Conviction and commitment, wit and wisdom: The gift of Josephine Van Dyke Brownson

Religious Education, Fall 2002 by Putrow, Mary L

Abstract

While wandering through the recesses of history one occasionally stumbles upon relatively uncelebrated persons whose contributions to the quality of life and faith of a given population merit attention. Their insights and experience have paved the way for continuing developments in religious education. One such person is Josephine Van Dyke Brownson.

In the Archdiocese of Detroit from 1906-1942 Josephine Brownson developed the Catholic Instruction League for the religious instruction of Catholic children attending public schools. Critical of the prevalent mode and content of religious instruction, by the time of her death she had written eleven books and had established seventy-five centers of instruction, enrolling fourteen thousand children.

In a past issue of Religious Education Lorna Bowman (1996, 324) reports on the life stories of selected women who are alumnae of Holy Child educational institutions in Nigeria. She writes, "It was my conviction that it would be a valuable contribution to the African Church and to the history of women's education to hear and record the stories of some of these Holy Child alumnae ......

While it is my hope that this piece will likewise contribute to the history of women in religious education and continue the conversation, I suggest two further contributions. First, research of this nature offers catechists and religious educators, most of whom are women, access to role models who in many cases were pilgrims of deep conviction and commitment, blazing the trail for the development of religious education and the preservation of the faith. Women's contributions to the field of religious education generally have been weakly chronicled save for a few articles and a recent book, Faith of our Foremothers: Women Changing Religious Education (Keely 1997).

Second, it is my hope that this research will spur others to examine the "hidden pieces" in the development of religious education within their own tradition and geographical situation. A recurrent metaphor found in feminist literature today is, "finding one's voice." I suggest that a challenge to women in religious education today, especially those with research skills, is to use their voices to reclaim the contributions of the voiceless of the past.

The intent of this research is to reclaim one such person, Josephine Van Dyke Brownson. Some may argue that because of her family background, educational opportunities, and contacts, she had a greater voice than most women. Nonetheless, although she died a little more than a half century ago and despite the role she played from 1906-42 in religious instruction in the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, few persons have heard of her. At the height of her work she had established 75 centers of religious instruction staffed by 454 catechists for some 14,000 young persons (Romig 1955, 6) and had published 11 books and several articles. She was a contemporary of the prominent Protestant religious educator, Sophia Fahs. Although their spheres of influence and educational opportunities differed considerably, Brownson's work and concerns paralleled those of Fahs. To note but one: while Fabs was seeking to enhance Biblical stories with missionary biography (Keeley 1997, 15), Brownson was attempting to enhance the doctrinal material of the Catechism with biblical stories. In summary, one might say that both of these women took the best they knew of education in general and applied it to religious instruction.

In 1948 Monica Porter attempted to convey Brownson's message to a limited audience when she wrote a small pamphlet about Brownson as part of a series offered by and to alumnae of the Sacred Heart Academies. In 1955 Walter Romig authored a book bearing her name as title; it is long since out of print. Several brief articles about her appeared during the time of her reception of the Laetare medal. A short piece appears in American Catholic Who's Who 1934-35 (Romig 1942-43) and also in Current Biography (1940). Tender (1990) has compiled references to her and her work from the Archives of the Archdiocese of Detroit and from the Archdiocesan weekly paper. These references provide skeletal information about Brownson. In only two historical works on religious education does one find her name mentioned.

In a sense one might assert that Brownson's life was orchestrated to be forgotten. She never married and, although one of seven siblings, had no nieces or nephews to preserve her story; as a lay woman she had no religious congregation archives to retain her memory, no strong voice was raised in her behalf after the death in 1968 of her sister Elizabeth, the last living member of the family. Elizabeth had begun but never finished the documentation to begin the process of beatification of Josephine (Shumaker 1997). Her books, writings, and other memorabilia were destroyed in a basement flood or distributed by Elizabeth after Brownson's death to various interested and mainly unidentified parties (Shumaker 1997). Until June 1998, no tombstone had marked her grave site.