There is good in the Catholic sisterhoods, but mingled with much that we disapprove. The deaconess institutions have the good features, but have avoided the ill. Much of the success of the Catholic Church in winning the poor and in retaining its influence over the lowly is due to the power exerted by the sisters who go about from house to house among the poor, and are received as friends.
There is a great army of Catholic sisters. It is calculated that there are about 28,000 Sisters of Vincent de Paul, 22,000 Franciscan Sisters caring for the sick, 6,000 Sisters of the Holy Cross, 5,000 Sisters of Charles, making a total of about 60,000 sisters of various orders belonging to the Catholic Church[1] who are occupied with works of mercy. The sisters engaged in education are often well-trained and accomplished. The order of Charles will not accept widows, orphans without property, girls from asylums, or those that have served as maids. As a rule, those that join it must make some contribution of money to the order when they are received. This order is small, but one of the most active and aggressive of any. The great number of the sisters, however, are women of few advantages, taken from poor homes and lives of toil.253/249 There is wisdom in this course, for a great deal of the work to be done depends upon qualities that can be developed by training, while the exceptional education and talents are employed in the exceptional places.
A contemplation of these facts just recorded causes us better to understand the importance that the co-operation of women has for the Catholic Church. It causes us, too, to appreciate better the opening before the Protestant women of all evangelical churches, so wide, so all-embracing that every variety of talent can find a place.
Gifts of clothes or food or fuel are not so well appreciated as the respectful hearing which clothes the teller with self-respect, the kind word and loving sympathy that feed the heart, the inspiring consolations of religious faith that animate and warm the soul, and such gifts women of sympathetic Christian hearts can ever render. As has been well said, “Shall the advantages of such a system be monopolized by those who have so little else to offer?”[2]
You may say, “I do not object to the deaconess and her work, but I do object to her distinctive dress. I do not believe in a uniform of charity.”254/250 But let us consider the arguments that can be brought forward in favor of it. It is a distinctive garb because its wearer is a distinctive officer of the Church. Unless she were “set apart” by some uniform immediately and widely recognized how could she have the protection that is accorded her? Alike in every land where she is known, as we have seen, the deaconess can venture into any part of the great cities at any hour, and is invariably treated with respect. There is in the heart of the rudest and most lawless some trace of chivalry which recognizes the self-denying lives of these women. Then, in making her visits, the deaconess finds her dress an introduction that opens doors that would otherwise remain closed to her. It certainly is a convenient and economical garb, that saves a great deal of time and money to the wearer.
Are not these advantages more than an offset to an ill-defined objection to the dress because it has been associated with women who are alien to our Protestant faith? This is a minor matter, however, and one that can be adjusted at liking.
You may say, “I do not like to think of a woman who is dear to me cut off from the pleasures of home life, and devoted to a life-time of work among those who, in many respects, must be repugnant to her tastes. It does not seem so high and beautiful255/251 a life as that which makes home a center, and carries on its activities from there.”
But there are many women debarred from the pleasures of home life by God’s direct providence to whom other duties and responsibilities have been allotted. And then this work may not necessarily be for life. It is true that when a Christian woman occupies the position of a deaconess she must relinquish wholly all other pursuits so long as she holds this office. Neither without grave and weighty reasons should she seek to leave it. It is her calling. The period of probation has its uses, not only in making the probationer familiar with the duties and tasks demanded of her, but in giving her time to test the strength of her call to service, that she may not, through enthusiasm, lightly assume the duties of the office, nor as lightly throw them aside.
But if a deaconess is called away to perform her duties as a sister or daughter, or if she desires to marry, she is free to do so, after giving due information to those with whom she is connected in work. Freedom and liberty are in every phase of this office.
As to the highest life for a woman, an archbishop of England well said some years ago, “that whatever life God gives to any woman is the highest life for that woman,” and that “in256/252 becoming a deaconess a woman devoting herself to this life must believe that it is the highest life for her, and that in it she gives herself wholly to the Lord.”[3]