Catherine Doherty - Cause for Canonization

Ecclesial Communities and Movements

Cardinal Stafford attending the
Oxford Conference on Ecclesial
Movements and Communities,
October 2001.

Some of you may know that I have been stationed for the past two years in our house in England, whence I am writing. I mention this because last year our Madonna House community was invited to give a presentation at a conference in Oxford dedicated to these new ecclesial movements and communities, of which Madonna House is one. (We probably consider ourselves more of a community than a movement.) James Francis Cardinal Stafford, President of the Pontifical Council of the Laity, was present for the conference and we had a chance to become acquainted with him during meals and have informal conversations about Catherine and Madonna House.

Through this contact I acquired two books put out by the Council under his auspices, which expanded my own vision of Catherine’s participation in the lay movements of the 20th century. This new perspective seems very relevant for her Cause: it enables us to see her life as part of a larger plan inspired by the Holy Spirit.

The process for canonization seeks to bring to light indications and signs of a person’s holiness. Only the Church can make the final judgment about the authenticity of such holiness. One of these signs would be that a person’s life and vocation forms part of a wider action and plan of the Holy Spirit in a certain historical period.

I found that what the Church was saying about the laity and lay movements in the 20th century also applies very much to Catherine and Madonna House. These books have helped to confirm, for me, the authenticity of Catherine’s life and vocation. They articulate the Church’s mature vision of a century of the lay apostolate. They are, therefore, very significant for her Cause.

The first book is entitled Movements in the Church. It contains the proceedings of the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements convened in May, 1998, in Rome, by the Council for the Laity.

The second is The Ecclesial Movements in the Pastoral Concern of the Bishops. It contains the proceedings of a seminar held in Rome in June, 1999, again promoted by the Council for the Laity.

In using citations from these books I will simply refer to them as #2 and #4 respectively: their publication numbers in a series of books on the laity put out by the Council. (Available from: Pontifical Council for the Laity, Palazzo San Calisto, 00120 Vatican City)

The Lay Movement

The Church is saying that the Holy Spirit
inspired a comparable vast lay movement
in the 20th century to meet her primary need,
which was to enter more fully into the whole
of society through the laity.
Catherine was part of this movement.

One of the most surprising conclusions of these studies is the magnitude and depth of the lay movement of the past century. Throughout history the Holy Spirit has inspired extensive and profound movements of spirituality to meet certain needs of the times. To mention only the most outstanding: the monastic movement of the 4th and 5th centuries; the mendicant friar movement of Dominic and Francis in the 12th and 13th centuries; the Orders that arose during the so-called counter-Reformation in the 17th and 18th centuries (for example, the Jesuits).

The Church is saying that the Holy Spirit inspired a comparable vast lay movement in the 20th century to meet her primary need, which was to enter more fully into the whole of society through the laity. Catherine was part of this movement. Not every lay group or organization developed into an ecclesial community, but Catherine’s did.

What is an Ecclesial Community?

Sometimes it’s helpful to start a presentation by giving the main theme or conclusion. After stating the Church’s main insight about ecclesial communities, I will try to show how, over the years, Catherine’s charism led her to the heart of the Holy Spirit’s purpose and design for some laity in the past century.

The word the Church is now using for some of these movements and communities — “ecclesial” — really says it all. The 20th century has been called the century of the Church. Lumen Gentium is frequently designated as the key document of Vatican Council II.
Throughout the 20th century, and even before, the Popes had been calling for a greater involvement of the laity in the life of the Church. Many people responded to this call. Some of them were truly charismatic persons who attracted followers, and whose apostolates gradually developed into new communities.

Catherine Doherty at Madonna House in Combermere.

A unique dimension, however, of these communities, was that people from other canonical states—bishops, priests, religious, families—were also attracted to join them. What the Church and theologians are saying is that people, whether consciously or unconsciously, were actually seeking a new and life-giving experience of the Church.

This is why these communities never “fit” canonical forms, because the Holy Spirit was inspiring new models for Church life, which includes all the states of life. People were seeking a new expression of the Church itself.

First I will share a quotation from Pope John Paul II’s address to the communities and movements gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome on May 30, 1998. It expresses the Church’s present understanding of where the Holy Spirit was leading certain lay apostolates in the 20th century.

“Today a new stage is unfolding before you: that of ecclesial maturity. There is a great need today for mature Christian personalities, conscious of their baptismal identity, of their vocation and mission in the Church and in the world. There is great need for living Christian communities! And here are the movements and the new ecclesial communities: they are the response, given by the Holy Spirit, to this critical challenge at the end of the millennium. You are this providential response! Thanks to this powerful ecclesial experience, wonderful Christian families have come into being which are open to life, true ‘domestic churches’.” (#2, 222–223)

Next, a quotation which expresses this ecclesial essence of the new communities:

“The experience of the movements only confirms the fundamental precept of Christifideles Laici [Pope John Paul II’s Magna Carta on the mission of the laity], in affirming that to reconstruct the fabric of human society what is needed first of all is to remake the Christian fabric of ecclesial communities themselves.

“…In contrast to the case of the traditional associations of the lay apostolate, here we are speaking of ‘ecclesial movements,’ both because they welcome the baptized in their various states of life, and because the charisms that arouse and animate them tend to educate in the totality of the Christian, ecclesial experience (…‘Church in miniature’, as one of the movements’ founders put it). Not partial, sectarian, fragmentary experiences, not even a particular spirituality, still less the claim of being the Church, but rather distinctive reflections of the one Church. Not a fragmentation of the Church, but original… modes of living the mystery of the Church. What a movement embodies and transmits is the life itself of the Church—not just a part of it in some way reduced or ‘specialized’.” (Guzman Carriquiry, #4, 61)

Not all forms of the lay apostolate have developed into ecclesial communities or movements. However, in the last century, the Holy Spirit poured out special graces on certain persons to be the founders and foundresses of ecclesial communities precisely to manifest different ways of being Church. These persons form a kind of “charismatic coterie” among themselves. Our community’s belief is that Catherine was one of these charismatic persons.

Seeing her life in this larger movement of the Spirit is another way of assessing her sanctity and contribution to the Church. While showing something of the growth of her apostolate into an ecclesial community, I will also share some of her vision of, and love for, the Church. It was her desire to renew the Church, which guided many characteristics of her community.

Catherine Answers the Call of the Popes

Catherine meets with Pope John Paul II, 1981.

In the early 1930’s Catherine began studying, with others, the social encyclicals of the Popes, especially Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII, and Quadragesimo Anno by Pope Pius XI. They were calling the laity in particular to Christianize all aspects of the modern world. Catherine looked around Catholic parishes and dioceses but didn’t see much indication that these calls of the Popes were being implemented.

She decided to implement them herself. In her mind the accent at that time was definitely on her own calling: she didn’t envision other people joining her. She understood God’s call as that of a lone apostle, “Russian style,” as she used to say, trying to implement this call to the laity.

But God had other plans. Her zeal and gifts attracted followers, both men and women. In short, a community was forming. In June, 1934, a small group of 16 men and women made simple promises together in St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto. A few weeks before the ceremony she wrote this prophetic statement in her diary:

“The lay apostolate is the coming event of the Church. More and more it will be at the forefront. Filled with the spirit of Christ it will go and conquer the world. O Lord, give me a small share of that work. Small and simple—but allow me to participate in it, out of love for thee and my neighbour.”

One of the signs that Catherine was destined to create a new and life-giving expression of the Church is that her love for the Church, her desire to make the Church more beautiful as the Bride of Christ, formed a deep part of her motivation.

The lay apostolate is the coming event
of the Church. More and more it will be
at the forefront. Filled with the spirit of
Christ it will go and conquer the world.

It’s possible to be called to help the poor, work for racial justice, and be involved in all the aspects of the lay apostolate, without being called by the Holy Spirit to renew the Church through a new community. But Catherine always saw her life and call as a longing to make the Church everything she was meant to be. Even while in England, before coming to Canada, Catherine was given an understanding of the Church which formed part of her inmost love for Jesus. Once, in a public talk, she said:

“As I grew up I began to understand the Christian idea of the Church. At some point, somewhere along the line, I realized who and what the Church was. I was young, I was in England, and I read something. Suddenly, like a flash, I realized that she was the Spotless Bride of Christ. I saw her clad in the King’s robes, beautiful and glorious.

“This vision stayed in my heart like a warm, consoling thought: the Church was the Bride of Christ, spotless, without blemish, shining, radiant. As scripture says, ‘The King’s daughter is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes; in many- coloured robes she is led to the King.’ (Ps. 45:13–14) I knew that she wasn’t clad with just anything. She was something so holy, so precious, something you should die for. This is the Church.

“Yes, I understood. I understood the mystical notion of the nuptials of the Christian with his God. I cannot explain it; it’s beyond explanation. But because I entered into the mystery of love which is God, I entered into the mystery of his Church, which is his beloved; and I still live in this mystery.

“When such things happen to a person, then the Church as a mystery, the Church as the Bride, the Church as the People of God, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, becomes a reality of faith. For we are in the realm of faith.”

From the earliest years, then, Catherine, through her love for the Church, and out of her concern that the Church be renewed, was being led to form one of the ecclesial communities. As her understanding of her vocation grew, so did her realization that she was being called to give some kind of new expression to the life of the Church.

Catherine and Eddie Doherty at prayer with the community.

In her diary for May 14, 1965, she was reflecting on the role of priests who were coming to join Madonna House. This more mature understanding of what the Holy Spirit was doing is exactly what the Church is now saying about ecclesial communities. She wrote:

“They [the priests] have been brought to ‘a little flock’ especially selected, brought into being by God himself. This ‘little flock’ is also ‘the people of God.’ Through the coming of priests to Madonna House with the approval of the bishop, Madonna House now becomes a ‘full little Church,’ or should I say a ‘complete little Church,’ i.e., bishop, priests, people of God.”

The titles “founder” and “foundress” are used by the Church in connection with these ecclesial communities. It’s difficult to say exactly when Catherine saw herself as a foundress. Probably it was at the high point of the Friendship House movement (1942), when various houses had been established in the United States and yearly conventions were being held. In her diaries at this time she recognizes that she is the foundress of what she called “the Friendship House movement.”

In the next issue I will show how she was led by the Holy Spirit to form a more concentrated community, rather than a more diffuse movement. Fewer people were involved, and she was drawn by the Holy Spirit into a profound personal “journey inward.” It was out of these depths that what the Pope called a “domestic Church,” a “wonderful Christian family,” a new ecclesial community was born.

— Father Robert Wild, Postulator for the Cause

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