Marie Therese; Forgotten Founder

Spectacle of Saints is very pleased to welcome Joanne McCracken as our guest blogger this week! Joanne is a retired nurse who now spends her free time playing with her grandsons, making greeting cards, facilitating women’s retreats and trying to make Marie Therese De Lamourous more well known. She and her husband Ray live in New Jersey and are Marianist Affiliates. Joanne is a big fan of Marie Therese de Lamourous and maybe, just maybe, thinks "MT" doesn't get quite the credit she deserves. Read on...

Father William Joseph Chaminade is credited with founding the Society of Mary and Mother Adele established the Daughters of Mary, but both of these religious order and the Lay Sodalities—the very foundation of what we  know as the Marianist Family—were influenced in collaboration with Marie These de Lamourous. So why, outside of the U.S., is she not considered as one of the Marianist founders?


To be fair, Marie Therese is a most unlikely candidate for that lofty title. Born into a middle class family of nobles in the south of France, Marie Therese was the eldest of 11 children and was herself sickly as a child. Homeschooled by her mother, she received a classical education learning reading, writing, fine arts, and geometry along with valuable lessons in agriculture, vineyard management and stock raising. She had hoped to become a Carmelite nun, but her frail health and family responsibilities kept her from following that call. With the French Revolution decimating religious practice and sending priests into exile or hiding, Marie Therese became the "pastor-shepherd" to the Catholic community at Pian, where she gathered people for Sunday worship, taught catechism classes, prepared individuals for Sacraments and ministered to all of their spiritual needs. To do this, she often traveled in peasant dress and cut her hair short in the fashion of the lower classes. (1) As a woman, she did all she could to keep the faith alive.

 It was during these years that she met and became friends with Father Chaminade. Attracted by his vision of re-Christianizing France by gathering people into a religious family where everyone, regardless of education, money or prestige was accepted and honored, Marie Therese worked side by side with Chaminade from the very beginning of his new ministry. Her name is the first name on the initial list of Sodalists at Bordeaux, and she became the leader of the women’s section. With her knowledge of management and business, she became his financial advisor and even bailed him out of jail on one
occasion. When he sent her to help Adele organize the Daughters, Marie Therese was appalled by Adele’s lack of structure and planning for her newborn order and spent many months helping her get started. Again, when Chaminade got ready to create the Society of Mary for priests and Brothers, it was Marie Therese he consulted on any number of issues even having her act as a negotiator when conflicts arose. And while all of this was going on, Marie Therese was herself busy establishing the Misericorde home and ministry to help women forced into prostitution to reform their lives. She was so beloved by her “filles” and the people whom she served that even in her lifetime she was known as the “Saint of Bordeaux.”
So why is  Marie Therese not seen as a  founder in most of the Marianist world? According to a document approved by the World Council of the Marianist Family in November 2017, it all seems to come down to a lack of words of identity. The document points out that:
“Marie Therese was not given the responsibility of defining the spirit of one or another of these branches, much less both."
No founding text was attributed to her.
Never was she referenced in the beginning as a foundress at the heart of one of the foundations.
None of the statuary texts of any of the branches mention Marie Therese among the founders.
Never  have any of her writings been incorporated into a corpus considered as constitutive of our charismatic identity.” ( 2)
Sigh.

I am sure  the governors of  such designations must be diligent in whom they elevate  to founder status, but in today's ecclesiastical world where we are struggling to recognize the value and role of the laity, it would seem Marie Therese de Lamourous’ life and work would be a shining model of the Marianist characteristic for Discipleship of Equals and warrants inclusion as a founder.
Joanne, at left, as her favorite founder
All that being said, I am sure that in her humility, Marie Therese would be honored to be a shadow figure, behind the scenes getting things done but allowing others to draw the attention…..sort of like her role model, Mary.  

 In her footsteps,
Joanne




Notes  
1. Joseph Stefanelli, SM Marie  Therese de Lamourous;  Firm of Hand, Loving of  Heart.
2. World Council of the Marianist Family, Nov 2017   Marie Therese Who Are  You?

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