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Mission, service and sacrifice: the rel igious formation of Catholic teachers

There was a statement in our training, "we are doormats of God". Somebody took that as a retreat theme. "You are just doormats of God". We are not doormats of God. God does not want this. (MN I 5)

Introduction

In chapter three I argued that the Church's educational mission was influenced by the desire to maintain a distinctive Catholic identity through the transmission

of faith and Catholic cultural practices to the next generation of Catholic pupils. In this chapter I will illustrate how the religious formation of Catholic teachers was designed to produce expert teachers whose responsibility was to do just that

(see also diagram 3 . 1 ). The strongly rel igious motivation for entering a teaching

order set recruits to religious life apart from those entering teaching in the state

education system. In the fol lowing, I will demonstrate that Catholic teachers

were unique in their commitment to the celibate rel igious life, the educational

mission of the order to which they belonged, and their special responsibility for

the success of the Catholic educational mission. Each of them undertook a

process of religious formation and professional trai ning that prepared them to

transmit the faith, to reproduce Catholic cultural practices and to enhance the

This chapter will util ise documentary, archival and the life history

accounts of the participants in this study to consider ways in which new rel igious were socialised into particular religious and cultural practices and the infl uence of the distinctive pedagogies of different religious orders. I will show that religious learned to comply with the requirements 'Of a highlyregulated celibate l ife because they felt a personal call or "vocation" to rel igious l i fe and a commitment to the m ission of the teaching order in which they became a member. It was a "call" that was sustained by the camaraderie they experienced with other recruits and the knowledge that they were taking part in the C hurch's wider educational mission for the salvation of souls. From this point in the thesis onwards, the voices of the participants in this study, until now muted, will assume an increasingly signi ficant role in the research narrative. The accounts of Catholic educators come to promi nence particularly as we move from a

consideration of historic influences in part two of this thesis to a focus on the significance of the educational m ission for the rel igious who lived, shared and promoted that m ission in part three and four of the thesis. Key themes identified in earlier chapters are examined in relation to the lives of the participants in this study, the 1 9 women and 1 0 men who taught in Catholic school s in the years after 1 943. Influences such as Roman-based authoritarian structures, an Irish inheritance, the particular traditions of religious orders and gender-based

practices resurface in the context of the rel igious formation of Catholic teachers. This chapter argues that the Church's desire to ensure a continuity of religious, cultural and social values within the Catholic community shaped the spiritual formation of New Zealand Catholic teachers. Thus new recruits received

and were socialised into practices of work and prayer designed to ensure the reproduction of these values in the next generation of Catholic pupils. The process of religious formation was influenced by a number of factors including notions of mission, service and sacrifice. The chapter outlines the organisation of novitiate training before detail ing initiation practices underpinned by a mix of authoritarian and regulatory practices, particular constructions of gender and the distinctive spiritual traditions of rel igious orders. The framework of the chapter i s outlined i n diagram 5. 1 .

Diagram 5. 1 The religious formation of Catholic teachers

Formation process

Choosing a life of mission service and sacrifice • Personal vocation • Educational mission of religious order • Salvation of souls I nitiation into religious life • _{Pupil teaching} • _Juniorate • _Postulant • _Novice • _{Prayer and} work A vowed life • Poverty • Chastity • Obedience

Val ues and practices

Specialist training

• Spiritual

• Theological

Formation for perfection

• Detachment from worldly values • Deference to authority • Highly regulated environment • _Conformity • Gendered practices • _{Distinctive spiritual} traditions of religious orders

C hoosing a l ife of mission, service and sacrifice

The educational m ission Transmitting the faith to Catholic pupils Reproducing Catholic cultural practices The distin ctive pedagogies of religious orders

Religious communities are made up of groups of individuals "who freely come together to enter a vowed l ife w ithin a community which is both formally recognised and regulated by the Church", 283 Members take vows of poverty,

chastity and obedience, and pledge to uphold the charism, or m is sion of the community. As Elizabeth Smyth puts it, religious communities have both

practical and moral purposes?84 The increasing numbers who joined the "active" rel igious orders in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world saw teaching in a Catholic school as a useful work to do both for the salvation of their souls and for the good of society as a whole.285 The notion of mission operated at three levels, a personal mission or vocation as a religious, a commitment to the

distinctive educational mission o f a religious order and a sharing in the Church's wider salvation mission by transmitting faith and cultural practices to their pupils (see diagram 5 . 1 ). Essential to the vocation of a religious teacher was a notion of service that assumed a lifetime commitment to the apostolate o f teaching, a commitment that was undertaken without payment and which involved a wide range of duties?86 The vast majority of these teachers were women.287 As Ernest S immonds notes:

284 _{I bid.}

285 T. O'Donoghue, _{Come follow me andforsake temptation: Catholic schooling and the}

recruitment and retention of teachers for religious teaching orders, 1 922- 1 965 _{(Bern, 2004). 1 9.}

286 _{These duties included cleaning the school, taking care of the grounds, meeting parents,}

training sports' teams, giving extra tuition to children with l earning difficulties, organising the work of sodalities such as the Chi ldren of M ary, fundraising activities, prepari ng pupils for the Sacraments, supervision of boarders, and the giving of music and speech lessons after school to supplement the low school fees charged to Catholic pupils. See Coll ins, "Hidden Lives" . 1 94; O'Donoghue, Comefollow me. 20.

287 _{In New Zealand seven out of eight religious were women. See Table 4.3 : and Simmons, A}

I t w a s t a ken f o r g r a n t e d t hat t h e s e de d i c a t e d women wou l d w o r k l o ng hou r s a t a l l s o r t s o f t a s ks f r om the mo s t me n i a l t o � h e mo s t s ub l ime a nd a t the s ame t ime l i ve i n such pove r t y t h a t t h e f e e s o f t h e mu s i c t e a ch e r w e r e o ft e n t h e o n l y m e a n s o f k e e p i n g t he convent g o i n g ... t h e y w e r e b u i l d i ng a Church o n t h e b e n t b a c k s o f t h e

Nuns . 2 8 8

The success of the Catholic educational mission depended, as Simmonds

explains, on the large numbers of rel igious women who worked "long hours at all sorts of tasks" to "build" the Cathol ic Church in New Zealand. It was a life characterised by poverty, hard work and personal commitment. A Domi nican Sister recalls that she was drawn to religious life by the Sisters who taught her "their poverty, they had practically nothing in the school and yet they taught us" (OM 4). Another Dominican Sister saw that life as a rel igious offered

opportunities for devotion, prayer, the service of others and an alternative to marnage.

A lot of my friends at school were going out and I used to (as well). Yet it seemed to me that it was so superficial, there was nothing there. I thought, "Goodness, I can't imagine j ust going through life, going to m orning teas and afternoon teas and all the rest of it". Then the fact that I went to Mass with my father and saw his devotion. We looked after the poor people in our area. To me these seemed (to be) the real values. Then of course my sister was received as a Dominican Sister. I suppose I was at the age of 1 2 or 1 3 at that time. I was very impressed by that ceremony. (OG3)

The Sister, who was a boarder at a Dominican secondary school with her older sister, i s inspired to enter the convent because the "devotion" of her father, and a desire to l ive "the real values" of the Cathol ic faith rather than "j ust going through l ife, going to morning teas". She was drawn to the Dominican order because she was "very impressed" by h er sister' s reception ceremony. Like a

288

number of the Dominican Sisters in this study, she remembers being attracted to religious life by the beauty of the solemn liturgies particularly those of the D ivine Office (see later discussion).

As has been illustrated in chapter four, the establishment of the Catholic education system in New Zealand was made possible by the influx of

predominantly Irish teaching rel igious orders; its expansion rel ied on the successful recruitment of new members to these orders. This was achieved by a policy of recruitment from Ireland, a policy which continued until the I 960s, and by encouraging pupils, particularly in Cathol ic secondary schools, to "enter" teaching rel igious life?89 F ive Irish-born Sisters were interviewed for this study, three Sisters of Mercy and two Dominican Sisters. These Sisters came to New Zealand in the 1 950s and early 1 960s. They have now returned to Ireland, each having spent more than forty years teaching in New Zealand Catholic schools. 290 For these Sisters the importance of "mission" was paramount. A Mercy Sister remembered that in Ireland "it was customary in those days [the 1 940 and 1 950s] for the missionary sisters [to] come around to the schools and talk to the girls

289 _{For example significant numbers of I rish postulants joined the Auckland Sisters of Mercy}

in the first half of the twentieth century: nineteen in 1 922, seventeen in 1 93 7, twenty-four in 1 949, twenty-one i n 1 95 1 . Delany, Gracious is the time: 1 850- 1 950 _{Centenary of the Sisters of}

Mercy Auckland New Zealand. 179. Issues relatin g to the continuing Irish presence among New Zealand teaching religious is an area needing further research.

290 _{Since it became the policy of the Dominican and M ercy Sisters in the 1 990s to allow Irish} born S isters to return to Ireland on "retirement" twenty-five Mercy Sisters and two Dominicans have done so (Personal Communication, ( MO), 1 3 February 2003 ). The author interviewed three M ercy S isters and two Dominican Sisters when she visited Ireland in May 2003 .

about vocations" (MB3). Although a Dominican Sister recalls that she was "just fifteen" when New Zealand Dominican Sisters came to recruit new members at the Dublin school she attended, she had always had a strong sense of m ission "to be a teacher and to be a religious" (OAS):

These Sisters came and asked . . . "Do you want to be a rel igious?" "Yes I do." "And you're going to do something about it for me?" . . . So I stepped out into the dark and said I would go. They told me a little bit about New Zealand. Mother Philomena told me about this gorgeous country that was so l ike ours and the skies were blue, blue skies and there were green, green paddocks and I was thinking "That's j ust like home" not that that was what took me there. I really feel that this was my call from God and I felt that if I didn't answer then, God knows I might not ever have another opportunity to say yes. (OAS-6)

Inspired by notions of service - "a choice of vocation that was beautiful" (OB8) - numbers of Irish girls felt a "call to New Zealand to the m issions" (089) . They decided to join the New Zealand Dominicans even though that meant leaving fami ly and friends and travelling to the other side of the world to a country about which they knew little:291

I suppose we were brought up with the idea of a m ission, the need to support m issions (missions to us were people out there who had never heard of God) and that we should do something for these people. We knew it would be helpful to get them to know God like we would and to support them. I suppose going to New Zealand was a mission. (OA 1 1 )

L ike their nineteenth-century Irish antecedents, these Irish-born Dominican Sisters were inspired to travel half way around the world to bring the faith to a "people out there who had never heard of (God)". As some of the Sisters commented, they imagined (mistakenly) that New Zealand was inhabited by

291 A number of the "Irish" Sisters believed they were going to be teaching Maori "wearing grass skirts", a far cry from the chi ldren of working-class Irish Cathol ics they actually

native people wearing grass skirts and that they would be bringing the Catholic

faith from Ireland to "people out there who had never heard of God". Like their

New Zealand counterparts they were inspired by the individual religious who

were "happy in religious life", and who model led a call ing they saw to be characterised by "kindness and caring", "fantastic" teaching and a life of prayer,

beautiful l iturgies and the Divine Office:

I saw women who were great model s and were happy in rel igious life . . . We had a Sister who took us right throughout primary school . . . and she became such a model of kindness and caring. She was a fantastic teacher and we realised that more during our own school life when we became teachers . . . we would go around to the chapel and . . . al l of a sudden you would hear these angelic voices singing. I just loved liturgy and listening to the Divine Office . . . (OA4)

Researchers such as Hareven and Langenbach suggest that American rel igious communities not only promoted vocations in the pupils in their schools but also

actively util ised a network of connections with Cathol ic fami lies to encourage

new recruits. They note, for example that girls who eventually became Nuns

often visited or boarded with aunts or older sisters who were members of

rel igious communities.292 Danylewycz suggests that this was part of an overall

pattern where Catholic parents not only felt honoured when their children were

called to serve God but were also led to believe that through this "sacrifice" their

own chances for salvation had improved significantly?93 In fact by fostering a

vocation to a teaching order a Catholic parent also shared in the Church' s

292 _{See Tamara K. Hareven and Randolf Langenbach, Amoskeag: Life and work in an}

Americanfactory-city (New York, 1 978).

293 See Danylewycz, Taking the veil: A n alternative to marriage, motherhood and

educational mission and took part in the salvation of souls. Research for this

thesis supports the contention of my earlier study that there is a strong correlation

between an individual's experience of education in a Catholic school and his or

her later decision to enter a religious order.294 Of the twenty-nine rel igious

interviewed, all but one entered the re ligious order that ran the Catholic

secondary school they attended; all had attended a Catholic school.295 I t i s also

clear that many of the men and women in this study were encouraged by the example of inspirational teachers, as a Christian Brother recal led:

I think it was because I had a magnificent teacher in Form 2, Brother Webster, who is si nce dead, Peter, Xavier Webster. Now there would be three or four of us in this community and a number of us, who would say that we are here because of him. He had an influence that was m i les beyond that of pure ly imparting knowledge. There are things that he taught us that I stil l remember. (CN7)

Schools, convents and monasteries were permeated by re ligious values and practices. These worked, not only to transmit the faith and cultural practices for those who chose the single or married state in life, but also to encourage pupils to consider the possibility of a religious vocation. Becom ing a Catholic teacher provided young men and women with an opportunity to undertake a l i fe of

m ission, sacrifice and service in the field of education and by doing so to fulfil a

un ique role in bui lding up the Catholic Church in New Zealand as a Dom in ican Sister who entered in the 1 930s remembered:

We felt that we were fulfil ling something withi n the Church, some need that might be there, and also we were providing a good solid education for

294 Col \ ins, "Hidden Lives" . 1 42.

295 The other religious had attended a Catholic primary school run by another order and later a

girls of that time. I felt it was a call from God. That was the main thing. It meant a big sacrifice having to give up all the things you give up when you become a Nun. Apart from the social aspect of everything it' s the fact of marriage and having children and all that. . . But you don 't think of these