A Foreign and Wicked Institution?

The Campaign Against Convents in Victorian England

Rene Kollar

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781606083369
  9781498252645
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876609
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Many in Victorian England harbored deep suspicion of convent life. In addition to looking at anti-Catholicism and the fear of both Anglican and Catholic sisterhoods that were established during the nineteenth century, this work explores the prejudice that existed against women in Victorian England who joined sisterhoods and worked in orphanages and in education and were comitted to social work among the urban poor. Women, according to some of these critics, should remain passive in matters of religion. Nuns, however, did play an important role in many areas of life in nineteenth-century England and faced hostility from many who felt threatened and challenged by members of female religious orders. The accomplishments of the nineteenth-century nuns and the opposition they overcame should serve as both an example and encouragement to all men and women committed to the Gospel.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Bishop William Ullathorne and His Defense of Convents
• Chapter 2: They Walled Up Nuns, Didn’t They?
• Chapter 3: Two Lectures at Bath
• Chapter 4: The Myth and Reality of Sr. Barbara Ubryk, the Imprisoned Nun of Cracow
• Chapter 5: An American “Escaped Nun” on Tour in England
• Chapter 6: Those Horrible Iron Cages
• Chapter 7: Flowers, Pictures, and Crosses
• Chapter 8: Magdalenes and Nuns
• Chapter 9: Foreign and Catholic
• Chapter 10: A Death in the Family
• Chapter 11: The Priest, the Nun, and Confession
• Chapter 12: Power and Control over Women in Victorian England
• Chapter 13: An Anglican Sisterhood and Auricular Confession
• Chapter 14: Giacinto Achilli versus the Roman Catholic Church