Re-Evaluating the Role of “National” Identities in the American Catholic Church at the Turn of the Twentieth Century : The Case of Les Petites Franciscaines De Marie (PFM)

Re-Evaluating the Role of “National” Identities in the American Catholic Church at the Turn of the Twentieth Century : The Case of Les Petites Franciscaines De Marie (PFM)

Some perspectives on North American, French Canadian Catholic female religious at the beginning of the 20th century. How studying these nuns in New England adds to an understanding about French Canadian ethnic identity and its real function among New England parishes. Challenges to a specific French Canadian, Franco American ethnoreligious discourse historically dominated by male priests. Case study of les Petites Franciscaines de Marie (PFM), or the Little Franciscans of Mary, whose religious order was established in Worcester, Massachusetts. From the author: "[T]his essay will consider how shifting our focus from male church officials to female religious can alter our understanding of the relationship between religious and ethnic identities" (516). "Did female religious side with male priests in defending their ethnic turf against bishops whom they perceived as hostile and assimilationist? Alternatively, could nuns not have cared less about connections between their religious identity and their ethnic identity? Or did they understand the relationship between the two in some other way completely?" (518)

Waldron, FlorenceMae

2009-07

en

Journal Article

424657740, 704153188, 4637918870

 

1870-1900; Worcester, Massachusetts, New England

10.1353/cat.0.0451

1534-0708 (online), 0008-8080 (print)

3

515-545

The Catholic Historical Review

95