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Religious
Life
Sisters widen circle of service
By CHUCK COLBERT
Boston
On a gray, overcast New England winter morning Charles Schuetz
joined Srs. Eleanor Daniels and Joanne Gallagher around a table, here in the
Sisters of St. Joseph’s Office of Sponsored Ministries, located in the
Brighton neighborhood. They were eager to share their excitement about one of
the religious order’s latest projects -- nine sponsored ministries --
overseen by a newly incorporated, mostly lay governing body, the Corporation
for Sponsored Ministries.
Schuetz serves as executive director for the Corporation for
Sponsored Ministries, Daniels is director of its mission effectiveness.
Gallagher is the communications director for the local St. Joseph congregation.
The sisters number more than 550 and minister throughout Greater Boston and
beyond.
According to Daniels, “Co-ministry with the laity has been a
hallmark of the Sisters of St. Joseph” -- long before Vatican II stressed
collaboration and partnership with lay people. “Partnering with the laity
goes back to our founding,” she added.
The Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston opened a school for 200 girls
in the church basement of St. Thomas Aquinas Church just four days after their
arrival here in October 1873. All four nuns volunteered to come when their
community in Brooklyn, N.Y., responded to a call from Boston Archbishop John
Joseph Williams, who was eager to develop a Catholic school system for the
rapidly growing immigrant population.
“There was a great need for education then, at the time of
the great immigration,” said Daniels. “We are a congregation of the
great love of God. We were founded, back in 17th-century France, on the
principle of love and service to God and the ‘dear neighbor.’ We are
inspired by that great love God has for us. We are all about sharing that love
with an ever-widening circle of people.”
The mission of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Boston, one of unity
and reconciliation of people with God and with one another, has sought to
include those on society’s margins, those at the breaking point. Whether
people experience brokenness and alienation at the personal or interpersonal
level, or in relation to the society in which they live, the sisters and their
associates offer ministry of healing, integration and unity.
The St. Joseph Sisters of Boston trace their roots to Le Puy
(1651) and Lyon (1807), France; St. Louis (1836); and ultimately Boston. The
sisters’ ministry of unity and reconciliation has a special focus on
nonviolence, peace and social justice.
Joyfully optimistic, the sisters are determined to facilitate
ongoing communication and bring divided communities together in dialogue.
Prayerful, active spirituality is at the core of their charism, made concrete
in everyday life. Today the sisters’ ministries are a source of hope in a
world of abuse and violence, threat of war and nuclear destruction.
They have earned a reputation throughout the Boston area as
outstanding educators, having staffed more than 125 educational institutions
over the years. Through-out their history, God’s call has tugged at them
for other ministries as well -- to immigrants, the homeless, the sick and
hungry, the deaf and blind.
Like their foremothers, who hailed from the small 17th-century
town of LePuy, they “are risk takers,” said Gallagher.
“We’ve gone to places where nobody wanted to go.”
Added Daniels, “That meant, initially in France, going out
into Le Puy’s various neighborhoods and ministering where people were
suffering and dying from the plague.” Years later in Boston, the sisters
cared for people in the 1918 influenza epidemic.
Working with the laity
The Corporation of Sponsored Ministries is the parent corporation
that monitors two things for the sisters, mission effectiveness and quality,
Schuetz explained. First considered in 1996, this new model for sponsorship was
implemented in June 2000, he said.
“The Sisters of St. Joseph wanted to expand their influence
outside the educational piece,” Schuetz said. “So they reorganized
corporately all their ministerial structures under one corporation. In doing so
they included a huge volume of the laity into their work.”
Daniels and Schuetz spend a fair amount of their time outside the
office, going out to the ministry sites, presenting the heritage, history,
mission and charism -- and the co-responsibility of partnering with the
order.
Daniels said, “We really entrust our mission and our charism,
through the corporation, to these boards of trustees.”
Entrusting frees the sisters up to look ahead, to make the future
now. “We’re always asking ourselves,” Daniels said, “Who is
the neighbor, the dear neighbor? What are the needs of the dear neighbor? Who
will be the new dear neighbor in the future?”
There are nine sponsored ministries operating within the
Corporation for Sponsored Ministries umbrella -- all serving particular
“dear neighbors.” Five guidelines provide a framework under which the
order can make informed decisions regarding sponsorship: commitment to the
sisters’ mission and charism; commitment to the teaching, healing and
prophetic mission of the church; commitment to justice and peace; commitment to
effectiveness; and commitment to the quality of the ministry. Inspired by the
Jesuit Jean Pierre Médaille, the sisters talk of their commitment to
high standards in terms of “excellence tempered with gentleness.”
The nine sponsored ministries include:
- Bethany Health Care Center (founded in 1916) and Bethany Hill
School (founded in 1994), both located in Framingham, Mass. The health care
facility provides care for the sisters, although there is an emerging lay
component. The Bethany School provides educational housing for its residents
while they pursue educational goals.
- Two Montessori schools, the Merrimack Montessori School
(founded in 1966), located in Haverhill, Mass; and Walnut Park Montessori
School (also founded in 1966), located in Newton, Mass. Both schools provide a
structure that allows freedom within limits, an educational environment that
focuses on acquiring learning skills, not simply facts.
Walnut Park is
accredited by the American Montessori Society, one of 50 schools so recognized
across the country.
- The Literacy Connection (founded in 1987) provides language
skills to immigrant populations all over the Boston archdiocese. With only two
paid staff, more than 100 volunteers serve the program.
- The Jackson School (founded in 1967), also located in Newton,
Mass., is an elementary school, serving 260 children in grades K-6, providing
academic excellence in a Catholic environment. Small class sizes encourage the
spiritual, intellectual and social education of the children.
- Mount St. Joseph Academy (founded in 1885), based next door to
the motherhouse, is a private all-women’s Catholic high school serving a
diverse student body of 300. Dedicated formally on the Feast of St. Joseph,
March 19, 1892, the academy continues the mission of its founders “to
cultivate the intellect and make a special training of the heart.”
- Regis College (founded in 1927), based in Weston, Mass., is the
only all-women’s Catholic college remaining in the archdiocese. With an
enrollment of more than 1,300 students, full-time, part-time, undergraduate and
graduate, Regis College today is a Catholic, liberal arts and sciences college
where women form a community of scholars.
- Fontbonne Academy (founded in1954), located in Milton, Mass.,
is a private secondary school for young women, dedicated “to provide an
intellectual training integrated with Catholic thought and principle.” The
school serves a student body of 600, including many people of color and many
cultures.
Furthering the mission
Besides her communications ministry, Gallagher serves as a trustee
to Fontbonne Academy, where three years ago the school’s board rewrote the
mission.
“It was amazing to me to come into that group and see the
partnership even with the students,” she said. “Teachers, students,
parents, graduates -- the entire learning community -- including secretaries,
librarians, the institutional advancement office -- everybody has an equal
voice in furthering the mission,” she added. “Talk about partnering
with the laity. It was all there from the beginning.”
Like her colleague Daniels, Gallagher has no doubts that
empowerment of the laity animates the mission effectiveness and quality of the
nine sponsored ministries, as well as the more than a hundred others.
“When I entered the order in 1966, I was handed the documents of Vatican
II,” Gallagher said. “We had to read them. I cut my spiritual teeth
on those documents and so did the many other [Sisters of St. Joseph]. It was
that spirituality that resides in the marrow of our bones.”
More than 100 years ago, four nuns of the Congregation of the
Sisters of St. Joseph traveled from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Boston and founded a
parish-based school in what is now Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood.
They were inspired then, as they are now, by a profound love of God and a
joyfully optimistic belief in the power of God’s love to heal, reconcile
and unify all of humankind.
Just as they made the future then, so they create the future now,
ever mindful of the needs of the dear neighbor.
Free-lance journalist Chuck Colbert writes from Cambridge,
Mass.
National Catholic Reporter, February 21,
2003
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