Catherine Spalding, SCN: A Life in Letters by Mary Ellen Doyle, SCN (review)

Mary Ellen Doyle, SCN, presents Catherine Spalding, (1793–1858), as courageous and kindhearted. Born in Maryland, the third child of Edward and Juliet Boarman Spalding, Catherine experienced early childhood loss, uprooting, and placement with relatives as guardians. Moved westward, the rigors of pioneer life on the Kentucky frontier forged strength of character, an appealing personality, and effective relational skills. Benedict J. Flaget, first bishop of Bardstown, and his colleague, Bishop John B. David, were among Catherine’s collaborators in formulating her life-long mission of caring for others as a Sister of Charity of Nazareth (SCN).

Doyle explains her schema for arranging the Spalding papers, previously authenticated letters by and to Catherine, according to five periods of her life. Doyle comments on the significance of Mother Catherine’s correspondence, provides a biographical chronology, and identifies patterns of relationships and service throughout her forty-five years as an SCN, twenty-five as the community leader. To inform the reader about Catherine’s world, Doyle employs epistolary genre and editorial commentary. The latter tends to obfuscate rather than elucidate the understanding of readers unfamiliar with SCN tradition. In this reviewer’s opinion, well-honed footnotes would have been more helpful, e.g. Bechtle and Metz, eds., Selected Writings Elizabeth Bayley Seton, 4 vols. (2000–2006).

Catherine emerges as a friendly, practical woman of faith: “I have lived long enough to learn to take all these things just as they come” (Letter 5–11, viii). Catherine “was an educated, but never showy, writer” (xvi). Doyle allows Catherine to use her own words to tell not only her story, but also that of the communal development of the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, the stories of members, and their first Mother. For example, two sisters walked “each day to Newport poor school with their lunch of bread and prunes” in 1857 (267).

Treatment of the foundation years (1812–1838) offers an overview of Catherine’s experiences, aspirations, and vocational choice. She was the third woman to join the nascent Sisters of Charity of Nazareth and facilitated its establishment and growth. As Mother and administrator (1838–1844), Catherine boldly composed a significant letter July 6, 1841, signed by many SCN. The missive thwarted a clandestine plan of Bishop Flaget and other Sulpicians to unite the Nazareth and Emmitsburg communities of Sisters of Charity. Catherine’s strategy preserved the SCN identity in their “crisis of independence” (41) and in the midst of struggles between Sulpician superiors in Paris and Maryland.

Doyle could have provided details about the SCN crisis in relation to the Sulpicians’ post-French Revolution recovery efforts, and the implications for the American Sisters of Charity of the mandates issued in 1829 and 1845 by superior generals, Antoine Garnier, and Louis de Courson, that the Sulpicians return to their founding charism: to prepare seminarians for ministry as priests.

At the Louisville mission (1844–1850), anti-Catholic bigotry confronted Catherine as poor immigrants increased, fatal diseases spread, and more orphans required loving care. Called to leadership again, Catherine oversaw the development at Nazareth (1850–1856) under a new bishop, Martin John Spalding, who would prove more authoritative than affable, despite ties of kinship. Catherine returned to Louisville to spend her final years among her dear orphans and the sisters whom she’d formed as women of charity and justice.

Catherine was a contemporary of Elizabeth Seton (1774–1821). Both established a community of women based on the way of life developed by Saints Louise de Marillac and Vincent de Paul in seventeenth-century France. The Sisters of Charity in Kentucky and Maryland had the same mission: to seek and serve Christ in the person of those who were poor. Catherine and the SCN embraced the Vincentian way of life and apostolic service. A broader treatment of the Vincentian spirit would have enriched readers’ appreciation of Catherine’s spirituality.

Doyle presumes that Catherine wrote many more letters and questions their fate. I...