Father Coughlan said that before proceeding on this project, they must seek the approval of Archbishop McNeil, as canon law decreed that the bishop must give his approval for every new foundation in his diocese.4 Archbishop Neil McNeil had been appointed Archbishop of Toronto in 1912, and by 1920 he was acknowledged as the most forward-looking and influential of the English-speaking hierarchy in Canada. He was a Nova Scotian of Scottish descent, a legacy which made him far less defensive in his attitude to the non-Catholic world than the Irish bishops who had been his predecessors.5
In his youth he had been a brilliant scholar, having received doctorates in theology and philosophy in Rome. While studying there he also became an enthusiastic supporter of Pope Leo XIII’s social encyclical, Rerum Novarum, and was determined to see its reforming principles adopted by the Catholic Church in Canada. On his return to Canada he was made Rector of St. Francis Xavier University, where he spoke out as an ardent defender of poor fishermen against the local fish merchants who exploited them. At age forty-five, Neil McNeil became Bishop of St. George’s in western Newfoundland, where he ministered to a population of seven thousand Catholics living in little Irish, French, Scottish and English settlements along the rugged coastline. For fifteen years he gave them practical as well as spiritual leadership, for money was scarce and skilled labourers a rarity. He taught his people how to build their own churches and schools from local materials and, as one of them, adopted a simple lifestyle himself.
Thereafter, Bishop McNeil was transferred to Vancouver, where he now worked as archbishop of a huge diocese which included all of British Columbia except Vancouver Island. That diocese urgently required restructuring. Founded in 1863, its first priests had been the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a French missionary order who had worked mainly in the French and Indian rural frontier villages. The province’s population mix was changing rapidly by 1900, as English-speaking immigrants settled in Vancouver and its environs. In his short tenure of two and a half years, Archbishop McNeil earned respect as a builder of hospitals and welfare projects which benefited the whole community as well as erecting schools and churches for his own Catholic flock.
Vancouver was a boom town, and the archbishop became very incensed about the plight of poorly paid workers, particularly the young women who were desperately seeking work in the new factories and businesses. He spoke openly about their difficulties in finding decent places to live at reasonable rent, and told businessmen who paid these low wages that they had a civic as well as a moral obligation to undertake projects to provide some form of low-cost, safe and respectable housing for their employees.
In his sermons and letters to his Vancouver flock, the archbishop pointed out that Catholics should not remain sequestered from the community outside their church. The most effective way, he said, for them to express their faith publicly was to participate in public affairs with goodwill and charity. Charity, as he frequently pointed out, was not mere almsgiving, but was a generosity of spirit which accepted differences without rancour or condemnation.
After he became Archbishop of Toronto, McNeil worked to promote a spirit of reconciliation between all citizens in his new archdiocese. Many of the prewar immigrants were Roman Catholics from Central Europe who had experienced difficulties in adjusting to a new language and the predominantly Anglo-Celtic cultural and religious patterns of the city. In his inaugural address to the Toronto diocese he lamented the insularity exhibited by some Catholics and declared, “We must enlarge our hearts and widen our horizons. The people of this church in Canada need to know each other better.” During the First World War the archbishop was troubled by the instances of racial or religious rancour which endangered national unity. As a patriotic Canadian, he urged Catholics to support public events contributing to Canada’s war effort. He warned that “if we are wanting in Catholic charity we can make it seem that we had no part in the upbuilding of this great nation, as if we were innately selfish, looking after local and small issues.”6
Like Catherine, Archbishop McNeil was worried about the spiritual dangers and cultural isolation facing the Central European immigrants, and did his best to find priests who spoke their language so that they would become more comfortable with Canadian ways. In the days before any government aid, he urged the Catholic churches to provide them with language classes and emergency relief, lest they lose their faith because their Church seemingly had deserted them when they were lonely strangers in a strange land.
With such a broad background in the difficulties faced by the rural and urban immigrants, the archbishop was prepared to be sympathetic to Catherine’s particular contention that it was a matter of great urgency that the Church begin now to broaden the scope of its mission to include the vast unserviced sections of western Canada. At their first meeting, he grasped immediately that Catherine had also hit upon a new method to carry out this difficult task. This differentiated her from the usual applicants to the religious life who accepted without question the ministry assigned to them by the Superiors.
Moreover, the archbishop was not at all alarmed at the prospect of Catholic sisters avoiding separate schools in order to teach in the rural areas which in most locations across the West had only public schools. The western rural population was so scattered, and this new order’s potential mission field would be so large, they would not infringe on the useful ministries of those Catholic orders already established in larger western centres and employed there by the separate school boards. Nor was the archbishop troubled by the prospect of some of the new order’s employers objecting to their school staff wearing religious habits. He agreed with Catherine’s plan to avoid their displeasure at the public display of their teachers’ Catholic affiliation by having the order wear a less conspicuous form of dress than the traditional religious habit. At one of their meetings, Archbishop McNeil even went so far as to suggest that they not use the word “Sister” in their official title. This idea was later discarded, in case it might not be acceptable to the Roman authorities.
Catherine stressed repeatedly at these meetings that the key to reaching the lapsed Catholic rural immigrants was through the provision of education for their children. It seemed the most immediate and practical way of approaching these people, as the lack of schooling for their children was one of their great worries. Even if the parents did not speak English, their children would be making progress in English every day in school, the sisters would be meeting their parents to discuss school affairs, and this would give them an opportunity to offer to help with many of their other needs, including religious education. Other services might come later, but she held firmly to her theory that schooling was the first and most important service they could offer.
Archbishop McNeil and Father Coughlan do not appear to have disagreed with her logic; but early during the several conferences which Catherine’s memoirs indicated took place in January 1921, she noted that the archbishop asked that “health work be included to supplement and help the prestige … A couple of small hospitals in the West could give the claim to caring for health … other rural endeavors could be anything to help families, provide clothing, medicine, encouragement, guidance and thus come under the head of social work.”7
Archbishop McNeil, Father Coughlan and Catherine also held many discussions on the particular aspects of the sisters’ lifestyle which would have to be incorporated into their Holy Rule and Constitutions. Catherine put forward her objections to several regulations common to all female religious orders in Canada which she felt would thwart the mission to be undertaken by the new order. She rejected the excessively early rising hour, which had been the custom in the medieval enclosed monastic orders, and had been continued even by the semi-enclosed orders. It would be detrimental to the health of teachers working under the difficult physical conditions found in remote areas: “6 a.m. was as early as I could manage day after day, so it was definitely decided on.”8 Eliminated also should be the rules which restricted the sisters’ freedom to eat their meals away from the convent community when necessary, forbade them to go out alone, or to stay overnight in other than their own or another religious order’s accommodation. The severity and uncertainty of prairie weather, and the great distances they would travel in their work, made such restrictions impractical. A rule which severely