SCHOOL SISTERS OF NOTRE DAME

(SSND, Official Catholic Directory #2970) A religious congregation founded in Bavaria in 1833 by Bp. George Michael Wittmann and Karolina Gerhardinger. The congregation, dedicated to the work of education, was one of many religious communities that arose in 19th-century Europe after long secularization of religious schools. Wittmann, canon of the Cathedral of Ratisbon, conceived the plan of establishing a congregation of teaching sisters to continue the work of the suppressed canonesses of St. Augustine de Notre Dame, the French community founded by Peter fourier and Alix Le Clerc in Lorraine in 1597. This congregation had had over 2,000 members in Western and Central Europe when secularization closed many convents in France and all of those in Germany. The last Bavarian house at Stadtamhof was suppressed in 1809. Wittmann, aware of the serious consequences that would follow from the loss of religious teachers to the Church, initiated preparations for the foundation of a new religious community of women dedicated to the education of young girls.

Foundation. In 1812 Wittmann selected three young girls as the nucleus for his work. Karolina Gerhardinger, the youngest of the three and the only one to persevere, was but 12 years of age when the project was begun. During the three years of training in a Bavarian normal school and ten years of teaching in a public school, they received instructions in the spiritual life under the guidance of the bishop. In 1825, encouraged by the cessation of anti-religious hostility and by the generosity of King Louis I of Bavaria, Karolina, supported by Wittmann, petitioned the Bavarian ministry for permission to form a religious society to teach in Stadtamhof. The sanction for this religious foundation was granted, but the authorities of the city refused to allow them to use the confiscated cloister school because of the revenue it afforded the town. Karolina and her companions continued to teach in public schools until the opportunity to form a community presented itself. Eight years later in 1833, through Witt-mann's friend, Sebastian Job, chaplain of the Imperial Court of Austria, a suitable house was obtained in Job's native city, Neunburg vorm Wald. Although the founding of the first house of the congregation and its pioneer development took over 20 years, this new community called Poor School Sisters of Notre Dame had, within a few decades, as many members as the congregation founded by Fourier.

Rule. For the guidance of the sisters, Wittmann wrote a preliminary draft of a rule and constitutions based on that of Fourier. Although Wittmann did not live to finish the work, Job completed the statutes which he called the "Spirit of the Constitutions of the Poor School Sisters of Notre Dame." However, the rule was intended to serve the congregation only until experience should provide the guidance needed for a rule more suited to the times. The new congregation received episcopal recognition on March 26, 1834, as a distinct, self-sustaining religious society. As such, it cannot be considered a branch of the 16th-century French order. Karolina Gerhardinger, now Mother Teresa of Jesus, was appointed superior general and foundress. Unfortunately, Wittmann and Job, the two most instrumental in the foundation of the congregation, did not live to see their work receive episcopal or papal recognition. The rule written by Mother Teresa was submitted to the Holy See in 1852. It was approved tentatively in 1859 and permanently in 1865.

Mother Teresa's rule differed fundamentally from Fourier's; it required a stricter observance of poverty, provided for smaller communities to staff country schools for the poor, and established a strong centralized government to safeguard the unity of the congregation. This latter point was novel for communities of religious women, which had customarily been placed under the authority of the local bishop; but Mother Teresa's long struggle with well-meaning opponents finally ended, and in 1859 this point was incorporated into the rule: that branch houses be subject to the provincial motherhouse and all houses be under obedience to the superior general. Since Neunburg vorm Wald was a small, inaccessible town in 1843, Mother Teresa transferred the motherhouse to the city of Munich where it remained until 1957 when the generalate of the congregation was moved to Rome.

Growth. Within 14 years Mother Teresa was governing 125 sisters teaching in 16 schools, and the demand for their services was increasing. Large numbers of young girls continued to request admission to the thriving congregation. Thus, from 1847 to 1854, when the influx of German immigrants into the U.S. reached its height, the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Germany were among the first religious teachers called upon to help solve the grave problem facing the American bishops, namely, the preservation of the faith of German Catholics in the U.S.

With the encouragement of the archbishop of Munich and the help of King Louis I of Bavaria and the ludwig missionsverein, Mother Teresa arrived in the U.S. in 1847 with five sisters. Although she had been promised St. Mary's near Harrisburg, Pa., as the site for a mother-house, the location proved so disappointing that she and her companions sought out the Redemptorist provincial, Bp. John Neumann of Philadelphia, Pa., for further direction. Although he could give them little help financially, he did offer them a house in Baltimore, Md., adjoining St. James's Church. This became the first American motherhouse. In 1850 Bp. John Martin Henni of Milwaukee, Wis., persuaded Mother Teresa to transfer the motherhouse to his episcopal city. Mother Mary Caroline Friess, although only 26 years of age, was appointed superior of the motherhouse in Milwaukee and vicar-general of the American branch of the congregation. Between 1847 and 1850, even before the new motherhouse was finished, schools were opened in Buffalo, N.Y., and Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pa.

While her original plan had been to staff parochial schools for the children of German immigrants, Mother Caroline decided to open her classrooms to children of all races and nationalities. At her death in July 1892 the congregation in the U.S. had three provinces, numbered 2,000 sisters, with 200 schools in 30 dioceses, and served 70,000 children and 1,500 orphans. During the first 130 years of its existence, the congregation made a vital contribution to the growth of the parochial school system. In 1963 there were 384,418 children under the sisters' care. Of this number nearly 296,490 were in the U.S. and Canada.

The School Sisters of Notre Dame are devoted exclusively to education on every level—kindergarten, elementary, high school, and college—and are established on four continents and in 19 countries. They conduct special schools in the U.S. for the handicapped (deaf, emotionally disturbed, retarded), catechetical centers, day nurseries, prevocational schools, and orphanages. Under a mother general in Rome, there are 20 provincial superiors exercising authority over 12,000 sisters, 327 novices, 652 candidates, and 872 aspirants. At present there are 937 houses in Canada, the U.S., Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Japan, England, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Poland, Hungary, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. There are seven North American provinces: Western—Mequon, Wis. (1850); Eastern—Baltimore, Md. (1876); Southern—St. Louis, Mo. (1895); Northwestern—Mankato, Minn. (1912); Canadian—Waterdown, Ontario, Canada (1927); North-eastern—Wilton, Conn. (1957); South Central—Dallas, Texas (1961). Five of the American provinces have missionary fields: the West, in Guam; the Northwest, in Guatemala; the East, in the southeast U.S.; the South, in Japan, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, and Honduras; Canada, in Bolivia with a vicariate in England; and the Northeast, in Puerto Rico. The English, Argentinians, Japanese, Brazilians, and Guamanian missions have novitiates for their native populations. The sisters conduct six colleges within the U.S. and Canada; the College of Notre Dame of Maryland, established in 1896, was the first Catholic college for women in the U.S.

The growth of the congregation peaked in the 1960s with a total of more than 12,000 members, approximately half of whom were ministering in the United States. In the last 50 years, School Sisters from the United States have traveled to Sierra Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Japan, Guam, Yap, Ebeye, Chunk, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, El Salvador, Pakistan and Nepal to minister with the people. After the Maryknoll Sisters, SSND is the largest group of women religious missionaries in the Church.

Post-Vatican II Developments. Following the directives of Vatican II, the congregation studied its charism and heritage and rewrote its rule. You Are Sent, the title based on the words of Jesus to go forth and teach all nations, is the revised constitution which guides more than three thousand School Sisters of Notre Dame today. Teaching on the elementary, secondary, and university levels remains a strong ministry. The sisters also serve the poor wherever there is a need, in the heart of large cities or in Appalachia, within the U.S. borders and beyond. Their ministry extends to shelters for homeless women, classes for illiterate adults, aid to agricultural workers, and programs for disadvantaged children, among others.

In 1986, as a service to the wider community, 678 School Sisters of Notre Dame, ranging in age from 75 to 106, volunteered to be part of a study on aging. University of Kentucky scientist David A. Snowdon led the ongoing research project to learn more about Alzheimer's disease. By allowing their personal and medical histories to be examined and by donating their brains for autopsy, the older sisters, who were eager to help others learn about the causes, treatment and prevention of the disease, also found a renewed sense of mission. "There is great promise in old age," concluded Dr. Snowdon in the Bantam book Aging With Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Healthier and More Meaningful Lives, published in 2001.

The Mandate for Action, the resulting document of the Twentieth General Chapter, called the sisters to live out a sense of global responsibility, to reverence all of creation, to prefer and seek solidarity with persons who are poor, and to work to change unjust structures. Responding to the mandate, the international congregation applied for and received nongovernmental status at the United Nations in 1993.

Bibliography: m. d. cameron, "School Sisters of Notre Dame," Catholic World 165 (May 1947) 163–166. f. friess, Life of Reverend Mother Mary Teresa of Jesus Gerhardinger (Baltimore 1907). m. t. flynn, Mother Caroline and the School Sisters of Notre Dame in North America, 2 v. (St. Louis 1928). m. l. ziegler, Mutter Theresia von Jesu Gerhardinger (Munich 1950); Die armen Schulschwestern von Unserser Lieben Frau (Munich 1935). m. e. kawa, Mutter and Magd: Mutter Maria Theresia von Jesu Gerhardinger (Augsburg 1958).

[m. v. geiger/

d. turek]