NOTRE DAME
130
NOTRE DAME
In 1851 two foundations were made in Ouatemuhi,
Central America, under government auspices and
with such an outburst of welcome and esteem from
the people as reads like a romance. In less than
twenty years the reins of power having passed into the
hands of the Liberals and Freemasons, the forty-one
Sisters of Notre Dame were exiled.
There are three novitiates in America: at San 3os6 for the California Province, at Cincinnati for the cen- tral [jart of the United States, and at \\'altham, Mas- sachusetts, for the Kastern States. The rule has been kept in its integrity in America as in Europe. The union with Namur has been preserved, and a like union has even been maintained between all the houses of a province and its centre, the residence of the provincial superior. According to the needs of the schools, the sisters pass from house to house, and even from province to province as obedience enjoins.
It was through the Redemptorists that the Sisters of Notre Dame first went to England. Father de Buggenoms, a Belgian, superior of a small mission at Falmouth, felt the urgent need of schools for the poor Catholic children. He asked and obtained from the Superior of the Sisters of Notre Dame at Namur a community of si.\ sisters, and with these he opened a small school at Penryn in Cornwall. It continued only three years, however, as the place afforded no means of subsistence to a religious house. The Re- demptorists having established a second English mis- sion at Clapham, near London, and having asked again for Sisters of Notre Dame for a school, the community of Penryn was transferred thither in 1S48. Through the initiative of Father Buggenoms the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, a community in the Diocese of Northampton, about fifty in number, were affiliated in 1852 to the Institute of Notre Dame, with the consent of the Bishops of Namur and Northampton. Scarcely had the hierarchy been re-established in England when the Government offered education to the Catho- lic poor ; the Sisters of Notre Dame devoted themselves earnestly to this work, under the guidance of Sister Mary of St. Francis (Hon. Laura M. Petre), who was to the congregation in England what Mother St. Joseph was to the whole institute. Before her death (24 June, 1886) eighteen houses had been founded in Eng- land. There are now twenty-one.
The most important of these English houses is the Training College for Catholic School-Mistresses at Mount Pleasant, Liverpool, the direction of which was confided to the Sisters of Notre Dame by the Govern- ment in 18.56. The "centre system" which admits of the concentrated instruction of pupil teachers, now adopted by all the School Boards of the larger English cities, originated with the sisters at Liverpool.
At the request of the Scotch Education Depart- ment, the Sisters of Notre Dame opened the Dowan- hill Training College for Catholic School-Mistresses at Glasgow in 1895. Its history has been an unbroken record of academic successes and material e-xpansion. A second convent in Scotland has been opened at Dumbarton this year (1910).
Although "codes" differ in terms and requirements, it may be said in general that in England and America the schools of Notre Dame are graded from kinder- garten all through the elementary, grammar, and high school classes. The academies carry the schedule of studies on to college work, while Trinity College, Washington, D. C, and St. Mary's Hall, Liverpool, are devoted exclusively to work for college degrees. To meet local difficulties and extend the benefit of Christian instruction, the sisters conduct industrial schools, orphanages for girls, schools for deaf mutes, and for negroes.
Annah of the Mothfr-House of Notre Dame, Namur, Belgium; Sister of Notre Dame, Life of the Blensed Julie Billiart (Lon- don. 1909); Sister of Notre Dame, Life of the Rev. Mother St. Joseph (Namur, 1850): Mannix, Memoir of Sister Louiae (Bos- ton, 1906J ; Clarke, The Hon. Mrs. Petre, in religion Sister Mary
of St. Francis (London, 189H) ; Englixh Foundations of the Sisters o)
Notre Dame (Liverpool, 1895); S.N.D., Faiien from the Records of
Catholic Education (Sister Mary of St. Philip and the Training
College at Mount Pleasant) in The Crucible, I, no. 4, March, 1908.
See Julie Billiart, Blessed, and Louise, Sister.
A Sister of Notre Dame.
Statistics for 1909;
Belgium
England
Scotland
America
Africa
Totals
49
1,250
15,954
5,969
1,091
618
5,934
5,004
18
700
36,510
2,845
1,246
93
8,621
12.112
47
1,489
31,010
2,595
1,107
54
18,952
25,691
4
33
1,586
50
60
2,666 415
3,472
85.060
11,4,59
Free Scholars
Pay Scholars
Sunday Scholars
35,507
IV. — School Sisters of Notre Dame, a religious
community devoted to education. In 1910 they
counted 3170 members in Europe and 3604 in America,
a total of 6774, with about 115,300 pupils in America
and 94,827 in Europe, a total of 210,127. In the
United States they conduct parish schools in ten
archdioceses and twenty-five dioceses, and have charge
of eight orphanages; in addition they have parish
schools and an orphanage in the Diocese of Hamilton,
Canada; an Indian school at Harbor Springs, Mich.;
a school for negroes at Annapolis; and a deaf-mute
institute in Louisiana. Their principal boarding-
schools are: Baltimore, Md.; Fort Lee, New Jersey;
Quincy, 111.; Longwood, Chicago; Prairie du Chien,
Wis. Of their day and high schools the most prominent
are at Baltimore, Md., Quincy, 111.; Longwood and
Chatawa, Miss.
The School Sisters of Notre Dame are a branch of the Congregation of Notre-Dame founded in France, by St. Peter Fourier in 1597. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, several convents of the congrega- tion were established in Germany. Tlie one at Ratis- bon was suppressed at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but it was soon restored and remodelled to meet the needs of modern times. Bishop Wittmann of Ratisbon and Father Job of Vienna effected the change. While retaining the essential features of the rule and constitutions given by St. Peter Fourier, they widened the scope of the Sisters' educational work. In 1834 their community consisted of one former pupil of the suppressed congregation, Caroline Gerhardinger, who became first Superior General (Mother Theresa of Jesus), and a few companions. The first convent was in Neunburgvorm Wald, Bavaria. In 1839 they removed to a suburb of Munich, and in 1843, into a for- mer Poor Clare convent, built in 1284, and situated within the city limits. From this mother-house in the year 1847 six School Sisters of Notre Dame, on the invi- tation of Bishop O'Connor of Pittsburg, emigrated to America and landed at New York on 31 July. One of the Sisters succumbed to the heat of the season and died at Harrisburg, Pa., on the journey from New York to St. Mary's, Elk Co., Pa., destined to be the foundation-house in America. As St. Mary's was not the place for a permanent location the mother-general successfully negotiated to obtain the Redemptorists' convent attached to St. James' Church, Baltimore, Md. By 3 Nov., 1847, three schools were opened. The second and last colony of sisters, eleven in num- ber, arrived from Munich, 25 March, 1848, and foun- dations were made at Pittsburg, Philadelphia, and Buffalo.
On 15 December, 1850, the mother-house was trans- ferred to Milwaukee, with Mother Mary Caroline Friess as vicar-general of the sisters in America.
With money donated by King Louis I of Bavaria, a house was bought; this was absorbed later by Notre Dame Convent on St. Marjs Hill. On 2 January,
