eBook

Elizabeth Seton

Catherine O'Donnell

2018

Overview

In 1975, two centuries after her birth, Pope Paul VI canonized Elizabeth Ann Seton, making her the first saint to be a native-born citizen of the United States in the Roman Catholic Church. Seton came of age in Manhattan as the city and her family struggled to rebuild themselves after the Revolution, explored both contemporary philosophy and Christianity, converted to Catholicism from her native Episcopalian faith, and built the St. Joseph's Academy and Free School in Emmitsburg, Maryland. Hers was an exemplary early American life of struggle, ambition, questioning, and faith, and in this flowing biography, Catherine O'Donnell has given Seton her due. O'Donnell places Seton squarely in the context of the dynamic and risky years of the American and French Revolutions and their aftermath. Just as Seton's dramatic life was studded with hardship, achievement, and grief so were the social, economic, political, and religious scenes of the Early American Republic in which she lived. O'Donnell provides the reader with a strong sense of this remarkable woman's intelligence and compassion as she withstood her husband's financial failures and untimely death, undertook a slow conversion to Catholicism, and struggled to reconcile her single-minded faith with her respect for others' different choices. The fruit of her labors were the creation of a spirituality that embraced human connections as well as divine love and the American Sisters of Charity, part of an enduring global community with a specific apostolate for teaching. The trove of correspondence, journals, reflections, and community records that O'Donnell weaves together throughoutElizabeth Seton provides deep insight into her life and her world. Each source enriches our understanding of women's friendships and choices, illuminates the relationships within the often-opaque world of early religious communities, and upends conventional wisdom about the ways Americans of different faiths competed and collaborated during the nation's earliest years. Through her close and sympathetic reading of Seton's letters and journals, O'Donnell reveals Seton the person and shows us how, with both pride and humility, she came to understand her own importance as Mother Seton in the years before her death in 1821.

• Publisher: Cornell University Press,Three Hills, an imprint of Cornell University Pres
• Subject: 1800s / 19th century / 19th century America / 19th century American culture / 19th century American economy / 19th century American expansion / 19th century American immigration / 19th century United States / 19th century US / American 1800s / American 19th century / American 19th century events / American 19th century history / American 19th century politics / American 19th century slavery / American 19th century society / American history / American Studies / Biography / BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Religious / BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Women / Canonization / Catholic / Christian martyrs / Christian saints / Christian saints biography / Christian saints-United States-Biography / Christianity / Conversion / Daughters of Charity / Education / Emmitsburg / First American-Born Saint / Founder / Gender studies / History / HISTORY / United States / 19th Century / HISTORY / Women / John Carroll / Maryland / Mother Seton / New York / NEW YORK HISTORY / Orphanage / Philanthropy / Pluralism / RELIGION / RELIGION / Christian Life / Women's Issues / RELIGION / Christianity / Saints & Sainthood / Religious / RELIGIOUS STUDIES / Saint / Saints & Sainthood / Seton, Elizabeth Ann, Saint, 1774–1821 / Sisters of Charity / SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies / st. patrick's day / United States / Widow / Women in American Catholicism / women's history month
• ISBN: 9781501726026, 1501726021, 9781501705786, 1501705784, 9781501726019, 1501726013