While Catherine was recovering from her shock and humiliation, she was comforted by a letter forwarded to her by Sister Justina. Sister Avila had gently informed Sister Justina immediately after Catherine had been rejected; for she knew that the quiet, gentle Mamie would be very upset at her sister’s failure and need consoling.
My dear Sister Justina,
The accompanying news will grieve you, I know. Yet there is much I might tell you to lessen your grief. Your dear sister has been an exemplary postulant, and has never given me a moment’s anxiety. In one accustomed to govern, I naturally expected to find much evidence of self-will. It will surely greatly comfort and edify you to know that I found none.
Your sister won the esteem and affection of her companions, and her going is a real grief to them. I am confident that the Divine Providence of God which orders and rules all things so sweetly has designed this experience for your dear sister as a preparation for some special work He has set aside for her capable direction. Pray hard that light may abound to lead her steps aright.
Miss D. is brave and cheerful. I feel she is realizing the truth of Father Faber’s words: “There is no disappointment to him whose will is buried in the will of God.” May that same precious conformity lighten your heart dear Child, and bring you comfort and consolation. God bless you.
Sister Justina’s note accompanying Sister Avila’s letter assured Catherine that “it is the Holy Will of God and while it is a disappointment there is consolation in the thought that ’every cross is a crown begun’ and ’absence of trials is not God’s usual way of rewarding faithful service.’” She invited Catherine to visit her late in December and assured her that “Sister Superior will welcome you most cordially.” She closed her note with “all the love of a fond sister’s heart to one who has been brave in the battle of life and who some day will hear the Master’s own ’well done’.”45
Although these letters helped dull some of her pain, Catherine always credited the MacDonnell family for her recovery of faith in her own worth and in her vocation. With loving care in the form of good meals and gentle understanding, they halted her descent into a despair from which she might not have otherwise recovered. Just before Christmas she decided that the time had come to report her recent disaster to Father Coughlan. He listened calmly to her story, and his only comment was, “I guess you talked too much about the West.” Catherine had to admit that she had. There was silence, and then to her astonishment he burst into hearty laughter and said, “You had better start a community of your own.”46 For Catherine, that moment on 20 December 1920 was the instant of the birth of the Sisters of Service; this priest, whom she esteemed and trusted, still believed that she had a vocation, had understood that her ideas were so revolutionary that no established religious order in the Canadian Catholic Church would be able to bring them to fruition. Their traditions were too entrenched to enable them to make the transition into a new era of Catholic education and apostolic mission.
Father Coughlan then said he needed time to get his regular duties completed, and as it was getting close to Christmas, they should wait until after the holiday before beginning their discussions about the new religious order. Catherine returned happily to report the amazing turn of events to Irene MacDonnell, who immediately invited her to stay with them as long as she needed. Now they would all be able to enjoy Christmas together. Catherine rejoiced that at last she had found the road leading to the mission she had envisioned. She felt vindicated, and confident in her ability to present her plans for the new order in a clear, logical and persuasive way when the time was ripe.
CHAPTER 4
CATHERINE PURSUES HER VISION: THE FOUNDING OF THE SISTERS OF SERVICE
Shortly After Christmas, Father Coughlan began a series of discussions with Catherine to put into specific and orderly form her ideas on the purpose and function of their new religious order. Whenever he could spare the time, she would be summoned to his office on McCaul Street in Toronto where they discussed her vision of service in the light of her experiences in Ontario and Alberta:
I explained to Father Coughlan that dedicated women could use rural schools, publicly administered and organized in all settled Western Areas, for peripheral missionary work. There would be no treading on ground already accepted by older communities, no overlapping. The magnetism which would draw suitable motivated women was not to be any city, but something quite new the untouched farming areas west of Ontario. Such untrodden or abandoned areas were vast and were slowly filling up with Ukrainians and others from Europe, people certain to be confused for years to come, about Canadian economics, politics and especially religion.1
Catherine’s knowledge of the inner workings of religious orders was, as she admitted, very scanty. Father Coughlan gave her some instruction in the processes which, by canon law, must be followed to accomplish their mutual goal. She always recalled these discussions with pride and gratitude. Father Coughlan was not just sympathetic to her ideas, he also indicated that he thought she had been truly inspired in devising a new and creative approach to meeting the spiritual and educational needs of the neglected settlers in western Canada. Her ideas were based on principles and methods which, at that time, were not followed by any of the female religious orders working in the Canadian West. She now saw that the Community of St. Joseph could not have been expected to undertake a new apostolate at the urging of a postulant who, in effect, was trying to deflect a stately ship from its own safely predetermined course. To change so drastically would have required fundamental alterations to the Holy Rules and Constitutions of the order, which had been approved by the Vatican at their founding. To obtain Vatican consent to this would have been lengthy and difficult, even if the Mother Superior of the order had actually agreed with her.
Father Coughlan perceived that Catherine would always be on a collision course as applicant to any order which was committed by its rule to an apostolate which was intrinsically different from her own vision. She was impetuous and determined; but she was also a practical and enthusiastic person who was willing to attack a serious problem with great faith and total dedication. He recognized, too, that these were the personal traits of many of the Church’s most creative visionaries, who in the past had also suffered rejection when their insights into the needs of the Church ran counter to its current practices. To those not inspired by her warm desire to introduce new methods of reaching the immigrant communities, she appeared to be wilfully disobedient. He recognized that this new order would be grounded in orthodox Catholic theology, spirituality and discipline, but through its Rule would introduce new concepts in carrying out the traditional work of the womens’ religious orders. Catherine herself described her approach as adopting a spirit of ecumenism, in the method of carrying out its mission to rural settlements.
“Ecumenism” by her definition was still the same principle she had believed in and lived by as early as 1903, when she had chosen some non-Catholic Christians in the Alliston community as her closest friends, and with them had sought out teaching positions in Ontario’s public schools. Her recognition of them as faithful Christians was still a rarity in Catholic circles, for many of the parish clergy and laity were still “deeply immersed in the ghetto complex”2 which had encouraged them to avoid, and in some instances even to forbid, contacts or cooperation with non-Catholics.
In practice, her project meant that sisters of her new order were not to be separated from the secular world by regulations which restricted their social and religious contacts with any of the laity, Protestant or Catholic. Given the wide gulf which then existed between the Catholic and non-Catholic world, and between the lay and clerical world within Catholic society, this in itself was a revolutionary idea which ran counter to centuries of a traditional lifestyle. Yet, as Father Coughlan and Catherine agreed, the essence of the life of a Catholic religious, which was the dedication of sisters wholly to the service of God and the Church, was retained. Indeed, she explained further:
We could use the conditions just as they existed and develop a teaching Order for the rural West of Canada. I