As ever.
Very truly yours,
SISTER LUCRETIA,
S. C. S. P.
Just a day or two after I mailed the foregoing letter, I received a note from Mother Wilfrid asking me to write further, explaining more fully the national hatred mentioned in my first letter—she not having received this last one as yet. So on March 18th, 1910, I wrote at length:
Dear Mother Wilfrid:
The only reason French sisters have no use for me, and would never give me a sign of prestige is that I am not French. That is my awful crime. I am liked and approved of by all that I have dealings with—the doctors, the people, the sick—great and lowly—the nurses, the help of the floor—all express happiness and pleasure on seeing me. The English-speaking sisters find a few minutes' comfort of mind and a little peace and enjoyment in my company. In the eyes of jealous, evil minds it must be wicked to possess gifts which radiate peace, happiness and harmony.
I even admit that I am not dead to approbation or condemnation. I naturally like to give to everybody of the best I have, whatever it may be—to receive people well and friendly, to serve someone a lunch, or to do some little favor of whatever kind, or if it were only a few kind words of encouragement. If anyone wishes my secret, I am not jealous to give my recipe. I always made it a particular point to do everything as well as I could and know that I do it with as pleasing and cheerful disposition as possible. But that is poison to the other side. I am and always have been successful in my office. I taught a class of sisters (nursing) since the beginning of last September, and I know that I did it right and successful the times I could get them.
Why such national prejudice and jealousy? Really what the last election (superior's election) here showed, after all the talking of doing away with the spirit of nationality, the prayers and conferences to the same purpose, then the nationality spirit manifested itself with more force than ever before, at least openly, so that one knows what to call it. It shows clearly, too, that there will never be harmony, and it is obvious that one kind will predominate as long as they can, and when they cannot, the next majority will.
Our community has failed to prove, up to now, that it is a success to have mixed nationalities. In time, of course, anyone can see that one kind will give way to the other, but not by means of harmony—probably by the same methods as of the past, the stronger or the majority shall control the weaker or minority. "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen." Said this time in truth and effect.
First of all, our people, the English-speaking sisters, have no one to go to for redress, who understands them in their troubles and trials and difficulties of a business or social nature, simply silence and obedience without a faint feeling of even a little sympathy in common.
The Jews did not understand our Lord and His suffering, but the Blessed Virgin did. I believe He had a few other household members who were not only loyal, faithful and devoted to Him, but harmonious, too. If there was jealousy and disagreement, I do not believe that a good and generous worker was taken out of office by the Master and put aside as an evil spirit or put through humiliating and heart-rending trials till there would be nothing left but a grimace and distorted body or an insensible being, an object of pity and sadness.
Should religion, if it was the right kind, make people wish and sigh for death to come and put an end to their misery? Why all this profession of religion if it cannot grow a few flowers and plants of joy and happiness, if it has to legislate people so stiff and cramped in body and mind that they cannot bend without breaking, or breath enough left in them without looking haggard or half dead?
Religion and church are not to blame for want of breadth, harmony and strength amongst ourselves in organizations. It is up to the majority of us sisters to make life part Paradise or all Purgatory on earth, and all the sermons on charity that could be preached in the world and all the good will and generosity put together will fail to produce peace and harmony in a community which cannot organize and legislate just and fair dealings to begin with. Man knows and appreciates this.
With the other letters I have sent you, you can see the situation. With love as ever.
Sincerely yours,
SISTER LUCRETIA,
S. C. S. P.
The reply I received was as follows:
My dear Sister Lucretia:
Lest you worry about your letter of March 18th, I come, although I have but a few moments to myself, to say it reached me in due time. I have read and re-read it and find that what you say is true. Oh! if trying to please and comfort (without sacrificing one's religious principles) and succeeding therein were crime, I earnestly wish there were more criminals among us. In any case, I would urge you to continue to make other's lives happy, and not allow the narrow-mindedness of some and the unkindness of others to cast bitterness into your own life. It is hard, sometimes, but there are enough beauties and sweetnesses in life if we will only take them, and I am sure you have proved until now you know where they are to be found and how to make use of them. Continue, dear Sister Lucretia; nothing that is good ever dies; we have often heard this and perhaps so far have had occasions to experience its truth. Allow me to quote a few lines I found not long ago and find encouraging: "If you live the most devoted and disinterested life possible, you will find people sneering at you and imputing your actions to selfish motives and putting a cruel construction on all you do or say. Well, it does not matter, for we shall all be manifested at the Judgment seat of Christ, before God and men and angels. Let us live to please Him, for our integrity of motive will be known at the last, and put beyond all dispute."
I have just learned that Sister Rita has been transferred to Oakland. I hope she will like the South and make herself happy.
Believe me, dear Sister,
Sincerely yours,
SISTER M. WILFRID,
S. C. S. P.
You will observe from the foregoing letters that we, as sisters, do not hold the system accountable for the wrongs we have to endure in the convent. We believe that the sisters alone are at fault, as I have stated in my letters to Mother Wilfrid. But the man or woman with ordinary intelligence, who reads these conditions as they were at that time can readily see the real source. The heads of the institution, who had the sole power, instead of the bettering conditions, tolerated and permitted them to remain. At that, I have my grave doubts if the convent system could ever be harmonious. Think of housing a large number of women under one roof, bound by the ironclad, childish rules and precepts. They are a barrier to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," which the Constitution of the United States guarantees every citizen. They make progress an impossibility. The outside world thinks the convent system is a success because they see the institutions grow in size and number, which is due to the economic methods of free sister-service. They never have the opportunity to see "success" from within.
As a further proof that the system is the cause of discord, strife and inharmony among the sisters I will copy another letter I wrote to Mother Wilfrid. There is some repetition of portions of my former letters, but I think the whole of the letter will interest my readers, even though it is lengthy:
Dear Mother Wilfrid:
I will bring a few other points before you, Mother, which means inharmony in our order. I do not intend to convey to you the idea that I am an oracle of success. The intention being simply to consider some of the principal essentials required for success. Just a little mental view of things.
We all admit that experience is a great teacher—observation its necessary accompaniment. Both are in vain unless a practical application can be made of the lessons to be learned from them.
One of the first essentials of success is common honesty. If those who have had experience in one kind of work could only dare to be sincere enough to express the difficulties they meet, in such a manner as to better conditions. What's in the way? Prejudice, the fear of not standing high as a perfect religious, sisters, whether qualified for leadership or not, ambitious for high offices. If the companion should be a little more gifted in some things than the superior, she should make herself so small and subservient that she can scarcely think. If she cannot look scared, stand back and look perfectly mum. She is proud, independent, trespassing on the superior's rights, disloyal and rebelling against all rightful and lawful authority. She is placed in a responsible position and not permitted to be woman enough to be justified in her own actions. She has to of necessity, due to inorganization, make a blunder of herself and her work. We are constantly blundering and straightening out after each other. Experience should have taught some of us how to improve upon blundering ways. Take for one thing, the frequent changing of the sisters without system or method, often for no reason—then because some have put their heads together to bare so-and-so out, they have to eat "black bread." She has given offence—God alone knows for what trifle. She must be punished and made unsuccessful even if the house and place where she is will suffer the loss of her good and successful work. This might be saying a good deal for a subordinate, but it is the price paid for lessons taught by experience. We will have better organization only when we will have our sisters taught from the time they enter the work for which they have aptitude, talent and inclination, and leave them generally where they are contented and successful and not shift them about from house to house, pillar to post, without serious reason. We ought to know by this time that a work one does not care anything about she will not put much effort or interest in.
To stand the hardships in connection with every occupation, one must have some liking for it and be qualified to succeed. And then there will be plenty of room to love God and suffer for Him, and any number of chances to practice the highest degree of religious perfection—entire abnegation, if you will. Such a one can be on the way to Gethsemane every day with greater fervor rather than murmurs.
As a general rule, people who have worked the greater part of their lives or years in certain works, particularly when they reach the years of about forty, adapt themselves with great difficulty to an entirely different kind. They need the efforts and thoughts as well, of younger years to correspond with their generosity and good will. First of all to grasp the situation, and then a renewing of energy, as it were, they need new thoughts to keep in progress with the changing conditions. I cannot see that we have to be a misfit to be a good religious, and to cripple every natural gift—physically or intellectually.
It takes years of study, practice and experience to acquire the knowledge to fit ones self for the proper and successful way of handling any work or business. People who are every year, or every few years, starting something new, are always beginners, possessing a superficial or smattering knowledge of many things, and thorough in none.
This is the way our house is largely represented here now—and we wonder what is the matter! "What has happened, St. Vincent's?" The greater wonder is that things go on as well as they do.
Another mistake our people make is that of ousting out of office those who do have the good will and energy to capacitate themselves for their work and prove a success all round by making a little more of themselves than the ordinary hum-drum routine sisters. The spirit of the rule is one kind of spirit—and there are other spirits. If I have not the spirit, God forgive me. There are plenty of others who have not the spirit. Is it the spirit when one is successful in an office and in all her dealings with the people she comes in contact with, to not even make an effort to have harmony and understanding on the part of her superiors if misunderstanding and discord exists? They are not able to face you with one correction or complaint, but through the religious system, under cover of all that is holy, to oust her and throw her down and out, as it were, regardless of human feelings or sense of righteousness—no, not even common civility. Anyone not made of cast-iron is bound to break—body and spirit—under such tremendous pressure.
Such is Sister Rita's case, for one.Yours as ever,
SISTER LUCRETIA,
S. C. S. P.
I want it strictly understood by my readers that all the letters I have here produced were written by me while I was yet a sister at St. Vincent's Hospital, and superintendent of the third floor of that institution. I could tell the same facts without the evidence of these letters, and in a great many less words, but I wish to let the world know that I knew while there that the governing heads of the institution were doing nothing to better the then existing conditions of inharmony and discord among the sisters; but, on the other hand, were making matters worse for them by transferring older sisters who were acquainted with the work and supplanting them with younger sisters who were ignorant in the care of the sick.