By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — When the young woman entered the convent to begin her life as a nun, the government was an opponent of the Catholic Church.
The convent’s residents knew they may have to move. The government was interested in the convent’s possessions.
It appeared that the local bishop was siding more with the government than with his own Catholic Church. The Vatican was displeased. It was a “collective time of darkness,” a speaker here said, but the Lord was raising up some great saints.
This may sound like the U.S. government under the Obama and Biden administrations taking such actions as hounding the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide abortifacients and contraceptives in their health insurance.
This may seem to reflect life in the United States or some other countries today. However, it was more than 100 years ago, in France. We hear much today about “woke” indoctrination even reaching into the U.S. military, but it’s not so unique.
Wikipedia recalls various details about Church and state relations shortly after the twentieth century began in France, saying that Prime Minister Emile Combes “was determined to defeat Catholicism thoroughly. . . .
“The Combes government worked with Masonic lodges to create a secret surveillance of all army officers to make sure that devout Catholics would not be promoted,” the article says.
“Exposed as the Affaire Des Fiches, the scandal undermined support for the Combes government, and he resigned,” Wikipedia says. “It also undermined morale in the army, as officers realized that hostile spies examining their private lives were more important to their careers than their own professional accomplishments.”
Although our own times may seem an echo of such persecution, a presentation given here on November 6 concentrated on the life of one courageous young French nun of that era, not its political events. She lived only 26 years, dying of Addison’s Disease in 1906. Her feast day is November 8.
Speaker Claire Dwyer said this is a disease that causes loss of ability to process food, leading to starvation.
Dwyer, who authored a book about the nun, St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, titled This Present Paradise (Sophia Institute Press), spoke at a presentation for the Institute of Catholic Theology (ICT). This is an evangelization program based at St. Thomas the Apostle Church here. Dwyer received her undergraduate degree in theology from the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio.
The book’s title calls on the fact that by virtue of people’s Baptism, the Trinity makes its home with them while still here on Earth. “We start that eternal exchange of love in this life,” Dwyer said.
However, she said, “We experience that now sometimes in blind faith,” because sometimes life doesn’t feel like paradise.
Answering an audience question later during the presentation, Dwyer said there are two camps of people, those who are big fans of St. Elizabeth, and those who never heard of her before, which previously was the case for Dwyer herself.
Earlier during her talk, Dwyer said the future saint’s father and grandfather, who lived with the family, both died when she was young, and her mother had to take Elizabeth and other daughter to live in an apartment in Dijon, France.
Born Elizabeth Catez, she became a Carmelite who was canonized in 2016. Like another Carmelite saint, Therese of Lisieux, Elizabeth had a temper when she was little but desired to bury her rage at the foot of the cross, said Dwyer, who showed her audience some photos of a frowning girl, as well as more attractive pictures.
At a young age Elizabeth “knew what God wanted from her,” but her mother forbade her entering the convent, Dwyer said, adding that “Elizabeth was obedient to her mother, which was incredibly painful.”
Elizabeth became an accomplished pianist and then, at age 18, her mother gave her permission for the convent, but not until she was 21, Dwyer said, explaining that the mother still hoped some other interest like a potential husband would intervene in her daughter’s life, but nothing else did.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth was learning “she could live as a Carmelite in the world,” Dwyer said.
When women enter the Carmelite convent, they really do die to the world, Dwyer said, showing a photo of Elizabeth as a bride of Christ in a white wedding dress, but it soon was replaced by wearing a coarse religious habit.
Elizabeth rarely traveled outside the convent and saw her family infrequently, Dwyer said. “They live a life apart from the world,” but offered up for the world, she said.
The future saint “entered a period of great aridity” spiritually, feeling no comfort from God, Dwyer said. “She approached her final vows in total darkness,” the kind of experience that St. John of the Cross wrote about.
Bill Marcotte, the assistant director of the ICT, commented to the audience, “The Lord allows the darkness to draw us closer to Him.” Marcotte said he has the feeling that “we’re entering a new age in the Church.”
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