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Chapter Six Behind the Veil: Power and Authority, a Delicate Balance

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Chapter Six Behind the Veil: Power and Authority, a Delicate Balance 143 Chapter Six Behind the Veil: Power and Authority, a Delicate Balance. The people were essential to, and the priests pivotal in, the making of the Maitland Diocese. But, in the most pervasive aspects of daily life, it was the religious women who were to perpetuate and maintain the structures established by Lynch and extended by Murray. Priests were indispensable to the sacramental church but their small numbers and the vastness of the diocese limited what they were able to do. Religious women, on the other hand, because of their numbers and functions, were able to extend their influence to every level both within the Catholic community and beyond. Although their goals were similar to those of Murray and the clergy, namely to spread and consolidate formal Catholicism in the diocese, they operated in a different way, exercising agency for the same ends but using different means. The sisterhoods reflected and perpetuated the class structure of the diocese and that structure became part of their power base as they contributed to the making of the diocese and the moulding of its people. Women religious were numerically the largest single group within the formal hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Despite their unique position, however, submission, with its assumed powerlessness, underpinned popular as well as ecclesiastical attitudes to religious sisterhoods. Maureen Purcell's investigation of women religious in the Maitland Diocese explores their submission as an abdication of power. 1 A Dominican sister and mediaeval historian, Purcell considered that the Christian faith and religious life were potentially the most liberating forces of all. Her hard-headed, uncompromising and intellectual approach admits of no sentimentality. She argues that submission by religious women was not only a compromise but a denial of principle 1 M. Purcell, 'The Original Sin: Submission as Survival, Women Religious in the Early Maitland Diocese', in S. Willis, (ed.) Women, Faith and Fetes, Melbourne, 1977, pp. 194-217. 144 which diminished their integrity and precluded 'creative risk-taking'.2 For her, the women religious of the Maitland Diocese abdicated their rightful power. As an historian, Purcell understood the sisters' predicament, but as a religious she could not condone what she saw as their failure, their submission, which she believed rendered them powerless. Marina Warner's study of the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by implication, underlines the potential power of women religious but she takes a more optimistic view of its realization. The position and status of such women were very much bound up with the place of the Virgin in the Catholic Church and in attitudes to her. In particular, Warner points to the central paradoxes of the cult of the Virgin, with its 'multi-layered concept of ideal womanhood'. 3 It is a paradox, too, which extends from the Mother of Christ to His brides, the spiritual mothers of the coming generations of the church. Although Warner herself does not try to tease out this paradox explicitly in relation to women religious, she does realize the possibilities (rather than only the limitations) for these women. Significantly, she identifies Teresa of Avila and Catherine of Siena as women 'who were able, once they had capitulated to the conditions the Church demanded, to assert their ideas and their authority as independent and active women'. 4 As Doctors of the Church, a title officially bestowed upon them, they were members of an exclusive male-dominated pantheon and exercised considerable power and influence both by virtue of their personalities and by their position. For Warner, unlike Purcell, capitulation or submission could be a means of empowerment. Warner concludes, Paradoxically, the veil and the surrender of a certain system of values that the veil implies, could procure a woman an education, a certain freedom of manoeuvre, and a certain exercise of influence unattainable for other women, with the exception of princesses, queens and heiresses.5 2 Ibid., p. 208. 3 M. Warner, Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary, New York, 1976, p. 344. 4 Ibid., p. 76. 5 Loc. cit. 145 Warner's use of 'could' reflects her view that power was conditional not automatic. Nevertheless, this power was there for women. The Queen of Heaven herself was a woman who held an uncommon place in the scheme of things. Much depended on the relationship of sisters to ordinaries. The office of bishop bestowed upon its incumbent ecclesiastical power. It was by its very nature public and impersonal, but dependent also upon 'rituals of reification' for force and effect. 6 An important, even crucial part of this process, was what Dening calls the authority of the person holding the office. By contrast with power, authority, thus defined, is private and personal and is dependent upon the abilities and personality of the individual concerned. If the barque of Peter were to have a successful landfall in the Diocese of Maitland, not only her captain but also her officers and crew required an understanding of the boundaries of power as well as the exercise of authority. Religious women had ecclesiastical power, although it was considerably less than that of their clerical superiors. As a consequence their authority had to weigh more heavily in their dealings with their local ordinary if they were to protect themselves and their apostolic endeavours. The class, background, education and sophistication of superiors were important in the exercise of their authority. We should not underestimate their abilities or the force of their personalities in any relationship with their canonical and ecclesiastical superiors. Murray brought three sisterhoods to Maitland: the Dominicans, the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of St Joseph. (Two other groups spent time in the diocese but did not stay.) ? These religious women had not only inherited the religious traditions of more than a thousand years; they had participated in, and were practitioners of, nineteenth-century changes. They all had their ultimate origins in the formation of the Benedictines in 6 G. Dening, Mr Bligh's Bad Language, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 80-83. 7 These groups, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd and the Brigidines, will be discussed below. 146 the sixth century, and of the later mendicant orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans. 8 Each of these older orders had a single founder as leader and prophet who had drawn people to himself and to religious life. Their centralised form of government, based upon episcopal exemption, reflected the circumstances of their foundation. In practice, the Sacred Congregation of Regulars in Rome assigned a cardinal protector who defended the group's interests, thus limiting the authority of the local bishop. The protector could not change or alter the constitutions of the order, nor act in his own right in its regard except as a delegate of the Holy See. 9 Central government allowed flexibility, promoting unity for those orders whose houses were scattered over vast geographical areas. It also gave them a great deal of power to act independently. By contrast, religious institutions founded during the great expansion of orders in the nineteenth century, tended to an 'atomistic' or diocesan structure. That is, they were under the control of the bishop.1° The bishop's power over them was considerable, governing in his own right and not as a delegate of the pope. 11 Diocesan congregations were completely under the bishop's ju:risdiction. 12 The sisterhoods of the nineteenth century had moved far away from the older, established traditions of the monastic and contemplative life. For example, traditional religious orders, such as the Dominicans, took solemn vows while religious congregations founded in the nineteenth century took simple vows. Although the intent of both solemn and simple vows was the same, there were differences in the invalidating force of each.13 8 M. Walsh, (ed.) Butlers Lives of the Saints, North Blackburn, 1991, p. 212. 9 D. I. Lanslots, OSB, Handbook of Canon Law for Congregations of Women Under Simple Vows, New York, 1972, pp. 131-164. 10 For a discussion of the episcopal powers of the bishop, see D. J. Keenan, The Catholic Church in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: A Sociological Study, Dublin, 1983, pp. 52-53. 11 A term used by A. Fahey in his case study of nineteenth-century nuns, 'Female Asceticism, in the Catholic Church: A Case Study of Nuns in the Nineteenth Century', PhD., University of Illinios, 1981, p.139. 12 For some examples of negative experiences of the power and authority of bishops, see K. MacDonald, 'Women Religious and Bishops — Some Experiences', Religious Life Review, Vol. 100, 1983, pp.15-23. 13 'Solemn vows contained in themselves the power of invalidating contrary acts, while simple vows rendered acts contrary to the vow only illicit.' In other words 'simple' vows could be deprived of legal efficacy. C. Dortel-Claudot, 'The 147 Canonically, however, only orders with solemn vows were deemed to embody the true religious state. It was not until changes were made in the Code of Canon Law in 1917 that nineteenth-century congregations acquired the full religious state and some legal independence.14 The number of nineteenth-century diocesan foundations grew as quickly as they did partly as a result of a revolution in common piety but also because they suited the purposes of the local ordinary, whether he held to an Ultramontane or a Gallican ecclesiology. 15 Foundations from already tried and proven communities were most acceptable to bishops trying to address needs within their respective dioceses. In Europe and the Americas bishops bent upon centralization deliberately isolated these new congregations and would brook no outside interference. Any attempts by Rome to legislate against the unchecked increase of these congregations were thwarted, especially by the Gallican bishops of France and Belgium.
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