Article Tools
- Text Size
- Add a comment (1)
- Print-Friendly
- Email this article
What is a prophet? A strident voice denouncing injustice? A wild-eyed visionary calling sinners to repentance?
These images hardly fit Katharine Drexel, a refined, wealthy woman who disliked being in the public eye and felt strongly attracted to hidden prayer. And yet, like the biblical prophets of old, this self-effacing heiress became a voice in the wilderness and a countercultural witness to the gospel call to justice.
Long before the U.S. civil rights movement was born, Katharine worked to abolish the racial discrimination that many white Americans had accepted as normal. Many believed what the American School of Ethnology then presented as science: that the country’s three main races belonged to separately created species and that blacks and Native Americans might not even be fully human.
Catholics were not immune to insidious attitudes of this kind. Once, riding a train home from a mission trip, Katharine met a priest who expressed surprise that the religious…
The full article is available to subscribers only
Access all articles, daily meditations and readings, as well as special resources, by becoming a subscriber. View subscription options.
Special Offer: Two week free web-only trial subscription. Sign up now.
Existing Print & Web-Only Subscribers: Login for full access.
INDEED MOTHER KATHARINE IS A SAINT...MAY THE LIFE SHE LED AND THE ORDER SHE ESTABLISHED SPUR US ALL TOWARDS THE LESS PRIVILEDGED AND THE NEEDY IN OUR SOCEITIES IN JESUS NAME. AMEN