A Tree Rooted in Faith: A History of Queen of Angels Monastery

By Alberta Dieker OSB

A Tree Rooted in Faith traces the history of Queen of Angels Monastery from its beginnings in Maria-Rickenbach in Switzerland to the end of the twentieth century in Mt. Angel, Oregon. The foundress, Mother Bernardine Wachter, came to America as a missionary, first to Conception, Missouri, and then to the far west to establish a community of Benedictine Sisters. As she was joined by new recruits from Europe as well as American women, they built and staffed schools in Oregon and British Columbia. Based on community annals and individual memoirs, difficulties of their pioneer beginnings are related, along with adaptations of their prayer and community life to the new environment and to gradual developments in theology and spirituality. This story tells of the sisters' early work as teachers and of the gradual change in ministries as the needs of society and of the Catholic Church have evolved. The last quarter of the twentieth century saw drastic changes in American society and in the Catholic Church. Likewise, Queen of Angels Monastery has changed. Some basic ingredients of monastic life instilled by its founding mothers remain the same, while ministries and some aspects of lifestyle are different. Like their landmark giant Sequoia tree, Queen of Angels Monastery still stands firmly rooted in faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Oct 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781498275903

Alberta Dieker OSB

Sister Alberta Dieker, OSB, is a member of Queen of Angels Monastery, Mt. Angel, Oregon. She is a retired professor of history, having taught at Mt. Angel College, Mount Angel Seminary, and at Eastern Oregon State University in LaGrande. She holds an M.A. in history from St. Louis University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. She currently serves as archivist for her Benedictine community, writes occasional articles, and enjoys reading, birdwatching, and life in general.

Book preview

A Tree Rooted in Faith

A History of Queen of Angels Monastery

Alberta Dieker, OSB

2008.WS_logo.jpg

A TREE ROOTED IN FAITH

A History of Queen of Angels Monastery

Copyright © 2007 Benedictine Sisters of Mount Angel. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock, 199 W. 8th Ave., Eugene, OR 97401.

isbn 13: 978-1-55635-460-1

eisbn 13: 978-1-4982-7590-3

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Call

Chapter 2: The Move to Missouri

Chapter 3: Conception and Maryville

Chapter 4: On to Gervais, Oregon

Chapter 5: Beginnings at Mt. Angel

Chapter 6: A New Century, a New Prioress

Chapter 7: Years of Turbulence

Chapter 8: The Post-War Years

Chapter 9: The Depression Years

Chapter 10: A New Decade, a New Thrust

Chapter 11: Winds of Change

Chapter 12: To the End of the Century

Notes

Photographs

To the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel, past and present, in the hope that this work will help to keep their story alive, and especially to former prioresses, Ursula Hodes and Gemma Piennett, whose decisions made it possible for me to study and nourish my love of history.

Foreword

What joy the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel have in celebrating the 125th anniversary of their founding. What joy I have in presenting our written history by Sister Alberta Dieker, OSB.

With great care, Sister Alberta has written this important story of our monastic community, including our beginnings, expansion and growth, and the blessings of our gracious God. From construction of the early monastery in 1887 to the building of schools up and down the Willamette Valley, the sisters displayed untiring devotion to God and to His Church. The faith, hope, and love of the Benedictine sisters shine through this amazing history.

On behalf of all the sisters of Queen of Angels Monastery, I extend our deepest gratitude to Sister Alberta for her perseverance in completing the history and for giving us this record of our precious legacy. There is no one more qualified than Sister Alberta to write our community history with such first hand knowledge, scholarly study and research, and unfathomable interest.

Our monastic tree has been rooted in the faith and determination of our pioneer sisters and grown by courageous, self-sacrificing love. As we begin our next 125 years, we the Benedictine sisters move into our future sustained by God’s love and the powerful example of our founding sisters.

Sr. Dorothy Jean Beyer, OSB

Prioress, Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel

1987–1995, 1999–2007

106th Anniversary of the Death of Mother Bernardine Wachter, OSB

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Sister Dorothy Jean Beyer and the sisters of Queen of Angels Monastery, who have allowed me the time and space to complete this project. They have encouraged and prodded me to keep at the task. I am also grateful for those sisters who now rest in our cemetery, for they kept the records, wrote memoirs, and told me their stories, without which this account would be dry indeed. The sisters at Maria Rickenbach in Switzerland helped me find letters and relevant information. The Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration in Clyde, Missouri, shared valuable materials from their archives. I also made use of the archives of Mount Angel Abbey, and of St. Gertrude Monastery in Cottonwood, Idaho. Steve Ritchie, of the Benedictine Foundation of Oregon has given invaluable assistance in getting the manuscript published. Marcus Covert has given yeoman’s service as copy-editor. Sister Gertrude Feick spent many hours preparing the manuscript for the type-setter. To the numerous family members and former students who have shown interest and support for the project I am deeply indebted and offer my sincere thanks.

Introduction

The Benedictine sisters who arrived in Oregon in October of 1882 probably did not think of themselves as heroines of history, or even as participants in events that would have long-term significance. They left few records. Certainly each one played a part in her own way, with her own motives and dreams. These may have been passed on by word of mouth, but for those of us who are living a century later, they survive only in the works the women left behind, in a few letters that have been preserved, and in scattered records. Even the diaries and annals tell only of some events, leaving out personal details that would be interesting. Putting their story together is a challenging and sometimes frustrating task.

The sisters who came from Switzerland to Oregon by way of Missouri were a part of what historians today consider a mass migration of peoples from Europe to the Americas. The Land of Opportunity beckoned all kinds of Europeans for many reasons. The reasons that inspired a particular group of sisters to emigrate to the United States and to make a permanent settlement in Oregon are important to our story. A brief look at the historical background from which they came may be helpful.

The history of Western Europe in the late nineteenth century presents a mass of contradictions. Science and technology pointed to a new world of speed and efficiency, with railroad tracks and telegraph wires carrying cargo and communication to distant places at speeds unheard of a century earlier. At the same time, romantic poets and painters portrayed quiet pastoral scenes or recalled the better days of the past, when human beings were greater and more powerful than their machinery. The nineteenth century European, for the most part, looked forward to a wondrous future, and at the same time attempted to recover the past and, in some instances, to breathe life into what was already moribund.

Contradictions and their accompanying tensions were certainly present within the Catholic Church in the nineteenth century. The French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had, for better or worse, thrust the institutional church into a new and uneasy position. No longer could churchmen depend upon royalty or feudal privilege for material or moral support. The diplomats who met at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 could restore kings to thrones and redraw the national boundaries which Napoleon’s armies had obliterated, but they could not restore the pre-revolutionary way of life nor wipe out the ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity those same armies had carried with them. Scattered bishops could return from exile or hiding, surviving monks and nuns could straggle back to what was left of their monastic buildings, but life would not be the same again. Much of the history of the Catholic Church in nineteenth century Europe is a story of struggling for position, of learning to live in a secular state and to survive in a new political world.

While this serious and not always edifying struggle was taking place on the hierarchical level, a groundswell of popular piety gave evidence that faith was still alive among the masses of Europe, both Catholic and Protestant. The need for new forms of expression and a popular revival of religious fervor was evidenced in the pietistic movement, in spiritualism, in the foundation of new preaching and teaching orders, and in an active and intense missionary movement to the unchurched peoples of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Somehow starting anew, with Rousseau’s noble savage in mind, seemed more challenging to some devout Christians than attempting to cope with the complex religious and political issues in what seemed to be a tired and corrupt Europe.

One aspect of the renewed popular piety was a reassertion of the mystical and the miraculous, an affirmation of direct, intuitive, and emotional religious experience, in contrast to the pure reason of the Enlightenment. This affirmation took on many forms: new interest in traditional places of pilgrimage, creation of new shrines and saints (Lourdes in France, for example), and a heightened emphasis on adoration and contemplation, often stressed as the opposite of activity and external works. Another manifestation of popular piety was the creation of new religious orders, some specifically for missionary and so-called active work, and others as centers solely for prayer and adoration. The nineteenth century also witnessed the revival of traditional religious orders, sometimes involving the return to ancient monastic sites, in other cases building anew on what were believed to be old traditions.

It is not surprising that this religious revival coincided with and grew upon the renewed interest among European scholars in the history of the Middle Ages. Medieval Europe was a predominantly Christian Europe, and in many ways a Benedictine Europe. New Benedictine monasteries were established with the precise purpose of returning to a pristine form of monastic life. Beuron in Germany was an outstanding example of this effort. The prevailing idea seemed to be that monasteries which had had a continuous existence had become soft and lax, if not corrupt, and therefore could not easily be reformed. Starting anew would guarantee a fresh view. Obviously, contradictions, even rivalries, abounded, and the history of European monasticism in the nineteenth century attests to the uncertainty, even bitterness, fostered by the conviction that there was only one true monastic ideal. The controversy came to America with the early monks and continued well into the twentieth century.

Religious houses of women were also affected by the tensions and excitement of revival. A new demand for charitable works was fostered by the demand for literacy and education—even for women. Furthermore, the dissolution of convents and religious houses during the French Revolution and Napoleonic period all but destroyed the network of charitable and social work institutions—hospitals, orphanages, and asylums for the mentally disturbed—which had existed in Europe up to that time. In many instances, work was left undone since social services had not yet become the prerogative of struggling and uncertain governments. At the same time, the mystic, pietistic movement called for removal from the world and a life devoted entirely to prayer. The tension created by this apparent contradiction also emigrated to America with the early Benedictines and followed them into the next century.

Another sign of tension was the awakening awareness among women of the possibility of new roles and demands within the church of the future. The need for education and vocational training for the poor as well as those who were wealthy and protected became more apparent. Industrialization was changing the economic world as drastically as revolution and democracy were changing the political world. Within the church, the hierarchical structure still remained exclusively male. Prelates and parish priests, missionaries and religious superiors, all had ideas about what women religious should be doing, what prayers they should be saying, and whether their lives should be active or contemplative. Obviously, these ideas did not always coincide with what the sisters themselves thought or wanted. In some instances, it apparently did not occur to the men in the church hierarchy to consult the women about their own destiny.

The Benedictine convent at Maria Rickenbach in Switzerland is a good example of nineteenth century religious revival and popular piety. The story has been told many times of the shrine on the mountain containing a statue of the Blessed Virgin. A shepherd boy had found the image and saved it from destruction by fire during the religious wars of the sixteenth century. By means considered miraculous, the statue had remained in a tree on the mountainside, and eventually had been enshrined. This almost inaccessible place became a pilgrimage spot for the hardy souls who could make their way up the mountainside.¹

Among the people who made this pilgrimage in the spring of 1853 were two young women who were members of the Society of Divine Providence, an almost clandestine religious order, dressed in lay clothes and making vows a year at a time. The women dedicated themselves to the education of country girls and to the care of orphans and the aged. Sister Mary Vincentia Gretener was in poor health and in need of rest. Her doctor recommended fresh Alpine air, so she proceeded to Maria Rickenbach, accompanied by Sister Mary Gertrude Leupi, who was selected by lot to be her companion. As the story goes, the two sisters climbed the mountain to the shrine, whereupon Sister Gertrude was inspired to make the spot her new home—specifically, a convent dedicated to the perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Again, the contradictions are apparent—two members of an institute founded specifically for external works now believed themselves called to a cloistered and contemplative life. That their convent would also become a Benedictine house was almost an accident, or an act of providence. The confessor appointed for the group was a Benedictine priest from the nearby abbey at Engelberg. Sister Gertrude took him into her confidence, and he encouraged her in her ambition to found a new religious house on the mountain.²

The contradictions show themselves even here. The desire of Sister Gertrude to found a community of Benedictine women near that of the men at Engelberg was zealous and sincere. So was her overwhelming conviction that the sisterhood should be devoted above all to perpetual adoration. A Benedictine community founded expressly for this purpose was without precedent in the Holy Rule or in the traditional concept of the Order. Apparently, this fact did not deter either the enthusiasm of the women or the approval of the men. There was a question about whether the sisters should be reciting the Divine Office (which apparently they did not even consider at the beginning). The men settled the question for them, pointing out that the sisters were oblates, and not really members of the Benedictine Order.

Within a generation of its foundation, the convent at Maria Rickenbach would send sisters to the United States, and eventually to Oregon to establish the first Benedictine motherhouse in the Pacific Northwest. The signs of contradiction evident in many of the church leaders of the nineteenth century were noticeable also in Mother Bernardine Wachter, the German girl destined to become the foundress of a Swiss-American community of Benedictine sisters. The pioneer sisters of the convent in Mt. Angel, Oregon remembered Mother Bernardine as a brilliant woman, and revered her as a saint. Her carefully written commentaries on the Holy Rule and her instructions to the novices reveal a serious spirituality. At the same time, other evidence points to a strong-willed, if not stubborn, woman unable to be deterred from a given course once she determined it was right for her. Some of her contemporaries, including Ignatius Conrad, founder of New Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas, considered her impossible to get along with, inconsiderate of others, and totally under the influence of the Benedictine priest Adelhelm Odermatt. According to some accounts, Sister Bernardine was sickly and frequently took to her bed while others did the work. Mention is made of screaming fits when things did not go her way.

In spite of these acknowledged weaknesses, this same sickly, hysterical woman was selected to be a part of Adelheim Odermatt’s missionary group to America. She was assigned to teach the German-speaking Swiss sisters in Maryville, Missouri how to instruct their American pupils. She was also chosen to be the assistant to Mother Gertrude Leupi, founder of Maria Rickenbach and herself a missionary in Missouri. When this intrepid woman went on to the Dakotas to work among the Indians, she took Sister Bernardine with her. Finally, when Adelhelm Odermatt obtained permission to establish a Benedictine convent in the Far West, he asked for Sister Bernardine. Out of these contradictions and conflicts was born the first motherhouse of Benedictine sisters in Oregon.

1 • The Call

The Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel have always considered Mother Mary Bernardine Wachter to be their foundress. They have likewise venerated Father Adelhelm Odermatt, since he was responsible for bringing the first members of their group to make a permanent settlement in Oregon.¹ His role, until his death in 1920, was that of advisor and spiritual father.

Who were these two people, whose lives became intertwined to the point of arousing suspicion and tension within the young religious communities at Conception and Maryville in Missouri?² Apparently, neither of them kept a diary or journal. Only a few of their letters have been preserved, and they are more concerned with business matters and interesting events than with the thoughts and emotions which might have motivated these two active and enthusiastic people. At the time of Mother Bernardine’s death on June 3, 1901, the sisters at Mt. Angel, anxious to preserve the memory of this noble religious to coming generations, intended to write a sketch of her life.³ Her only surviving relative was her brother, the Benedictine monk Father Anselm Wachter. He declined to give any details of her early life and begged the Sisters to desist from anything like writing a biography of the deceased. ‘Let her rest in peace,’ he said to the sisters who asked for data.⁴

In 1903, two sisters from Mt. Angel, Gregoria Amrhein and Anselma Feierabend,⁵ returned to their native Europe (both were Engelbergers), and visited Mother Bernardine’s childhood home at Isny in southern Wuertemberg in present day Germany, where she was born on August 25, 1846. The sisters noted that the town contained monastery buildings dating from the eleventh century. The property had been confiscated and the monks dispersed during the sixteenth century, but the monastery’s church had been renovated and served as the parish church for the Catholics of the area. Apparently the sisters were impressed with the beauty of the church and its evidence of Benedictine tradition. There are still the old marble altars, the carved pillars, the frescoes representing scenes from the life of St. Benedict and other great saints of the Order. In this beautiful old Benedictine church, hallowed by many traditions, Mother M. Bernardine was baptized and received her first holy Communion.⁶

Although no members of the Wachter family were still living in Isny in 1903, the sisters wrote, It was no small satisfaction . . . to hear the expressions of respect, veneration and gratitude which were on the lips of everyone that had known the family Wachter. The father, Franz X., had taught for forty years in the public schools of Isny, and was Mayor (Schultheiss) for some time. He was described as a just and upright man. He died in 1863, leaving his widow, Clara Fink Wachter, with a seventeen-year-old daughter, Josepha⁷ (the future Mother Bernardine), and a younger son who would later become Father Anselm. The account tells nothing of the means of livelihood for this family, but merely notes that Mrs. Wachter devoted herself more than ever to the education of her two children. The mother was described as a woman of strong mind and noble character, noted for her benevolence toward the poor and unfortunate.⁸

Adelhelm Odermatt, a native Swiss, born on December 10, 1844, near Stans, Canton Unterwalden,⁹ was to play a crucial role in the life of Mother Bernardine and to be the founder of Mt. Angel Abbey. He was educated at the nearby Benedictine Abbey of Engelberg. There he made his solemn profession as a monk on September 29, 1866, and was ordained a priest on May 3, 1869. He began his career as a missionary on April 27, 1873, when he departed for America with Father Frowin Conrad. Their purpose was to select a site to establish a new Engelberg in a new land. Their Abbot, Anselm Villiger, noted in his diary for that day, The American venture is meeting with general approval.¹⁰ By October, Father Adelhelm was established as parish priest in Maryville, Missouri. Within a year he would be asking for help, and particularly for sisters from Maria Rickenbach.¹¹ This circumstance was to lead eventually to the meeting of Father Adelhelm and Mother Bernardine.

Meanwhile, the young Josepha Wachter had, in 1866, joined the recently founded community of Benedictine Sisters at Maria Rickenbach. No evidence remains to indicate what prompted this choice of vocation, whether she had thought about it for some time, or whether it was a spur-of-the-moment inspiration. The circumstances surrounding her final decision have been described in some detail.¹²

Two sisters from Maria Rickenbach were sent to Germany in 1865 to collect money to support their struggling young community. In the village Church at Beuern, Wuertemberg, where just at the time a mission was held, the Sisters noticed near them a young lady who, by her modesty and devotion attracted their attention. When the sisters arrived at Isny a few days later, they asked the parish priest for someone to guide them to homes of Catholics within the town. The young lady brought forth for that purpose was none other than the girl they had seen in the church at Beuren. Not only did she agree to assist them, but also, as it was near dinner time she invited them first to come home with her where she introduced them to her mother who was only too pleased to prepare a substantial repast for the wayworn and hungry Sisters. Apparently the sisters remained in the town for several days, for the account states that Josepha soon grew confident and told them of her longing to devote herself to God in the religious life, and of her desire to go with them to their poor, newly founded Convent.¹³

Mrs. Wachter was less than enthusiastic about her daughter leaving home for a foreign country, describing this as a sacrifice beyond her power. The charming narrative then recounts that Josepha had recourse to prayer. Since the time was shortly before Christmas, she made a novena to the Child Jesus, and gained her mother’s consent to return to Switzerland with the sisters, who were still traveling and presumably collecting money in Germany. What other means of persuasion Josepha used cannot be determined. The pious account says simply, "Josepha