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“She offered herself up”: The Victim Soul and Victim Spirituality in Catholicism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Paula M. Kane
Paula M. Kane
Affiliation:
Marous Chair of Catholic Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Pittsburgh
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Extract

A teenage Catholic girl lies immobilized in her bed in Worcester, Massachusetts, her dark hair gathered in pink satin ribbons, her lacy nightgown spread neatly around her. The pleasing effect of a damsel in a pre-Raphaelite painting is broken by the sight of a tracheotomy tube in her neck attached to a ventilator, and a feeding tube in her stomach. For the last six years the American media has provided glimpses into the curious vegetative existence of Audrey Santo (1984–), who has lain in a coma-like state since a swimming pool accident at the age of three. Despite the girl's lack of consciousness and brain function, she has been credited as the conduit for extraordinary events in her home which have included bleeding hosts, stigmata, weeping statues, exuding walls, and physical healings. Audrey's popularity is largely a media creation, stemming from a 1996 televised documentary film about her on EWTN, a Christian broadcasting network in Alabama, which spawned a deluge of requests to the Santo family from people wanting to make a pilgrimage to see their daughter.

Type
Articles
Information
Church History , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , March 2002 , pp. 80 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2002

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References

1. The pre-Raphaelite reference comes from The Independent (London), 29 Aug. 1998. The Irish Independent (Dublin) referred to Audrey as “The Sleeping Beauty Coma Girl.”Google Scholar

2. The film “Audrey's life: Voice of a Silent Soul,” directed by John Clote and funded by the Mercy Foundation, allegedly caught on tape the surprise of the priest celebrating Mass when he found a bloody host among those on the communion plate. Newsday (New York), 28 July 1998. The film has been re-broadcast numerous times and the video is for sale.Google ScholarThere is also a book about Audrey entitled In God's Hands: The Miraculous Story of Little Audrey Santo (McKees Rocks, Perm.: St. Andrew's Productions, 1997). The author, Thomas Petrisko of Pittsburgh, is well-known as a promoter of Marian apparitions, and many of his perceptions seem to guide the film's interpretation of Audrey.Google Scholar

3. The commemoration on August 9 has become an annual event, although the location has moved from the campus to the Santo family's parish. The 2001 observance included, for the first time, a healing liturgy for children. Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 13 Aug. 2001. I am grateful to Owen Murphy for his archival assistance regarding the diocese of Worcester.Google Scholar

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14. However, “Miserentissimus Redemptor,” issued by Pope Pius XI, so over-emphasized the need for humankind to make up for its sins that it seems “ less a joyful assent to God's love than a dutiful or even fearful response to God's anger.”Google ScholarWeber, Jeanne, “Devotion to the Sacred Heart: History, Theology and Liturgical Celebration,” Worship 72 (1998): 247.Google Scholar

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19. The history of Catholic spirituality is interpreted by Chinnici, in Living Stones, while relevant primary sources appear in Chinnici, Joseph and Dries, Angelyn, eds., Prayer and Practice in the American Catholic Community (New York: Orbis, 2000).Google Scholar

20. On the political valences assumed by Catholic devotions, see Jonas, Raymond, France and the Cult of the Sacred Heart (Berkeley: University of California, 2000)Google Scholarand Carroll, Michael P., Catholic Cults and Devotions (Toronto: McGill-Queens University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

21. For example, Americans adopted the ritual of Enthronement of the Sacred Heart as a sign of Christ's kingship over their homes, rather than as an endorsement of monarchy.Google Scholar

22. Kaplan, Louise, Female Perversions (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 368 and especially chap. 11.Google Scholar

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27. Orsi, “Mildred, is it fun to be a cripple?“ 553. See also Harris, Lourdes; Cooey, Paula, Religious Imagination and the Body (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994);Google Scholarand Reineke, Martha, Sacrificed Lives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

28. Orsi, “Mildred, is it fun to be a cripple?“ 575.

29. “Troy from California, “ online reviewer of In God's Hands for http://www.amazon.com, 1999.Google Scholar

30. Kreuter, , The Way of Victimhood in the Sacred Heart (Collegeville, Minn.: n.p., 1960/1951), 41. Italics mine.Google Scholar

31. Kreuter, , “The Way of Victimhood,” 42.Google Scholar

32. Slater, T., “Reparation,” Catholic Encyclopedia (1913; on-line version, New Advent, 1996, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen).Google Scholar

33. This older understanding of reparation has been de-emphasized in the postconciliar church, as the entry in the New Catholic Encyclopedia indicates.Google Scholar

34. See Callahan, C. Annice, “Karl Rahner's Reinterpretation of Devotion to the Sacred Heart: Toward a Spirituality of the Pierced Heart“ (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1984). Rahner preferred to emphasize the “mysticism of everyday life.”Google Scholar

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36. “Girard's most radical assertion is that Jesus is not a sacrifice,” Wills, Gary, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 305.Google Scholar

37. Today Paray-le-Monial is second only to Lourdes in France as a pilgrimage site.Google Scholar

38. For a Kleinian interpretation of Margaret Mary's exchange of hearts see Carroll, Catholic Cults and Devotions, 141–43. Carroll uses Melanie Klein's theories of the pre-Oedipal infant's powerful first relationship—that with the mother's breast—which the child experiences alternately as present (good) and absent (bad), thereby providing the basis for fantasies that are activated in adult life.Google Scholar

39. Carroll, Catholic Cults, 136.Google Scholar

40. Carroll, Catholic Cults, 145.Google Scholar

41. Giloteaux, Abbé Paulin, Victim Souls: a Doctrinal Essay, trans. Bond, L. M. G.. (New York: Benziger Bros., 1927/1922), ix.Google ScholarIn a more florid apocalyptic mode, from England Bernard Williamson wrote: “The ever-growing call of the Lord to this Victim-life in these last days may indicate that the Mystical Crucifixion of the Bride is drawing nigh, and that in consequence the number of those whom He would conform to Himself in His suffering life must increase,” Williamson, , Supernatural Mysticism (London: Kegan Paul, 1921), 186.Google Scholar

42. Kreuter, , “Visit to Konnersreuth,” Sponsa Regis, 1933, 212.Google Scholar

43. Kreuter, , “Visit to Konnersreuth,” 228; 210.Google Scholar

44. Kreuter, , “Visit to Konnersreuth (Concluded),” Sponsa Regis, 1935, 52. Kreuter continued with optimism, “Invested with this power, contemplatives are able to turn the mind of men into the right direction, to leaven the whole mass of hunanity“ (53).Google Scholar

45. See Tuzik, Robert, How Firm a Foundation: Leaders of the Liturgical Movement (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 1990).Google Scholar

46. Barry, Colman, O.S.B., “Interview with Joseph Kreuter c. 1955,” MS Collection 5, St. John's Abbey Archives, Collegeville, Minn, (hereafter SJA). I am grateful to the archivist and staff at St. John's Abbey Archives for their assistance.Google ScholarOn Virgil Michel see Marx, Paul, Virgil Michel and the Liturgical Movement (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1957).Google Scholar

47. Barry, Colman, Worship and Work (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1993), 275.Google Scholar

48. Kreuter received commendations from members of the American hierarchy such as Samuel Stritch, Archbishop of Milwaukee, who warned, “1 do not wish to say that our Sisters should not know the provisions of Canon Law, but only that ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing.’“ (24 May 1937), SJA, Kreuter papers, box 7, folder 14.Google Scholar

49. Sponsa Regis, May 14 1945.Google Scholar

50. Sponsa Regis, June 15 1945, 239.Google Scholar

51. Rossman, P. Raphael, O.S.B., The Liturgy and Victim Souls (St. Paul, Minn.: Wanderer, 1942), 2.Google Scholar

52. Sponsa Regis, 15 Jan. 1946.Google Scholar

53. Drysch, Mother Leona, C.S.S.F. provincial, 1956–62, quoted in Endecavage, Charlene, The Chicago Felicians: a history of the Mother of Good Counsel Province of the Felician Sisters (Chicago, Ill.: Felician Sisters, 1999), 482. I thank Anselm Nye for this reference.Google Scholar

54. Barry, Colman, “Interview with Joseph Kreuter c. 1955,” SJA, Kreuter papers.Google Scholar

55. Barry, , Worship and Work, 568, n. 36. When Kreuter returned to Minnesota in 1947 he was assigned to a parish until 1956.Google Scholar

56. See the discussion of American varieties of personalism in Fisher, James, The Catholic Counterculture in America, 1933–1962 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).Google Scholar

57. Lescher, Bruce H., “American Catholic Spirituality,” Encyclopedia of American Catholic History (Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 1997), 51.Google Scholar

58. Barry, , Worship and Work, 280; Barry, “Interview,” 3, 4.Google Scholar

59. Barry, , “Interview,” 3.Google Scholar

60. This decision was probably inspired by the Benedictine chaplain at Clyde, whose influence was never stronger than in this era. In her history of American Benedictine sisters, Sister Dolores Dowling is critical of this juncture in Clyde's history: “Cut off by their semi-cloister from the best currents in culture, the sisters lived this sentimental, privatized spirituality with its intense focus on Jesus as their immolated spouse in the Eucharist with a love and genuine faith that were a saving grace.”Google ScholarDowling, , In Your Midst: The Story of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration (n.p., 1988), 91.Google Scholar

61. Barry, , “Interview.”Google Scholar

62. Sponsa Regis, 15 May 1943, 214.Google Scholar

63. Barry, , Worship and Work, 279. Kreuter was also responding to a local crisis at Collegeville, where for some decades before his arrival the monastery was torn between its international missionary work and the order's rule mandating a purely contemplative life.Google Scholar

64. Wills, Garry makes a similar point in Papal Sin, which appeared after this article was completed: “The church gave up direct political action, replaced it with ‘Catholic Action’ (mainly evangelizing work with the young and devotional organizations). This withdrawal from politics, in order to protect the church's spiritual realm, undercut the leaders of Catholic parries—Don Luigi Bosco in Italy, Gil Rabies in Spain, and the Center Party in Germany—making it easier for fascism to take over the politics of those countries“ 34.Google Scholar

65. Barry, , “Interview,” 3.Google Scholar

66. See Taves, Ann, The Household of Faith: Roman Catholic Devotions in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986).Google Scholar

67. Eiten, , “Living the Apostolate of the Cross or the Victim-Life in Practice,” Sponsa Regis, 15 Nov. 1944, 53.Google Scholar

68. Sponsa Regis, 15 Nov. 1933, 89.Google Scholar

69. Kreuter, , “Visit to Konnersreuth,” Sponsa Regis, 1934, 212.Google Scholar

70. Kreuter, Joseph, Eine Kreuzesbraut unserer Zeit: Schzvester Maria Annella, O.S.B. (Collegeville, Minn.: St. John's Abbey, 1929).Google ScholarThe pamphlet was quickly translated into many languages, including “Ceylonese.” The English translation appeared in The Grail magazine in 1931 and was reprinted as Sister M. Annella, O.S.B.: An Apostle of Suffering in Our Day (Collegeville, Minn.: St. John's Abbey, 1946).Google Scholar

71. Kreuter, , Sister M. Annella, 17, 22, 25.Google Scholar

72. For example, the Constitutions of the Sacred Heart sisters try to minimize the conflict by stating that the choir sisters should regard the “lowly and obscure duties“ of coadjutrix sisters “with a secret appreciation and a certain kind of envy, and be always disposed to render them every service in their power as far as obedience enjoins or permits.”Google Scholar

73. Giloteaux, , Victim Souls, 272. Some of the articles written for Sponsa Regis in the 1930s also followed an explicitly Theresian model of victimhood.Google Scholar

74. Giraud is identified as a “grande“ leader of victim spirituality in DSAM, vol. 16. Another key text is Grimal, J., The Priest and the Sacrifice of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Paris: Beauchesne, 1908).Google Scholar

75. Giraud, , The Spirit of Sacrifice (New York: Benziger, 1905), 495.Google Scholar

76. Poulain, Augustin, Graces of Interior Prayer: A Treatise on Mystical Theology, trans, from the 6th ed. By Smith, Leonora L. Yorke and corrected with the 10th French edition with an introduction by J.V. Bainvel (Westminster, Vt.: Celtic Cross, 1978/1910), 154–55.Google Scholar

77. Poulain suggests that the over-zealous would be more useful if they dedicated their lives “to the defense of the Church and the purification of society,” Graces of Interior Prayer, 154–55.Google Scholar

78. Poulain, Graces of Interior Prayer, 436.

79. Fisher, James argues that for Day, the term “worker“ in Catholic Worker became nearly synonymous with sufferer. The Catholic Counterculture in America, 1933–1962 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 50.Google Scholar

80. See Fisher, Catholic Counterculture, chaps. 1–3, on American versions of personalism and Dorothy Day's embrace of voluntary poverty. For Day, Catholicism “provided the vehicle for her exploration of the terrain lying between the remnants of the Christian ideal and the darker will to self-abasement“ 16.Google Scholar

81. Giloteaux, , Victim Souls, 100.Google Scholar

82. Giloteaux, , Victim Souls, 147.Google Scholar

83. Poulain, , Graces of Interior Prayer, 154.Google Scholar

84. Eiten, Robert B., S.J., “Living the Apostolate of the Cross,” Sponsa Regis, 15 Nov. 1944, 59.Google Scholar

85. Giloteaux, , Victim Souls, 86.Google Scholar

86. Kreuter reported over 1,500 victim souls enlisted in June, 1939. By the 1950s Kreuter's roster of victim souls was being maintained at a convent in Belgium, while other clergy leaders in the movement had their own favorite sites. The Victim Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Marseilles were founded by Julie-Adèle de Gérin-Richard (1793–1865), not to be confused with the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (R.S.C.J.) founded by Madeleine Sophie Barat in 1800.Google Scholar

87. Papers of Sister Dorothea, Mary, S.M., S.J.A.Google Scholar

88. Sponsa Regis, 15 Aug. 1939, 276.Google Scholar

89. Sponsa Regis, 15 Nov. 1944, 59.Google Scholar

90. One typical volume in this genre is Rev. Lyonnard, John, S.J., The Apostleship of Suffering, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Messenger of the Sacred Heart, 1890).Google Scholar

91. Kreuter, , Guide for Victim Souls of the Sacred Heart (New York: Benziger, 1939), 225, 226.Google ScholarSee also Hasler, Francis X., O.S.B., A Call for Victim Souls (New York: Benziger, 1938).Google Scholar

92. Kreuter, , The Way of Victimhood in the Sacred Heart, 9.Google Scholar

93. Ibid., 10, 18.

94. On Galgani, see the interesting work of Mazzoni, Cristina, “Visions of the Mystic/Mystical Visions: Interpretations and Self-Interpretations of Gemma Galgani,” Annalid'ltalianistica 13 (1995): 371–86.Google Scholar

95. Kreuter, , “A Visit to Konnersreuth,” Sponsa Regis, 1933, 257.Google Scholar

96. Freze, Michael, They Bore the Wounds of Christ: the Mystery of the Sacred Stigmata (Huntington, Ind.: OSV, 1989), 62. See also the section entitled “The Meaning of Co-Redemption,” 59–89.Google Scholar

97. I examine the spiritual biographies of these individuals (and others) in a forthcoming study of stigmatization in the modern era.Google Scholar

98. Audrey has been associated with traditions related to both Jesus and Mary, including Guadalupe, Lisieux, and Medjugorje, and with the scent of roses, eucharistic miracles, stigmata, and bleeding relics. See “The Strange Case of Audrey Santo,” The Boston Phoenix, 25 Dec. 1997–1 Jan. 1998.Google Scholar

99. Petrisko, Thomas W., The Sorrow, the Sacrifice, and the Triumph (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 286.Google Scholar

100. On Pio, see McKevitt, Christopher, “‘To Suffer and Never to Die’: The Concept of Suffering in the Cult of Padre Pio da Pietrelcina,” Journal of Mediterranean Studies 1 (1991): 54–67.Google Scholar

101. “Marthe Robin—A Chosen Soul,” (London: Catholic Truth Society, 1999), 9.Google Scholar

102. Interview with Sonia Huerta, R.N., in “Audrey's Life.” Another source claims that non-Catholic nurses who care for Audrey have been converted by their connection with her.Google Scholar

103. Sister Josefa Menéndez's postulancy contains many instances of the three stages of ritual passage of separation, transition, and incorporation, as developed By van Gennep, Arnold and popularized by Edith, and Turner, Victor: Josefa reported that she was repeatedly abducted by the devil and dragged into hell, where she endured multiple tortures before being returned to the convent (with scorched habit and skin). The Way of Divine Love (Rockford, Ill.: Tan, 1973/1949).Google Scholar

104. The Catholic Church condemned spiritualist practices such as seances, which had become especially popular again after World War I as bereaved family members tried to contact brothers, sons, and husbands who had died on the battlefields.Google Scholar

105. Rev. O'Sullivan, A. M., Teresa Higginson: the Servant of God (London: Sands & Co., 1924), 31–33.Google Scholar

106. The connection between spiritual directors and female mystic-victims deserves its own full-length treatment; to date only a few studies of medieval and early modern confessors address the psychological dynamics and gender assumptions involved.Google Scholar

107. Letters of Teresa Higginson. Selected and Discussed by a Monk of St. Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate (London: Sands & Co., 1937), 33.Google Scholar

108. Biographical information about da Costa appears in Woodward, Kenneth L., Making Saints (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 171–78.Google Scholar

109. Treece, Patricia, The Sanctified Body, 201.Google Scholar

110. In For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983), a study of corporal punishment among Germanspeaking peoples, Alice Miller claims that many children who have been abused develop the capacity for trance or dissociative states, which serves as one way for them to hide their true selves or manage their constant anxiety.Google Scholar

111. Father Lozano, John, quoted in Woodward, Making Saints, 176. In the preceding sentences Lozano attests, “The difficulty is that in Rome they don't know what to do with Freudian psychology. Most of the consultants have yet to assimilate his theory of the unconscious. The fear is that if the writings of mystics are sent out to psychiatrists, they will attribute everything to sex. Yes, that is a danger, I say, but the other danger is the tendency of spiritual theologians to attribute everything to God.”Google Scholar

112. Menéndez, Way of Divine Love, xvi. Higginson's conversion fantasies are reported in O'Sullivan, Teresa Higginson: The Servant of God, 15, 87. Among the many biographies of Neumann, only Ian Wilson reports the details of the two rape attempts that occurred while Teresa was working at a local inn where she did farm work. Ian Wilson, The Bleeding Mind, 48;Google ScholarRogo, D. Scott, Miracles: A Parascientific Inquiry into Wondrous Phenomena (New York: Dial, 1982), 65.Google Scholar

113. Petrisko, , The Sorrow, the Sacrifice and the Triumph, 69.Google Scholar

114. Nouwen, Henri J. M., “The Extraordinary Witness of Marthe Robin,” New Oxford Review, May 1987, 5.Google Scholar

115. Freze, , They Bore the Wounds, 285.Google Scholar

116. The retreat houses are also credited to her spiritual director, Father Finet, in a more typical rendering of women as helpmates and inspirations for the clergy.Google Scholar

117. Cardinal Faulhaber of Munich employed a similar oxymoron in referring to Theresa Neumann as a “silent preacher.” Kreuter, “A Visit to Konnersreuth,” Sponsa Regis, 1933, 209.Google Scholar

118. Catherine, Anne Emmerich was the modern prototype of the grabatiare [bed-ridden] stigmatisée that Marthe Robin represents.Google ScholarBouflet, Joachim, Les stigmatisés (Paris: Cerf, 1996). Details of Robin's life come from “Marthe Robin—A Chosen Soul,” a 1999 pamphlet published by the Catholic Truth Society of Great Britain.Google Scholar

119. “Blows we must receive in this life, willing or unwilling. The Nun accepts them willingly, knowing that in so doing she is helping her Maker in His work of perfecting her.” According to Father Scott, salvation itself was at stake in choosing a vocation: “It is almost an assurance of eternal salvation to enter the convent. Living as the rules ordain gives virtually a guarantee of salvation.”Google ScholarScott, Martin, S.J., Convent Life (New York: P. J. Kenedy, 1919), 127, 141.Google Scholar

120. Kerr, Teresa Higginson, 28.Google Scholar

121. Fulton Sheen (1895–1979), in his last years, gave retreats to priests that dwelled on this (now outmoded) victim identity. Also see Sheen's meditations on “The Eucharist and the Body of the Priest,” in The Priest Is Not His Own (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963).Google ScholarFor possible connections between the victim priest and cultural strategies of male masochism, see Stewart, Suzanne R., Sublime Surrender: Male Masochism at the Fin de Siècle (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

122. For its history see Galy, Abbé J., Le sacrifice dans I'école Française (Paris: Nouvelles Éditions Latines, 1951).Google ScholarOne seminal text was the thesis of Lepin, M., “L'idée du sacrifice dans la religion chrétienne, principalement d'après le Père de Condren et Monsieur Olier” (thesis, Paris-Lyon, 1897).Google Scholar

123. Manzoni, Guiseppe, “Victimale (Spiritualite),” DSAM, 16:543.Google Scholar

124. Giloteaux, , Victim Souls, 52.Google Scholar

125. There was even a children's crusade for grammar school victims, engineered by Joseph Kreuter and The Little Missionary magazine. It emphasized a program to “fight for“ Christ and his earthly kingdom through daily prayer, weekly communion, obedience authority, daily examination of conscience, and anticommunism. Sponsa Regis, 15 Mar. 1939.Google Scholar

126. Manzoni, , “Victimale (Spiritualite),” DSAM, 16:545.Google Scholar

127. Harris, , Lourdes, 306.Google Scholar

128. Freze, , They Bore the Wounds, 285.Google Scholar

129. Kreuter, Joseph, “Visit to Konnersreuth,” Sponsa Regis, 1933/1934. Sponsa Regis became the progressive journal Sisters Today in 1965, which ceased publication in the fall of 2000.Google Scholar

130. de Vinck, José, Revelations of Women Mystics From the Middle Ages to Modern Times (New York: Alba House, 1985), 93.Google Scholar

131. Letters of Teresa Higginson (London: Sands & Co., 1937), 62.Google Scholar

132. Among the many useful sources are Djikstra, Bram, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in the Fin de Siècle (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986),Google Scholarand Showalter, Elaine, Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (New York: Viking, 1990).Google Scholar

133. Medieval mystics like Catherine of Siena recognized a female dimension of Jesus by understanding the piercing of his side during the Crucifixion as a metaphor for childbirth. This maternal Jesus, however, was not utilized by the founders of victim soul spirituality.Google Scholar

134. Giloteaux, , Victim Souls, 89.Google Scholar

135. “As, in the human frame, the vigor of one member contributes to the well-being of the rest, so in the Mystical Body of Christ each Christian benefits his brethren by his own particular merits.” Giloteaux, Victim Souls, 94.Google Scholar

136. Charmot, Way of Divine Love, 468. I am also grateful to Byrne, Patricia, , C.S.J., who is writing a history of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the United States, for sharing archival materials about Josefa Menéndez.Google Scholar

137. “And with those martyrs of the war were other victims—mothers, sweethearts, wives—not called upon indeed to give their blood, but shedding with their tears the very life-blood of their souls; joining their secret anguish to the soldiers' pain, and, as it were, presenting through their prayer, for the redemption of the world, the sum of woe inflicted by the war,” Charmot, Way of Divine Love, 52.Google Scholar

138. Sponsa Regis, 15 Jan. 1945, 118.Google Scholar

139. Monier-Vinard, H., S.J. “Introduction,” Way of Divine Love, xix.Google Scholar

140. We can trace at least two strands of victim spirituality: one derived from St. Margaret Mary Alacoque and her revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (e.g., Menéndez, Kreuter, Gallagher); the other, a “legion of little souls“ traced to Thérèse of Lisieux and her “little way“ of suffering (e.g., Galgani, Neumann, Pio, Robin).Google Scholar

141. Reineke, , Sacrificed Lives, 116.Google Scholar

142. See for example, a manuscript submitted by a priest to Sponsa Regis charting his passage “from sinner to victim.” In it, the author describes religious life as a vow to “henceforth victimize themselves throughout life for the glory of God, immolating their unruly passions by perpetual mortification and abnegation, thus consuming themselves as holocausts in imitation of the Supreme Victim, their Head and Exemplar.” SJA, box 7, folder 16.Google Scholar

143. Chinnici, Joseph, “From Sectarian Suffering to Compassionate Solidarity: Joseph Cardinal Bernardin and the American Catholic Language of Suffering,” paper delivered at the University of Notre Dame, 9 Mar. 2000, American Catholic Studies Newsletter, fall 2000.Google ScholarChinnici describes Bernardin's book, The Gift of Peace: Personal Reflections (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1996), as marking a shift to an affective discourse of suffering.Google Scholar