Research Catalog

Title

Sister Thorn and Catholic mysticism in modern America / Paula M. Kane.

Author

Kane, Paula M.

Publication

Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2013]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xii, 313 pages : illustrations; 25 cm

Summary

"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"--

Uniform Title

Project Muse UPCC books.

Subject

• Reilly, Margaret, 1884-1937
• Sisters of the Good Shepherd > Biography
• Catholic Church > United States > History > 20th century
• 1900-1999
• HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Middle Atlantic (DC, DE, MD, NJ, NY, PA)
• Nuns > United States > Biography
• Stigmatization > United States > History > 20th century
• RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic

Genre/Form

• collective biographies.
• Biographies
• History
• Biographies.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-308) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Now you are my thorn, but soon you shall be my lily of delight : the transformation of Margaret Reilly -- The monastery is a hospital of spiritual sick : the lure of convent life -- Mad about bleeding nuns : Sister Thorn's champions -- We are skeptics together about a great many things : Catholics and the scientific study of stigmata -- Cor Jesu regnabit : devotional culture in American Catholicism -- It is beautiful to live with saints : the Americanization of modern sanctity -- Find sweet music everywhere : modern Catholic supernaturalism.

ISBN

• 9781469607603 (hardback)
• 1469607603 (hardback)

LCCN

^^2013015617

OCLC

838415411

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library