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Catherine McAuley’s Theological and Literary Debt to Alonso Rodriguez: the ‘Spirit of the Institute’ Parallels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Mary C. Sullivan R.S.M.
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Extract

In the early development of their spiritual and theological roots, the Sisters of Mercy are indebted to many Irish diocesan priests and to many religious orders active in Dublin and the surrounding area during the early nineteenth century, especially to those most supportive of Catherine McAuley and the first Sisters of Mercy prior to and following the founding of the Institute of Mercy in Baggot Street in 1831. Among the religious orders, the Carmelite Fathers on Clarendon Street, the Presentation Sisters on George’s Hill, the Dominican Fathers at Carlow College, the Irish Sisters of Charity (in the person of their founder, Mary Aikenhead), the Poor Clares, and the Irish Christian Brothers come immediately to mind. The theological debt of Catherine McAuley (1778–1841) and the Sisters of Mercy to the Society of Jesus, however, is fundamental and quite specific. The subsequent historical affiliations of the Sisters of Mercy with members of the Society of Jesus and the frequent consultations which many congregations of Sisters of Mercy have had, and continue to have, with various Jesuit advisers and spiritual directors have their earliest exemplar in the remarkably close association of Catherine McAuley with the classical religious writings of the well-known sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit theologian, Alonso Rodriguez (1526–1616). This intellectual relationship is suggested by much in Catherine’s thought and writing, but, for the purpose of this article, most notably in the remarkable parallels that exist between Catherine’s only long essay and Rodriguez’s early seventeenth-century essay on the same general theme.

Type
Other
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , May 1990 , pp. 81 - 105
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 1973

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References

Notes

1 Catherine McAuley was in Bermondsey, London, from 19 November 1839 to mid-January 1840. The fact that a manuscript of the essay, in Catherine’s handwriting, is found in the archives of the Convent of Mercy in Bermondsey seems to support the view of Mary Bertrand Degnan R.S.M., that Catherine wrote the treatise for the Bermondsey community during ‘a subtle attack’, by Sister Clare Agnew of that community, ‘on the fundamentals distinguishing [Catherine’s] work’ and as ‘a warning against misinterpretation and corruption of the true spirit of her congregation’. See Mercy Unto Thousands (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1957), p. 256. However, another undated manuscript of the same essay, also in Catherine’s handwriting, is found in a notebook which appears to be of an earlier date, in the archives of the Dublin community at Carysfort Park, Blackrock.

2 Neumann, Mary Ignatia (ed.), Letters of Catherine McAuley, 1827–1841, (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969), pp. 385–391.Google Scholar

3 Degnan, op.cit., p. 139.

4 Well into the 1950s, Sisters of Mercy in the United States and elsewhere were required to read at least two volumes of Rodriguez’s Practice of Perfection during their canonical novitiate—such was the perduring claim Rodriguez’s work had on the process of religious formation in the Sisters of Mercy and in many other religious orders throughout the world, for over three centuries.

5 Catherine McAuley and the early Sisters of Mercy were frequent transcribers of spiritual books, in whole or in part. The Archives of the Sisters of Mercy at Carysfort Park, Dublin, contains many such volumes, most of them probably transcribed during the first decade of the congregation. These hand written copybooks were evidently used for spiritual reading and community lectures. Catherine herself copied parts of several other treatises of Rodriguez in a notebook believed to have been transcribed during her novitiate at the Presentation Conventation on George’s Hill.

6 Letters, 20 December 1840, p. 273.

7 ‘Spirit of the Institute’, in Letters, pp. 385, 387–88.

8 Newdigate, C. J., S.J., The Earlier English Versions of Rodriguez (Roehampton, England: Manresa Press), 1928, p. 19.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., p. 24.

10 The Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues, translated from the original spanish by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1929).

11 Neither Catherine McAuley’s ‘personal’ library of printed books (if such a collection of books she used ever existed) nor the library of the first Sisters of Mercy (other than their transcriptions) has been preserved intact in such a way as to permit researchers to identify with accuracy the printed books used by Catherine and the Baggot Street community, 1831–1841. In fact, copies of a number of printed books clearly known, whether by title or author, to have been used by Catherine McAuley can now be found only in rare book libraries and antiquarian book shops. Catherine would have been the first and the strictest to insist that no one should make a ‘shrine’ out of any materials she used, so now researchers must do what they can to track down her sources.

12 Alonsus Rodriguez, The Practice of Christian and Religious Perfection, translated from the French copy of M. l’Abbé Regnier des Marais, in Three Volumes (Kilkenny: John Reynolds, 1806).

13 Savage, Roland Burke S.J. , Catherine McAuley (Dublin: Gill and Son, 1955), p. 94.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. 28.

15 Degnan, op. cit., p. 24.

16 ibid., pp. 24–28.

17 Newdigate, op. cit., pp. 4–13.

18 The number in parentheses at the end of each quotation is the number of the sentence in Catherine’s text. The text I have used is the ‘Spirit of the Institute’, in M. I. Neumann (ed.), Letters of Catherine McAuley, op. cit., pp. 385–391, except where this text should be corrected by the Bermondsey MS or by the Bermondsey Community’s printed edition of the manuscript entitled, ‘The Mercy Ideal’ (London: The Sisters of Mercy, [n.d.]). In the manuscript Catherine McAuley’s punctuation is mostly commas and dashes; the Neumann and Bermondsey use of periods seems helpful. Catherine did not insert scriptural references in parentheses in her text but they are included here. Thus, the text given here is Catherine’s manuscript with the Neumann or Bermondsey punctuation and references.

19 The quotations from Rodriguez’s work are from the 1806 Kilkenny edition of the then standard English translation (from the French translation) and are indicated by page numbers in parentheses; the reference in each case is to Volume III of the edition. In this edition direct quotations are italicized. Since this edition is not widely available, the second page reference in the parentheses is to the current standard English translation: The Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues, translated from the original Spanish by Joseph Rickaby, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1929), which although Catherine could not have used it, is now generally available in theological libraries. I am very grateful to the Librarians of Heythrop College, University of London, for preserving their copy of the Kilkenny edition and for allowing me to use it and photocopy much of it.

20 For the few remaining quotations from Rodriguez’s treatise, the page references in parentheses in the text are to the Kilkenny edition, vol. III, from which I quote.

21 Original Rule of the Sisters of Mercy, Articles 3.8 and 3.9.

22 I am deeply grateful to the Sisters of Mercy of Dublin, particularly to those in the Baggot Street and Carysfort Park communities, and especially to Sister Mary Magdalena Frisby, Archivist, for all the help she gave me in the Archives of the Sisters of Mercy, Dublin. Those archives are in excellent order thanks to a long line of careful people, most notably in this century, Mother Mary Dominick Foster and Fathers John McErlean, S.J., and Roland Burke Savage, S.J. I am also grateful to the good memory of Sister Nathy O’Hara of the Carysfort community.

23 ‘Personal Act of Consecration of Mother M. Catherine McAuley’, in M. I. Neumann (ed.), Letters of Catherine McAuley, op. cit., pp. 392–93.

24 … her Prayer book was that entitled Devotions to the Sacred heart of Jesus’, certified typed copy of the ‘Bermondsey Annals, 1849–50’ (available in the Dublin archives), p. 26.

25 The Little Book of Practical Sayings, Addices and prayers, of Our Revered Foundress, Mother Mary Catherine McAuley (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1886), p. 53.

26 Second Edition (Dublin: Brett Smith, 1830). Joseph Joy Dean, S.J., was at this time President of Saint Bridget’s Seminary in Blancherstown [Blanchardstown], just west of Dublin.

27 The transcription is nearly verbatim, although Catherine deletes a few words, adds a few, and transposes the second paragraph, in which one consecrates her body to God, to the penultimate position in the ‘Act’. In general, her very minor revisions are in the direction of greater simplicity and spiritual modesty, with respect to herself and God.

28 Mary Clare Moore, one of Catherine’s earliest associates and the founder of the Bermondsey community, describes the morning prayer of the community after the dedication of the chapel at Baggot Street on 4 June, 1829 and before the founding of the Sisters of Mercy: ‘At six [a.m.] we assembled in Choir and said morning prayers, which was only an Act of Oblation from the big Sacred Heart Book, then meditation in the Journal till 7 o’c, I think.’ Letter to Sister Mary Clare Augustine Moore (her sister), 1 September 1844, Archives of the Sisters of Mercy, Dublin. It is possible that she refers to a large edition of Dean’s Devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. If so, then in their communal praying of the ‘Act of Oblation’ individually transcribed copies would have been useful. Catherine’s manuscript may date from this time or be a later transcription. One extant transcription in Catherine’s handwriting is in the Archives of the Sisters of Mercy of the Union, Silver Spring, Maryland.