The Courage to Dare: The Spirituality of Catherine Donnelly, Founder of the Sisters of Service by Kathryn Perry (review)

One cannot help but think of the brave women in many of Alice Munro’s short stories as you read The Courage to Dare: The Spirituality of Catherine Donnelly, Founder of the Sisters of Service. The hopes, dreams, and anguish of ordinary people from family farms and small villages in rural Southern Ontario are etched into the story of Donnelly’s vision that all life may flourish. We are taken from her Ontario Celtic roots into her encounter with the suffering of newcomers in the wilderness of the Canadian West. Kathryn Perry ably guides the reader into a place of deeper understanding and appreciation of the energy and drive of Donnelly throughout her long life. We are led through her encounter with religious life and into the remarkable founding of the Sisters of Service, a Catholic congregation of women religious established in 1922.

Donnelly’s heartbreak, when her vision is misunderstood and her desire for proper recognition as founder thwarted, is explored with realism and sensitivity. The encounter of the beauty of the transcendent in the heart of Catherine Donnelly with her desire to serve the most abandoned is explored fully through her vibrant spirituality.

Perry invites the reader to experience this unique woman’s spirituality through a prism of themes leading to a holistic understanding of Donnelly’s life. We first meet Donnelly, a determined, caring, young woman, through her Celtic roots. The themes of the love of nature, love of Scripture, and religious imagination are a persistent presence throughout her early years as a young teacher supporting her father and two sisters. These foundational themes endured until her death in 1983 at the age of ninety-nine. As a young teacher in public schools, Donnelly saw a need for educated Catholic women like herself to serve those living in isolated rural communities. Donnelly’s ecumenical sensitivity, rooted in her early years, grew as she encountered those struggling to survive. Her desire to bring the good news of the gospel to anyone is at the heart of her compassion for the most marginalized.

Donnelly’s vibrant religious faith is tested in her desire to live as a member of a Catholic religious congregation. The demand of developing ministries in the uniquely Canadian context is explored through themes of cooperation, community development, and caring for the common good. Donnelly felt that being attentive to the grassroots of social welfare work was the way to be faithful to the call of the gospel. Therefore religious women should be well educated as professional teachers, nurses, and social workers and fit into the social life of the community. Living within multiple overlapping contexts reveals the contours of the challenges Donnelly faced as a woman religious and as a Canadian.

One cannot really understand Catherine Donnelly without a thorough consideration of three foundational contexts of her life. Perry emphasizes the realities of the rural community, especially in the Canadian western provinces, the context of the local Catholic Church, and the rapidly changing Canadian culture. The core context of the Catholic Church in Donnelly’s life spanned from the early twentieth century into the revolution brought about by the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. Donnelly’s prophetic imagination is affirmed by the radical changes to traditional women religious congregations and her pastoral vision to serve all, regardless of religion, status, or ethnicity. Yet the trials Donnelly faced are startling as she comes to the realization that her founding vision for the Sisters of Service had not been honoured as she had wished. Perry does not spare the reader the knowledge of Donnelly’s personal suffering, for her anger and frustration come through the pages as real.

At times the exploration of the themes within Donnelly’s’ spirituality seems drawn out. Yet this woman’s long life needed attention paid to the complexity of her mission, the contextual influences, and struggles to...