A Tree Rooted in Faith. Alberta Dieker
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Writing to an abbot in Switzerland for permission to travel fourteen miles in Missouri seems almost ludicrous, but it also indicates the problems raised by the divided authority over the sisters. Mother Anselma mentioned at one point that she had hoped to spend her life cooking for the sisters at Maria Rickenbach. It is quite possible that some of the other sisters considered her inadequately educated and unprepared for a position of authority. In any case, she was aware of serious problems, but often could do little about them.
While Mother Anselma was preoccupied with preserving unity among her sisters, along with providing proper shelter and staffing two schools, Sister Bernardine was learning English and preparing for the teachers’ examinations to be taken before September. In addition, as already noted, she worked in the garden and laundry. The sisters had tried to practice their English while they were engaged in these manual tasks, but it was too hard to carry on anything but trivial conversation, so they preferred silence.
Sister Scholastica had an equally difficult adjustment to make, for she wrote:
Oh, the kitchen! The first week, I feared I could not make it; now it is already a little better. I should manage to spare two hours every day for learning—but now I have to feed the chickens and the pig, bake, churn butter, and much more that always comes along. I am expected to be able to do more than appears possible to me. I have never had to do this kind of work before, and therefore it takes so much time, which makes it still harder for me.11
She could not take part in common recreation, and found herself falling asleep at prayer time. The youthful gaiety that pervaded her shipboard letter seemed to be lost in the unfamiliar and unrelenting labor in her new home.
Fortunately, by September Sister Scholastica felt more at home in the kitchen, and was receiving help and guidance, both from Mother Anselma and from a cookbook her father had sent her.12 She was finding time to write letters, and even to learn a little English. She, too, expressed her admiration for Mother Anselma, but pitied her because some of the sisters would go over her head and seek direction from Father Adelhelm or one of the men. Sister Agnes in Maryville had given notice that she had not come to America to be a man’s cook, and apparently neither the priests nor her superior could convince her otherwise.
Meanwhile four candidates had arrived at Conception, and three novices were being trained.13 While the sisters rejoiced in the increase of their flock, they wondered where or how they could squeeze anyone else into already overcrowded quarters.
A different controversy was causing serious division among the monks in Missouri.14 A brief description of their difficulties will enable the reader to better understand the frustration of the sisters, who were expected to look to the monks for spiritual direction and to depend, at least in part, upon them for their temporal welfare as well.
When the first group of monks came to America from Engelberg, Frowin Conrad had been appointed superior and charged with the responsibility of founding a house patterned on the Swiss foundation from which they had come. To Abbot Anselm Villiger this was extremely important, because he looked toward the American community as a refuge, in case the home abbey should be dissolved by the Swiss government. Equally important to him was the maintenance of the prayer schedule, order of the day, and the customs and language of the Swiss homeland.
Frowin Conrad was certainly an Engelberger, but he was also interested in the reforms and renewal taking place throughout the Benedictine world. He had visited Beuron Abbey in Germany, a recent foundation which purported to be a return to the original concept of cenobitic life as conceived by Saint Benedict at Monte Cassino. This ideal included a secluded monastery with a farm worked by lay brothers. The main work of the community was the recitation of the Divine Office in choir and the restoration of the Gregorian Chant. Work in parishes and schools was discouraged as being out of the tradition of early Benedictine life. Frowin maintained a correspondence with Placidus Wolter, co-founder with his brother Maurus of the Beuronese reform, and looked to him for guidance about monastic practices and liturgical music.
In 1875, Ignatius Conrad, a professed monk of Einsedeln in Switzerland, was permitted to join his brother, Frowin, in Missouri. Frowin had urged Ignatius to come to America, and was delighted when the latter’s abbot was willing to release him. It is significant that Frowin encouraged Ignatius to visit Beuron before he set sail for America. This Ignatius did not do. According to instructions from his abbot, he reported first to Abbot Martin Marty at St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana. St. Meinrad’s was, after all, a foundation from Einsedeln. Frowin had hoped that his brother would join the community at Conception, but it soon became apparent that Ignatius had something else in mind.
From the start, Ignatius complained that he found at Conception not a familiar Swiss monastery, but an attempt to copy the new-fangled, frenchified customs of Beuron. What was wrong, for example, with the comfortable German hymns, sung in polyphony? Why did everything have to be in Latin and in Gregorian Chant? Ignatius wrote heated letters to Abbot Anselm, apparently without talking it through with Frowin himself. As a result, Abbot Anselm sent a severe rebuke across the ocean to the well-intentioned and peace-loving Frowin. A painful rift developed between the two brothers, and it was never really healed. Frowin was disappointed that his own brother did not transfer his stability to Conception. Understandably, he could no longer trust Ignatius and, perhaps with some relief, sent him off to Maryville to assist Adelhelm. Since the sisters had to live and work very closely with the monks, both at Conception and at Maryville, the tensions and divisions over the Beuron controversy must have affected them as well.
Aware of these problems, and seeking to learn more about conditions first-hand, Mother Anselma made the trip to Maryville in the summer of 1876, but had to shorten her stay because Sister Beatrix insisted on her early return to Conception.15 However, she had made up her mind to send Sister Bernardine to Maryville to teach the small children and to give lessons in German. Sister Augustina would teach the upper grades.
The visit to Maryville made Mother Anselma more convinced than ever that something had to be done about the living conditions for the sisters. Far too much time was wasted, she believed, in unnecessary talking and consultation with the priests. For this she blamed Father Adelhelm, at least in part. Sister Agnes was unhappy as a cook, and apparently could not please either Adelhelm or Ignatius, both of whom were sick from time to time. Anselma hesitated to return Agnes to Conception: “I don’t know what I will do with her there. You know well how things went already at Maria Rickenbach,” she explained to Abbot Anselm.16 Again she asked the abbot’s advice about allowing the sisters to rent rooms in a private home, for four dollars per month, which seemed expensive and might not be acceptable to the people of the parish. Adelhelm had already had his word: “He said it would bankrupt him, as it were, for he would have to hire strangers to do the work.”17 Undaunted by any suggestion that the sisters’ living conditions were anything but ideal, Adelhelm asked in September of 1877 for another sister to help with the kitchen work and the care of the horses and stable.
Mother Anselma wrote of these conditions to Abbot Anselm, noting that all three of the priests at Maryville were sickly and needed special attention, including a few delicacies now and then. She was embarrassed by the lack of order in the house and wished that Adelhelm would be more firm, especially with Sister Agnes, who seemed to enjoy tending the chickens more than the kitchen. She thought that assigning specific duties to each sister, should they remain in the rectory, might help matters: “Bernardine will take care of Adelhelm’s room and the church; Augustina the house.” Perhaps Abbot Anselm had suggested Sister Bernardine for training the novices, for Mother Anselma told him that she still found Bernardine too strict, and that she needed experience in order to become more gentle.
Adelhelm’s opinion about housing prevailed, and when Sisters Bernardine and Augustina arrived in Maryville to open the school in the fall of 1876, they moved into the already overcrowded rectory. Sister Bernardine was appointed superior of the group of three, indicating that Mother Anselma had confidence in her ability to cope with whatever difficulties were bound to arise. From the first, Bernardine enjoyed the approval and approbation of Adelhelm, and the two became close friends. Even with the best of good will, life was hard in Maryville, as Sister Bernardine described their duties to Mother Gertrude:
One must not imagine the Maryville rectory to be a comfortable little parish house