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7 Class and ethnicity The theme of perfection resonates throughout the nineteenth-century writings of and about women religious. Catherine McAuley reminded the Sisters of Mercy that ‘Religion refines and elevates the character. A perfect Religious is a perfect lady.’1 Thomas Marshall, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools, saw women religious as: belonging to a higher grade of society – this is almost universally the case in female communities – yet in the previous cultivation of their minds, the possession of more ample attainments, and a far more careful
gender, class and ethnicity. Gender was a prime determiner of social positioning in the Roman Catholic Church. Although not members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, women religious, as church workers, held a special place in the church and were a dynamic, authoritative and pervasive influence. Gender had an assumed authority which was constructed both publicly and privately. This authority was constantly changing during the course of the nineteenth century as women’s congregations developed from small conventual establishments to large, national or multinational
Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth century social history. Over 10,000 women, establishing and managing significant Catholic educational, health care and social welfare institutions in England and Wales, have virtually disappeared from history. In nineteenth-century England, representations of women religious were ambiguous and contested from both within and without the convent. This book places women religious in the centre of nineteenth-century social history and reveals how religious activism shaped the identity of Catholic women religious. It is devoted to evolution of religious life and the early monastic life of the women. Catholic women were not pushed into becoming women religious. On the basis of their available options, they chose a path that best suited their personal, spiritual, economic and vocational needs. The postulancy and novitiate period formed a rite of passage that tested the vocation of each aspirant. The book explores the religious activism of women religious through their missionary identity and professional identity. The labour of these women was linked to their role as evangelisers. The book deals with the development of a congregation's corporate identity which brought together a disparate group of women under the banner of religious life. It looks specifically at class and ethnicity and the women who entered religious life, and identifies the source of authority for the congregation and the individual sister.
appointed by states, arranged by churches, or – as was increasingly common in the twentieth century – by the laity. Though special worship was often the product of cultural contact and exchange between varied ethnic and faith groups, the style of worship in a region often reflected the ethnic and religious composition of the population: while special worship in the Canadas and Maritimes displayed Scottish and American elements, the leadership of the Church of England was more accepted in the Australian colony of NSW, where
addressed by creating a specific literature that recorded congregational history and, particularly, the founder’s ideals and objectives. This literature reinforced a corporate identity that bound women together and separated them from the outside world. Despite the badge of corporate identity, differences existed, and differences of class and ethnicity were difficult to camouflage. Women religious were seen as ‘belonging to a higher grade of society’, yet women who entered nineteenth-century congregations came from varied backgrounds. Religious life appealed to women of
‘national home.’ In the ambiguity of this phrase, which could refer either to a state or to a ‘spiritual center,’ lay both the divide between Political and Cultural-Practical Zionism, and also an implicit distinction as to the shape of Jewish nationalism. A center for the renaissance of Jewish culture would naturally be grounded in an ethnic nationalism; the nationalism undergirding a state could be civic in character (Kohn 1946 , 330–331). These distinctions eventually collapsed into one another, giving rise to the idea of a Jewish State. This elision was not merely
‘blessing’ of the ‘excellent’ British constitution. 13 The notion of shared sin carried some danger for elites, as it might have a levelling effect and minimise the differences between classes and ethnicities. But it had uses too. It diverted attention from government failings, and it meant colonists could not abrogate responsibilities, as the reform of manners now became a public, patriotic and national act. 14 The idea that there were accumulated or national sins led some to argue that colonists and metropolitan Britons
worship, in the later nineteenth century they exhorted, invited and recommended. Like the foundation days that commemorated the birth of colonies, special occasions of worship often had a multi-faith, multi-ethnic and cross-class reach; certainly, they did not have the kind of specificity of appeal that characterised other holidays, such as the monarch’s birthday, or titular saint days. 51 That many acts of special worship came about through public pressure is just one indication of special worship’s popular appeal. That said
represented Catholics as a concordant body, united in its efforts to proselytise Protestant England and return it to the papal fold. Yet this solidarity of the English Catholic laity was a mirage; there were unequivocal, tangible divisions between Catholics in England. Three distinct groups of Catholics existed; they were divided by class barriers, ethnic prejudice and forms of religious fervour.35 To a great extent, the two groups on the extreme ends of the spectrum, the ‘Old Catholics’ and the ‘Irish Catholics’, seemed worlds apart. At a dinner party in 1860, the ‘Old
Ashkenazic rabbi is influenced by philosophical texts composed in Egypt, or in Iraq, in whose ethnic box do his anti-authoritarian ideas fit? In other words, I believe that the nature of Jewish cultural transmission does not fit the eurocentric model of anarchist historiography even if the individuals of which the cannon is (thus far) composed happen to be of Ashkenazic origin. In spite of the aforementioned androcentrism of classical formulations of the anarchist canon, it is well-known that women, especially Jewish women, played central roles in