My Grand Mother Sister"Cecile" " The Sister of the Congregation of Montreal"Circa 1890

Good Evening CW Friends----(9:00 PM)2016-4-10
I am so excited when i want to share some priceless piece from my family history, some of you maybe exclaimed, wow this about time to follow on that, well to be honest with you i did't know i will share some personal item like that again, because to tell the truth, last year when i start share my family history i have comment very rude by some member here on CW, at that time i want to remove them from the site, but some good members contact me and help me with good word to go above those individuals, it's take me a while to come down, last Friday before seeing my friend i stop at the Bank to retrieve some archive and photograph, from my safety deposit box, this is one of them....;-)

This picture depicted my Grand Mother sister"Cecile" she decided to offer her life to the cause of " The Sister of the Congregation of Montreal", she enter the congregation in very young age(16), she like to travel, so this is a good opportunity, but the main reason really was, that this person want to help the poor, and by some mission in any part of the world, she always say to my Grand Mother, "do you need anything sister", i remember, i was like 6 or 7 years old, my mother gave me a "chaplet" and told me this Alain come from your Grand Mother Sister, she was a nun, I still have this priceless"Chaplet" somewhere, for sure one day this will be one post here.

This picture was from "Latendresse, artist Photograph, Quebec"
This photo measure 4 inch by 5.50 inch

This habit was worn by a Sister of the Congregation of Notre-Dame. The Congregation was founded in Montreal in 1652 by Marguerite Bourgeoys (1620-1700), who had come from France to the small settlement of Ville-Marie to establish a school. At that time there were few children to teach, so the Sisters helped the sick and needy. From this modest beginning, the Congregation of Notre-Dame grew into a well-respected teaching order.

-----------------Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal-----------------------

La Venerable Marguerite Bourgeoys by Pierre Le Ber in the possession of the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame, Montreal
The Congrégation de Notre Dame is a religious community for women founded in the colony of New France, now part of Canada, in 1658. It was established by Marguerite Bourgeoys, who created a religious community for women where the sisters were not confined to a convent but were allowed to live among and help the less fortunate. The Congregation held an important role in the development of New France, as it offered education to girls in their boarding school, watched over newly arrived women, to the colony and served as missionaries to the Aboriginal people. The community's motherhouse has been based in Montreal for over 350 years. Marguerite Bourgeoys was canonized in 1982 by the Roman Catholic Church as Canada's first woman saint.

-------------------------Origins of the Congregation-------------------------------

The Congrégation Notre-Dame was a previously well funded women’s religious order created in France by Pierre Fourier and Alix Le Clerc; it was committed to education through the organization of the Catholic Church. Bourgeoys joined the externe Congregation following a great spiritual experience in 1640 and a long search for a place within the more conventional contemplative women’s religious communities. As Bourgeoys helped in the Congregation of Notre Dame, she had a vision of a new kind of religious community for women. This new order took Mary, the mother of Jesus, as their role model, considering her to be an actor in the Bible together with Jesus and his apostles. Bourgeoys wanted the women of her new order to be active and among those who needed their help, and not cloistered in a convent waiting for the needy to come to them.

This vision, together with her experience in teaching and working in the Congregation of Notre Dame in Troyes, France and an invitation by Paul de Chomedey de Maisonneuve, inspired Bourgeoys to head to New France. There in 1657 she established an educative/proselytizing order for women: the Congregation of Notre Dame. The Congregation received civil recognition in 1671 from King Louis XIV and finally was granted official status by the Catholic Church in 1698: some 40 years after its creation and only two years before the death of Marguerite Bourgeoys.

-------------------------Controversy of the uncloistered-------------------------

The difficulties of establishing a non-cloistered religious order for women in 17th century New France were considerable. At the time, such independent action by women threatened some men, and the church preferred the regimen of the cloistered nun behind the walls of a convent.
Marguerite and the Sisters of the Congrégation de Notre-Dame broke this mold. Before 1698, the first two bishops of Quebec, François de Laval and Jean-Baptiste de La Croix de Chevrières de Saint-Vallier, were ambivalent about the Congregation, failing to understand their need to remain uncloistered. However, they did recognize the societal need for traveling teachers; they counted on Bourgeoys and her sisters to reach the small and dispersed population of Canada in these early years. The sisters were allowed to live a relatively uncloistered life. They were needed to take education to the children between Quebec and Montreal and beyond. If women were to be the educators, Laval and Saint-Vallier reluctantly recognized the sisters needed to be able to travel and live outside a convent.

By 1694 Bishop Saint-Vallier sent the Congregation a new constitution that imposed more restrictions. The sisters had enjoyed certain freedoms for approximately forty years, and resisted more restrictive and conventional rules.The constitution afforded the Congregation the right to officially declare vows, necessary to gain legitimacy in the frontier society and grow as an organization. It required the sisters to be obedient to and report directly to the bishop of Quebec. The document also required them to take solemn vows, attacked their more secular activities in the convent, and instituted the requirement of a dowry to be donated by new sisters. After a few years of resistance, in 1698 the sisters had to accept Saint-Vallier’s constitution; it had traditional requirements long enforced in Europe. Cloistering was a tradition used to safeguard the chastity of women religious, as well as to encourage a more prayerful way of life.

Courtesy of ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congregation_of_Notre_Dame_of_Montreal