"Contending Parties": Bishop John David and the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth

"It is a truth universally acknowledged" (to borrow a famed ironic opening) that communities of religious women "must be in want of" clerical guidance and supervision. Certainly this view was in force when antebellum American bishops and pastors avidly sought to provide education and social services for their flocks. The ministries could not be had without communities of intelligent, capable, and spiritually motivated women, whose foundations the clergy promoted and supported according to accepted norms of management and obedience. It followed that collaboration of clerical men and religious women was essential, while conflict was ever possible and too often occurred.

Nowhere was this concatenation of needs, collaboration, and potential conflict more real than in Kentucky, where, in 1808, Benedict Joseph Flaget became bishop of the new frontier diocese of Bardstown. In 1812, his friend and soon coadjutor bishop, John Baptist David, established the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth to educate frontier girls. David found his essential collaborator in Catherine Spalding, a girl of nineteen, intelligent, witty, and kind, an excellent manager, whom the first six members elected as their superior.¹

The two clerics were Sulpicians, former seminary teachers, refugees from the French Revolution, steeped in the traditions of clerical authority and religious obedience. The first Sisters of Charity were of the English, Maryland Catholic stock, laity accustomed to living the faith and making decisions in the absence of clergy. They came to the first Nazareth on St. Thomas Farm near Bardstown with little or no education but with strength of mind and purpose to serve the developing Church. There, Mother Catherine found her collaborator in Sister Ellen O'Connell, an educated and zealous woman from Baltimore; together they opened the first school for Kentucky girls. Catherine was headmistress; Ellen taught students and taught the sisters to teach. By 1831, with boarders from beyond the state, the school was flourishing. Catherine completed a term of office and was replaced by Sister Angela Spink.

Portrait of Most Rev. Benedict Joseph Flaget, NCS.1.12, Art Collection, Archives, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

It has long been known that Nazareth in the 1830's was riven by a crisis of leadership that very nearly destroyed the community, also that the turmoil began around three persons: Mother Angela Spink, Sister Ellen O'Connell, and Bishop David. Though Mother Catherine was spared direct involvement in the painful events, she surely heard of them. Because she was in Louisville and out of office, she could not use her powers of persuasion or mediation.

In August 1831, Angela Spink was elected Mother, with Frances Gardiner as assistant. Elections in early years occurred at a "general meeting" of the sisters; Angela was, therefore, the general choice. According to Bishop David, she was "well liked." And well she might have been. After only one year in the community, she had been sent in 1820 to open St. Vincent's Academy in western Kentucky and had almost single-handedly built the farm and physical plant and managed its finances; as local superior, she had governed successfully. In 1829 she had been recalled to Nazareth to serve as Mother Catherine's assistant and was the only other sister with Catherine on the Board of Trustees. Historian Ben Webb reported her reputation as "remarkable for the excellence of her judgment." Angela Spink was no incompetent woman.²

Portrait of Most Rev. John Baptist David, S. S., D.D., NCS.1.9, Art Collection, Archives, Sisters of Charity of Nazareth.

Nevertheless, she had had her successes without benefit of academic education, and she knew her limitations. She was not the one to judge curriculum or teacher competency and placement. But election as Mother made her headmistress of Nazareth Academy; to fulfill her role, she needed to rely on Ellen O'Connell even more than Catherine had. That she did so became a source of serious displeasure to Bishop David. In 1832 he wrote to Sister Elizabeth Suttle at St. Vincent's that Ellen's influence "was...