Icame across this article yesterday about Prof. Thompson, one of my fav historians! Through her work, she tells the stories of U.S. women religious and how they have shaped U.S. culture and society. Plus she’s a lively writer–she makes history come alive! I am grateful to her and all historians who help to share accurate, authentic stories about sisters!

Sister Julie and I were delighted to have Prof. Thompson join us on a live podcast last year. To hear a recording of the conversation, go to the In Good Faith webpage.

Are there sisters you know whose stories should be told? Please share your stories here and on the A Nun’s Life Discussion Forum

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer tonight and every weekday at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live.

Who knew that puns were crucial in the rise of modern civilization? Not me. Well, not until I heard an interview about puns on public radio the other day. The program was “Here and Now,”  and the interview was with John Pollack, author of the book The Pun Also Rises: How the Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History, and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics (source)

Pollack said that ancient punsters shaped the alphabet, which was fundamental in gathering knowledge and transmitting it over time. They did this, he said, by “translating pictograms into completely abstract symbols whose value was strictly phonetic.” Ingenious!

Despite my puny knowledge about the history of puns, I have always enjoyed them. So, if you like puns too, take a listen to the interview and give puns a try. Make a contribution to modern civilization and write your best pun in the comment box below!

IGF002 In Good Faith with historian Dr. Margaret Susan Thompson recorded live on October 7, 2010. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. Our hosts talk with Dr. Thompson about the history of U.S. Catholic sisters and nuns and find out some surprising things.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Guest: Dr. Margaret Susan Thompson

Dr. Thompson is professor of history at Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where she also holds appointments in the departments of religion, political science, and women and gender studies. She is a leading expert on the history of Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States.

Topic: The History of Catholic Sisters and Nuns in the U.S.

The sisters talk with Dr. Peggy Thompson about calling and history, her experience working with women’s religious communities across the country, the significance of Catholic sisters and nuns in the context of the American experience, and what the “good old days” of religious life was actually like. We’ll also talk about how many of the stories of founders and pioneer sisters can inspire us today in our daily quest for God.

Dr. Thompson recently did an 18-lecture series on The History of Women Religious in the United States. The publishers of this series, Now You Know Media, have provided the first lecture for free. Listen to the Introduction and Lecture 1: Discovering Foremothers: Origins of Women’s Religious Life.

Show Notes:

• from broadway aspirations to history scholar
• history, it’s not about “dead things”
• the first sister-President of the United States (and Vice President too)
• what the lives of pioneering sisters can tell us about living an active live and a life of prayer
• what we can learn from religious founders about living a faith-filled life
• sisters caring for the wounded during the Civil War
• the impact of Catholic sisters and nunson U.S. culture
• skeletons in the closet and other surprising tales from religious archives
• habits for apostolic religious — not as traditional as they seem
• revisiting their founding inspiration — lots of surprises along the way
• apostolic orders : are they morphing into Beguines?
• prayer: always central to Catholic sisters and nuns throughout the ages

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live every first Thursday of the month from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

For more information, including upcoming guests on In Good Faith, please visit the program page of In Good Faith.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the word “nun”? Risk-takers? Innovators? Entrepreneurs?

The Oblate Sisters of Providence -- Mother Mary Lange, the founder of this religious community, is another foremother you should know! www.oblatesisters.com

The more I study the history of sisters, the more I see the truth of those images. A number of scholars are helping bring those images to light. One is Margaret Susan Thompson, a historian at Syracuse University. In her work, she shows how risk taking and innovation, as well as lots of persistence, are part of the very nature of religious life.

Sister Julie and I often talk about religious life as an adventure, and history helps us see that it always has been!

Here are some examples that Prof. Thompson uses in her discussion about religious life in her article “Discovering Foremothers.” (To listen to a 25-min based on this article, click here.)

What examples come to mind for you?

Mary Ward, [a] seventeenth-century Englishwoman … founded the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a society she envisioned as a female counterpart to the Jesuits: without habits, convents, or fealty to local bishops. [She] was imprisoned by one Pope and who walked hundreds of miles to Rome to win the patronage of another and whose descendants did not … [gain] permission to acknowledge her as their founder until the 1800.

Katharine Drexel, an American … used the millions of dollars left to her use by her banker father (a partner of J. P. Morgan) to found and fund the works of a community dedicated solely to “Indians and Colored People” and who, because her father authorized that only she receive the income from his estate and only for the duration of her natural life, managed to survive until the age of 97 so as to get as much of that income as possible.

Sister Julie and I are delighted to have Prof. Thompson as our guest on “In Good Faith” tomorrow, Thursday, at 7 p.m. Central Time (your time zone). Hope you can join us!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters” and chat room. FOR TONIGHT ONLY we’ll be one hour earlier than usual at 5 p.m. CST (your time zone). Join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

FP006 Feature Podcast on Discovering Foremothers: Origins of Women’s Religious Life by historian Dr. Margaret Susan Thompson. Published in her 18-lecture series, The History of Women Religious in the United States, through NowYouKnowMedia.com.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Introduction and Lecture 1: Discovering Foremothers: Origins of Women’s Religious Life

If you are interested in purchasing or learning more about the lecture series, visit Now You Know Media.

Listen to Sister Maxine and Sister Julie’s interview with Dr. Thompson on the In Good Faith program.

At the Conference of the History of Women Religious today I attended a presentation by Dr. Carmen Mangion of the University of London. She presented the project of her colleage Dr. Caroline Bowden. The project is called Who Were the Nuns? and it is a prosopographical study of the English convents in exile in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Scene from the Painted Life of Mary Ward. Mary Ward and some of the first seven Companions setting sail for Flanders.

Who Were the Nuns? project is “a comprehensive study of the membership of the English convents in exile. That is, the period between the opening of the first English convent in Brussels to the nuns’ return to England as a result of the French Revolution and associated violence. Most were enclosed convents, in theory cut off from the outside world. However in practice the nuns were not isolated and their contacts and networks spread widely.

Why did the nuns have to go into exile? Well, Catholic nuns, monks, and clergy were not exactly welcome in England at the time. In fact monasteries and convents were forcibly disbanded, and it was illegal to establish any new ones. (See Wikipedia on Dissolution of the Monasteries for more information).

As a result, “vast numbers of Catholics left their home country for the continent including many men and women religious and men and women with a religious vocation. Some of them found a new haven in Spain, Portugal, Italy or Bavaria, but northern France and the Southern Netherlands were particularly appealing to these Catholics in exile. The English Carthusians were the first to settle themselves on the continent in 1559, later followed by many other religious communities of men and women. Forty years later the first ‘English convent’ for English nuns was founded in Brussels. About a dozen others were to follow in the next fifty years, most of them enclosed and contemplative, but often hosting prestigious boarding schools for children of the English Catholic elite.” (source)

Dr. Bowden found that “twenty two convents were founded on the continent and around 4000 women were professed. The convents became significant cultural centres, fostering the education of Catholic girls, making collections of books, commissioning works of art and maintaining substantial buildings.” The sisters, and their legacy, survived despite exile, wars, and natural disasters.

It is a fascinating study and project and I hope to learn more about it. I encourage you to check out Who Were the Nuns? project website.

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer today via our live podcast “Praying with the Sisters” and chat room. Just before 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) join us at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE … more info on that page.

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