It is eighty-one years since Catherine McAuley was born, forty years since she made the first beginning of her institute, and twenty-five years since her death. Her period of active life embraced only fourteen years. Yet there are now more than two hundred convents, and three thousand sisters, belonging to the congregation of Our Lady of Mercy, scattered over Ireland, England, the United States, British America, South America, and Australia; although the mortality among the sisters is at the high rate of ten per cent a year.
These facts prove better than any eloquence the value of the life and works of the foundress of the institute. Her personal history is uncommonly interesting and highly romantic. She was the daughter of highly respectable Catholic parents residing in Dublin. Losing her parents at an early age, she came under the guardianship of relatives who were strict Protestants and intensely hostile [{855}] to the Catholic religion. Consequently, she was not able to receive any instruction, to go to mass, or much less to receive the sacraments, before she became a young lady. Her brothers and sisters were easily induced to give up their minds to the influence of Protestant teaching and example. Catherine, however, steadily refused to attend the Protestant church; and, as soon as she was capable of doing so, made a studious and thorough examination of the grounds of the two religions, which resulted in establishing her forever in a faith which was not only firm but intelligent. She eventually succeeded in bringing back her sister and her nephew and niece to the Catholic church. While still a child, Catherine McAuley was adopted by an elderly couple named Callahan, who were very kind-hearted, very wealthy, and, childless. They allowed her to practise her religion, although quite indifferent to religion themselves, and gave her the means of practising many of those acts of charity to which she was always inclined.
This part of her history is strikingly interesting, as throwing light on the state of the Catholic religion among the higher classes in Ireland, during the latter part of the last century and the former part of the present one. It contains some scenes of tragic pathos taken from domestic life. Few are aware of the hatred, the contempt, the cruelty, the bitter, unrelenting persecution, with which the Catholic religion has had to contend in Ireland. Miss McAuley was once obliged to fly from the house of her brother-in-law, at night, through the streets of Dublin, to save herself from death at his hands. Nevertheless, she conquered, as the holy faith has always conquered, by undaunted courage joined with angelic meekness. The same brother-in-law who had pursued her with a drawn dagger, declared to her on his death-bed, that if he had time he would candidly examine into the Catholic religion, and died repeating acts of contrition, faith, hope and charity, which she suggested to him, leaving his children to her guardianship.
At the age of thirty-five Miss McAuley was left, by the death of her adopted parents, both of whom had become Catholics during their last illness, mistress of a fortune, the exact amount of which is not stated, but which appears to have at east equalled the sum of fifty thousand pounds sterling. The whole of this fortune was devoted by her to the foundation of her institute, which was opened about five years afterward, that is, in the year 1827. She does not seem to have cherished any aspirations after the religious state for herself, during her youth, much less to have dreamed of becoming the foundress of an order. In founding her institute in Dublin, she had in view the plan of combining the efforts of charitable ladies for the benefit of the poor, the sick, the ignorant, and particularly servant-girls who were out of place. The community-life, and the whole religious routine, grew up naturally and of itself. After a time, the judgment of prelates, clergymen, and other persons of weight, induced Miss McAuley and her associates to adopt a rule, and take perpetual vows. The scope of the institute embraces choir duties to a moderate extent, almost every kind of charitable work for the poor, a particular care for respectable servant-girls out of place, poor-schools, and high-schools or academies for girls of the middling classes.
The noble woman who planned all this vast scheme of good works, and lavished her fortune with princely generosity to set it in motion, died in the year 1841, at the age of fifty~four, ten years after making her vows as a Sister of Mercy. It is an interesting circumstance that the great and good Daniel O'Connell was one of her warmest friends during her life, and one of her staunchest supporters in her undertakings. These two magnanimous souls who loved their country, their country's faith, and the patient, oppressed, but unconquerable poor of their country, better than all earthly things, could appreciate and honor each other. Our readers will thank us for quoting the following description of the scenes which usually occurred at the great Liberator's visits to the convents of the Sisters of' Mercy:
"In his journeys through Ireland, O'Connell nearly always visited the convents in his route. On these occasions his reception was a kind of ovation. The Te Deum was sung, the reception-room hung with green, the national emblems—harp, shamrock, and sun-burst—displayed, addresses were read by the pupils, and any request he asked implicitly granted. His manner at such scenes was particularly happy. To a young girl who had delivered q flattering address to the 'Conquering Hero,' he said, very [{856}] graciously, that he 'regretted her sex precluded her from that distinguished place in the imperial senate to which her elocutionary abilities entitled her.' Then glancing at the girls who surrounded the oratress, he continued with emotion: 'Often have I listened with nerve unstrung and heart unmoved to the calumny and invectives of our national enemies; but to-day, as I look on the beautiful young virgins of Erin, my herculean frame quivers with emotion, and the unbidden tear moistens my eye. Can such a race continue in ignoble bondage? Are you born for no better lot than slavery? No,' he continued, with increasing vehemence, 'you shall be free; your country shall yet be a nation; you shall not become the mothers of slaves.'" (pp. 146-47.)
What a contrast between such genuine heroic characters as these, the true glory of their people, and the mock-heroic charlatans, whose genius show itself only in gathering in money from laboring men and servant-girls, and organizing raids which end only in the death and imprisonment of their most unlucky dupes, and bitter mutual accusations of treachery and cowardice among the leaders. The worst enemies of the Irish people are those who seek to alienate them from their clergy, and to lead them astray from the true mission given them by divine providence, which is identified with their traditions of faith and loyalty to the church. They are like Achaz and the false prophets of Judah, who contaminated the people of God with the false maxims of the nations around them. Men and women like Daniel O'Connell and Catherine McAuley are the Macchabees and Judiths of their nation. Through such as these, the faith of Ireland may yet conquer England, as the trampled faith of Judaea conquered Rome; and her long martyrdom obtain the due meed of glory from the children of her old oppressors.
We recommend this book to all those who claim kindred either in nationality or in faith with its subject, and who wish to rekindle their devotion or renew the memories of their ancestral home. We recommend it especially to our wealthy Catholics, that they may meditate on the example of princely charity given them by this young heiress, who gave away a fortune more readily than most others would give one twentieth of a year's income. We request our fair young readers also, to lay aside their novels for a while, and read the life of one who was beautiful, gifted, highly educated, beloved of all, rich in worldly goods, and with all earthly happiness courting her acceptance; and who, amid these allurements and the severest temptations to her faith, shone forth a bright model of all high Christian virtues to her sex. We wish that all those who are prejudiced against the Catholic faith, and who nevertheless have the candor which pays tribute to virtue, conscientiousness, and self-sacrifice, wherever seen, might also read it. The history of Catherine McAuley and her institute adds another to the many practical, living proofs, more powerful than any speculative arguments, of the truth and power of the Catholic religion. Such a history never has been or will be possible outside the fold of the Catholic church. Its occurrence in our own times shows that the church is now, as of old, the fruitful mother of saints, and that the old Catholic ideas which once made martyrs of young maidens, and raised up Claras and Teresas, retain all their power over the souls of those who have inherited the same faith. We have no fear of incurring the displeasure of Urban VIII. or of his successor, in giving our judgment that Catherine McAuley was a true Christian heroine, a woman of the same high stamp of character with St. Teresa, whom she resembles in many striking respects.
It is superfluous to say that this biography will be a most useful book in religious houses. Example is more powerful than precept, and a recent example is more powerful than a remote one. It were to be wished that similar biographies were more numerous. There are materials in the recent history of other orders, as well as in that of the institute of Mercy, which might be used to great advantage. The history of the American foundress of the Order of the Visitation would be worthy of a place, even in the annals of that ancient order. Books of this kind are not only instructive, but, when well written, superior in that charm which captivate's the feelings and imagination of the young, to the romantic tales over which their time and sensibilities are too often wasted. The present volume is written in that lively and piquant style, with a dash of humor to flavor it, which makes a biography most readable and entertaining. Religion wears its most cheerful and attractive countenance in [{857}] these pages, and even the couch of the dying sisters are lit up with gayety. Mother Catherine's life was a perpetual Laetare Sunday in Lent, spiritual joy ever decking with flowers the altar of sacrifice, and changing the violet of penance and self-denial to rose-color. Her tranquil and benignant countenance, as represented in the portrait which graces her biography, expresses this type of spirituality which she communicated to her order. The mirthful laugh of the common-room resounds through the pages which relate of the unremitting labors and continual prayer, whose effect decimates the ranks of the Sisters of Mercy every year. We are not treated to any prosy disquisitions or abstracts of ascetic treatises, which make some of the lives of saints such tiresome reading, especially to young people. But we have something better; a picture of virtue, of piety, of devotion to Jesus Christ, in their most heroic form, blended with a joyousness to which, the boudoir and the drawing-room are strangers, and which may well attract pure and generous hearts to imitate such an engaging model of sanctity.
There are numerous episodes and sketches of the many persons with whom Mother Catherine was associated, such as that of her little niece Mary; of the good Welsh sister from Bridgenorth; of the English earl's daughter, who entered the convent with her two waiting-maids; of the accomplished but somewhat eccentric authoress of Geraldine; and the inimitable Dr. Fitzgerald. Some of these are pathetic, and others comic in the extreme. We have but one criticism to make, which is, that a little more restraint and forbearance toward some who are deemed to have erred in their duty to the order, would have added another grace to the narrative. There are also some faults of typography and slight clerical oversights, which will doubtless be corrected in a second edition.