The Demands of Rome: Her Own Story of Thirty-One Years as a Sister of Charity in the Order of the Sisters of Charity of Providence of the Roman Catholic ChurchSchoffen, Elizabeth
Religion
The Demands of Rome: Her Own Story of Thirty-One Years as a Sister of Charity in the Order of the Sisters of Charity of Providence of the Roman Catholic Church
Schoffen, Elizabeth
Ex-nuns -- United States -- Biography; Monastic and religious life of women
This was one time in my convent life that I received what I had asked
for, in fact, it was just the opposite extreme of what I had been
experiencing in my previous Mission. I was on my feet from morning till
night, and even for recreation and diversion, I was sent to the kitchen
to assist in the work there.
CHAPTER V.
MY BEGGING EXPEDITION.
ST. VINCENT'S HOSPITAL--ROUTINE OF A SISTER.
During the spring of 1891, the Province of the Sisters of Charity of
Providence of the Pacific Northwest was divided, and by an order from
the head Mother House at Montreal, the sisters were to remain in the
provinces where they were when the division went into effect. I was
ordered to report to the Mother House at Vancouver, Washington. This was
in March, 1891. On my way to Vancouver from Spokane, I had to pass
through Portland, Oregon, and while there the order went into effect,
and the sister superior of St. Vincent's Hospital claimed me as a
subject of the Oregon Province.
I was at St. Vincent's Hospital about a month, when I was transferred to
Astoria, Oregon, to St. Mary's Hospital, where I practiced on typhoid
patients and became more efficient in laundry work, for a little over a
year.
In June, 1892, I was missioned to St. Mary's Hospital, New Westminster,
B. C. My duties in this hospital were practically the same as in the
other hospitals I had worked in.
It was while I was at this hospital that I was sent on my principal
begging expedition. On July fourth, 1892, Sister Ethelbert and myself
were commissioned to go north to the logging camps on the islands in the
Gulf of Georgia (near Alaska) to secure contributions in the name of
Charity for the Roman Catholic Church and to sell tickets for ten
dollars each, which would entitle the holder to care in St. Mary's
Hospital, New Westminter, B. C., for a specified time.
The hardship and terrors of this trip are indescribable. Crossing the
stormy straights in small canoes, camping out at night in the wildest
woods, our lives were endangered many times. Arriving at the camps at
all hours of the night, tired, wet, cold and hungry; being lifted into
bunks by the men when we were so cold, in fact nearly frozen, that we
could hardly move; being carried on the backs of the men across muddy
and wet places where the water was too shallow for the canoe, or boat,
to land. Oh, yes, in the convent we were taught to be so modest--modesty
to the very extreme, but it is all right, in the Roman Catholic Church,
to send sisters to such places as this, where, as some of the men told
me, they had not seen a woman for from three to eight years. It was all
right in the Roman Catholic Church because we were getting the money for
the fat living of the priests and to enrich the coffers of the Pope of
Rome. Believe me, dear reader, no benefit do the sisters ever get from
the hardships and indignities imposed upon them on a trip of this
nature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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