The Ursuline Outrage (February/March 1982 | Volume: 33, Issue: 2)

The Ursuline Outrage

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Authors: Carmine A. Prioli

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February/March 1982 | Volume 33, Issue 2

On a sweltering Monday afternoon in July, 1834, Edward Cutter of Charlestown, Massachusetts, was startled by the sudden appearance of a woman in his house. Her hair was closely shorn, she was clad only in a flimsy nightdress, and she was muttering incoherently. Cutter probably surmised that she was from the Ursuline convent a few hundred yards up the hill, then known as Mount Benedict.

Sure enough, before long, a carriage was dispatched from the convent and the deranged woman was quietly escorted back there by the mother superior and the Right Reverend Benedict Fenwick, bishop of the Boston diocese.

Later, Cutter learned that the woman who had so unexpectedly descended upon him was indeed a nun; in fact, she was Sister Mary John, the mother assistant of the Ursuline community, which operated the Mount Benedict school for girls. Her bedraggled appearance and nervous disorder were, the mother superior explained, the symptoms of a “brain fever” brought on by the suffocating heat and the stress of a heavy academic workload. Following her return to the convent, Sister Mary John’s condition was reported as significantly improved under the care of the Ursuline sisters.

Before long, however, Charlestown bristled with rumors: a girl had tried to escape from the nuns at Mount Benedict but had been captured and was imprisoned at the Catholic school. Several daily newspapers ran sensational stories about the “mysterious lady” who was held against her will, maybe tortured, perhaps murdered by the Catholics. On August 8, 1834, the Boston Mercantile Journal , under the heading “Mysterious,” ran the story of her alleged imprisonment. Three days later the same paper published a small retraction: “The Bunker Hill Aurora says that the version we lately gave of the ‘mysterious’ affair at Charlestown, is materially incorrect ….” But it was too late: the flames of bigotry already had been kindled.

At the time of the American Revolution, there were about one hundred Catholics in Boston. Predominantly French, Irish, or Spanish, they had no church organization or regular place of worship. Priests were transient, and it was not until 1790 that the superior of Roman Catholic missions in the United States ordered one of his ablest men, the Reverend John Thayer—a former Congregationalist minister—to strike northward from Baltimore for the “hub” of the Protestant universe. Services in Boston for the next decade were held in a rented Huguenot chapel, but it was not long before the Catholics outgrew their humble origins. They were skilled artisans and shrewd businessmen who adjusted well to the Protestant work ethic, and by the turn of the century they numbered around twelve hundred and enjoyed two assets for continued success: influential friends and money. In 1799 they commissioned Charles Bulfinch—fresh from his work as chief architect of the Massachusetts State House—to build their exquisite cathedral. In 1808 even Rome began to take notice, and Pope Pius VII designated Boston an episcopal see. So by