An American Saint on the Fourth of July
A small tribute to Elizabeth Ann Seton
I’m spending this week at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, where I’m attending a residency—a combination symposium and workshop—sponsored by the Hildebrand Project, which is devoted to promoting the work of the 20th-century Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand. Although I still have some other demands on my time (such as those papers from a pair of online classes that I am, at this very moment, assiduously not grading), I am trying to stay as focused as possible in order to make some progress on a translation project during the week.
That doesn’t leave a lot of time for extra reading From My Bookshelf. The obvious thing to do, and my original plan, would be to write about the book I’m translating. Sooner or later—perhaps sooner!—I’ll still do that. But it occurred to me that today is the Fourth of July, and I thought perhaps I should come up with something a little more appropriate to the day.
I stumbled upon a solution during a half-hour spent browsing in the cleverly named BookMarx used bookstore in downtown Steubenville. I discovered a small pamphlet entitled Saint Elizabeth Seton: The Holiness of an American Woman, written by Sister Mary Schmidt and published in 1975, just ahead of the American bicentennial. Elizabeth Seton was born in 1774 in New York City, the first person born in what would soon become the United States to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. So I thought to myself: You’re spending a week at a Catholic university, she’s the first American-born saint, it’s the Fourth of July… you’ve got your topic.
A few years ago, en route with my family back home from northern Virginia, we stopped briefly at the National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in Emmitsburg, Maryland. I was sufficiently intrigued that I afterwards read Catherine O’Donnell’s biography, Elizabeth Seton: American Saint. (Itself an enjoyable book, worth reading.) Seton was in fact quite an interesting woman, with a life that is inspiring but also easy to sympathize with—a practical, determined, and in some ways, to borrow O’Donnell’s label, a very American saint.
She was born into a prominent and well-connected New York family just as the new nation was being founded. Indeed, she grew up in the same milieu as some rather important people. As Schmidt says, “she attended George Washington’s inaugural ball and was well acquainted with such political leaders as Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Gouverneur Morris, Van Rensselaer, et al.” For me, this makes her come alive in a way that more distant medieval figures do not.
She is accessible also, at least to this protestant reader, because before she ever founded a religious congregation, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph’s, and thus became “Mother Seton,” she was married and had five children. Her husband, William Seton, was a businessman, albeit not a particularly successful one. He suffered from tuberculosis, and in 1803 he traveled to Italy, hoping the climate would improve his health. Unfortunately, upon arrival he was quarantined—there had been a yellow fever in New York, and the Italian officials feared he might have it—and the cold, damp cell where he was held for a month almost certainly drove him to his grave. Elizabeth was left a young widow and single mother.
The trip changed her life in another way, because in Italy she became acquainted with Catholicism. Raised an Episcopalian, she joined the Catholic Church after her return to New York—not a popular decision among many of her family members and former acquaintances. Elizabeth Seton proved to be a rather determined woman, however. In addition to founding her religious community, the first established for women in the United States, she became especially devoted to education. The school she founded in Emmitsburg in 1810 was the first Catholic girls’ school in the country, and also the seed from which would eventually grow a large Catholic parochial school system.
She faced numerous challenges—continued alienation from family and former friends, the deaths of some of her own children, financial struggles, divisions within her community—before dying just over a decade later at the relatively young age of 46. But through it all, Seton displayed a combination of energy, determination, and entrepreneurialism that seems to mark her as distinctively American. Schmidt makes a similar point: “She proved to be typically American in her initiative and her drive for achievement against apparently hopeless odds.”
When Pope Paul VI canonized Mother Seton in 1975, he highlighted these same qualities, and I’ll close with his words:
Elizabeth Ann Seton is a saint. St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is an American. All of us say this with special joy, and with the intention of honoring the land and the nation from which she sprang forth as the first flower in the calendar of the saints. Elizabeth Ann Seton was wholly American! Rejoice for your glorious daughter. Be proud of her. And know how to preserve her fruitful heritage.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week for another installment From My Bookshelf.
Thank you for sharing! My favorite 4th of July post this year!
I enjoyed reading! I had not heard of her. Thanks for sharing 🙂