News Notes - Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur

2002
NEWS NOTES

Become better acquainted with the Sisters of Notre Dame and our mission through these articles, which have been published this year
in newspapers throughout the country.

SNDs Provide On-Site Education at Dayton Marriott
Young Nuns Find Strength in Numbers
Today's Sisters: A Different Face
Children's Therapist Takes Vows as Religious
Single Mom Gets Dream: Home
Lessons Learned While Searching for God
Sister Sees Silver Lining in Volunteering
Sheltering the Homeless
Catholic School Program Helps Cincinnati's Youth
Commitment, Commitment, Commitment
News Notes Archives

SNDs Provide On-Site Education at Dayton Marriott

Dayton Deanery
The Catholic Telegraph
11/29/02

The Alliance for Work-Based Education, directed by Notre Dame de Namur Sister Joanne Seiser, is working with Dayton's Marriott Hotel and general manager John Buntemeyer to offer adult education classes for its employees.

Notre Dame de Namur Sister Joanne Seiser and Dayton Marriott employee Robert Wilson chat during a tutoring session.

Buntemeyer, who sees the program as a way to provide education and retain current employees, and his staff provide a conference room, telephone and use of office equipment so employees may attend on-site tutoring sessions. Employees are paid for one of the two hour-long sessions they attend per week.

A major source of funding is a grant from the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur Province Ministry Fund.

Basic reading, writing and math skills are taught on a one-on-one basis. The skills are designed to help students learn to read and write and can also help students to pass a high school equivalency examination or prepare for citizenship. Eighteen students took part in the program during the fall quarter.

Depending on funding, "We hope to continue (the workshops) for a couple of years," said Sister Joanne. The Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur completed a capital campaign a year ago, she said. Part of the money collected was earmarked for the Province Ministry Fund to support the Sisters' outreach programs.

Another Alliance for Work-Based Education site is located at the University of Dayton. For information, call 937-226-6839.

Young Nuns Find Strength in Numbers
400 Under-50 Sisters Meet in Chicago; See Hope for the Future

By Robert McClory
National Catholic Reporter
7/5/02

At 31, Sr. Meg Coursey is by far the youngest member of her religious order, the St. Joseph Sisters of Springfield, Mass. No one had entered the order for more than a decade before her arrival five years ago and no one has entered since.

Sr. Heidi King, 28, is the youngest member of her order, the St. Joseph Sisters of Nazareth, Mich. A convert to Catholicism nine years ago, she will profess her temporary vows in July. There have been no other candidates since she entered in 1998.

One might wonder how young women like these cope in what many consider a dying way of life. Yet Coursey and King show no signs of anxiety. Nor was there evidence of alarm among the other 390 sisters, all under the age of 50, who met June 14-16 at Loyola University in Chicago for a multi-congregational conference titled “Gathering Voices for the Future.” Indeed, the mood was so upbeat, it contrasted vividly with pictures of grimfaced U.S. bishops on the front pages of every newspaper in the country during the same days the sisters were meeting.

Said Coursey, “I know what I’m doing doesn’t make any sense on paper, and as permanent vows get closer, it gets kind of scary. But I do not believe I’ll be the last member of this order. If you’re doing what you should be about, if you’re faithful, it will work out.” What Coursey is currently “about” is teaching English as a second language at a job-training site in Holyoke, Mass.

King, who was not raised in any religion, read news accounts of Catholic sisters working in inner cities when she was in high school and felt drawn to that life. After graduation, she went through the program for adults wishing to join the Catholic church, was baptized and earned and degree in elementary education at the University of Michigan. Since entering the order, “my commitment to serve has deepened,” she said. “It’s for real, and professing the vows will make it public.”

Both Coursey and King consider themselves modern, liberal Catholics and both favor the ordination of women. “I want women to be ordained before the church makes priestly celibacy optional,” said King. “If it’s the other way around, they’ll have enough male priests and women will never get in.” Similar support for women’s ordination and calls for greater openness in church decision-making were voiced by many during conversation at the conference.

The nearly 400 young sisters (along with another 150 older sisters in attendance) presented some 115 religious communities. The idea of promoting intergenerational and intercommunity discussion originated with three sisters who met over the Internet in the mid-1990s. Two previous, smaller conferences, held in 1995 in Wisconsin and 1999 in Pennsylvania, led to the creation of a newsletter, Giving Voice, aimed at younger sisters from many congregations. Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Kristin Matthes, one of the original organizers, said young sisters, numbering two or three in congregations of 300 or more, can easily become marginalized. “We need to get together to share ideas,” she said.

Sister Kristen Matthes

Matthes, 36, has been in religious life since she was 17. After seven years in one congregation, she transferred to her present order because, she said, “I needed more involvement, more space to dream dreams and the choice to live among the poor.” She teaches courses in social justice and the sacraments at a high school in the Cincinnati area. “Younger sisters tend to be more passionate about social justice,” said Matthes. “We’re going back to what our founders were – liminal people on the margins reminding the church what it ought to be.”

Another conference organizer, Mercy Sr. Judy Eby, 38, said she resists the “death and diminishment mode” that can affect any rapidly aging sisterhood. Still, it’s only natural, she said, for young sisters to wonder, “How will we carry on 20 years from now? So we need peer groups to formulate ideas and plans.” After 17 years, Eby is still high on religious life. Some of her high school students in Cincinnati recently commented to her, “You make being a nun seem like fun.” Eby, who has a doctorate in historical theology, will begin teaching at a Catholic college in Omaha, Neb., in the fall.

The major speakers, Notre Dame de Namur Srs. Barbara Fiand and Mary Johnson and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sandra Schneiders, challenged the gathering to think outside the box in developing ideas and plans for the future. The fundamental concern of modern religious women today, said Fiand, should not be simple accord with their founder’s wishes or maintaining survival of their order or conforming to canon law. “Our work must be the transformation of all things of Christ, bringing about the reign of God,” she said, and whatever is not conducive to that goal needs to be jettisoned, even if that should include the traditional notion of perpetual vows.

Fiand contended that the dualistic worldview that held sway for some 5,000 years is yielding to a new, emerging unitive view through the discoveries of quantum physics. Once stable concepts of permanence, order, measurability and certainty are “imploding before our eyes,” she said, as we begin to understand “the flow and connectedness of all things.”

Sister Barbara Fiand

Because of this shift, Fiand said, religious women must revisit all their preconceptions. Should membership in religious communities be absolutely tied to permanent vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, she asked, or should membership be tied to a call to serve and a commitment to do what is just? Fiand said she was not talking about limited volunteer corps service or temporary memberships or third orders but full membership based on a not-yet-clear “reincarnation” of religious commitment in keeping with modern insights. “Young people are no more selfish today than they ever were,” she said. “But their way of service is different.”

It became clear during a lively question period that not everyone was comfortable with Fiand’s radical insights. Later, she and Schneiders dialogued before the whole group and expressed contrasting views of the centrality of perpetual vows in religious life. Matthes said she appreciated Fiand’s willingness to “ask the big questions – but for me the perpetuity of the vows is a very important thing.” Several young sisters like Coursey concurred, saying the requirement of permanent commitment was a major factory that attracted them to religious life in the first place.

Today’s Sisters: A Different Face

By Robert McCory
National Catholic Report
7/5/02

Women entering the church’s established religious orders in the past 20 years bear little resemblance to their predecessors of 40 years ago. They were in most cases older on entry, far better educated and from very different backgrounds. Here is a sample from attendees at the Loyola conference:

Jackie Hittner, 41, a native of St. Louis, entered the Mercy order at 26 after earning master’s degrees in library science and business administration at a college in Georgia. “I wanted to establish myself with women whose work makes them bigger than themselves,” she says, “and I saw the joy they had in life. I knew I’d be OK.” Since her profession, Hittner has served largely as a librarian, most recently as library director at St. Joseph College in Maine. She does not regard herself as a wilting Marian-the-librarian type. “It’s the constant interaction with students and faculty I most enjoy,” she says. “I’m teaching people how to think critically, how to organize their ideas.” In August, she will become reference librarian at St. Louis University.

Sister Caryn Williams

Caryn Williams, 38, remembers being distracted one day in high school when a teacher asked the class what each wanted to do after graduation. “The girl in front of me said she might want to be a nun,” says Williams, “so I just said the same thing.” In fact, she had given no previous thought to the idea, but once said aloud, the idea stayed with her. After college in Ohio, Williams worked as a reporter with a small newspaper in Indiana, earned a master’s degree in social work and served with the Peace Corps in Gabon. She decided to enter religious life while on a retreat; she picked the Notre Dame de Namur order out of a vocation catalog “because they were big in communications and social services.” She entered in 1994 at the age of 30 and made her final profession in June [of 2002]. “My mom was pretty angry when I entered,” she says. “She thought I’d have to wear a habit and she’d never see me again. But it hasn’t worked out that way.” Williams is a child psychotherapist at a large hospital-affiliated clinic in Cincinnati.

Juana Mendez, 51, has just left the younger-sister category, but she has been a member of Mother Seton’s Sisters of Charity only since 1995 and is still one year away from final vows. Besides being a religious woman working as a pastoral associate at a parish in Covington, Ky., Mendez is a mother of three children and grandmother of four. “Religious life had been burning in my heart,” she says, since she came to this country with her family from Puerto Rico as a child. Nevertheless, she married at 18, had three children in five years, and was divorced at 26. The marriage was later annulled. Mendez worked in Cleveland public schools while raising her family. When they were finally on their own, she tested the waters of sisterhood living for a time with a group of Marianist sisters, then made her decision. It wasn’t easy for her grown children at first, she confesses. “They thought they had lost me forever. Now they’re OK. We see each other often, and they call me ‘Mom, the sister.’” Religious life wasn’t easy for her either at first. “I found poverty and obedience difficult,” she says, “but I had lived with my mother and a niece when the kids were young, so I’ve always been in a community of one kind or another.” Mendez relishes her work in a largely Hispanic parish where she assists with immigration problems, attends court hearings and teaches English as a second language.

Kay Kramer, 39, acknowledges that religious life may look very different in the future. But meanwhile, she is so fully occupied bringing new life into the world as a nurse-midwife at a medical center in Cincinnati that she has little time to worry. In college she was torn between interests in liturgy and in nursing. She chose nursing because the needs of the poor minority women seemed more pressing. She chose religious life (with the Congregation of Divine Providence) because, she says, “I wanted to be present to those in need for a lifetime.” Her cheerful, lifelong faith in God was shaken recently, she admits, when she was diagnosed with cancer just five months after her mother was stricken with the same illness. “I didn’t know who to trust or what to believe,” she says. However, her trust has been restored, she says, because of the great support she received from members of her community during treatment. Kramer considers trust a very important aspect of her job: “I have to trust that God guides my hands to do what must be done every time I deliver a baby,” she says.

Evelyn Ovalles, 48, entered the Sisters of Providence (of St. Mary of the Woods, Inc.) in 1997, ending what she calls “many long years of running away from the call. I used to dream a lot that I was being chased and I kept trying to get away. Since I became a sister, I don’t have that dream anymore.” Born in the Philippines, Ovalles came to the United States early in life, earned a law degree and worked as a paralegal in the Los Angeles archdiocese chancery office. “I waited so long to become a sister because I felt unworthy,” she says, “and always I was seeking a community.” After a period of discernment, she made the move. Now Ovalles is working in the marriage tribunal for the Gary, Ind., diocese and is studying canon law. Though the work is similar to what she did in Los Angeles, her attitude is different, she says. “That was a job, this is a mission -- to bring justice and mercy to people.”

Children's Therapist Takes Vows as Religious

By Therese Schuler
The Catholic Telegraph
7/5/02

ARCHDIOCESE - When Caryn Williams was 17, her religion teacher asked students what they wanted to be when they grew up. Thoughtlessly echoing the girl ahead of her, Caryn said she wanted to be a Sister.

Sister Elizabeth Bowyer (right), provincial, witnesses Sister Caryn Williams, left, professing her vows as a Sister of Notre Dame.

Years later, she made that response permanent in an exuberant profession ceremony combining the traditions of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur with those familiar to African-American Catholics.

She lit a candle from the paschal candle, symbolizing the continuation of her baptismal commitment. She made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience for life, and signed a document to that effect. The choir from Mother of Christ Church led music that prodded the audience into clapping and swaying along with it.

Reflecting before the June 20 ceremony, Sister Caryn said, "The vows will be a statement before family, friends and Sisters that I am making the greatest commitment in my life....I think (making vows) is the most important thing I could ever do.

The challenge that faced Sister Caryn, said Episcopal Father Juan Reed, her former spiritual director, was to bring her whole self to religious life. That "self" includes being an African American woman in a predominantly Caucasian institution.

"That's a big task, to say, 'I belong here,' to receive from this community but say, 'I'm going to bring my own voice.'"

Sister Caryn is sensitive to situations in which people are oppressed, wronged or excluded, he said. Part of the process of bringing her own voice means to "look at the structures and systems and racism, and to speak to that." In Sister Caryn's experience, that includes confronting racism within her religious congregation.

"It means being in multiple worlds and keeping all those worlds in conversation with each other," said Father Reed.

According to Sister of Notre Dame Joan Krimm, "We encouraged the women (of color) not to lose their culture, but to appreciate it." Sister Joan was pastoral administrator of Mother of Christ when Sister Caryn was a member of the parish, and she has been the woman's mentor for the past two years.

"I think what she and the other black women and Hispanic women [have] done is make us more aware of cultures other than ours," she said. "I think that has been a great gift to our congregation in the United States."

The common element in all of the aspects of Sister Caryn's life is God. "Each fragment of my life has something that led me to God," she said. There was her grandmother, a Jehovah's Witness, who often talked to her about God. There were the childhood friends she attended church with, and her mother's example of caring for others. There was the Sister of Mercy, her godmother, who gave her instructions in Catholicism, and the Sisters she observed as a student at St. Francis de Sales School.

The religious men and women she knew had a presence, a peacefulness, a sense of being centered. She wanted the spirituality she saw in them.

So she looked at vocation catalogues, and she went to an archdiocesan vocations retreat. There she met the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

She was interested, but she was also going to Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. Sister Susan Keferl, then-vocations minister, promised to write to her. She kept that promise throughout what Sister Caryn calls a "two-year retreat" in Gabon, without the distractions of telephone and television.

In 1994, three years after returning to the United States, she entered the Sisters of Notre Dame and began spiritual direction as a novice with Father Reed. He reassured her, "You do belong where God has called you....These things are not founded for you, and yet you are called."

"She's constantly moving between two worlds," he said. "And it's a gift Caryn has....it's like a dance, and she became proficient over the years."

Sister Caryn also has a gift for working with children. She is a therapist at Mercy Professional Services in Cincinnati. Her clients are in the agency's "Children at Risk" program. Many of them suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder. Some have witnessed violence at home in their neighborhoods.

"She knows how to be with children in a way that a child feels respected and safe and [how] to move them in a goal-directed way to where they need to be," said Sister Fran Repka, executive director of Mercy Professional Services.

In addition to having the appropriate licenses, staff at the agency must have an active spiritual life. "It's important for our mission here that people are in touch with the spiritual dynamics, as well as the emotional and social dynamics of behavior, and she does that very well," said Sister Fran.

Living in community, said Sister Caryn, supports her in her ministry. She is nourished by "the physical presence of Sisters who are there to appreciate you and life you up."

The Sisters are receptive to initiatives, she said. If one of them has an idea, does the research and can show its viability, the leadership will consider it.

"Caryn is just more fully herself every time I see her," said Father Reed, "and a lot of that comes from being a Sister of Notre Dame."

Single Mom Gets Dream: Home
Grant helps out| 'They thought I had some worth'

By Allen Howard
The Cincinnati Enquirer
5/5/02

For Lisa Snorton and her three children, coming from rundown rentals in the ghetto to a comfortable house in the suburbs means a piece of the American dream. Ms. Snorton was among 15 families who have received housing in Lockland, Carthage and Lincoln Heights through the Cincinnati Housing Partners Inc., the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur and a grant from the Charlotte R. Schmidlapp Fund, for which Fifth Third Bank serves as trustee.

Ms. Snorton moved into her four-bedroom home on Walnut Street in Lockland Thursday with her three children: Victoria, 10; Jeremiah, 3; and Mary, 1. "I can't begin to say how glad I am," said Ms. Snorton, a drug counselor for Transitions, Inc. in Covington. "I have lived in a lot of rundown places and paid a lot for rent. Cincinnati Housing Partners showed an interest in me. They thought I had come worth and that I deserved to live in a nice house, even though I come from the ghetto." Ms. Snorton is a single mom.

The trail that led to the housing opportunities for the families started with a $75,000 grant from the Schmidlapp Fund. It was channeled to Cincinnati Housing Partners Inc. from the Cincinnati chapter of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. CHP is a nonprofit housing agency dedicated to increasing home ownership for low- to moderate-income families. It benefits mostly single moms.

The agency was founded in 1985 by Notre Dame Sister Ann Rene McConn who serves as president and general manager. "We are helping women who want a home, but who have blemishes on their credit and know they cannot achieve the dream without a plan and without some assistance," Sister McConn said. CHP worked with banks to create a financial plan for people to clear their credit rating within a year. They make lease payments roughly equal to their future mortgage payments.

The Hamilton County Department of Community Development and Cornerstone Community Loan Fund have provided construction financing.

Lessons Learned While Searching for God

By Eileen Connelly, OSU
The Catholic Telegraph
4/19/02

ARCHDIOCESE – With age often comes wisdom, greater openness and the opportunity to reflect on one’s life and faith, as Ursuline (Brown County) Joan Leonard discovered through the Search for God Project.

The founder and former director of the Arts and Humanities Resource Center for the Elderly, Sister Joan has long been active in research and projects geared toward the elderly. For the purposes of the Search for God project, she interviewed 20 women over the age of 80 from a variety of religious backgrounds, including Catholic, Episcopalian, Jewish, Amish, Islamic, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Quaker, and Presbyterian.

One of her main goals in conducting the project, said Sister Joan, was to “combat ageism and demonstrate that women over the age of 80 still have a wonderfully significant contribution to make to our church and society.”

The questions she posed to the women covered such areas as what led them to want to follow God, their favorite places to pray, lessons they have learned in their spiritual journeys and where they have found God. What she learned through their comments, said Sister Joan, is that while the women may have experienced structural barriers between the various religious denominations as young people, age has opened their hearts and minds to what the different faith traditions hold in common.

“Their comments reflected that here are different paths to the same God,” she said. “I found that people do the same things with prayer, prayer easily in nature, and in private where they can be in tune with the Lord.”

Sister Joan noted that the exciting part of the project for her was the “openness and trust” of the women who shared their experiences. “It was a terribly enriching experience, and I was just so delighted by each of the women who were so gracious about sharing what is so personal about their spirituality. I was delighted by their attitudes of inclusiveness.”

The women who took part in the project found it to be a meaningful opportunity to reflect on their own spiritual development, their relationship with God and others and lessons learned.

Sister of Notre Dame de Namur Elizabeth Waters said she has recognized that our search for God is a life-long process, and as she has grown older she had discovered “new and beautiful things” about her faith.

Sister Elizabeth Waters

“I’ve realized more and more how God’s goodness has been with me from the very beginning, and as life has gone on, I have come to know even more how much God loves us and has great compassion for us.”

The most significant lesson she has learned is being grateful, Sister Elizabeth added. “I’m grateful to have the experience of God, the grace to stay with God and the opportunity to extend God’s goodness to others.”

While she was raised Baptist, Elsie Young of Hillsboro has attended the religious services of other denominations and is a member of Church Women United, an ecumenical movement of Christian women. This had led to her awareness that “we are all serving one God. He died for everybody, not just you and not just me. He died for everybody that would accept him.”

With age have come new insights about the role of God in her life. “When you’re young, you just live from day to day and don’t worry about the future,” Young explained. “You think you know it all and can do everything yourself. As you grow older, you have more understanding of the things that happen in your life and you realize you’re not on your own, that you have God to keep you and guide you. I’ve learned to rely on God more as I’ve grown older.”

Dorothy Hatton, who is Methodist and lives outside West Union, has also learned to rely on God, seeking strength and comfort as she has coped with family illness and the loss of her husband and two of their children.

“I questioned God and had sorrow and anger,” she admitted, “but I didn’t give up on God through any of it. I needed God, and He gave me the strength to get through it.”

In her nearly 90 years, Hatton said she has found much to be grateful for, and, like the project’s other participants, has become more aware of the similarities among religious denominations. “We all have the same purpose,” she said. “We just go about it a little differently.”

The project culminated last month with a gathering at Ursuline Academy in Blue Ash. Hosted by students from the high school, the event offered an interpretive dance piece and presentations by Sister of Saint Joseph of Medaille Judith Martin and the Reverend Phyllis Scholp, a Methodist minister. The women, who are both on staff in the religious studies department at the University of Dayton, reflected on the commonalities and differences in the material gathered by Sister Joan, as well as its significance in contemporary spirituality. Also featured was a concert of favorite hymns identified by the project participants.

Those interviewed for the project have received spiritual legacy booklets containing the information transcribed from their interviews, Sister Joan said, and she will be sharing her findings with students in a spirituality class at Ursuline in May. Also planned, she added, is a CD featuring portions of the interviews and concert, which will be made available to other spirituality classes and parishes.

Sister Sees Silver Lining in Volunteering
Notre Dame-AmeriCorps Director Instrumental in Expanding Program

By Therese Schuler
The Catholic Telegraph
4/19/02

ARCHDIOCESE — Notre Dame Sister Katherine Corr is the kind of person a struggling company might want to hire as its CEO. In seven years, she grew a program from six people to 270, from a budget of $70,000 to $2.4 million.

Sister Katherine sees it differently. "This is above all for me an experience of the work of the Holy Spirit," said the executive director of Notre Dame-AmeriCorps.

Notre Dame-AmeriCorps is a public-private partnership between the Notre Dame Mission Volunteers and AmeriCorps, a national service organization similar to the Peace Corps. Member-volunteers work at "partnering sites" that include schools, community centers and social-service organizations. They tutor, provide after-school enrichment programs and programs for parents as well as GED preparation. In exchange, they receive job-specific training, a stipend under $10,000, health insurance and an education award worth $4,725.

"These volunteers are helping us to expand our mission," said Sister Katherine. "They’re helping us go where we couldn’t go. And they’re helping us do it in the field of education."

The focus on education is natural for Sister Katherine, whose community, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, has served in that ministry since St. Julie Billiart founded it in Belgium in the 18th century. Sister Katherine ticks off other areas of confluence, where the Sisters’ mission dovetailed with AmeriCorps. Work with the poor. Non-violent conflict resolution. A focus on community. An ethic of service.

"That was the most heartening thing to see: that those values coalesced," she says.

"From the get-go, AmeriCorps has really been a partner," Sister Katherine said. The most obvious way the partnership benefits NDA is financial: AmeriCorps supplies 70 percent of the organization’s funding, with the site director in each city responsible for raising the remainder. Another benefit has been the help NDA received in sharpening its focus, and also in quantifying and qualifying results.

"I feel what AmeriCorps has helped us do…(is) focus on education," said Sister Katherine. "We have to find ways to measure our impact. We have to find ways to light it up."

In order to do that, the sites keep track of improvements in students’ test scores, and quantify the decrease in violent confrontations among them. Sister Katherine can rattle off the total number of volunteer hours: approaching 2 million since 1995. Site directors know how many students they have served in a given year, and how many parents.

Jill Whitmarsh is one of 17 NDA members serving in Cincinnati. Whitmarsh learned of a job opening at IMAGO, an environmental education center in Price Hill. When she applied for the job, she discovered it was an NDA position.

Whitmarsh is one of this year’s 270 NDA members serving in 10 cities, up from the four Sister Katherine originally started with. In each city, NDA works with a variety of partnering sites. Among the Cincinnati sites are St. Francis Seraph and Corryville Catholic Elementary Schools, the Peaslee Neighborhood Center, and the Harmony Community School.

"Partnering" involves a variety of levels, including the philosophical. "When we choose our partners, we know them and they know us," says Sister Katherine. "We’re already in sync."

Partnering sites — be it a school, a community center, a social-service organization — contribute to the financial support of the NDA members who serve there. In addition, they provide job descriptions and evaluations for these members, and sometimes give presentations at NDA gatherings.

Sister Katherine and the network of SNDs, former SNDs, friends and associates who collaborate with NDA work to pass on the Notre Dame spirit. Whenever possible, a Sister is the first site director in a city. At their week-long orientation in September, members learn about the congregation’s history. SNDs give training presentations and, in some cities, Sisters serve as mentors to the members — all while respecting the church-state boundaries.

The collaboration among the Sisters, their friends and associates, and AmeriCorps has led to NDA sites in 10 cities nationwide: Cincinnati; Baltimore, Maryland; Apopka, Florida; Phoenix, Arizona; Hartford, Connecticut; Boston, Massachusetts; the San Francisco Bay Area; Seattle, Washington; and Washington, D.C.

"The good God has sent along the right people at the right time to help this organization grow," says Sister Katherine.

"It’s more opportunity than we could have ever guessed or planned."

Sheltering the Homeless
Sister runs Marquette Park Shelter with faith, trust in God

By Patrick Butler
The Catholic New World
1/6/02

Running the Southwest Chicago P.A.D.S. homeless drop-in center is about the last thing Therese DelGenio expected to end up doing when she joined the teaching Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur 42 years ago. "But our foundress (St. Julie Billiart) always said it's not enough to teach the usual classroom subjects, that you've got to teach life," said DelGenio, who taught elementary school at Our Lady of the Rosary in Gary and St. Victor in Calumet City.

Then on August 31, 1992, "a day that changed my life," DelGenio and a friend were getting off the expressway at Damen when they saw a man with a sign saying "Am hungry. Will work for food."

"I normally don't do this sort of thing, but I had 30 cents left over from paying the toll, so I gave it to him," said DelGenio. "And for the next three days he stuck in my mind." She finally returned with her pastor and invited the man for coffee at a place on Archer Avenue. "We heard his story and asked if he wanted to go to a shelter. He said no, that he'd been robbed in one and felt safer taking his chances on the street.

"I was furious this kind of thing could be happening in a country with as much as we had. I asked God what he wanted me to do and I was told to open a shelter. Just like that."

She checked around and learned about the P.A.D.S. (Public Action to Deliver Shelter) programs in a number of suburbs. After visiting the one in McHenry, "I thought to myself, 'I can do that'." Within months, what is still the only Chicago P.A.D.S. was up and running at Holy Family Lutheran Church, 542 W. Hobble.

After "five great years," Southwest Chicago P.A.D.S. found its current home at 2648 W. 63rd St., which it will be leaving as soon as DelGenio's shelter can move into a larger building P.A.D.S. just bought in the same Marquette Park neighborhood. As far as DelGenio is concerned, the move won't come a moment too soon. Even she's not exactly sure how many people the warming center serves from 6 to 9 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. "But it's like State and Madison," DelGenio said.

She and a three-person full-time staff (a man from CapCorps, run by the Capuchin priests, another from the Augustinian equivalent of AmeriCorps, and a 83-year old nun from her order) supervise a dozen or more volunteers who do everything from cooking hot meals to passing out fresh clothes, said DelGenio, a certified addiction counselor who has seen a big change in the face of homelessness in just the past few months.

It used to be mostly alcoholics and the mentally ill, but "now we're seeing a lot more women and children," DelGenio said. Because homelessness is usually only a symptom of a host of underlying problems stemming from layoffs, divorces, illness or substance abuse, "success isn't just putting a homeless person in an apartment." Even that "can take months, even years," DelGenio said. "It's hard to look for a job if you don't have a place to change your clothes or clean up. And if the job is out in the suburbs, you need a car which you can't afford if you don't have a job. We measure success when the person is looking for work, attending 12-step meetings to stay clean and sober. Or following up on whatever health care they need," she added.

Southwest Chicago P.A.D.S., of course, knows all about living on a shoestring, since it gets no government aid and only a small contribution from the archdiocese's Rice Bowl Grants, DelGenio said, adding that "Most of what we get comes from ordinary people-often at just the right moment."

"Our foundress left 13 or 14 volumes of letters containing a lot of helpful advice, including reminders to 'Trust the good God,'" DelGenio said. "I must admit I don't always have the trust level St. Julie had. Yes, there are times when I still worry."

Catholic School Program Helps Cincinnati's Youth
'Choices for Children' Boosts Education in Inner-City School

By Therese Shuler
The Catholic Telegraph
1/18/02

ARCHDIOCESE - When the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur came to Cincinnati in 1849, Archbishop John Purcell offered them land in the country. They declined, insisting that it was in the city that they would find the poor. And today, the sisters are maintaining that commitment in the inner city. At a time when there are fewer sisters to go around, six sisters are on the staff at Corryville Catholic Elementary School; they include the principal, Sister Marie Smith.

The women religious could see that their students' needs went well beyond the academic, since many experienced economic hardships and family difficulties. The students also had little experience of the world beyond their families and neighborhoods and once they were beyond the care of Corryville Catholic, these challenges often overtook them and limited their success in high school.

That's why Sister Marie was a key figure in creating Choices for Children, a program of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur funded by donors and foundations, to help these students overcome some of the major obstacles to school success. Adult mentors in the program help the students realize that they do indeed have choices about how they behave, where they go to high school, and what professions they pursue.

Judy Dyrud took her first step toward getting involved with Choices for Children before it even existed, after see saw a class from Corryville Catholic at Mass. She was so impressed with how well-behaved the students were that she volunteered to be a mentor, if the school had such a program.

It didn't yet, but before long she was contacted by Joseph Speaks, the program director for Choices for Children who helps Corryville Catholic's eighth-graders get into high schools of their choice. With 30 years of experience in education, Speaks had a good idea of how to help students choose a high school. He helped them investigate different schools, prepared them for entrance exams and contacted Dyrud and other adults to be mentors.

Instead of the usual on-on-one approach, Speaks facilitated group mentoring sessions. Every Friday, the 14 eighth-graders and eight mentors met. They talked about such things as how to get into specific professions, the role of mentors in one's life and delaying gratification to achieve a goal.

The participants get more than just information. "They get the experience of knowing and talking to people like us," Dyrud said. "And we get the experience of knowing and talking to people like them," she said. "We come from different worlds, and it's good for both of us."

"For me, it's as much a learning experience as it is for them," said fellow mentor Dustin Starkey. One student particularly stands out in Starkey's memory - an eighth-grader who did not do well academically and also had attendance problems. But the student graduated along with his classmates, and 12 of the 14 high school freshman now attend Catholic high schools.

Choices for Children is now looking at ways it can help younger students before they reach eighth grade. Future participants in the program might be able to gain what an eighth-grade student said helped him in the program - "learning to be responsible for myself and to be ready for something new every week and every day."

Commitment, Commitment, Commitment

By Jo Ann Kovach
The Cincinnati Enquirer
1/6/02

The day the last of her three children started school full-time, Cheryl Ellery, then a single mom, vowed to walk away from a decade of public assistance and build a new life. Although at the time she knew not where the road would lead, today, streets in the city and neighboring Lincoln Heights and Lockland are dotted with the results of her resolve.

High school diploma in hand, Cheryl met with a counselor at the Hamilton County Department of Human Services and was administered a skills assessment that tested her as good with her hands. The placement service told her of an opportunity with Cincinnati Housing Partners, Inc. (CHP), a nonprofit housing organization that builds and rehabs homes for lower-income families. CHP had been working with the county for about a year to place phase-out public assistance candidates in temporary jobs of rehabbing homes (which are basically rebuilds) in Lincoln Heights.

Cheryl immediately signed up for CHP's 12-month Worker Training Program to learn residential construction trades.

Cheryl struggled to juggle her children's school schedules with those of public transportation, as well as family activities, hers and her kids' homework and household chores. Yet she managed perfect attendance of 9 to 4 workdays five days a week to learn and apply skills in carpentry, interior trim work, windows and doors, flooring, installation of electrical fixtures and more.

While Cheryl is not one to go on about herself, Sister Ann René McConn, president of CHP, sings her praises. "Cheryl worked very hard to learn the trade and we struggled to hold on to her," said Sister Ann René. "Her capabilities went beyond carpentry skills to reveal that she is a quick-study who has a talent for scheduling, organizing people, and is not afraid to try new things." So impressed was she with Cheryl's talents, Sister Ann René worked with the Greater Cincinnati Housing Alliance to obtain grant money to permanently hire Cheryl after she was graduated from the training program, by which time Cheryl was already supervising other trainees.

It turns out that the attraction was mutual. "Right from the first, I never wanted to leave CHP," Cheryl said. "My goal was to make them want to hire me permanently and I did whatever I could every day to make that happen."

Cheryl has been with CHP since 1995 and an employee since the summer of 1997. Sister Ann René estimates that Cheryl has participated in building or rehabbing more than 50 homes. Sister Ann René, who founded CHP in 1985, said Cheryl is one of the area's small number of African-American women employed in the home-building industry.

In August, Cheryl was promoted from assistant manager to project manager of construction, responsible for all post-drywall work at assigned sites. In addition to hands-on and very much on deck at each home (sorry, no admittance without paper booties), Cheryl schedules contractors, purchases materials and is responsible for completing the job on time and within budget.

At any given time, Cheryl is in charge of about 10 homes, right now in Carthage, Lincoln Heights and her favorite, Lockland, where CHP is building five new homes across the street from the one where Cheryl grew up.

Cheryl says she has "merely tapped the surface of what's out there to learn" about her career, and is concentrating on learning the front end of the process. She is studying soil conservation and foundations with the goal "to building a home from start to finish."

Used with permission from The Cincinnati Enquirer.