial team.

Sister Conan was appointed to hernew position by Clare Pratt, RSCJ,Superior General of the Society inRome, after consultation with the 430 members of the U.S. province.Following her appointment, SisterConan began a province-wideconsultation of her own, inviting RSCJto provide input on the configurationof her provincial team and to putforward names of RSCJ with gifts andtalents that will complement hers.

Both the makeup and membershipof the team must be approved by theSociety’s General Council in Rome.

For the past fourteen years, SisterConan has served the province in avariety of roles related to formation,including a five-year term on theSociety’s international formation teamin Rome from 1996 to 2001. On herreturn to the United States, she wasappointed director of formation for the U.S. Province, the position shecurrently holds.

Sister Conan, 57, is a native ofDeWitt, New York. She holds abachelor’s degree in mathematics fromManhattanville College, a master’s

degree in theology from BostonCollege, a master’s degree ineducational administration from theUniversity of Notre Dame, and acertificate in spirituality from JesuitSchool of Theology in Berkeley,California.

From 1980 to 1990, she served asheadmistress of Convent of the SacredHeart in Greenwich, Connecticut.Prior to 1980, she worked as a teacherand administrator in Sacred Heartschools in Buffalo and Albany, NewYork; Newton, Massachusetts; andBloomfield Hills, Michigan. She hasserved on several provincial committeesand was a delegate to the Society’sGeneral Chapter in 2000.

Sister Hughes describes her successoras well-qualified to serve as provincial.“She brings an extraordinary back-ground to the ministry of provincialgovernment in the Society and to theparticular challenges she will face.” N

Heart Lines

Provincial-Elect Brings ‘Extraordinary Background ’

Kathleen Conan, RSCJ, begins term in August

Sister Conan pages through a book duringa diversity training workshop in 2003.

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When the tsunami took itsdevastating toll in late December,minds and hearts of RSCJaround the world turned onceagain to Indonesia, where theSociety, in tribute to the newlycanonized Philippine Duchesne,established a mission in 1989.

I t was 1988, and PhilippineDuchesne had been added to the

roster of Catholic saints. In honor of its beloved pioneer missionary, theinternational Society of the SacredHeart decided to go into a newcountry, as Philippine had done nearly two centuries before.

The Society wanted to go to ayoung nation, one in which Catholicswere a minority, symbolic of thesituation into which Philippine foundherself when she arrived in NorthAmerica in 1818, intending to live and work among Native Americans.

And so the Society looked toIndonesia, a young nation, whereeighty-seven percent of its 238 millionpeople are Muslims and just fourpercent are Catholics. This new

venture, aimed at strengthening tiesbetween East and West, betweenMuslims and Catholics, officially beganwith the arrival of Nance O’Neil, RSCJ,in Jakarta, on the island of Java, inFebruary of 1989. Indonesia, made up of some 13,000 islands and manydifferent cultures, was a young republic,having gained independence from theDutch in a peaceful transition justthirty years before. Sister O’Neil hadjust ended a six-year tenure as the firstprovincial of the newly formed U.S.province.

For the first year and a half after herarrival, Sister O’Neil lived with Ursulinesisters, another striking parallel to theexperience of Philippine who lived forsix weeks in an Ursuline convent inNew Orleans, her first stop after herarrival from France.

Although numerous RSCJ havevisited Jakarta for shorter or longerperiods over the past two decades –notably, Brigid Keogh, an Americanwho joined the Japanese province,

spent a year of assessment there beforethe project began – Sister O’Neil, 76,has been the mainstay of the Society’sU.S. presence. She is still teachingwhere she began in 1989, at Atma Jaya(“the Spirit shall prevail”) University, a forty-year-old school founded by layCatholics.

The first to join her from theUnited States was Barbara Dawson,RSCJ, who came in 1990 intending to stay, but returned home in 1993when she was named U.S. provincial.Chizuyo Inoue, RSCJ, arrived fromJapan in 1991 and became Indonesia’smainstay from the East. In those earlydays “the Society was discerningwhether this was the right place for usto be,” Sister Dawson said. In 2002,the Society’s General Council in Romeelevated Indonesia from “project” to“area,” a sign of greater permanence.

InculturationAmong changes in Catholic

theology and practice formulated at the

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Spotlight onIndonesia

Members of the two RSCJ communities in Jakarta, Indonesia, are, from left, Sisters ChizuyoInoue, Roslan Sinaga, Jovita Triwiludjeng (“Lulut”), Sally Rude, Geradette Philips, Nance O’Neil,and Digna Dacanay. At far right is Patricia D’Souza of India, a recently professed RSCJ gettingher international experience in Indonesia.

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Second Vatican Council in the early1960s was a shift from mission asevangelization to mission as primarilyrelationship. This implies going toanother culture in the spirit of a guest,intending to learn from the natives and build bridges across cultures. InIndonesia, this “inculturation,” as it is called, has, at the most basic level,meant learning an Asian language,adjusting to sultry heat and pollutedwater, awakening at 4:15 a.m. to theMuslim call to prayer, sometimesfinding goldfish on one’s dinner plate,and learning to enjoy hot sauce andpeppers for snacks. It has meantheating water for baths, doing laundryby hand, learning to sweep a housefrom front to back to avoid sweepinggood spirits out. It has also broughtsuch privileges as observing theJavanese three-day wedding celebration.On day one, the bride and groom, inseparate ceremonies, ask their parentsfor forgiveness and blessing; on daytwo, each is washed by family memberswith water filled with flowers fromseven wells, and a piece of hair isplanted in the family garden, signifyingthat as the bride and groom make anew home, each remains a part of thefamily of their birth On day three thefamilies, including bride and groom,come together to exchange gifts.

At a deeper level, Sister O’Neil saidinculturation means experiencing “thedepth of the spirituality in Indonesia,which enriches our own, as we

contribute to improving the educationfor the vast majority in a countrywhere good schools are mostly for theelite.” She noted that Indonesia spendsless per capita on education than anycountry in Southeast Asia.

The RSCJ live in Muslimneighborhoods “where we, the onlynon-Muslims, have warm relationswith people who surround us,” shewrote recently in response to e-mailedquestions. Pondok Sophia, one of two RSCJ chapels, was a center forinterfaith prayer for peace before theinvasion of Iraq, she said. “The localimam, a great friend of the community,came with his family and some of thecongregation to pray for peace there.He also attended our first vowceremony. There, according to SisterO’Neil, “the celebrant had the presenceof mind to add ‘and all who lead theircongregations in prayer’ in the part ofthe Mass where we pray for the popeand bishops.”

Wide outreachToday, two communities of RSCJ

live in Jakarta. Seven in all, the RSCJare Sisters O’Neil and Sally Rude of

the United States; Sister ChizuyoInoue (“Kaeru”) of Japan; Sister DignaDacanay of the Philippines; SisterGerardette Philips of India; SisterJovita Triwiludjeng (“Lulut”), andRoslan Sinaga of Indonesia. Lulutrecently made her first vows in theSociety; Roslan is a novice.

“Though we are few, we work inmany places,” Sister O’Neil wrote.Three teach at Atma Jaya: SistersO’Neil and Dacanay part time, SisterRude full time. They also teach at themajor Catholic seminary, and SisterDacanay teaches English to the staff of a human rights organization. SistersO’Neil and Inoue teach part time atNational University (UNAS), andSister Philips teaches at Parmedina, a Muslim university.

“So we keep busy and haveoutreach to many kinds of people,”Sister O’Neil reported. “We have beenself-supporting from the outset. Allgifts and interest go directly to projectswe are connected with.”

Those projects are numerous.Among them, RSCJ have assisted streetchildren through the Jesuit-sponsoredJakarta Social Institute and other

Mahlini, a 13-year-old Indonesian girl, watches from a temporary shelter in Banda Aceh, whereshe lives with approximately a hundred children who lost one or both of their parents because ofthe tsunami that hit Indonesia in December. Relief agencies estimated in late February that tenthousand Indonesian children are looking and waiting for missing parents.

An Indonesian man waits for customers atthe market in Jakarta, not far from one ofthe RSCJ communities.

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marginalized people through FAKTA(Jakartan Poor People’s Forum), anorganization that provides legal aid tothe many disenfranchised people inJakarta. These include street vendors,scavengers, pedicab drivers and slumdwellers who “teach us a lot,” SisterO’Neil said.

Meanwhile, Lulut started a thrivingpreschool for needy neighborhoodchildren in the noviceship’s garage. A project to give literacy training tosome of the mothers is in the works.

Political unrestSince 1989, Indonesia has been the

focus of international attention at leastfour times. The first was the oftenviolent unrest surrounding the fall ofPresident Suharto in 1998. Atma Jayawas the center of many demonstrationsbecause of its proximity to the nation’sparliament.

The second was the massacre oftens of thousands in largely Catholic

East Timor by the Indonesian militaryin 1999, following a vote ofindependence. From the first, theRSCJ have had ties to East Timor, nowTimor Leste since it finally regainedindependence in 2002. Today, SisterInoue goes to Timor Leste several timesa year, where her work includes “widowweavers,” a cottage industry she startedwith women who have become selfsupporting by weaving gorgeous cloth.Because of the massacre, widowsabound, Sister O’Neil said.

The third event of internationalsignificance was the terrorist bombingsof tourist sites in Bali in 2002.

And the fourth, perhaps the worstnatural disaster in world history, wasthe tsunami in late December. Nearly250,000 are dead or missing in Aceh, a province on the Indonesian island ofSumatra.

Although the devastated area is along way, more than 1,500 miles, fromJakarta, the RSCJ were soon busypacking relief supplies and translatingreports from stricken areas. Ironically,Sister Rude wrote the U.S. province,“Meanwhile I help Atma Jaya studentsrehearse for A Midsummer Night’sDream.” Finally, in late January, theU.S. province transferred $100,000 indonations to a crisis center establishedby Indonesian bishops, with moretransfers to come. Meanwhile, thesisters continue to assess how to beinvolved educationally in Aceh’sreconstruction.

So far, three RSCJ, Sisters Inoue,Triwiludjeng, and Patricia D’Souza, a visitor from India doing herinternational experience, have gone to Aceh. Sister Inoue’s reports of herjourney, filled with sad and hopeful,surreal and folklorish stories, can befound on the Society’s website,www.rscjinternational.org.

Here is one: “A boy was floating on a wave and immediately caught

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something like a string. It was abuffalo’s tail. Eventually the buffalo gotstuck among the trees, as it was alreadydead. The boy climbed a tree. Then hemet a monkey waiting with his mouthopen. He said, ‘Dear Monkey, pleasedon’t bite me. I want to be saved.’ Themonkey closed his mouth. He waitedtogether with the monkey until thewater went down. Then he came downfrom the tree and ran to the mountain.”

‘Profound relationships’What Sister Dawson finds most

hopeful and exciting about theIndonesian mission is the “profoundrelationships” between the RSCJ andtheir Muslim neighbors and friends.“To be intimately engaged with theMuslim community is really new anddifferent for us. And it is the future,”she said.

“What am I doing in here, in thisfourth most populous nation in theworld, and the world’s largest Muslimnation, more Muslims than in Iran andIraq combined,” Sister O’Neil oftenmuses rhetorically. “I like to say I’mjust holding the place until IndonesianRSCJ take this project in hand andmove it in to a future they see.” N

In a 1998 photo taken in front of AtmaJaya University in Jakarta, Indonesianstudents light candles at the site where eightstudents were shot and killed by troopsduring a peaceful demonstration onNovember 13, “Black Friday.”

The front of Kebon Nanas, the communityhouse in Jakarta where Sisters Nance O’Neil,Chizuyo Inoue and Sally Rude live.

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A Religious of the Sacred Heart overseeing Barat Hall, a Sacred Heart boys’school in St. Louis, noted in the house journal in 1942, on the occasion of anannual bazaar, that the nuns had found a way of coping with their boisterous

young charges. “For the past two years, many games provided by leaders kept downmischief and noise somewhat,” the journal keeper wrote.

By then, no doubt, RSCJ at Barat Hall could rely on a fair amount of accumulatedwisdom. The school, founded in 1893, was the first Sacred Heart school in the UnitedStates to educate boys, and journals from the early years describe an order of day thatafforded ample time for sports, recreation, arts and crafts.

Although Barat Hall, along with its related girls’ school, City House, closed in 1968,it has successors in six gender-specific Sacred Heart schools for boys in the United States.Based on experience and new research about how boys learn, each incorporatesexploratory and hands-on learning into curricula and, as in those early years, allowsplenty of opportunity for sports, recreation and the arts. In fact, the new research, muchof it derived from brain scanning and other scientific means, offers solid evidence thatwhat the RSCJ learned though intuition and experience was on the mark.

Today, administrators at five Sacred Heart programs for boys in Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, Detroit and Princeton, New Jersey, say they are strongly convinced that an education rooted in the five goals of Sacred Heart education is as good for boys as it isfor girls. Further, they said, boys, especially elementary and middle school boys, do betterwhen taught separately from more verbally-oriented girls, who have different needs.

The five Sacred Heart single-gender programs for boys in operation today include just two stand-alone boys’ schools: Regis School of the Sacred Heart in Houston andPrinceton Academy in New Jersey. Each has approximately two hundred students inpreschool through eighth grade. (Princeton is the only school described here that is not a member of the national Network of Sacred Heart Schools. Princeton has entered aprocess leading to membership in a few years.)

All-boy schools in line with founding mission Sacred Heart programs rely on new research

Above: As part of a thematic study of therain forest, Hardey Prep kindergartnersLiam Doheny and Colin Judge, carefullyadd to their classroom journals.

continued

Below: Kathy Humora, PrincetonAcademy’s middle school head and scienceteacher, promotes an active learning process,striving to build strong knowledge ofscientific principles and develop problem-solving skills.

10 Heart SPRING 2005

charts. Boys are often stronger in spatial skills, and less able tomulti-task, the research shows. “Boys’ minds go into rest modevery easily,” Carty said, not unlike a computer that goes into asuspended mode when no one punches the keys or clicks themouse. “When they bounce their legs or click their pens, it’sbecause they need to move in order to stay alert.” She findsthat giving boys “stress balls” to squeeze at test times meetstheir need while sparing teachers’ nerves.

The fact that boys are kinesthetic learners doesn’t meanthey don’t need rules and structure, educators are quick tonote. Gordon Sharafinski, head of Stuart Hall High School,finds that boys, often inclined to look for ways around therules, need more specifics than girls. “In our handbook,” he said, “we tend to avoid broad strokes.”

Monica Gutierrez, who teaches fifth-grade math at Regis,runs a highly structured classroom, in which boys are expectedto settle right into work on problems and homework review.But she changes the pace often. After ten or fifteen minutes of high concentration, “we’ll move into some exercises: yogapositions, stretches to get them moving. I try to incorporate a lot of learning games that allow them to move their bodies.”For instance, in learning the metric system, they became thedecimal points moving their feet around sheets of papers withnumbers taped on the floor.

“It’s amazing how much more they learn if they are ontheir feet,” said Margaret Buehler, who teaches English atRegis. “I’ve learned that with boys, you can give theminformation, but then you have to let them do somethingright away.” When teaching Shakespeare, she has her studentsact out the plays as they read aloud.

Sharafinski applies the same principle to school liturgies.“If we are going to do a reflection, we give them paper towrite on because, with males, activity is such an importantpiece in the reflective process,” he said. “We look for ways to get them actively involved. It’s a very interesting shift infocus, from girls to boys in educational research,” he added.

The other three all-boy programs, which share campuseswith schools for girls, are Hardey Preparatory School inChicago, an elementary school that is part of Sacred HeartSchools Chicago (Sheridan Road); Stuart Hall School for Boysand Stuart Hall High School in San Francisco, components ofSchools of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco (Broadway); andAcademy of the Sacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,which operates single-gender elementary and middle schoolprograms for both boys and girls. In addition, four SacredHeart schools are co-educational: Doane Stuart in Albany,New York; Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton, California;Academy of the Sacred Heart in St. Charles, Missouri, andOur Lady of Guadalupe in Houston, Texas.

Action-centered learningAt Regis, Anne Storey Carty, headmistress, is steeped in

research about how boys learn and statistics that have helpedto fuel it. Recent studies document a disturbing trend: boysthroughout the industrialized world are lagging well behindgirls educationally. According to an article by educationalgurus Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens in EducationalLeadership, November 2004, girls are attending college ingreater numbers than boys, earning higher grades andgraduating more often, while boys are falling behind on avariety of academic measures. Boys represent ninety percent of all discipline referrals and eighty percent of school dropouts,and are two-thirds more likely than girls to be placed inspecial education programs. Further, boys are being diagnosedin far greater numbers than girls with Attention DeficitDisorder. (The full, archived article is available atwww.ascd.org.)

Administrators and teachers at Regis, the first U.S. schoolto be designated a Gurian Institute Model School, have beentrained in Michael Gurian’s principles and techniques. Theseinclude smaller classes, more space, movement, graphs and

Above left and center: Boys at Stuart Hall High School engaged in sports and art. The school, whichopened in September 2000, has built a reputation for rigorous academics, competitive sports teams and well-rounded young men. The soccer team (above left) won a local division championship. On the right is senior Hiver VanGeenhover, a promising young artist who says he appreciates theencouragement and guidance he has received.

Carrying the Ugandan flag, Hardey Prepseventh-grader Chris Audain processes intothe Mass of the Holy Spirit. Flagsrepresenting each of the countries withSacred Heart Schools are displayed.

SPRING 2005 Heart 11

“Twenty-five years ago we were talking about how we couldhelp the girls.”

Network goals are keyNat Wilburn, principal at Sheridan Road of both the

Academy for girls and Hardey Prep for boys, observes that anall-boys school frees boys to be both jocks and artists, becausethey don’t have to posture to impress the girls. The result,several Sacred Heart educators said, is that boys are notembarrassed about enjoying poetry, painting, or even dance.

Each of the boys’ schools that shares a campus with girlsoffers opportunities for interaction between the sexes. In San Francisco, for instance, drama, music, student government,and social events are among activities that bring boys and girlstogether, Sharafinski said.

As at each of the twenty-three Sacred Heart schools in the United States, educational philosophy at the schools forboys is driven by the five goals of Sacred Heart education: 1) a personal and active faith in God, 2) a deep respect forintellectual values, 3) a social awareness that impels to action,4) the building of community as a Christian value, and 5) personal growth in an atmosphere of wise freedom.

Bridget Bearss, RSCJ, headmistress of Academy of theSacred Heart, Bloomfield Hills, continually reinforces thegoals as the basis of the high standards she sets for her middleschool boys. At Princeton Academy, Olen Kalkus, schoolhead, follows a custom in place at some other Sacred Heartschools: awards at graduation are tied to the five goals. Aplaque for each goal hangs in the main hallway, and names of graduates receiving goal-related awards are inscribed on the appropriate plaque, he said. “Our students pass this wallcountless times during the year, giving them cause to reflecton the goals we are educating them towards.”

For Dan Flaherty, head of the middle school at HardeyPrep, a meeting of an international coalition of boys’ schools

in Dallas highlighted the distinctiveness of Sacred Hearteducation, of which service education is always a part. “Peoplefrom schools without a religious affiliation seemed to bealmost desperate for values,” he said. “You could hear themtalking about it, about the dearth of values in our culture.”

Reflecting Sophie’s visionMadeleine Ortman, executive director of the Network,

recalls visiting Stuart Hall in San Francisco one day when,following the death of a student, Sharafinski told the boys to“take the Sacred Heart prayer out of their wallets and recite it.They all had it there,” she said, noting that the prayer is baseddirectly on the goals:

“Gracious God, instill in each of us a bold faith; a deeprespect for intellectual values; a passionate desire to serveothers, especially those most in need; an instinct for buildingcommunity; and a profound and honest commitment to ourpersonal growth. May we always act as persons of courage and integrity.”

The goals, so effective in Sacred Heart education for girls,“really speak to the boys,” Ortman said. “They make themstop and think about what is most important in life.”

Sister Bearss said that research showing that boys are fallingbehind educationally figured heavily in Bloomfield Hills’decision to extend its elementary program for boys to middleschool in 2002. “Middle-school-aged boys are a high-riskpopulation in the United States,” she said.

Given St. Madeleine Sophie Barat’s commitment toeducate the educationally under-served when she founded the Society of the Sacred Heart – particularly girls in her own post-Revolutionary France – it wasn’t much of a leap,according to Sister Bearss, to transfer that commitment tomiddle school boys.

“There was an element in our decision of ‘what wouldMadeleine Sophie do’,” she said. N

Above: Five boys at Princeton Academy use theirbodies to build a pyramid. Princeton Academy isbuilding is programs on the five Network goals and related criteria as it seeks membership in theNetwork of Sacred Heart Schools.

Left: Boys in grades six and eight at Regis School create roller coasters made of paper towel rollsto model acceleration. Right: Boys at Regis examine a model they have created as part of alearning project, reflecting brain research showing the importance of using structures and realobjects for learning, especially in math and science.

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S ometime in the last half of the 1970s,Gin O’Meara, RSCJ, associateprofessor of art at Maryville College,

was invited to do a mini-workshop based onher study of Jungian psychology for a group ofyoung women who met regularly to talk aboutbooks they’d read. She gave each woman asheet of paper to be divided into three verticalcolumns. In the first column, the women were

to list as many of their “personas” as they could: the various roles they adoptedas they went about their days; the faces they presented to the world. In thesecond column, they were asked to briefly describe how, behaviorally, theylived out each persona, and in the third column, how doing so made themfeel. Finally, each person was invited to share her list with the group.

I was among those present that evening, and in the few hours SisterO’Meara would spend with us, she had a profound effect on the direction my life would take. I did not meet up with her again for many years.

I do not recall all of the “personas” I listed. They certainly would haveincluded mother, wife, homemaker, daughter, friend and seeker of knowledge.The exercise’s main effect was to push into consciousness the realization that I was not wholly satisfied in any one, or even the totality, of those roles, despitethe blessings of a supportive spouse, small children I enjoyed, a comfortablehome and wonderful friends. Everything around me in my growing-up yearsof the 1950s had suggested these should be enough.

Something in my personality was struggling for life, and I was now beingasked to give it a name. At the end of my list, I tentatively added a phrase thatincluded the word “creative.” I don’t recall the precise words, or how I said Ilived this out – perhaps only in a barely acknowledged desire to be a player ona different stage. I do remember noting that this hidden part of myself mademe feel phony and fearful: the “imposter syndrome” writ large.

Following Sister O’Meara’s instructions, I read my list aloud, conscious ofmy voice growing soft and hesitant as I came to the last item.

Sister O’Meara was not hesitant at all. “Go with that one,” she said kindly,but with authority. “That is where the Spirit is leading you.”

“I’ve been told that I tend to ‘unmask’ people,” Sister O’Meara saidrecently in a written reflection about her ministry of “spiritual conversation”that has developed alongside her work as a professional artist. The truth is, she


Working magic with hands and heart

Gin O’Meara, RSCJ is celebrated as artist, spiritual guide

All works shown on these pages are by SisterO’Meara. Above, a fabric-covered book aboutairborne objects, such as leaves and feathers, fits into a ribbon-laced sleeve. Below, SisterO’Meara at home. Above right, a book oflayered paper collages.

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Note: Sister O’Meara died peacefully at home on March 22, just before Heartwent to press. About two weeks before, she read the following article andapproved it, with minor corrections.


said in an interview in her studio near Villa Duchesne, “people unmaskthemselves” when they are ready. Years later, I would look back on thatmeeting with Gin O’Meara as the first real glimpse of the angel with whom I would wrestle for more that a decade as I struggled to overcome societalexpectations and a gnawing sense of guilt and move into a career as a journalistand now as director of communications for Sister O’Meara’s congregation, theReligious of the Sacred Heart. It has been a far more rewarding life than, threedecades ago, I dared to imagine.

Many people attest to a similar “magic” that Sister O’Meara has worked intheir lives, whether their relationship has been as fleeting as mine or as deep asthose who have met with her for years.

Elaine Abels, RSCJ, comes regularly from Omaha for conversations withSister O’Meara, deriving what she describes as dramatic results. “She hasopened me to the inner life and brought a whole new language to that, onethat made a lot of sense to me,” Sister Abels said. Another woman comesannually from Uruguay so that Sister O’Meara can “blow on her embers.”

Belden Lane, author and theology professor at St. Louis University who hasmet with her monthly for a decade, described this effect: “After talking withher I am always more aware of the possibilities in my life, of what I might domore creatively, of how I might yet be set aflame by God (as I’ve seen thathappen so often in her own life).”

+ ‘Terrible sense of untruth’Virginia O’Meara, one of three children, arrived

January 26, 1927. Both of her parents were artistic.Her father, architect Patrick O’Meara, designed andoversaw construction at Villa Duchesne, the SacredHeart school in St. Louis County. Her mother, FaySullivan O’Meara, was a woman who “could doanything with her hands,” Sister O’Meara said. Gin

began attending Villa Duchesne in the fourth grade, making the hour-longjourney of nine miles, then partly on dirt roads, from her home nearWashington University. After completing her noviceship in the Society of the Sacred Heart, she was sent to Villa Duchesne, where she remained for thegreater part of eighteen years, teaching English and religious studies. In themid-1960s, she was appointed Villa’s headmistress.

Sister O’Meara recalls “always doing art,” but when, as a novice in theSociety, she proposed pursuing a degree in the field, she was told to take acorrespondence course and choose again. “We’ll always have seculars to teachart,” her superiors told her. So she earned a bachelor’s degree in education fromMaryville in 1954, a master’s in modern European history from St. LouisUniversity in 1956, and a master’s in interdisciplinary arts from ManhattanvilleCollege in 1968.

In the late 1960s, Sister O’Meara was working toward a doctorate inAmerican studies at St. Louis University and teaching history at Maryville,when Kent Addison, then-department chair in art, asked her to teach a courseon psychology of color because the professor who normally taught the coursewas ill. Next, she was invited to set up a printmaking studio in the artdepartment. She prepared herself by traveling to art centers in Latin America,California and New York with strong reputations for their techniques. Fromthat point on, art and teaching art became her primary work. “Students loved

Top to bottom: A watercolor painting entitled“Remembering Tuscany”; an artful book covered inpainted papers trimmed with fibers; a book aboutpunctuation bound with ribbon; a birthday bookabout light for Sister Nordmann, whose first name,Lucie, means light. Above right: a book covered inhandmade paper and held together with a goldelastic band.


her,” said Nancy Rice, director of art and design at Maryville. “After theygraduated, they came back to see her. Since her retirement, they always askabout her.”

During the early 1970s, her work selling well, Sister O’Meara experienced a personal crisis, a spiritual impoverishment that led to her own struggle withthe angel. Through an offhand remark at one of her frequent exhibits by anadmirer of her work, she realized that “what I had created had nothing to dowith who I really am.” Unable to sleep, invaded with “a terrible sense ofuntruth,” she began a quest for authenticity that led her deeper into thesymbol systems she had begun to explore. During that time, she said, “I wasaware of actively seeking a personal synthesis of art, religion and psychology.”

She began a program of study that would engage her for three decades andinform her spirituality and art. She delved into Jungian psychology, mythology,Eastern Orthodox iconography, native American spirituality, Celtic imagery,ancient Chinese wisdom, mandalas, literary classics, mystics of many religions,describing the various strands of her research as “spokes of a wheel, leading tothe center.” Along with teaching art, she began giving workshops and teachingclasses in Maryville’s religious studies department based on her research. Today,her love of symbols, both seed and fruit of her contemplation, which shedescribes as the highest value of her life, is evident in her art, in the poetry she writes, in the books she reads, and in the labels on boxes of clippings andother materials for art that line her studio shelves.

+ Bookmaking as ‘high play’Over the years, and since her retirement from Maryville in 1989, Sister O’Meara has worked in many media:photography, pottery, painting, collages, weaving,papermaking and paper layering, and handmade books. For thirty years, she has designed her own Christmas cards.Last year alone, she knitted nearly a hundred scarves witheyelash yarns.

She recalls once hearing an artist say, “Art is a state of mind, and I have it.”The words struck a chord. “I guess I could say the same,” she recently wrote.“Something in me is always wanting and ready to create.”

“Her hands are just magical,” said Jeanne Rohen, a longtime friend from St. Charles.

Sister O’Meara’s books are magical too. A form of “high play” to her,packaging paper, words and symbols in highly personal ways, they representthe integration of art, psychology and religion she once sought, Her booksmight be covered in handmade papers, or perhaps in cloth. They might open in the traditional fashion, or unfold like an accordion or origami. Theymight be tucked inside a handmade box or sleeve, or be fitted with secretcompartments or little pockets for smaller books. They might be tied withribbon or tassels, latched with a button or a tiny clasp.

Each book carries a message, evoking a symbolic theme. One, for instance,is about punctuation: “Parentheses protect, enclosing or encompassing whateveryou desire, like bookends or garden gates. Periods are stop exercises, makingconscious closings and conclusions with all the feelings and punishing thatbelong to endings.”

Some of her works are “birthday books” produced annually for members ofher religious community. “There must be hundreds out there,” she said. Sister

Top to bottom: “Aspenhof,” a Missouri scene inwatercolor; a book about air-borne objects, removedfrom its sleeve (page 12), unfolds like an accordion; a book covered in paste paper features windows oninside pages; a book of designs in paste paper.

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Lucie Nordmann, who has received eleven, said,“Each one reflects a part of who I am. ”

Sister Nordmann added, “I’ve learned a lot fromher, including the importance of accepting people,and the value of lifelong learning.” Sister Nordmanndescribes Sister O’Meara as a woman of fascinatingcontradictions. For instance, though deeplyintroverted – “she spends hours in the morning justsitting and waiting, listening for God” – she loves tocook and entertain and “has taught our communityhospitality,” Sister Nordmann said.

+ New stage of learningIn recent months, Sister

O’Meara has met the darkangel again, this time in theform of physical poverty. She has been diagnosed with cancer in her lungs,untreatable “cancer ofunknown origin.” She

describes moving into a new stage of learning –learning to accept help from others; to move fromwhat she calls her social/solitary conflict into a more consciously interdependent mode.

“She’s on oxygen now, and having difficultybreathing,” Belden Lane wrote after recentlyspending an hour with her. “But she impressed me, as she always does, as a person larger than life(aflame with life). She’s working hard now ondistinguishing between consciousness and illness, as she says. She knows that she ‘has’ an illness, but she refuses to define herselfas a ‘sick person.’ This has nothing to do with denial. It’s entirely aboutmaking choices regarding the consciousness by which she will live her life.That’s exactly like her – what she’s always done.”

Because Sister O’Meara has long enjoyed travel – she has visited twenty-three countries in conjunction with her teaching and her art – she accepted last October a friend’s gift of a trip to Lourdes, France. Expecting little – “I’vealways associated Lourdes with a sentimental piety,” she said – she was surprisedat the powerful experience of real faith she sensed among participants, and ather own sense of solidarity with people who are dealing with sickness andsuffering.

She now reports seeing her life with a greater “wholeness” than before andrealizes that, while she has generally followed her own intuitions and attractionsin making choices, having at one time decided “to be happy” rather than strive“to be holy” in the conventional, pious sense of that term, God has been usingher all along.

“I see now that all of it has built up in me a sort of treasure house ofexperiences and resources, which developed into a wealth of psychological andspiritual usefulness for the many persons my life has touched. In ways I havenot been conscious of, I believe God has effected His will through me.” N

— Pamela Schaeffer

Top to bottom: A painting of trees, a book featuringdesigns in typography, and two birthday books forSister Nordmann. One features passages about starsfrom one of her favorite works, The Little Prince; theother is based on a cherished Bible verse, Isaiah 61:1.Above right, a tiny book ties with bells.

Contemplation

I have comeFrom ancient cavesAnd cavernsWhere I discovered fire.

I came out to lightAnd air and speechAnd thought To share my giftBy writing sparksIn words which thenWould burn In a creative blazeLike the bush Which Moses sawAnd said how itWould be a sacred sign.

I find insteadThat it has takenAll my care To merely keepA small and silentFlame aliveFor seeing in the night.

— Gin O’Meara

like mine, been molded by dedication to their ownreligious commitments. They find deep meaning intheir respective traditions. I also have friends whosevalues and sense of identity come from commitmentsor experiences other than a particular faith tradition.They, too, are impelled to live their days with a deepinner integrity that gives meaning to their existence.

Even though our lives are animated by these deepcommitments, we cannot and do not exist in avacuum, but in complex societies and cultures. Mostof us are connected in one way or another with a great many formal or informal groupings – familiesand workplaces, volunteer endeavors, educationalinstitutions, structured religious organizations,businesses, intellectual societies, athletic andentertainment entities, social clubs, professionalassociations and the like. Our interactions with thesegroups affect our identity and our spirituality, whetherin complementary or alienating ways. And there ismutuality here: our identity and spirituality affect,sometimes profoundly, the organizations of which we are a part, helping to create or shape each of theirdistinctive cultures.

For many of us, among these groups where weconnect, our place of employment is the mostsignificant. Whether we call our work an occupation,a career or a ministry, we experience our day-to-dayreality within the distinctive culture of thatorganization. In a healthy organization, the key to its culture is its mission. Necessarily, in the role ofemployee, we operate within that mission, contributeto its goals, foster its objectives, and it is in thoseactivities that the link between our spirituality and the culture of an organization can be found.

For many decades, I was gifted with full-timeemployment at the University of San Diego, a settingwhere there was a strong correlation between who Iam as a person and as a Religious of the Sacred Heartand the institution’s mission. The University of San


Spirituality

“W hat gives meaning to your life?” was the astonishing query of the 19-year

old sophomore at the University of San Diego as shebegan interviewing me for an article in the studentnewspaper some years ago. This young woman’squestion probed deeply. Because she already knew meas a Catholic and a Religious of the Sacred Heart, Irealized that she sought to understand how I integrate

these life-givingcommitments into myday-to-day living in the complex world of Western culture.

Experience tells me that each of us has a deeply personalspirituality, emanatingfrom our God-givenidentity, with theaspirations, longings,qualities, and gifts that characterize us aspersons. Human beingscrave meaning in life.We want to be part ofsomething bigger thanourselves. We want toknow how to get intouch with God at the

center of our being, whatever terminology our faithtradition gives us for the Supreme Being.

In my case, my Roman Catholic faith tradition,family background, and membership in the Society of the Sacred Heart have strongly influenced myspirituality, though it has always been clear to me thatI was drawn to the Society because its spiritualityalready spoke to the leanings of my heart and soul. I have numerous non-Catholic and non-Christianfriends and co-workers whose lives and values have,

Making the right connectionsOrganizations, values and us

Sally M. Furay, RSCJ

Sister Sally Furay, left, and Sister KathleenSullivan discuss a document during a provinceplanning assembly last year.

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this genre as part of societal culture. In its role ofnurturing the aspirations of the human spirit, whetherthrough comedy or tragedy, live theater attracts peoplewho are eager to explore vicariously the meaning andconsequences of human interactions, to think deeplyabout who they are in relationship to others, and toprobe the underlying values of the characters they arewitnessing. Somehow what transpires on the stagebecomes part of the culture.

Moreover, at least in this theater, staff and boardmembers care about each other in thoughtful ways,creating an environment and culture that enriches,elevates and deepens thepersonal values of manyparticipants. I have remained involvedwith The Old Globe for solong not only because of itsmission, but also because of the quality of the peoplewho, like me, want to be part of it.

Fortunately, it is not justthe nonprofit world thatcreates environments wherepeople can integrate theirspirituality, values and work.I am a member of the boardof directors of NeighborhoodNational Bank, an eight-year-old community bank that was founded for andfocuses on economic development in inner-citycommunities. Board members are ethnically diverseand personally successful. We are all there for thesame reason: to be true to our own spiritual identityby assisting under-served groups in joining theeconomic mainstream. Like any for-profit

corporation, the bank has tomake money, and it does soeffectively. But the foundingmission is central to theorganizational culture for board members andemployees at all levels.

A final example from my own experience is perhapsan odd one. It is not usual to think of a governmentagency with an organizational culture that complementsand enriches the spiritual identity of its participants.Yet, in my experience, such is the case with the

Diego is a RomanCatholic institution whosemission has taken shapeover decades, in partthrough the influence of the Religious of theSacred Heart. Today, the university’s mission focuseson commitment to a belief in God and on respect for the sacredness of each human being, regardless of religious connections. The university welcomes and respects those whose lives are formed by a varietyof faith traditions, recognizing their contributions toour pluralistic society and to an atmosphere of opendiscussion essential to liberal education.

I have been fortunate to have worked in anenvironment where my outer roles and inner lifemerge into wholeness, where the faith dimensions of life and work were in harmony. Did that mean that everything always went smoothly, that my ownactions and the actions of others at the University of San Diego were always consistent with expressedvalues and identity? Of course not. What else is newin the human condition! But the intent and effortwere there, as was clarity of purpose, howeverimperfect in realization. Institutional structures anddecisions and internal dynamics were examined fortheir consonance with what the institution said itvalued, and it was a joy to me to discover over theyears how many employees, whether Catholic, non-Catholic Christian, non-Christian, or even agnostic,came to the institution and thrived for the samereasons and with the same motivation as my own.

The example I just described concerns a faith-based university. But similar outcomes are apparent in other environments, even ostensibly secular ones.For more than twenty years I have been involved withThe Old Globe Theatre in San Diego. I joined theboard because live theater captivates my imaginationand nourishes my creativity, so I seek to encourage


A view of the University of San Diego, where Sister Furaywas an administrator for many years.

Norbert Leo Butz (left) and John Lithgowperform in The Old Globe’s world-premiereproduction of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

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California Student Aid Commission, a state agency,and its non-profit auxiliary corporation, EdFund,whose statutory purpose is enabling qualified,financially needy students to attend post-secondaryeducational institutions of their choice.

The Student Aid Commissionadministers hundreds of millions of dollars annually in state grants to students attending public orindependent or proprietaryinstitutions in California, whileEdFund processes over $7 billionannually in government-guaranteedloans to students and parents to help them pay tuition fees atcolleges and universities anywherein the country.

Although this could easily havebecome a gigantic, impersonalbureaucracy, it has not.Commissioners and EdFunddirectors, basically volunteers,represent divergent walks of life,ranging from venture capitalists

and business executives to university administratorsand students. The culture among them and theiremployees evidences a consistent concern for each ofthe hundreds of thousands of students connected withone or both of the two agencies. An organizationalstructure that puts “Students First” (EdFund’s motto)keeps the caring touch through creative uses ofpersonal and online communication. When things get tough, as they regularly do with such complexorganizations, the focus on mission remains the“ground bass,” as they say in the world of music.

These examples illustrate the fundamental truththat a coherent mission, well-articulated values, andclear internal structures of responsibility and authority,while necessary for organizational cohesion, do notmake things happen. People do. It is people whodevelop the mission and values. It is people whocreate environments wherein expressed values maybecome reality. It is people who, through words andactions, make mission and values visible and keepthem in the forefront of organizational consciousness.

The unsurprising result of such visibility is often agrowing realization within participants that their ownspiritual identity resonates with the group’s

articulation of its mission. Hence, more and morethey implement these institutional values as part ofwho they are, thus deepening the impact for the entireorganization. Conversely, participants may find thatan organizational culture is insensitive or indifferentto their spirituality and values, raising questions andleading to decisions about their continuedinvolvement.

Because a life consonant with our deepest beliefsand values is so central to our spiritual and emotionalhealth, it is worth reflecting periodically on theorganizational culture of groups with which we are associated. If we are at the top levels of anorganization, it is imperative that we ask ourselveshow overt our efforts are to foster an organizationalculture that encourages others to focus on mission.For all of us, it is well to frequently reflect on thenature of our organizational connections and toexplore the various cultural dimensions, especially of those with which we are deeply involved.

If we admire a particular organizational culture, it is crucial that we work to foster and strengthen it. If there are aspects we find unsympathetic to ourspiritual identity, we need to examine how to respond.At minimum, particularly with groups, workplace orother, where we give a lot of ourselves, it appearsindispensable that we analyze the correlation betweenthe institutional cultures and our own spiritualidentity and values.

Significant as I believe this analysis to be, I havelearned over the years that, while relationships withvarious entities are a pervasive and vital part of life,they are not the whole of it. What human beings seekis integration, wholeness: an understanding of thetruth that spiritual identity motivates actions, andattention to why and where those actions take place.

The young woman interviewing me years ago for that article seems to have grasped this reality. She probed beyond my most visible roles andresponsibilities, beyond my deepest commitments,forcing me to respond in terms of the relationship ofmy spirituality and values to the actions and choicesof my daily life. N


Spirituality

Sister Furay, a lawyer and consultant to higher education,is a former academic vice present and provost of theUniversity of San Diego. She serves on numerous boardsand committees.

Students benefit from EdFund, which provides $7 billion annually in government-guaranteed loans.

T he Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Churchgives five definitions of the word “catholic”:

1) universal, not local; 2) orthodox, not heretical;3) the undivided church before 1054; 4) from1054 to the 16th century, not Orthodox; 5)Western, not Protestant. This is a handy resumeof the mutations in meaning acquired by thissimple word over centuries, and it is ironic tonote that this word, meant to be all-inclusive, is,in every case but one, defined against somethingelse. Most of us when reciting the Apostles’Creed say that we believe in the “holy catholicchurch,” with a small c. Here it is intended to be restored to its original meaning of “universal.”

Yet the Catholic Church with capital C, more commonly known as the Roman CatholicChurch, is in many respects universal and insome aspects quite particular. It is found innearly every country in the world, and iscreeping slowly toward truly indigenoustraditions. It is the play on Catholic big C andcatholic small c that forms the foundation forwhat I wish to explore: biblical scholarship thatarises from the capital C but is at the service ofthe small c.

The quality of Roman Catholic biblicalscholarship in our own time needs no specialpleading to those acquainted with Catholicscholars and authors like John L. McKenzie,Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, RolandMurphy and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. It isfounded on the rich tradition of patristic andmedieval exegesis, and one of its principles hasalways been that a consensus of patristic interpretation on a given question (which in fact rarely occurs) constitutes an authentic interpretation. Luke Timothy Johnson rightlyobjects in his book The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarshipto histories of biblical interpretation that begin in thesixteenth century or later, as if nothing had happened betweenthe writing of the biblical texts and the rise of modern biblicalcriticism.

Now it is certainly true that institutionalRoman Catholicism was not the first to embracehistorical criticism, but was dragged into it by thepersuasive arguments of German Protestantscholarship in the nineteenth century on suchquestions as authorship of the Pentateuch andinterrelationships of the Synoptic Gospels. But once the Catholic Church accepted the new criticism, it grabbed on with a bulldog grip, so much so that the 1993 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission, TheInterpretation of the Bible in the Church, declaredhistorical criticism to be “the indispensablemethod for the scientific study of the meaning of ancient texts.” The document dismayed boththose who would return to patristic exegesis as the norm, and those who would, in thePostmodern era, declare historical criticism passé.The document goes on to say that Scripture,being the Word of God in human language, “has been composed by human authors in all its various parts and in all the sources that liebehind them. Because of this, its properunderstanding not only admits the use of thismethod but actually requires it.”

Interest of Catholic theologians in modernbiblical study began earlier than one might havethought. Already in 1546, the Council of Trentstated that its purpose was “that … errors beremoved and the purity of the gospel bepreserved.” It stressed proper training of Scriptureteachers and specified the Latin Vulgate as thestandard text, but never required that all

translations be made from it. Contrary to some popular images, the Roman Catholic

Church from the time of the Reformation was never againstbiblical research or Bible reading by the faithful. What itopposed was private interpretation contrary to the commonunderstanding of the church. Both Catholics and Protestantsoften interpreted the prohibition of private interpretation as a prohibition of Bible reading, but such was not the case. In


Catholic or catholic?Biblical Scholarship at the Service of the Church

Carolyn Osiek, RSCJ

TIMELINECirca 500 BC: Books of

Hebrew Bible complete

Circa 100 CE : Greek

manuscripts of New

Testament complete

390: Jerome produces

Latin Vulgate manuscripts

600: Church authorities

mandate Latin for all

translations

1456: Gutenberg Bible

printed in Latin

1526: First English

translation of New

Testament published on

printing press

1610: Douay Rheims

Catholic translation

published in English

continued

his own brother Peter, bishop of St. Louis,criticized too great a favoring of the King James.Martin Spalding, bishop of Louisville, objectedin 1858 to the critical note explaining the Greekword baptizõ as immersion, complaining that“the Baptists out there have been exulting over ittoo much.” Orestes Brownson, philosopher andCatholic convert, championed Kenrick’s cause,noting that St. Jerome studied Hebrew withJewish scholars, besides being a master of Latin.

Meanwhile. Marie-Joseph LaGrange hadbeen sent from France to Jerusalem by hisDominican superiors to found the École Pratiqued’Études Bibliques, which would emphasize studyof the Bible in the physical and cultural contextin which it had been written. In 1920, it becamethe national archaeological school of France,changing its name to École Biblique etArchéologique Française. In its first fifty years, theÉcole Biblique produced forty-two major books,682 scientific articles and over 6,200 bookreviews. Its flagship journal, Revue Biblique,founded in 1892, continues to be a leader inscientific biblical research. The school’s majortranslation project was the Jerusalem Bible, firstpublished in French in 1956, and subsequentlyin most major languages.

In 1892, the progressive Archbishop JohnIreland of St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote to the firstrector of the newly founded Catholic Universityof America that he should educate his professorsand hang onto them, “making bishops only ofthose who are not worth keeping as professors.”

The following year, Pope Leo XIII published his encyclicalProvidentissimus Deus on the study of Sacred Scripture. It reaffirmed that professors of Scripture must use the LatinVulgate, sanctioned by the Council of Trent, but it alsoencouraged learning and use of original languages and use ofmethods of scientific criticism. It declared that there cannotbe any real discrepancy between theology and the naturalsciences, as long as each is confined to its own language anddiscipline. At the same time, it condemned the so-called“higher criticism” as tainted with “false philosophy andrationalism” for its attempt to alter traditional understandingsof the authorship and origins of biblical books.

The pope’s letter was sufficiently ambiguous that bothsides, progressives and conservatives, could find something tobolster their cause. Father LaGrange and his companions inJerusalem took it as confirmation for their work; opponentsof change, now gathering force, took a different view. In

fact, some of the first American Catholic bishopswere eager to get an approved translation intothe hands of their people. The standard Catholictranslation of the time was the Douay-RheimsBible, done by a group of Oxford-trained exiledEnglish Catholics first in Flanders, then atRheims, France, from 1568 to 1582, finallypublished as a whole in 1609-1610, just beforepublication of the Church of England’s KingJames Bible in 1611. The Douay-Rheimstranslation underwent many revisions, mostextensively by Bishop Challoner of Londonbetween 1749 and 1752.

In 1757, Rome decreed that all Bibletranslations should include “notes drawn fromthe holy fathers of the Church, or from learnedCatholics”; in other words, an annotated Bible.Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore in 1789 urgeda Catholic publisher in Philadelphia, MatthewCarey, to publish a Douay-Challoner Bible, sothat it could be placed “in the hands of ourpeople, instead of those translations, which theypurchase in stores & from Booksellers in theCountry.” The competition, of course, was theKing James Version, generally recognized as anexcellent translation. Francis P. Kenrick, priestand theologian, later to become successivelyarchbishop of Philadelphia (1842-1851) andBaltimore (1851-1863), published the firstedition of his Theologia Dogmatica in 1839. His familiarity with the biblical scholarship ofthe day is evident in his statement that the ruleof faith arises from the time of Christ and theApostles but must then be suited to conditions of future ages, and that the Scriptures “cannot be referred to the age of Christ, nor to the beginning of the apostolic preaching: for it is evident that many years elapsed before anything wasconsigned to writing. The apostolic writings are not known to have been collected together until the second century, andsome were not recognized by some churches for another fourcenturies.”

Between 1849 and 1860, Kenrick published in six volumesa complete revision of the Douay-Rheims-Challoner Bible,comparing it to the King James translation, and comparingthe Latin Vulgate to the Greek and Hebrew. He acknowledgedthe many advances made by Protestant scholarship and citedProtestant as well as Catholic authors in the notes, consideringthat more unity of thinking could only serve the commoncause of Christianity. Kenrick’s version enjoyed widepopularity but was not without its critics. Many, including


Essay

1611: King James Bible

published

1749-1752: Bishop

Challoner of London

revises Douay-Rheims

1800-1900: Surge in

translations; by 1900 Bible

available in more than

500 languages

1849-1860: Bishop Kenrick

revises Douay-Rheims-

Challoner Bible

1890: Fr. LaGrange opens

L’École Practique d’Étude

Bibliques in Jerusalem

1892: Revue Biblique

founded

1893: Providentissimus

Deus published; ambiguous

on biblical research

University in Baltimore with the renownedWilliam Foxwell Albright. Among thoseeventually to study with him were JosephFitzmyer and Raymond Brown. At the 1944meeting of the Catholic Biblical Association,Albright was elected to honorary life member-ship, the first non-Catholic member. In 1947,Kathryn Sullivan, RSCJ, history professor atManhattanville College, tutored and self-taughtin Scripture because no Catholic faculty at thetime would admit a woman, became the firstwoman elected to membership. She was electedvice-president in 1958, an office that, for men,led to the presidency. It was nearly thirty yearsbefore a woman, Pheme Perkins, would becomepresident. (Today the 1500 members of theCatholic Biblical Association include a numberof Protestants and Jews.)

But the times were changing. The watershedmoment came with the publication of theencyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu by Pius XII in1943. It seemed to reverse all the hesitancies thathad plagued Catholic biblical scholarship. Itcalled for use of the original biblical languages,saying that the special “authenticity” granted theVulgate was not for its critical quality but for itsvenerable history. It called for use of historicalmethods and every scientific means at thedisposal of exegetes. It declared that apparentcontradictions and historical inaccuracies weredue to ancient ways of speaking and lack ofscientific knowledge by the authors. The key tointerpretation, it said, was to strive to go back to

the original context, using history, archaeology, ethnology andother scholarly tools. The fear of Modernism was over andhistorical criticism was in.

Just when Catholic biblical scholars thought they were outof hot water, however, came another encyclical by the samePope Pius XII in 1950, Humani Generis, aimed not at biblicalstudies but at the “New Theology” from France, criticized forglossing over ecumenical differences and blurring thedistinction between nature and grace. It also warned againstpolygenism, the evolutionary theory of multiple humanorigins, as being incompatible with revelation as given inGenesis. Once again, an authoritative document opened thedoor to ideological ambiguity.

This situation was to last until the promulgation of theconstitution Dei Verbum on divine revelation at the fourthsession of Vatican Council II in September 1965. Thisdocument makes statements like the following: “Sacred

1890, Alfred Loisy at the Institut Catholique inParis was recognized by the rector of AmericanCollege in Rome as the best biblical scholar inthe church. By 1893, Loisy had been forced out of his academic position. Father LaGrange’senemies got him removed for one year, 1912,though he was never formally condemned.

The condemnation in 1899 of “Americanism,”a vague, loosely defined heresy, was followed byestablishment of the Pontifical BiblicalCommission in 1902 to ride herd on error inbiblical study. In the words of Roland Murphy,the commission “has had a topsy-turvy career inthe century of its existence.” The condemnationof Modernism followed in 1907 by the HolyOffice (previously, the Inquisition; today theCongregation for Doctrine and Faith), in adecree aptly titled Lamentabili. Neither so-called“Americanism” nor Modernism directly concernedbiblical study but, more generally, its philosophicalunderpinnings. But the waves of rationalism andempiricism had washed over the Bible as well asthe rest of theology and Christian life.

The Pontifical Biblical Institute was establishedby Pope Pius X in 1909 as a center for higherstudies in Scripture and entrusted to the Jesuits.Originally it was an organ of the PontificalBiblical Commission to exercise control overbiblical studies, but by 1930 it was independentand granting the doctorate. Today, with its addedhouse of study in Jerusalem, it is a respectedcenter for biblical studies and educates studentsfrom some sixty countries.

By 1936, scholars clearly recognized the limits of thestandard English translation, the Challoner-Rheims, and ofthe use of the Vulgate as foundational text. Bishop EdwinO’Hara of Great Falls, Montana, episcopal chair of theConfraternity of Christian Doctrine, called a meeting inWashington of prominent Catholic biblical scholars. Thismeeting would give rise to a new translation of the NewTestament and to the founding of the Catholic BiblicalAssociation of America in 1937 and the Catholic BiblicalQuarterly in 1939.

The Catholic Biblical Association was, of course, in theearly years totally composed of priests. Further, before theoutbreak of World War II, all professors of Scripture weresupposed to have degrees from either the Pontifical BiblicalCommission or the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. The war made this impossible and was the occasion for thefirst Catholic priests to begin their studies at Johns Hopkins


continued

1893: Alfred Loisy forced

out of academic position

in France

1899: Pope Leo XIII

condemns vaguely

defined “Americanism”

1907: Pope Pius X

condemns Modernism

1909: Pontifical Biblical

Institute established

in Rome

1937: Catholic Biblical

Association of America

founded

1939: Catholic Biblical

Quarterly founded

1943: Pope Pius XII

approves biblical

scholarship

Philosophical hermeneutics today provide waysto reflect consciously on the ways in which ourown limits condition our freedom ofinterpretation.

Third, the literal or first historical meaning isthe foundation for all further levels of meaning,but is not the only one. Even Origen, thegreatest allegorist of the patristic era, insisted onthis. Once the literal meaning is established asaccurately as possible, the interpreter is freed to examine further levels of meaning. Within the Bible itself, this process takes place as laterbiblical writers find themselves in newcircumstances calling for new interpretations.

Fourth, the Bible is part of a living traditionthat pre-existed it and that continues to enfoldus as we engage in our work. Interpretation isnever individual or private, but always part ofthat movement. Catholic exegesis “deliberatelyplaces itself within the living tradition of theChurch, whose first concern is fidelity to therevelation attested by the Bible.” The interpretiveprocess is incomplete until biblical texts havebeen adequately articulated for the present dayand for the culture in which the interpreterworks.

Fifth, the Bible is for the Church. It does not belong to biblical scholars, theologians,denominations, ministers or bishops. It belongsto the People of God. Scholarship has its ownintegrity and autonomy, and biblical scholars are responsible for seeking the truth, regardless of consensus or popular ideas. But one eye of

the Catholic biblical scholar must always be on the contextand good of the Church. Sometimes, upholding that goodunderpins consensus; sometimes it must dissent from thatconsensus in the interest of new developments.

The above principles for Catholic biblical scholarship setthe parameters for a program of studies that can be at theservice of the whole Church, whether the Catholic churchwith capital C, or the catholic, universal church with small c,which seeks to be the presence of Christ on earth. N


Tradition and sacred Scripture make up a singlesacred deposit of the Word of God, which isentrusted to the Church.” And, while authenticinterpretation is entrusted to the teaching officeof the Church, whose authority is exercised inthe name of Jesus Christ, “this Magisterium isnot superior to the Word of God, but is itsservant.” Thus, according to the plan of God,“sacred Tradition, sacred Scripture and theMagisterium … are so connected … that one ofthem cannot stand without the others.” Further,since God speaks through human means in theBible, all helpful methods must be used ofascertaining the meaning intended by God.

At the annual meeting of the CatholicBiblical Association of America in 1997, LukeTimothy Johnson caused quite a stir with hispaper “What’s Catholic about Catholic BiblicalScholarship?” which appears in revised form in The Future of Catholic Biblical Scholarship, co-authored with William S. Kurz. (Eerdmans,2002). Johnson’s argument is that Catholicbiblical scholarship has lost its roots in thetradition and assimilated to exegesis dominatedby historical criticism. His proposal stands intension with the Pontifical Biblical Commission’sassertion in 1993 of the importance of historicalcriticism. I do not subscribe to Johnson’s view,and the discussion is ongoing.

In conclusion, the basic principles of Catholicbiblical interpretation, gleaned from principalchurch documents but formulated in my ownterms, are the following.

First, the Bible is the Word of God in human language, a mirror of the mystery of the Incarnation itself. Just as thedivine Logos entered fully into human existence, assumingour full humanity, so too divine revelation in the Scripturesenters fully into the human existence in which it wasexpressed, with all the particularity of time, place, and humanconsciousness. The biblical writers were influenced by theirown pre-understandings, as are successive generations ofinterpreters, including biblical scholars today.

Second, because God is one and truth is one, there can beno contradiction between the Bible and science. Certainlythere can be contradictions between a poor understanding ofthe Bible and science, and there can be poor science. But thisis exactly why historical criticism is so important, for it helpsus to establish both the literal meaning and the literary andoral forms in which that meaning may be communicated.Patristic scholars who lacked scientific knowledge had theirown methods for resolving seeming contradictions.

This essay, available in full at www.rscj.org,is adapted from Sister Osiek’s address at herinauguration as Charles Fischer CatholicProfessor of New Testament at Brite DivinitySchool in Fort Worth. She is president of the124-year-old international Society of BiblicalLiterature, the fourth woman and the eighthCatholic to hold the post.

1944: First non-Catholic

elected to Catholic Biblical

Association

1947: Kathryn Sullivan,

RSCJ, first woman elected

to CBA membership

1950: Pope Pius XII warns

of “New Theology”

1956: Jerusalem Bible

published in French

1958: Kathryn Sullivan,

RSCJ, elected

vice-president of CBA

1965: Second Vatican

Council issues Dei Verbum

affirming biblical

scholarship

1993: Ponticial Biblical

Commission gives

primacy of place to

historical criticism

Essay

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Heart Magazine, Spring 2005