Mountain Sisters: From Convent to Community in Appalachia

324 Pages·2003·57.01 MB·English

by  Helen M. Lewis

MOUNTAIN
SISTERS
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MOUNTAIN
SISTERS
From Convent
to Community
in Appalachia
Helen M. Lewis & Monica Appleby
Foreword by Rosemary Radford Ruether
TlHIE U NIVJ2RSJITY PRESS OlG ]KJENTUCKY
Publication of this volume was made possible in part by
a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Copyright © 2003 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,
serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University,
Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville,
and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
07 06 05 04 03 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lewis, Helen M., 1924-
Mountain sisters: from convent to community in Appalachia /
Helen M. Lewis and Monica Appleby; foreword by Rosemary Radford Ruether.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8131-2268-6 (alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8131-9090-8 (pbk. - alk. paper)
1. Federation of Communities in Service-History. 2. Women in church work
Appalachian Region-History. 3. Glenmary Sisters-History. 1. Appleby, Monica,
1937- II. Title.
BV4420.L48 2003
267' .44273-dc21 2003007041
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements ofthe American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
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Dedicated to the mountains ofA ppalachia and the people who
live here. Thank you for your energy, hospitality, and wisdom.
And to
Mother Mary Catherine, who led the Glenmary Sisters
to ((walk on water.)'
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CONTENTS
Foreword
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Preface: Why and How We Produced This Book xm
Introduction
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Prologue 1
Part 1: The Glenmary Years
1. Choosing a Life 5
2. Training to Be a Sister 16
3. Going on Mission 33
4. Conflict with the Hierarchy 51
5. Leaving Glenmary 71
Part 2: Forming FOCIS
6. FOCIS: The First Years 85
7. Major Changes 100
8. The Dispersed Community 111
9. Arts and Development 127
Part 3: Working in Communities
10. Social Services 147
11. Community-Based Education 162
12. Community-Based Economic Development 178
13. Advocacy, Social Action, and Empowerment of
Women 196
Part 4: Honoring and Trespassing Boundaries
14. FOCIS as Church 215
15. Journey not Arrival 232
Epilogue: Religious Women Continue the Struggle 249
In Memory of Lenore Mullarney 254
Appendices:
Voices 256
Glossary 264
Notes 269
Index 287
FOREWORD
Rosemary Radford Ruether
T
his book by Helen Lewis and Monica Appleby about the Glenmary
Sisters' journey from religious order to community organization is both
fascinating and historically important. It is a story that tells us a great deal
about Catholic women in the last fifty years of the twentieth century and
into the twenty-first century. It is simultaneously a Catholic story, an
American story, and a women's story. It illustrates the extraordinary en
counter between these three realities of Catholicism, women, and Ameri
can society in the context oft he Appalachian Region and its people, culture,
and struggle for dignity and economic well-being.
As a Catholic story this is a case study of the exciting promise and sad
failure of reform in the Catholic Church after the Second Vatican Council.
The Council unleashed enormous energy for new theology and pastoral
initiatives in a church that had languished under Counter-Reformation
repression for four hundred years. The Council suggested a new openness
to the modern world that the Catholic Church had tried to shut out for
many centuries. It suggested a reform of social structures that would al
low democratic collaboration between laity and religious women, religious
women and priests, and people and bishops-rather than a church ruled
from the top as a feudal monarchy. It suggested a new theology that took
into account the whole people of God, particularly women and marginalized
groups, rather than privileging the celibate male as normative subject and
agent of theology and ministry. It suggested a church truly engaged in
justice and the building of the Kingdom of God within history.
The energies released by the Second Vatican Council resounded
throughout the Catholic Church, particularly in the United States of
America, where Catholics readily identified the church's "people of God"
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