August 19, 2018
Treasures From Our Tradition
Sometimes the heat of summer translates into unrest in a city’s streets. In the summer of 1834, popular sentiment against the presence of the Ursuline nuns near Boston reached a boiling point. An influx of Irish laborers had an impact on the work force in the city, and a deep-seated resentment against Catholics fueled the fire. The nuns supported themselves with a school, and most of the young women students were drawn from patrician Protestant families. Nevertheless, rumors fed by the saga of an unhappy junior sister and a later episode of a senior sister fleeing the place increased tensions. The city’s selectmen were given a tour by the disgruntled sister, who by then had returned, and found all things in good order. That didn’t please the mob, and the mother superior didn’t help matters when she said that the bishop had platoons of Irishmen at hand, twenty thousand strong, to do marauders harm. By August 11, the convent had been invaded, ransacked, and burned to the ground. The nuns fled to Maine and Canada. The diocese attempted to recover losses, but the commonwealth offered only ten thousand dollars, which was rejected. Years later, a legislative bill for the state to rebuild the convent and school was roundly defeated. Yet the enterprise of Catholic education had great resilience, and in 1946, more than a hundred years after the riots, the Ursulines returned to Boston to re-establish an academy that endures to the present day.
Rev. James Field, Copyright © J. S. Paluch Co.
God bless,
FROM THE PASTOR'S DESK
My Dear Parishioners,
This past Wednesday we celebrated the Feast of the Assumption
of Mary, and I think an appropriate time to look at
some of the holy women in our Catholic faith who have spoken
and lived the truth of Christ.
The following is taken from A Litany of Women for the
Church by Joan Chittister, OSB:
“Dear God, creator of women in your own image, born of a
woman in the midst of a world half women, carried by women
to all the mission fields around the globe, made known by
women to all the children of the earth, give to the women of
our time the strength to persevere, the courage to speak out,
the faith to believe in you beyond all systems and institutions
… so that the church may be converted to Your will in everything
and in all ways.”
• We therefore honor the following women who were a
part of the history of our faith:
• St. Esther, who pleaded against power for the liberation
of the people.
• St. Deborah, laywoman and judge, who led the people of
God.
• St. Scholastica, who taught her brother Benedict to honor
the spirit above the system.
• St. Joan of Arc, who put no law above the law of God.
• St. Clare of Assisi, who confronted the pope with the
image of woman as equal.
• St. Therese of Lisieux, who knew the call of priesthood
in herself.
• St. Teresa of Avila, who brought women’s gifts to the
reform of the church.
• St. Edith Stein, who brought fearlessness to faith.
• St. Elizabeth Seton, who broke down boundaries between
lay women and religious by wedding motherhood
and religious life.
• Dorothy Day, who led the church to a new sense of justice.
• And Mary, mother of Jesus, who heard the call of God
and answered.
Siempre Adelante!
Monsignor Liam Kidney,
Pastor