Reclaiming Peace
by Sister Susan Dewitt, CSJP
In the beginning, when Margaret Anna Cusack, Mother Clare, founded the community in 1884, we were St. Joseph's Sisters of Peace of the Immaculate Conception. Peace was the central concept in that string of names, as our 1884 Rule and Constitutions made clear: "The object of this Institute is, as its name implies, to promote the peace of the Church both by word and work. The very name Sisters of Peace will, it is hoped, even of itself, inspire the desire of peace and a love for it."
This clear charism and mission were blurred after Mother Clare, under attack by American bishops for her defence of a socialist priest, left the community so that it could continue to live, and soon thereafter left the Catholic Church. Under Mother Evangelista, the little community of the Sisters of Peace established schools and hospitals and focused on being kind to "God's priests and God's poor." The name "Sisters of Peace" now recalled a difficult past and controversial founder and by 1908 the council petitioned the Sacred Congregation in Rome to be allowed to change the name to Sisters of St. Joseph of the Holy Family. In 1929, the Vatican Commission approving the Constitutions fixed the name as the Sisters of St. Joseph of Newark, since the Motherhouse at that time was in the Diocese of Newark, New Jersey.
Louise DuMont recalls that when she joined the community, the founding date was given as 1888, the year when Mother Clare left the Congregation, and she was given no information about Mother Clare during the novitiate. Mother Clare was the skeleton in our Congregational closet, only remembered in whispers and bits of inaccurate information.
Vatican II brought huge changes to women religious, as communities were urged to examine their ways of living and praying, look at the relevance of their mission, and go back to discover the roots of their communities. Among the CSJPs, says Louise, who was Provincial of the Western Province at that time, "there was a lot of excitement" in responding to that call, reclaiming our original name and reclaiming Mother Clare as our founder.
In 1967-68, the opening steps were taken when Catherine O'Connor, CSJP gave a talk on charism - a new idea at that time - at a Special Chapter meeting held at Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and Dorothy Vidulich, CSJP followed up with a pamphlet, "Return to the Spirit," about Margaret Anna Cusack and the original charism of the Sisters of Peace. "Sisters began pulling letters and writings out of dusty boxes," says Dorothy Vidulich, and though some sisters were frightened and others were angry, most were excited by rediscovering the community's origins.
The crucial step came during the 1970 General Chapter, held in England, when Sister Joan Ward moved "that at this Chapter we reaffirm our title is Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and that we start bringing this title into use before this Chapter ends." Twenty-nine of the Chapter delegates voted for this motion, with one opposed and one abstention; the delegates also voted to commission a study of Mother Clare (Dorothy Vidulich's Peace Pays a Price) and to set out a new vision of community life, Response in the Spirit, a first step toward the writing of our Constitutions. Western Province delegates were Rosaleen Trainor, Johanna Vogelsang, Eileen Keane, Helen Haigh, Eleanor Gilmore, and Mary Powers, with Kathleen Pruitt, Margaret Dove, and Rosarii Metzgar as alternates and Louise DuMont as ex-officio.
"It was a wonderful thing to reclaim our history," said Louise, "and to recognize what had gone before, to acknowledge the falsification that has been done to hide Mother Clare. At first I had some difficulty in claiming Peace as our name, because that seemed so universal a command, but when I realized that this had been our original title, I supported the change with enthusiasm."
