Meet the Creole nun who risked her life to teach slaves

Venerable Henriette DeLille, born a “free woman of color" before the Civil War, had all the makings of a life of relative ease before her.

Born in 1812 to a wealthy French father and a free Creole woman of Spanish, French and African descent, Henriette was groomed throughout her childhood to become a part of what was then known as the placage system.

Under the placage system, free women of color (term used at the time for people of full or partial African descent, who were no longer or never were slaves) entered into common law marriages with wealthy white plantation owners, who often kept their legitimate families at the plantations in the country. It was a rigid system, but afforded free women of color comfortable and even luxurious lives.

Trained in French literature, music, dancing, and nursing, Henriette was prepared to become the “kept woman" of a wealthy white man throughout her childhood.

However, in her early 20s, Henriette declared that her religious convictions could not be reconciled with the placage lifestyle for which she was being prepared. Raised Catholic, which was typical for free people of color at the time, she had recently had a deep encounter with God, and believed that the placage system violated Church teaching on the sanctity of marriage.

Working as a teacher since the age of 14, Henriette’s devotion to caring for and educating the poor grew. Even though she was only one-eighth African and could have passed as a white person, she always referred to herself as Creole or as a free person of color, causing conflict in her family, who had declared themselves white on the census.

 

In 1836, wanting to dedicate her life to God, Henriette used the proceeds of an inheritance to found a small unrecognized order of nuns, the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Her non-white heritage had barred her from admission to the Ursuline and Carmelite orders, which only accepted white women at the time.

This group would eventually become the Sisters of the Holy Family, officially founded at St. Augustine’s Church in 1842. Like Henriette, the other two founding sisters had denounced a life in the placage system.

The Sisters taught religion and other subjects to the slaves, even though it was illegal to do so at the time, punishable by death or life imprisonment.

They also encouraged free quadroon women (women of one-fourth African descent) to marry men of their own class, and encouraged slave couples to have their unions blessed by the church.

The Sisters also established a home to care for elderly women, many of them likely former slaves. It was the first nursing home of its kind established by the Church in the U.S., and it was there that the early Sisters cared for the sick and the dying during the yellow fever epidemics that struck New Orleans in 1853 and 1897.

Homes for orphans and eventually schools were also established by the order, which continued to grow and spread its mission throughout the South.

Henriette Delille died in 1862 at the relatively young age of 50, probably of tuberculosis. At the time of her death, the order had 12 members, but it would eventually peak at 400 members in the 1950s.

The Sisters of the Holy Family are still an active order in Louisiana today, with sisters working in nursing homes and as teachers, administrators and other pastoral positions.

In 1988, the Mother Superior of the order at the time requested the opening of Henriette Delille’s cause for canonization. She was declared a Servant of God, and then was declared Venerable by Pope Benedict XVI on March 27, 2010. A miracle through her intercession is needed for her beatification, the next step in the process before canonization.

Throughout her life, Henriette was inspired by this prayer, which she wrote in one of her religious books when she first founded her order: “I believe in God, I hope In God. I love. I want to live and die for God.”

Five Myths about No-Fault Divorce

Almost four decades after the “no-fault” divorce revolution began in California, misconceptions abound. Even the many books about divorce, including myriad self-help manuals, are full of inaccurate and misleading information. No public debate preceded the introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the 1970s, and no debate has taken place since

Yet divorce-on-demand is exacting a devastating toll on our children, our social order, our economy, and even our constitutional rights. A recent study estimates the financial cost of divorce to taxpayers at $112 billion annually. Recent demands to legitimize same-sex marriage almost certainly follow from the divorce revolution, since gay activists readily acknowledge that they only desire to marry under the loosened terms that have resulted from the new divorce laws. Divorce also contributes to a dangerous increase in the power of the state over private life.

Here are some of the most common clichés and misconceptions about modern divorce, along with the facts.

 

Myth 1: No-fault divorce permitted divorce by mutual consent, thus making divorce less acrimonious.

Fact: No-fault divorce is unilateral divorce. It permits divorce by one spouse acting alone for any reason or no reason. No “grounds” are required, and the involuntarily divorced spouse need commit no legal infraction, either criminal or civil. It is therefore forced divorce, meaning you can be divorced over your objections. (Some 80 percent of divorces today are unilateral.)

 

Even more serious, you can be forcibly separated from your children, your home, and your property, also through literally “no fault” of your own. Failure to cooperate with the divorce opens the innocent spouse to criminal penalties. No-fault divorce made divorce far more destructive by allowing the state to undertake court proceedings against innocent people, confiscate everything they have, and incarcerate them without trial.

Myth 2: We cannot force people to remain married and should not try.

Fact: It is not a matter of forcing anyone to remain married. The issue is taking responsibility for one’s actions in abrogating an agreement. With no-fault divorce, the spouse who divorces without grounds or otherwise breaks the marriage agreement (for example, by adultery or desertion) thereby incurs no onus of responsibility. Indeed, that spouse gains advantages.

 

Courts therefore do not dispense justice against a legal wrong. Instead, every divorce is granted automatically, and the courts simply divvy up the goods — including the children — according to any criteria they choose, including separating the innocent spouse from his or her children without having to give any reason. Because the divorce creates work and earnings for judges, lawyers, and other court personnel, there is a strong incentive for these officials to reward the guilty spouse in order to encourage more divorces and more business for the courts. As Charles Dickens pointed out, “The one great principle of the…law is to make business for itself.”

 

Myth 3: No-fault divorce has led men to abandon their wives and children.

 

Fact: This does happen (wives more often than children), but it is greatly exaggerated. The vast majority of no-fault divorces — especially those involving children — are filed by wives. In fact, as Judy Parejko, author of Stolen Vows, has shown, the no-fault revolution was engineered largely by feminist lawyers, with the cooperation of the bar associations, as part of the sexual revolution. Overwhelmingly, it has served to separate large numbers of children from their fathers. Sometimes the genders are reversed, so that fathers take children from mothers. But either way, the main effect of no-fault is to make children weapons and pawns to gain power through the courts, not the “abandonment” of them by either parent.

 

Myth 4: When couples cannot agree or cooperate about matters like how the children should be raised, a judge must decide according to “the best interest of the child.”

 

Fact: It is not the business of government officials to supervise the raising of other people’s children. The entire point of a marriage and family is for mothers and fathers to cooperate and compromise for the sake of children and provide an example to those children of precisely these principles, without which no family can operate. Allowing one parent to surrender both parents’ decision-making rights over the children to government officials because of “disagreement” — without any infraction by the other (who may “disagree” only about losing his or her children) — negates the very principle of private family life and invites collusion between the divorcing parent and state officials.

 

Judges and civil servants are not disinterested. When we give government officials the power to make decisions about the best interest of other people’s children, it may well become the best interest of the officials. Allowing them to control the private lives of citizens’ who have committed no legal infraction simply by invoking “disagreement” gives them an incentive to reward the parent that is being the most disagreeable. That is precisely the reason for the runaway divorce epidemic.

Myth 5: Divorce must be made easy because of domestic violence.

 

Fact: Actual physical violence is legitimate grounds for divorce and always has been. So it does not justify dispensing with all standards of justice, which is what no-fault entails. On the contrary, openly false accusations of domestic violence and child abuse have become an industry in themselves, mostly to secure child custody. By dispensing with standards of justice for divorce, we have allowed them to be abandoned for criminal justice too. Thus “domestic violence” and “child abuse” are not adjudicated as criminal assault, and the accused seldom receives a trial or chance to clear his name. Instead he simply loses his children until he can prove his innocence, an impossible standard.

 

Most domestic violence and child abuse take place during and after family dissolution; very little occurs in intact families. So domestic violence is a red herring. Federal funds for domestic violence and child abuse now serve effectively as a subsidy on divorce in every state in America, encouraging spouses to bring false accusations and law-enforcement officials to reward them. This shatters another myth: that family law is the province of states.

 

No-fault divorce has exacerbated the divorce epidemic on almost every count. We urgently need an extensive public debate on divorce and the connected issues of child custody, domestic violence, child abuse, and child support — precisely the debate that the divorce industry has suppressed for four decades.

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Stephen Baskerville is associate professor of government at Patrick HenryCollege and author of Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family (Cumberland House, 2007).

The unseen Paul VI: an introvert who wore chains beneath his robes

History will judge Blessed Paul kindly, for his courage and his deep prayerfulness

Archbishop Rino Fisichella’s slim book I Met Paul VI (Gracewing) is not a personal memoir. Rather, it collects stories from those who knew Blessed Paul personally. Fisichella was the reporting judge in the Cause for Paul’s beatification, which took place in 2014. There are interesting glimpses of Paul’s personality from this book, but you have to search for them, which is made harder by the lack of an index. Footnotes and a bibliography would also have been helpful.

Nevertheless, the Archbishop writes with piety, affection and circumspection, anxious to show that that Paul VI was a holy man. Aware of the frequent criticisms of his subject, he occasionally sounds defensive, remarking at one point that Paul was not “a Hamlet figure, incapable of decision".

Despite these caveats, I did glean certain things from the book: that Paul was baptised on the same day – 30^th September 1897 – as St Therese of Lisieux died; that the chasuble in which he celebrated his first Mass was woven from his mother’s wedding dress; that he was a temperamentally shy man of delicate health who did not seek out company. On being selected to join the prestigious papal academy for future Church diplomats, the young Father Montini wrote home: “There is room … for the possibility to have some solitude. That consoles me a bit, because solitude allows one to build up the energy to be in company with others."

 

Another telling remark, after his election as Pope Paul VI in 1963, is his comment that “I feel like a statue on a pedestal, the only differing [sic] being the statue is alive." There is a brief mention by Mgr Magee, one of his private secretaries, that the Pope often wore chains underneath his clothing “to remind him that Christ had carried the Cross to redeem the world." Another anecdote concerning his dying hours at Castel Gandolfo in 1978, tells us that the Holy Father’s alarm clock, which had been a gift from his mother when, as a young papal diplomat, he had been assigned to Warsaw, suddenly started to ring out at 9.40 pm, the actual moment of Paul’s death, even though it had not been wound up that day. It had woken him at 6.00 daily. Now, uncannily “it welcomed him that evening into … eternal life."

I single out these points as they bring Blessed Paul VI alive. Of his great courage, in the face of the enormous and vociferous dissent from his encyclical Humanae Vitae in 1968, there can be no doubt, though the book doesn’t discuss this. That only he could have steered the Church through the turbulent waters of the Second Vatican Council after the death of John XXIII is also true. Although seen as “sad, anxious, indecisive" during the later years of his pontificate, Mgr Magee affirms that, on the contrary, Paul was “always profoundly serene" – indicative of a deep prayer-life.

I think history will judge Paul VI more kindly than his contemporaries. Archbishop Fisichella’s book has reminded me to pray to him and for a second miracle to aid his canonization.

Pope writes preface to book by victim of clerical sex abuse

“How can a priest, at the service of Christ and of His Church, come to cause such evil? How can one who has consecrated his life to leading the little ones to God, end up instead devouring them in what I have called a ‘diabolic sacrifice,’ which destroys both the victims and the life of the Church?”

Pope Francis has once again spoken out strongly against the evil of sex abuse perpetrated by clergy and religious. His words come in the preface to a book by a victim of clerical sexual abuse, Daniel Pettit, today a husband and father of six children.

This couple gave to persecuted Christians, and Pope Francis responded

Josefa Rodríguez and Amaro Pesquero were not expecting to receive a letter from Pope Francis.

But that’s exactly what happened last September, when the Pope himself thanked them in his own handwriting for the donation they had made for the persecuted Christians in the Middle East.

Josefa and Amaro are a married couple from Fuenlabrada, Madrid, Spain, who made a pilgrimage to Rome on the occasion of the Holy Year of Mercy in August 2016.

“My wife bought a prayer book on Divine Mercy and got in contact with this apostolate so they could send her more books so she could to give them away to others. Then they informed her that there was going to be a pilgrimage to Rome and we signed up," Amaro Pesquero told CNA.

But in addition to going on pilgrimage for the Jubilee, the retired couple brought a gift that they had gathered together with a lot of effort and that they wanted to give to the Holy Father: a sum of money they wished to donate for the persecuted Christians.

“We wanted it to be for the persecuted Christians of the Middle East, because we thought that they’re the ones who need it the most right now," Amaro said.

At the general audience in Saint Peter’s Square, they gave the envelope with the letter and the money to their fellow pilgrim who was going to greet Pope Francis on behalf of the entire group and who was able to personally hand it to the pontiff.

 

It was a sum of money that they never thought would get a response, but Pope Francis replied to them in his own handwriting, thanking them “for this gesture of concrete charity" along with two holy cards with prayers to Saint Joseph and Saint Therese of Lisieux.

Amaro explained that “the letter was late in arriving because it didn’t come by ordinary mail, but in the diplomatic pouch of the Diocese of Getafe."

“Someone at the Diocese came to our house, but we weren’t there and when we returned, our neighbor told us we needed to go there to pick up something important," he said. “We went and it was from the Holy Father."

In his letter the Pope told them: “I have received your letter of this past Aug. 2 with the donation included…to help the persecuted Christians, particularly in the countries of the Middle East."

“I thank you from the heart for this gesture of concrete charity and ask the Lord to abundantly reward you. I ask you, please, to not forget to pray for me so that I can be faithful to the Lord in this ministry. May Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin care for you."

However, this is not the first time that a pontiff wrote to this couple from Fuenlabrada – Saint John Paul II also thanked them for a similar gift.

As the couple told CNA, “we were able to greet Pope John Paul II in person, we shook hands with him and gave him a donation. He replied to us through his secretary and he also sent us a small card showing his thanks in his own handwriting."

 

How the Church supports marriages – every step of the way

It’s Valentine’s Day, and in countries across the world, people are focused on love and marriage. But for the Catholic Church, the celebration of – and support for – marriage is not limited to one day, but all year round.

“Marriage is not private," explained Rev. Richard Kramer, Director of Family Life and Pastoral Resource Development for the Archdiocese of Washington. “It’s personal, but it’s not private."

Marriage is not only between two people, but involves God as well, and so “it’s a public act," he told CNA. As a result, “marriage always needs the support of culture, it needs the support of society, it needs the support of friends and families. It needs the support of the Church itself."

While love and marriage exist throughout history around the world, and not just in the Church, their universality points to God’s plan for love and marriage, the priest said.

He pointed out that society is built upon families. Jesus was born into a family, he raised marriage to a sacrament, and his fist miracle was performed at the Wedding at Cana. Christ’s love for the Church is compared to the love between spouses.

Because of this importance of marriage, the Catholic Church seeks specifically to offer support for couples as they live out the sacrament, Fr. Kramer said. At the heart of these efforts is the parish priest.

 

One of Fr. Kramer’s first lessons for young priests is to “make them understand that their life is not separated from marriage, but that they are integral to it." He explained that Matrimony and Holy Orders, while distinct, are similar in their orientation to self-sacrifice and love for others. Both ultimately have the same goal – getting people to heaven.

Laity too should view their parish priest as a resource and someone who can accompany them through their marriage. “Something that I would like couples to understand is that by the virtue of a priest being pastor of a parish, he has a keen and almost expert insight to family life because he’s integral in every part of the family." Fr. Kramer said, pointing to a pastor’s involvement through catechesis, marriage formation, confession and counseling.

“I think couples do themselves a disservice if they buy the line ‘Father doesn’t know anything about marriage because he’s celibate’," Fr. Kramer warned, pointing back to a priest’s role in a family’s life as well as his position as Father of a parish.

“What I’d hope couples would do is to invite Father more intimately into their marriages, into their homes, to help him see and know that the priest is a man of the family."

A call to love

“Every single human being has a vocation, a call to love," Fr. Kramer said, and for most people, this call is to the Sacrament of Matrimony.

Preparation for marriage begins at birth, in the family, where one first learns about love, he said. But in a culture where so many marriages and families are broken, it can be difficult to understand what it truly means to love someone.

“We see a time when there’s more need to make sure that couples who are preparing for the sacrament have a good formation so that they can live their marriages in the whole of their lives," said Fr. Kramer.

Before marriage in the Catholic Church, couples are typically required to take a marriage preparation course and talk with the parish where they will be married and the priest who is preparing them.

The engagement period is a time for evangelization if the couple has been away from the Church and the sacraments, Fr. Kramer said. Even for couples who are already involved in the Church, marriage preparation and counseling is a good opportunity to deepen one’s knowledge and relationship with Christ and to become more involved in their parish’s life.

Bethany Meola, assistant director in the Secretariat on Laity Marriage, Family Life and Youth at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, pointed to the conference’s online resource “For Your Marriage," which contains contact information for marriage preparation and support programs for dioceses around the country.

The website also contains a wealth of online resources, such as Church teachings on various topics surrounding marriage and family life, relationship and parenting advice, Natural Family Planning resources, wedding planning guides, and book reviews.

 

Mass Etiquette; Dos and Don’ts while at Mass

Fast:

It doesn’t even really feel like a fast anymore since its just an hour. The Church requires every communicant to begin preparing to receive Jesus by observing an hour fast (from food) unless they’re aged or sick. Won’t really cost much to give this little to receive God into your soul would it?

Come early, recollect yourself:

Sometime ago i asked on our Facebook page “When is one late for Mass” some said with confidence “When they come later than the Sign of the Cross”. I disappointed them by reminding them that the Mass actually begins with the procession. I usually advise people to make effort to be in Church at least 10-15 minutes before the actual time in order to have some time to pray and recollect; to begin the Mass in the right spirit. When it becomes a habit to arrive late, it ceases to be a real celebration for the person, and if it becomes a habit (especially Sundays) it begins to become sinful.

Eating?

It is inappropriate to find a grown person snacking or chewing gum in Church. We want to show God some seriousness and show our devotion by setting aside a perfect “God-time”. This means we’d try to devote all our attention to the act of worship, to make it as perfect as possible. The house of God is a place of prayer, let us try to keep it so. For Children? I still don’t buy the idea of snacks. If it can be discreet, and if the child is really troublesome, then its okay.

Dressing:

Be modest, don’t attract too much attention by putting on something open. We also love to think Sunday as a real celebration, keep this in mind and put on the best you have. God is holy, your body is his Temple, cover it, and adorn it moderately.

No Phones:

No cell phones; texting, chatting, calls etc. I have seen a number of people chatting over Facebook while at Mass. Then i wonder: So we really cannot give God little time anymore? What will it take to turn off our phones for an hour or two (Depending on where you live, some are as fast as 45 mins). The only justifiable case is big emergencies though, whatever it be, let it be serious and be discreet while attending to it. It is usually better to quietly leave the Church to attend to the emergency than text or receive calls inside.

Genuflection:

Upon entering the Church, every informed Catholic remembers that Jesus is present in the Tabernacle (usually indicated by some light beside it). The problem usually is that only few remember to show some respect. Genuflecting (such that your knee hits the ground) is a sign of devotion and reverence to the Lord who for love waits for us in the Tabernacle with blessing and peace.

Active participation:

Some find it hard to follow all the routines over and over again; to stand, sit, speak when needed etc. However, active participation means exactly this. In order to be really part of a praying community, we must join the Body of Christ in its movements. We are supposed to try as much as possible to join in singing, praying, and in performing all appropriate gestures while at Mass for our participation to be perfect.

Receiving Communion:

It is customary to show some reverence before, during and after communion. Before receiving, one must recollect, pray and prepare themselves. Receiving, it is advised to bow or kneel (depending on what’s customary in your area). After receiving, kneel and pray to Jesus, don’t be in a hurry, he might also have a word or two for you. It shouldn’t be heard, it could be simple movements in your soul, inspirations etc. But pray and keep still for a while. Remember to be joyful as well, when you leave mass, share this joy with everyone !

Be Charitable:

If you’re sick, be sure not to receive from the chalice. Remember to respect people close to you, do not consider yourself alone. Your neighbor might not like to be held while at mass, or even be talked to, respect it. If your child is noisy either take them outside (if crying) or to be back. Do to others what you’d want done to you.

Don’t be in a hurry:

Do not leave the Church before the Presider (the minister), the Mass ends officially when the priest leaves the Church. Even then, it is usually advised you sit/kneel in silent prayer of thanksgiving or simply gaze at Jesus in the Tabernacle, smile at him and just be joyful. After which you should leave quietly in order not to distract others.

 

You should add any more you remember in the comment section, and do not forget to share.

God bless you !

This article was inspired by Marcel LeJeune’s post on the same subject.