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OSP Sisters and the 3 IHM Communities
Recently I was asked what the difference is between the IHM Sisters of Monroe, Michigan, and the IHM Sisters of Immaculata, Pennsylvania. There’s no easy answer to this, especially since there’s also a third IHM community, the IHM Sisters of Scranton, Pennsylvania, plus the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the original community of one of our IHM founders. So I’m throwing them all into the mix here too!
A little historical context first though — check out an earlier post OSP IHM: Nuns Who Rock in which I wrote about how our co-Founder Mother Theresa Maxis Duchemin was originally an OSP Sister and how the IHM congregation became 3 separate communities.
I find it difficult to characterize how we are different because as an IHM Sister, I am overwhelmed (in the good sense) by our shared charism and our connections to one another and to our founders. The 3 IHM communities are like three siblings who were separated when they were young — their early, foundational years were shared, but then they each were in different places and so lived and expressed their original shared experience in different ways. Some of those ways were based on the geography and the Catholic culture in the area, the needs of the people and of the Church in that area, and of course the women whom the Spirit led to be part of that particular community.
So we have both similarities and differences. Honestly, the best way to get a sense of what we are like (similarities and differences) is to be with us. The facts (e.g. this one is in Monroe, this one Philadelphia, etc.) cannot come close to telling the whole story, and ultimately (especially if one is discerning religious life) you can tell which one “fits” you when your heart leaps for joy when you are with them.
The OSP IHM Timeline, a narrative of our histories, can tell the story way better than I can. In it, each community expresses who they are through the various periods (early history, Vatican II period, tody). The OSPIHM Timeline was made back in 2005 by an inter-congregational team that I was blessed to be part of. It’s pretty cool. Just click on the link below!
OSP IHM Timeline
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With monastic communities, when a new monastery is founded by an old one, at first it is a dependent house, still forming one body under obedience to the same superior, then once it becomes self-supporting it becomes independent. Ultimately all full-fledged monasteries are truly independent of one another, so that even though there are, for example, Benedictine nuns in Connecticut and Benedictine nuns in New Mexico, both with the initials OSB, both following the Rule of St. Benedict to the best of their ability and discernment, there is no administrative or hierarchical connection between them.
Is it something like that?
Hi Regina, Our history is quite different from that. When Mother Theresa left the Oblate Sisters of Providence, she really left. And we’re not sure she ever was in communication with the Oblate Sisters again.
You see, Theresa was of English and Haitian descent. As a member of the Oblate Sisters of Providence (the first women’s religious community of African descent) it was understood that she was black. But she was so light-skinned that she could pass as white. So when she went with Father Gillet to the frontier lands of Michigan no public mention was made of her biracial descent or her history with the Oblate Sisters. But Theresa never forgot the Oblate Sisters — she originally named our community the Sisters of Providence (we changed not long after our founding in 1845 to Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in honor of Mary and the Immaculate Conception dogma of 1854).
In recent years as the OSPs and 3 IHM communities have reconnected more and studied our history, we’ve discovered so many things in our spirituality and practices that we all hold in common, thanks to Theresa having carried her deep love of OSP and her experience in the community to her new community of IHMs.
This is very oversimplified, and I don’t want to overlook how difficult it was for the OSP community to lose Theresa (she’d been a superior and a friend of OSP founder Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange). It was hard for Theresa too. The church at the time, both in Baltimore and in Detroit, was not accepting of black women religious and this profoundly affected this story of the Oblate Sisters of Providence and the IHMs. We acknowledge racism was a powerful actor in this story and we are committed to healing, both for our communities and in all that we do and are for others.
Oh wow, I hadn’t made the connection with the name Oblate Sisters of Providence — I know them! They were at the parish through which I came (back) into the church as an adult. I didn’t realize you IHMs were direct descendants! Pretty cool.
I have a question after reading the history. Did the founder Mother Theresa Maxis actually leave the order to become a Grey nun of Ottawa?
Hi discerninglife25, Yes, Mother Theresa did leave to become a Grey nun of Ottawa. After some of the IHM sisters had gone to Pennsylvania to found new missions at the request of the Bishop John Neumann, Theresa thought that maybe she’d move the whole community to Pennsylvania because the bishop was more welcoming of the community — plus, Bishop Neumann was a Redemptorist priest (CSsR), same community as our co-Founder Louis Gillet who had left shortly after founding the community. She wanted so much to have the community continue in that spirituality and tradition and in Pennsylvania they could. But the church in Michigan was not happy about this idea, and they were also a bit upset because not only had Gillet left, but all the other Redemptorists had left too. So they forbade the IHM sisters in Monroe to leave and they forbade them to even communicate with their IHM sisters on mission in Pennsylvania. In addition, Mother Theresa was not allowed to lead the community any more. She left Monroe for Pennsylvania hoping to reunite the community from there. But it didn’t happen. There was much heartbreak for Theresa and all the sisters at being separated and forbidden to ever communicate with one another or to rejoin the community. Theresa spent the rest of her life desperately trying to pull the community together again. She left the community to become a Grey nun because she thought that she was at the heart of the controversy and if she left, maybe the matter would calm down and the bishops would allow the community to reunite. This did not happen. After 18 years with the Grey nuns, Mother Theresa (who always considered herself an IHM) eventually returned to Pennsylvania ending her exile.
It’s a tough history, one filled with the joy and excitement of following the Spirit’s urgings and with the heartbreak and pain of losing our founders so early in our history and having the community separated and forbidden to communicate or reunite with one another. I can’t image how Father Gillet, Mother Theresa, and Mother Mary Lange (OSP founder) feel now, after seeing all three IHMs and the Oblate Sisters of Providence as wonderfully distinct communities, yet sisters united in faith with a common story (albeit from different perspectives) that we can finally share with one another and the world.