Sharing the Bread in Service: Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, 1891-1991 by Patricia Lynch, S.B.S. (review)

BOOK REVIEWS323 Vinyard regularly relates the Detroit scene to parallel events in the nation, seeing both similarity and contrast. One major difference was how strongly the ethnic plurality of Detroit resisted national forces for the centralization of Catholic education in local dioceses. In Detroit the parish remained the locus of the school. One ethnic group which is well represented in this work is the large Polish community,which, due to its own inner divisions, relied on two religious communities, the Felicians and the German School Sisters of St. Francis. Vinyard 's central account ends with the beginning of Catholic high schools. Mrs. Vinyard paints a detailed and attractive picture of a community's struggle to educate its youth, depicts the disparate forces at work in that community which allowed for a colorful diversity in the overall unity of the piece, provides national scenery for background, and induces pride for all who had a hand in producing the current educational landscape. Note only that the text should read "John Lancaster Spalding" on page 93EarlBoyea Sacred HeartMajor Seminary Detroit, Michigan Sharing the Bread in Service: Sisters ofthe Blessed Sacrament, 1891-1991¦ By Patricia Lynch, S.B.S. (Bensalem, Pennsylvania [19020-8502] : Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. 1998. Pp. viii,742.) Quite fortuitously, I happened to be doing some research at the Vatican Archives in the November week that Katharine Drexel (1858-1955) was beatified in 1988, and I found myself seated eight rows from the altar at St. Peter's Basilica for the ceremony. Even more amazingly, the pensione where I stayed happened to have a copy of the requisite Positio super virtutibus in specie for Drexel's beatification. The celebration brought into the present the fruit of her lifelong ministry with African Americans and Native Americans. Drexel's ministry concerns were carried forward in the foundation of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. Sharing the Bread in Service looks back at the hundred years of the Congregation, which has a strong eucharistie spirituality. Part One surveys Drexel's family background, noting especially the influences which shaped her consciousness about "the Colored and Indians," as they were referred to in her youth. At a time when the American Catholic Church had all it could do to keep up with the pastoral needs of European immigrants, Drexel bore a considerable amount of financial and physical outlay in the evangelization of African Americans and Native Americans. The section ends with the early development of congregational missions devoted to diese groups in the southwest and in some urban areas in Pennsylvania. In time, the Congregation took over several of the Native American schools originally funded by Drexel. Part Two ("Expanding Mission Fields, 1914-1937") notes the growth of the Congregation's work in the Southeast. Part Three ("Deepening Roots, 1937- 324book reviews 1964") examines the transition under new Community leadership other than Drexel's. In Part Four ("Strong Against theWinds, 1964-1991"), the author identifies the fruition of the Sisters' previous efforts and the time of vital changes in the Congregation as a result of the Second Vatican Council, the Civil Rights Movement, and school desegregation. Appendices contain the names and dates of all the members of the Congregation and a list of the 122 missions and convents founded since the Community's inception. The publishers are working on a way to correct the errors in the index. Lynch draws extensively on primary sources in the archives of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament for her narrative. By and large, the centennial study chronicles the development of the missions which the Sisters staffed from 1891 , the year that Katharine Drexel made her first profession. With the exception of the section on the 1960's and the Civil Rights Movement, there is little interpretation provided placing the Sisters' work and lives in a larger context of American history. However, by sheer force of the number of pages, as well as the identification of mission locations, the reader is impressed with the considerable role which the Sisters played in the formation and education of the two groups to whom they went in mission. The addition of a map indicating the sites of schools and catechetical centers would...