Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America

Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America

by Paula M. Kane
Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America

Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America

by Paula M. Kane

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

One day in 1917, while cooking dinner at home in Manhattan, Margaret Reilly (1884-1937) felt a sharp pain over her heart and claimed to see a crucifix emerging in blood on her skin. Four years later, Reilly entered the convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Peekskill, New York, where, known as Sister Mary of the Crown of Thorns, she spent most of her life gravely ill and possibly exhibiting Christ's wounds. In this portrait of Sister Thorn, Paula M. Kane scrutinizes the responses to this American stigmatic's experiences and illustrates the surprising presence of mystical phenomena in twentieth-century American Catholicism.
Drawing on accounts by clerical authorities, ordinary Catholics, doctors, and journalists—as well as on medicine, anthropology, and gender studies—Kane explores American Catholic mysticism, setting it in the context of life after World War I and showing the war's impact on American Christianity. Sister Thorn's life, she reveals, marks the beginning of a transition among Catholics from a devotional, Old World piety to a newly confident role in American society.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469626581
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 08/01/2015
Edition description: Reprint
Pages: 328
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Paula M. Kane is associate professor and John and Lucine O'Brien Marous Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

A Notorious Case of Bleeding 1

1 Now You Are My Thorn, but Soon You Shall Be My Lily of Delight 25

The Transformation of Margaret Reilly

2 The Monastery Is a Hospital of Spiritual Sick 64

The Lure of Convent Life

3 Mad about Bleeding Nuns 101

Sister Thorn's Champions

4 We Are Skeptics Together about a Great Many Thing 143

Catholics and the Scientific Study of Stigmata

5 Cor Jesu Regnabit 189

Devotional Culture in American Catholicism

6 It Is Beautiful to Live with Saints 217

The Americanization of Modern Sanctity

7 Find Sweet Music Everywhere 245

Modern Catholic Supernaturalism

Conclusion 260

Notes 267

Index 309

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Riveting. Kane's compelling narrative uses the story of a stigmatic nun to illuminate broader themes of convent culture, authority and resistance, and religion and science.--Kathleen Sprows Cummings, University of Notre Dame

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