Carol Bialock, RSCJ, is not a traditional nun. She is a poet, an activist and a student of Sufism, and she has spent her life deeply devoted to those in need. And now she is a published author as well, seeing her vivid book of poems, Coral Castles, released by Fernwood Press on her 90th birthday.
In 1818, Mother Rose Philippine Duchesne, of the newly-founded Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, left France to participate in the missionary expansion of the Catholic Church in the New World, at the request of Bishop Louis William Dubourg, named bishop of “Louisiana.” This vast area, acquired by the United States from France in 1803, extended over a territory of 530,000,000 acres (828,000 square miles), from New Orleans to Canada, including all the lands drained by the vast river system of the Mississippi and the Missouri, the future Midwest of the United States.
Grave on the Prairie, by Maureen J. Chicoine, RSCJ, is the story of the mission of the Society of the Sacred Heart to the Potawatomi in Kansas. Inaugurated by Philippine Duchesne in 1841, the mission lasted until 1879 when the religious of the Sacred Heart withdrew from Saint Marys, Kansas. The title refers to the grave of the seven RSCJ who died in Kansas.
Karen Olson, RSCJ, has written a life of Philippine for middle school children.The book is liberally illustrated with photos taken by Sister Olson during her travels to places where Philippine lived. The narrative is based on the standard biographies by Louise Callan and Catherine Mooney. It answers actual questions some middle school students posed to Sister Olson about Philippine’s life and personality and about canonization.
Edited by Juliet Mousseau, RSCJ, and Sarah Kohles
“Times Change,” written by Susan Putman Maxwell, RSCJ, is an apt description of the developments in schools of the Society of the Sacred Heart and other Catholic schools throughout the world in the era since the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church. In this book, the author, who has played a significant role in these developments, offers her memoir of the turbulence and the triumphs of this piece of educational history. She traces the development of the vision statement of Sacred Heart education against the background of the educational philosophy of the Society.
In time for its bicentennial celebration, the Society of the Sacred Heart published Saint Rose Philippine Duchesne: A Heart on Fire across Frontiers.
Two hundred years ago, Rose Philippine Duchesne set out across the Atlantic to establish the Society of the Sacred Heart and educate the children of North America. Opening the first Catholic school west of the Mississippi, Mother Duchesne, known as “the woman who prays always,” crossed frontiers to bring faith, love and education to the new world.
A group of mothers came together more than twenty years ago to pray for their children in the chapel of their school. Every week they gathered, praying the rosary fo the physical and spiritual safety of their children. The Mother's Rosary is the result of the love and devotion of these mothers. Now this book can serve as the catalyst for mothers to gather anywhere to pray for their children and to petition the aid of the Blessed Mother to help them be the best mothers possible.
Translated by Frances Gimber, RSCJ
The book relates the history of the Society of the Sacred Heart in the forty countries where it has been sent against the background of the social, political and economic, as well as religious, currents of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Religious of the Sacred Heart have had to confront liberalism and anti-clericalism, revolution, the effects of Nazism and Marxism, and world wars that destroyed their houses and scattered their members.
Edited by Kathleen Hughes, RSCJ, and Therese Fink Meyerhoff
This collection of essays features 55 members of the RSCJ sharing their answer to the most personal question: “How do you pray?” Their moving, personal answers provide an opportunity to look into your own interior life as they share how they move towards deeper communion with God.
