"We are definitely the pioneers of this movement": The Regis Lay Apostolate and the Origins of...

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Christopher Staysniak

American Catholic Studies, Volume 123, Number 4, Winter 2012, pp.45-65 (Article)

P bl h d b r n th l H t r l tDOI: 10.1353/acs.2012.0055

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45

"We are definitely the pioneers of this movement": The Regis Lay Apostolate and the Origins of Postgraduate Volunteerism,

1949-1972

Christopher Staysniak

The Regis Lay Apostolate was a pioneering postgraduate lay volunteer program that grew out of the heyday of Catholic Action and the lay apostolate in the mid-century American church. The program operated out of Regis College, an all-female school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph in Weston, Massachusetts. Under the vision of Sister Mary John Sullivan, the program ran from 1949 through 1972 and sent approximately 225 Regis graduates to serve at Catholic mission schools domestically and internationally. Sister Mary John and the Regis volunteers played an important role in spearheading and shaping a larger movement of postgraduate Catholic lay volunteers. This phenomenon remains a vibrant force in American Catholicism today, but has gone largely unstudied. As such, exploring the Regis Lay Apostolate as well as the motivations and experiences of its volunteers provides an important first step towards understanding the emergence, development, growth, and impact of the Catholic postgraduate volunteer model, and where it fits within the greater narratives of both Catholic American history and twentieth-century American volunteerism.

Introduction

In March 1954, Fleurette Arpin was a teacher of both religion and science at St. Catherine's, a Catholic mission school for Navajo and Apache children in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Fleurette's day-to-day experience at the school was very similar to that of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament with whom she lived and worked. She shared the same teaching duties, struggled with the restrictions of the school's shoestring budget, and like the nuns, her labor was essentially free. Fleurette received no compensation for her work besides room and board, a tiny stipend to cover living expenses, and the sense of satisfaction that came with serving St. Catherine's students, and in doing so, the larger Catholic Church. Despite these similarities, ________________________ Christopher Staysniak is a Ph.D. student studying American history at Boston College. His research focus is on both Catholic American history and American volunteerism. He is a graduate of Fairfield University, as well as the former Circulation Manager for Commonweal. He currently lives in Boston. For further comment on this article please contact the author: [email protected]. AMERICAN CATHOLIC STUDIES Vol. 123, No. 4 (2012): 45-65

46 American Catholic Studies

Fleurette was not a nun, nor was she teaching at St. Catherine's with the intention of ever becoming one. As a young, lay Catholic woman committing only a year instead of a lifetime to the church, Fleurette identified with a new phenomenon. As she wrote in a letter from this time, "We are definitely the pioneers of this movement and at times the going is rough. The sisters need us but they will have to learn to use us."1

The "movement" was the emergence of lay Catholic postgraduate volunteers like Fleurette in the early 1950s. Young Catholic women and men fresh out of college began committing one to two years of their lives to teach without wages alongside priests and nuns in impoverished Catholic mission schools across the nation and around the globe. True to her words, Fleurette was indeed in the forefront of this movement. She was a volunteer of the pioneering Regis Lay Apostolate, the small yet influential program whose origins, development, growth, and lasting impact are the focus of this article.

Based out of Regis College, then a school of approximately 700 young women run by the Sisters of St. Joseph located in Weston, Massachusetts, the Regis Lay Apostolate operated from 1949 to 1972. During this time approximately 225 Regis graduates volunteered to teach at Catholic mission schools in diverse locales, ranging from the South Pacific to South Carolina.2 Through their one- or two-year teaching commitments, these young women allowed numerous schools to keep operating and serving often impoverished students. Additionally, these Regis volunteers played an important role in spearheading and influencing a larger movement of postgraduate Catholic lay volunteers that remains a vibrant force in American Catholicism today. Until now, this Catholic volunteer phenomenon has gone largely unstudied. Thus, exploring the Regis Lay Apostolate and the motivations and experiences of its volunteers, like Fleurette Arpin, serves as an important first step towards understanding the emergence, development, and growth of this postgraduate phenomenon in respects to both Catholic American history and American volunteerism.

Origins of the Regis Lay Apostolate

Several dynamics within the mid-twentieth-century American Catholic Church served as important influences to the genesis of the

1. Fleurette Arpin to Sister Mary John Sullivan, March 21, 1954, Box 118, Folder 1, Regis College Archives Special Collections (RCA).

2. No central roster of Regis graduates who participated in the Regis Lay Apostolate has survived, if it ever existed, hence the estimated number of volunteers.

Staysniak/The Regis Lay Apostolate and Postgraduate Volunteerism 47

Regis Lay Apostolate. First and foremost, it was "an age in which the responsibilities of people in the pews were taken increasingly seriously."3 The 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s were a time of intense activity in the church, born of a larger "revival" of consciously Catholic culture that grew partially as a response to the troubling bigotry directed at Al Smith in the 1928 presidential campaign.4 Central to this shift was a call for Catholics to place their energies in "social, economic, educational, and cultural spheres," a mobilization that was interchangeably called Catholic Action or the lay apostolate.5 These ideas were heavily promoted by Pope Pius XI (1922-1939), and entered mainstream American Catholic discourse at the onset of the 1930s.6 At the core of these ideas was a broad challenge to lay Catholics to find concrete ways of participating in the wider "lay apostolate" of the church in their day-to-day lives. There was an ambiguity of just what constituted Catholic Action or participation in the lay apostolate, resulting in these umbrella terms becoming "the accepted way for bishops to describe whatever the laity were doing under their jurisdiction."7 As one magazine author wrote, "To obtain a clear picture of Catholic Action is difficult because it is not just one organization, but a whole host them."8 A few popular examples included the Catholic Youth Organization, Young Christian Workers, and the Christian Family Movement, not to mention innumerable smaller groups.9

As a subset of this larger impulse of Catholic Action and the lay apostolate, in the middle of the twentieth century there was a great deal of interest in the church's missionary work. Catholics could

3. Debra Campbell, "The Heyday of Catholic Action and the Lay Apostolate" in

Transforming Parish Ministry: The Changing Roles of Catholic Clergy, Laity, and Women Religious, eds. Jay P. Dolan, R. Scott Appleby, Patricia Byrne, and Debra Campbell (New York: Crossroad, 1989), 222.

4. Philip Gleason, Contending with Modernity: Catholic Higher Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 146. For more on the background of Catholic Action, as well as its influence at American Catholic colleges, see, 152-166.

5. Ibid., 153. 6. Campbell, 225. 7. Ibid. 8. R.M. Vandergift,O.P., "Age of the Laity," Dominicana 43 (summer 1958): 149-158. 9. Campbell, 232. See also Charles Curran, "The Social Mission of the Catholic

Church in the First Part of the Twentieth Century," in The Social Mission of the U.S. Catholic Church: A Theological Perspective (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011); Mary Irene Zotti, "The Young Christian Workers," U.S. Catholic Historian 9 (fall 1990): 387-400; Florence Henderson Davis, "Lay Movements in New York City during the Thirties and Forties," U.S. Catholic Historian 9 (fall 1990): 401-418.


subscribe to a host of mission-focused magazines, among them Catholic Missions, Jesuit Missions, Marist Missions, and Extension Society Magazine.10 Catholic grade school children "saved their pennies in mite boxes" in order to help "pagan babies" in China.11 One of the strongest displays of this missionary zeal was the Catholic Students' Mission Crusade (CSMC). Founded in 1920 with aims to "educate American Catholic youth about the work of missions . . . and to bolster the support of the missions among Americans," the CSMC became a tremendous organization with nationwide reach.12 By the late 1940s, the CSMC had established chapters – or "units" – in Catholic seminaries, elementary schools, high schools, and colleges across the country. The group published a magazine of its own, The Shield, held mass rallies that drew tens of thousands, and claimed membership of over one million members.13

Immediately following World War II, this attentiveness to the missions received an additional boost. The United States as a whole experienced what Seth Jacobs described as "a remarkable surge of religious interest inextricably bound up with the anxieties and imperatives of the cold war."14 With the onset of the Cold War, "Catholics viewed Christianity as the light confronting the darkness of godless communism." The "Cold War Missionary" became a frontline soldier in this international struggle.15 Within this early Cold War context, Catholic missionary activities took on new urgency. Religious communities sent more sisters, priests, and brothers overseas.16 In a reflection of these expanded missionary labors, the American bishops in 1949 created the Mission Secretariat, a national office to coordinate and manage the manifold and multiplying mission activities.17 For Catholic laity, providing auxiliary support to the missions by donating funds or offering prayers was another means by which they could actively assist in the work of the church under the rubric of Catholic Action and the lay apostolate.

10. Angelyn Dries, OSF, The Missionary Movement in American Catholic History (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1998), 347-351.

11. Ibid., 134-137. 12. David J. Endres, American Crusade: Catholic Youth in the World Mission

Movement from World War I through Vatican II (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2010), ix.

13. Ibid., x. 14. Seth Jacobs, American's Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Race, and

U.S. Intervention in Southeast Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 61. This phenomenon is the focus of chapter 2 of the book, "'Our System Demands the Supreme Being': America's Third Great Awakening," 60-87.

15. Dries, 144. 16. Ibid., 152. 17. Ibid., 152-155, 160-166.


But in these same postwar years, between this upswing in mission activities overseas and a booming Catholic population back home, the American church abruptly ran into a relative shortage of sisters. Even though religious vocations saw an absolute increase, the expanded ranks of nuns could not keep up with an ever widening gap between supply and demand. In the decade after World War II the number of American nuns grew overall by twenty-one percent. But as the baby boom took off, the student population they were expected to teach grew approximately ten times faster.18 This was a significant development as nuns were crucial to the success of Catholic schools, which were able to operate on significantly slimmer budgets compared to their non-Catholic counterparts because of the very low wages paid to the sisters who staffed them. In some instances the stipends nuns received were so low that they had to find other income generating activities on top of their teaching duties.19 Even among religious ranks, nuns were paid significantly less than teaching priests and brothers. Men religious were a "luxury to be replaced whenever possible with less expensive sisters" when staffing Catholic schools.20

Reflecting this relative shortfall of nuns, the influence of the lay apostolate, and the church's reenergized postwar missionary efforts in the late 1940s, both clergy and laity alike began to rally around a need for lay missionaries. As far as Catholics were concerned, it was a relatively unorthodox idea. Direct mission work had traditionally been the domain of priests, brothers, and sisters, while laity held more of a supporting role through organizations like the CSMC. But this would no longer be the case as new times demanded new measures. As one January 1949 article in Catholic Mission Digest described, missionary work was now a "challenge" for the laity. Given "an inadequate number of priests and nuns . . . it is simply impossible for them to do everything that must be done, especially in the present crucial time."21

It was these larger influences that primed Regis College for the chain of events that would ultimately result in the formation of its Lay Apostolate in November 1949. The individual spark came from a professor of English at Regis, Sister Mary John. Described in one 1963

18. Mary J. Oates, The Catholic Philanthropic Tradition in America (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1995), 135. 19. Amy L. Koehlinger, The New Nuns: Racial Justice and Religious Reform in the

1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 26. 20. Oates, Catholic Philanthropic Tradition, 154. See also Patricia Byrne, "Saving

Souls and Educating Americans, 1930-1945" in Transforming Parish Ministry, 123-124.

21. N. Maestrini, "Challenge to Lay Apostles; Abridged," Catholic Mission Digest, January 1949, 1-5.


article as "a big person . . . with big ideals,"22 this charismatic visionary had the single most decisive impact on the creation and growth of the program. Born Margaret Agnes Sullivan of Irish immigrants in 1907, she was raised in Merrimac, Massachusetts, the only girl in a family of boys. She had remarkable intellectual abilities, as evidenced by her unusually prestigious schooling when compared to other lay Catholic women of her generation. She attended Trinity College in Washington, DC, as an undergraduate, received her M.A. in English from Boston College, and earned a Ph.D. in English from Catholic University, the last degree attained after she had entered her religious community.23 Even among Catholic women religious, Sister Mary John's training was exceptional. She received her last degree approximately a decade before reforms in the 1950s profoundly changed – and improved – the training and education American sisters received.24

As devout as she was intellectual, after both high school and college she attempted to enter religious life. Her father, perhaps wanting to keep her close after the premature death of her mother, rebuffed her on two occasions. The third time around, between her M.A. and Ph.D. studies, he acquiesced and she entered the Sisters of St. Joseph, taking the name Sister Mary John. Upon completing her doctorate in 1942, she was assigned as an English professor to Regis College, founded by the Sisters of Saint Joseph in 1927.25 She had a keen ability to connect with students that was quickly recognized by Sister Honora, the school's president. Soon after Sister Mary John's arrival, Sister Honora called on her to "give witness to Christ . . . and to work with students so they would be imbued with His love and His concern for those in need of help."26 Sister Mary John responded to her superior's charge by organizing the college's own Mission Unit, demonstrating her own interest in Catholic missions, as well as the prevailing influence of the lay apostolate and contemporary missionary enthusiasm.

From its creation in 1942, under Sister Mary John's guidance the Mission Unit become one of the school's most popular student clubs.

22. "Can Teach-Will Travel," Columbia, July 1963, 17-20, 39-40. 23. Courtney Lynn Carlson, "Women Responding to their Call to Action: The Lay

Apostolate Program of Regis Massachusetts, 1950-1972" (master's thesis, University of Dayton, 1998), 37-40; Untitled Memoir, Sister Mary John, Box 116, Folder 1, RCA; Sister Mary John's dissertation was entitled "A Study of the Themes of the Sacred Passion in the Medieval Cycle Plays" (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1943).

24. For more see Koehlinger, 24-40. 25. Carlson, 38. 26. Untitled Memoir, Sister Mary John, Box 116, Folder 1, RCA.


Its very first meeting drew 176 members, approximately one-fourth of the entire student body.27 The organization supported Catholic missions through a myriad of fundraising, social, and devotional activities. Among these efforts, the young women of the Mission Unit organized dances, put on plays, and published and sold a bi-weekly student newspaper, the Mighty Mite. The annual high point of the club's work was "Mission Week." Taking place in the fall semester during the 1940s, the event entailed a week of mission-centered activities, replete with devotions, guest missionary speakers, and numerous fundraising sales.28

In November 1949, Sister Mary John and the women of Regis' vibrant Mission Unit were presented with a unique opportunity in regard to the missions. It began with a letter to Sister Mary John from Sister Inez Underwood, R.S.M., a "very dear friend and former classmate" from their respective Ph.D. studies at the Catholic University of America. Sister Inez wrote from Guam, where she was in charge of the Sisters of Mercy community and their mission work on the island.29 She had planned to open a Catholic mission school the upcoming fall, but as she wrote to her friend at Regis, "I am not going to be able to do it without some help."30 She was short-staffed. Unable to find a spare sister, she urged her friend Sister Mary John to join her in the Pacific.31 Sister Inez was most likely aware that her friend had long harbored an interest in the missions. Not only was she the advisor of Regis' Mission Unit, during her undergraduate years she had been an active leader of Trinity College's "Wekanduits" (We can do it) mission club. As tempting as the offer may have been to head to the tropics, especially in the midst of New England November weather, Sister Mary John was committed to Regis, and she declined the personal invitation.32

27. Regis Herald, November 11, 1942, RCA. 28. 1946 Mission Week Schedule, Regis Lay Apostolate Scrapbook, RCA; Program

for "The Mission of Regis College presents The Women Wrapped in Silence by Reverend John W. Lynch," Regis Lay Apostolate Scrapbook, RCA; Mighty Mite, March 1947, Regis Lay Apostolate Scrapbook, RCA.

29. Untitled history of Regis Lay Apostolate, Sister Mary John, Box 116, Folder 2, RCA.

30. Sister Inez to Sister Mary John, November 13, 1949, Box 116, Folder 17, RCA. 31. Ibid. 32. Untitled history of Regis Lay Apostolate.


Sister Mary John speaks with two Regis graduates

about to embark on their volunteer year. Photo courtesy of Regis College Archives, Regis College, Weston, MA.

But the matter did not end there. Sister Mary John had a back-up

plan in mind. She took Sister Inez's letter to one of her English classes and inquired what they thought could be done to address the situation. From the back of the room, one student suggested, "Send a substitute!"33 The rest of the class readily agreed, and they did not mean finding another nun. Putting the ideology of Catholic Action and the lay apostolate into action, they believed that one of them could go to Guam to ensure that the school would open as scheduled. This classroom outbreak of lay empowerment apparently aligned with Sister Mary John's intentions, as she replied to her students' suggestion, "That's just I wanted to hear."34

Regis Lay Apostolate and the Volunteer Experience

Sister Mary John soon found her "substitute," graduating senior and president of the Mission Unit, Marie McCormick. Before McCormick embarked for Guam, though, she, Sister Inez, and Sister

33. Marguerite Flavin, "Lay Apostolate – A Tradition of Service," Regis Today, fall

1985, 6-7; "Can Teach-Will Travel," 17-20, 39-40. 34. Flavin, 6-7; "Can Teach-Will Travel," 17-20, 39-40.


Mary John first had to figure out the logistics of their innovative plan because they had little precedent to follow. They eventually decided that McCormick's commitment would be for one year, with the option to stay longer if she so desired. It would be a volunteer year, as Sister Inez could not pay McCormick any more than she could have a nun, which was not much at all. McCormick would receive room, board, and a small living stipend. The funds to pay for her travel expenses to Guam were to be raised through the fundraising activities of Regis' Mission Unit. Sister Inez and the Sisters of Mercy were responsible for providing McCormick's transportation home. This improvised arrangement for Regis' first lay missionary subsequently became the model for all Regis volunteers who would later follow in McCormick's footsteps.

Apart from these practical details, McCormick also had to address the concerns of her father. He expressed understandable parental hesitation at the idea of his daughter going off into the far reaches of the Pacific. Despite his concerns, faith played a large role in his ultimate support of her decision to give a year of her life to the church. He wrote to her, "If Christ could give up His life in heaven for thirty years and then suffer a . . . painful death for us, then giving a year from our life surely is a small payment."35 Having alleviated her parents' concerns, in May 1950 McCormick headed to teach freshmen and sophomore girls at Our Lady of Guam, beginning this lay volunteer experiment.36

Once on the island, along with the demands of teaching, McCormick came face-to-face with her own relative privilege in comparison to the poverty she witnessed. "We Catholic college graduates have everything," she wrote, "and millions have nothing."37 She also learned to live with unfamiliar daily challenges such as frequent power failures, inconsistent running water, and as she bemoaned, "lots of mosquitoes and ants and insects."38 Despite these inconveniences, McCormick truly took to her volunteer experience. She enjoyed her work, and found the native Guamanians to be "very friendly, very generous, and most loving and thoughtful."39 Indeed, in December 1950, halfway through her first year, she informed Sister Mary John that she was going to stay for another. Explaining her

35. Pa to [Marie], February 17, 1950, Box 116, Folder 17, RCA. 36. The Academy of Our Lady of Guam remains a fully functioning all-girls Catholic

school. See "About Us," Academy of Our Lady of Guam, accessed March 23, 2012. http://www.aolg.edu.gu/.

37. Marie to Sister [Mary] John, Box 116, Folder 17, RCA. 38. Marie to Sister [Mary] John, Box 116, Folder 17, RCA. 39. Marie to Katie and Suzanne, March 1951, Box 116, Folder 17, RCA.


decision, she wrote, "I promised God a year – and I want to give him two . . . I want to return his graciousness in my own small way."40

McCormick's time in Guam was both a personal and a programmatic success, for her volunteer year immediately became a model for other graduates to follow. The regular letters she wrote back to Sister Mary John and her friends in the Mission Unit served as inspiration to others. In the summer of 1951 two more Regis women, Suzanne Gill and Marie O'Connell, came to Guam to bolster the staff at Our Lady of Guam.41 In the following years more Regis seniors sought out Sister Mary John to participate in this new volunteer postgraduate path. From Sister Inez's predicament, Sister Mary John's vision, and McCormick's willingness, a new program, quickly named the Regis Lay Apostolate, was born.

Publication showing the first participants in the Regis Lay Apostolate. Marie

McCormick is pictured in the center, and Fleurette Arpin is directly below her. Photo courtesy of Regis College Archives, Regis College, Weston, MA.

40. Marie to Sister [Mary] John, December 13, 1951, Box 116, Folder 15, RCA. 41. Untitled history of Regis Lay Apostolate.


During the 1950s, the great majority of Regis volunteers did not end up working in Pacific island locales like Guam. Most taught in schools that served impoverished children of marginalized, nonwhite populations within the borders of the United States. For example, in the 1956-1957 school year, sixteen Regis graduates volunteered for the Lay Apostolate. Seven were divided among two schools in New Mexico that taught Native American children. Six others were split between two El Paso, Texas, schools that served predominantly Mexican and Mexican-American populations. One volunteer taught at St. Ann's in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a rare integrated Southern school. The last two ended up in chillier country, educating Native Alaskan children at the Copper Valley School in rural Glenallen, Alaska.42 It would not be until the 1960s that Regis volunteers headed to more international locations. This shift in school placements most likely occurred as word of the program reached missionaries overseas, as well as the impact of the Peace Corps, founded in 1961. Between these influences, by the second decade of the program's existence, Regis graduates could be found in Jamaica, Taiwan, Chile, Bolivia, and Micronesia, helping resource-strapped mission schools make ends meet.43

Regis graduate Irene Demers Lamson '60 with her students in La Paz, Bolivia.

Photo courtesy of Regis College Archives, Regis College, Weston, MA.

42. 1956-1957 Regis Lay Apostolate Roster, Special Collection Box 905.06, RCA;

Untitled history of Regis Lay Apostolate. The Copper Valley School in Alaska, at which two Regis volunteers taught, is a remarkable side story in itself. For more, see "School in Alaska Built by Priest," New York Times, November 11, 1956, 127.

43. "Can Teach-Will Travel," 17-20, 39-40; Untitled memoir of Regis Lay Apostolate.


The majority of Regis' volunteers were native to New England, and came from blue collar, lower-middle-class, and middle-class families.44 For many, serving in the Regis Lay Apostolate was a matter of Catholic faith and Christian charity, their way of serving in the larger lay apostolate of the church. As one alumna of the program recounted, she and her peers volunteered "To give a year of our lives for the good of the church and the glory of God!"45 Sister Mary John shared these sentiments. As she succinctly said in one speech, the Regis Lay Apostolate was simply "the apostolate of the laity, in action."46 Many volunteers also saw their work as a necessity due to an insufficiency of nuns. Mary Reynolds, who taught in Hobbs, New Mexico, for the 1958-1959 school year, revealingly wrote years after her experience: "at the time I volunteered for the lay apostolate there seemed to be a shortage of women religious. . . We were there to do the work of a school teacher, thus keeping the school open until nuns were available."47 For many volunteers, it was clearly their Catholic faith and the perceived needs of their church as they understood them that served as incentive enough to travel so far away and work so demanding a year without pay.

Yet, faith alone was not the sole motivation. As Mary J. Oates has written, "The message that approved life options were either marriage or convent came to Catholic college women from the wider church community throughout the 1950s."48 The reality was not so stark, but for Regis graduates, as well as college-educated women as a whole, postgraduate opportunities at this time were limited in many ways.49 In this context the Regis Lay Apostolate provided its volunteers with a unique volunteer opportunity to live fairly independently, immersed in a different culture in exotic places. Regis graduates could travel and see the world in a way that may not have been otherwise possible at that point in their lives. Furthermore, since the experience was viewed as a service to the church, the volunteer year was not only a socially acceptable decision; it was one worthy of praise. This was evidenced by the laudatory newspaper articles that appeared throughout the greater Boston area every spring congratulating the

44. Survey of Regis College Lay Apostolate Alumnae, 1998, 905.07, RCA. 45. Ibid. 46. "Christian Leadership – A Challenge to the Colleges," N.C.E.A. Meeting, Grand

Rapids, Michigan, Box 116, RCA. The emphasis is my own. 47. Survey of Regis College Lay Apostolate Alumnae, 1998. 48. Mary J. Oates, "The Development of Catholic Colleges for Women, 1895-1960,"

U.S. Catholic Historian 7 (fall 1988): 419. 49. For example, see discussion in Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the

Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin, 2000), 40-43.


newest crop of Regis volunteers.50 One former volunteer called the experience a "respectable way to leave home before marriage";51 another saw it as an "opportunity for adventure."52 It was a mix of religious, charitable, and personal motivations that inspired Regis women, a formula that differed from volunteer to volunteer. Sister Mary John seemed to grasp this cocktail of incentives as well, as seen in one of her brochures for the program. She cited both "doing Christ's work on earth," and "a wonderful adventure" as reasons to spend a year teaching in mission schools.53

While many newspaper and magazine articles referred to them as "lay missionaries," the Regis women were foremost teachers, and this role defined their volunteer experience above all else. Teaching in itself was demanding, and the difficulties of the job were often further compounded by the limited resources of the schools in which they served, making for some noteworthy challenges. One volunteer serving in Augusta, Georgia, in 1952, wrote to Sister Mary John and vented about her own peculiar conundrum. She exclaimed, "I have 12 first graders and 18 second graders in the same room and yegods!, [sic] it is quite a strain on my energy to keep one side quiet and teach the other simultaneously."54 They learned on the job, as the extent of their training for the year consisted of a simple three-part verbal contract made with Sister Mary John. They had to remember that they were serving the church, promise to make the best of the situation at their placement school, and be mindful that they were "to serve and not lead."55 Some found this dearth of preparation to be a real shortcoming to the volunteer year.56 But given the diversity of locations and circumstances in which they collectively served, it is doubtful that any training could have fully prepared them for the work to which they had committed.

They taught all subjects and all grade levels from elementary through high school. For many, their duties extended beyond the classroom to various other extracurricular activities. These ranged from coaching athletic teams to daily administrative tasks, music

50. "11 of Regis Class of 148 Will Travel to Teach the Underprivileged," Boston

Globe, June 9, 1965, 13; "Swansea Regis College Graduate Volunteers for Year of Teaching in Kaneohe, Hawaii," The Anchor, October 24, 1963, 5; "Marianna Doyle Puerto Rican Apostle," Malden Press, April 7, 1960, 1.

51. Survey of Regis College Lay Apostolate Alumnae, 1998. 52. Ibid. 53. Undated Regis Lay Apostolate Program Flyer, Special Collection Box 905.06,

RCA. 54. Polly to Sr. John, Feast of St. Raphael, Box 117, Folder 5, RCA. 55. Sister May John, C.S.J., "The Fields Are White," Box 116, Folder 5, RCA. 56. Survey of Regis College Lay Apostolate Alumnae, 1998.


lessons, manual cleaning and upkeep of the school and, for one young woman who taught in Alaska, skinning moose meat for the teaching community.57 In a 1966 interview for The Boston Sunday Herald, Susan Curtin, also teaching in Alaska, illustrated the many roles that a Regis volunteer teacher might potentially fill. She was the "assistant dean of high school students, home economics teacher, drama coach, and physical education teacher." She added that between her many duties, it was "hard to separate teaching from social work."58

In a 1960 letter to Sister Mary John, four volunteers teaching on the island of St. Thomas declared, "We consider ourselves very lucky, in spite of the cockroaches."59 Even with the many challenges, discomforts, and relative penury of the Lay Apostolate, the year tended to be very rewarding and gratifying to the volunteers. Most grew to love their schools, their students, their host communities, and the new cultures in which they lived. Many often stayed for more than one year, and when their time inexorably drew to a close, they lobbied Sister Mary John in their letters to make sure there was another senior at Regis to take their place. The monetary benefits of the year were nonexistent, but it was the emotional, developmental, and experiential gains that constituted the volunteers' true compensation. For these young Catholic women, the Regis Lay Apostolate was a remarkable opportunity to both serve the church's lay apostolate and broaden their own worlds with a unique experience, whether they ate raw fish on the beaches of the Eastern Caroline Islands, or munched on mooseburger under the Northern Lights.60 In her efforts to encapsulate the impact of her volunteer year, Maryetta Lucero described her time as "one of the most romantic, idealistic, difficult, emotional, delightful, and memorable years in my life. . . . Like Alice in wonderland, we stepped into a completely new world."61

As testament to the aptitude, work ethic, and dedication of the volunteers, for the most part their services garnered high praise from the heads of the schools at which they taught. As one grateful mission school staff member wrote back to Sister Mary John, "The girls are admirable in their generosity and devotion . . . Our Lord made the

57. Survey of Regis College Lay Apostolate Alumnae, 1998; "Her Freshman Soft-ball

Team," Regis Lay Apostolate Scrapbook, RCA. 58. "Lay Apostle Susan in Land of Muktuk," The Boston Sunday Herald, February

27, 1966, 6-8. 59. Valerie, Eileen, Jean, and Julie to Sister [Mary] John, September 26, 1960, Box

117, Folder 24, RCA. 60. Judy O'Toole Booklet, Box 116, Folder 22; "Lay Apostle Susan in Land of

Muktuk." 61. Maryetta Lucero to Sr. Mary John, 1963, Box 116, Folder 4, RCA.


touchdown with the help of a winning team from New England."62 For most, the relationship between these young women and the priests and nuns with whom they served was a symbiotic affair, as all were bonded by a shared sense of mission. One volunteer teaching in Georgia remarked in a letter, "I like working with the nuns, for we're all working for the same Boss." But for volunteers, priests, and nuns alike, the novelty of the Regis Lay Apostolate created new and unfamiliar dynamics that, if not navigated carefully, carried all sorts of potential for conflict.

In many instances, friction between volunteers and their hosts was a product of trial and error as both parties tried to figure out how to negotiate new dynamics. Even though everyone worked for "the same Boss," the volunteers were not always suited to the same lifestyle as the nuns and priests with whom they lived and worked. One letter to Sister Mary John from a New Mexico mission school illustrated these low-intensity growing pains. A nun diplomatically wrote, "As you know, the matter of housing the girls in the convent with the sisters did not offer the most compatible arrangement and was abandoned in the fall." She added that "our advancement is sometimes by our mistake."63

Other instances of friction were a little more dramatic. In early 1962 Sister Mary John received a letter from a Father Maclellan of St. Michael's School in rural Levelland, Texas, where she had sent three volunteers. He reported, "To say that relationships between the girls and myself had become strained is an understatement."64 Illustrating some of the tensions of the new lay volunteer model, the issue stemmed from the fact that his new teachers from Regis had taken to going to bars on weekend nights. Out on the town, they often met with young men from a nearby army base. While this behavior was not atypical or outrageous for these young women by any means, Father Maclellan found their conduct to be quite to the contrary of what he expected of them. When he demanded they change their habits, disharmony ensued at St. Michael's. Father Maclellan ultimately had to realize that his volunteers were not nuns, nor would they behave as such. As lay volunteers, they were part of something new, and he had to adapt accordingly. As he later admitted in the same letter, "The girls were not what I expected, but they were and are exactly what they should be: good Catholic girls, normal, young girls, hard workers out to do some good for the Church."65

62. Advertising pamphlet for Regis Lay Apostolate, RCA. 63. Sr. Helena to Sister [Mary] John, March 28, 1961. Box 117, Folder 8, RCA. 64. Fr. Maclellan to Sr. Mary John, January 18, 1963. Box 118, Folder 3. RCA. 65. Ibid.


Growth and Influence

From an organizational and institutional standpoint, the Regis Lay Apostolate never consisted of more than the indefatigable Sister Mary John. She viewed her work essentially as a "grass-roots, people-to-people activity . . . unhampered by organization."66 Instead of building an institution, she wanted to help forge a larger lay Catholic volunteer movement that would not be dependent on any single person or program. This vision subsequently guided her efforts to build a movement in an organic, unsystematic way.

For instance, Sister Mary John did not "market" the Regis Lay Apostolate and the availability of volunteers to mission schools, dioceses, or religious orders. Heads of mission schools in need found out about this staffing lifeline on their own. They might have heard through word of mouth, read about it in article, run across a Regis volunteer at another school, or heard Sister Mary John at one of her many speaking engagements. However it happened, once mission school staff knew of the program, they had to make first contact with Sister Mary John and explain why their school should be a destination for Regis' limited ranks of lay volunteers. Most wrote letters describing their situation, and in many instances cited a lack of nuns as the reason for their staffing difficulties. One lay businessman in New Mexico wrote in a 1951 letter, "The problems of obtaining teaching sisters appears insurmountable and I am convinced the inception of your program must have been directed by God and could well be the solution to our blackened horizons."67 A few chose to go the extra mile and make their case in person, like the Rev. Gerrard McDaniel. In 1955, he made the long trip from El Paso, Texas, to Weston, Massachusetts. He walked right onto the Regis campus "with a roll of blueprints under his arm" for the school he planned, knowing he needed Regis volunteers to help realize his goal.68 Unfortunately, many of these pleas went unfulfilled, as Sister Mary John always had more requests than volunteers available.

The impact and influence of the Regis Lay Apostolate was not limited to the good works of the approximately 225 Regis graduates who volunteered over the course of the program's existence. It was not long after its creation that its influence began to ripple outwards from the confines of its campus, presenting Sister Mary John with the

66. Sister M. John, C.S.J., "Ten Years Later: The Collegiate Lay Teaching Apostolate," Catholic Charities Review, January 1961, 6-8.

67. Walker Famariss, Jr. to Sister Lucilla (President of Regis College), August 21, 1951, Box 117, Folder 8, RCA.

68. Untitled history of Regis Lay Apostolate.


opportunity to build and shape a wider movement as she so desired. Only a few years after Marie McCormick went to Guam, word of the pioneering path some of the Regis graduates were embarking upon began to spread throughout the Boston Archdiocese. Subsequently, Catholic seniors from nearby colleges began to contact Sister Mary John and ask if they, too, could participate. Faced with a constant overabundance of requests for help from beleaguered schools, Sister Mary John was more than happy to oblige these willing outside students. By the middle of the 1950s, Catholic graduates from nearby Catholic and non-Catholic schools – including Merrimack, Bridgewater State, Lowell State, College of Our Lady of the Elms, and Sacred Heart – had gone to teach at mission schools in the name of the Regis Lay Apostolate.69 As Sister Mary John kept no substantive records of these outside volunteers, at least none that have survived, very little is known about them.

What is known, though, is that due to their involvement, Regis soon became the epicenter of a much wider regional movement of lay Catholic postgraduate volunteers. One 1957 article from Boston College's newspaper, The Heights, illustrated this evolution of the Regis Lay Apostolate in one advertisement that called for volunteers to serve in "the under-staffed mission schools in and around the United States." Tellingly, the article referred to Sister Mary John as "the organizer of the Lay Apostolate in the Boston area."70 Some area schools, like Boston College and Anna Maria College, after having graduates volunteer through Regis, began lay volunteer programs of their own using the Regis Lay Apostolate as a model.71 This regional development was further illustrated in a February 1966 article from The Boston Sunday Herald. The author cited Regis as the birthplace of a "larger lay apostolate movement" which in that year placed "90 graduates from Greater Boston . . . in different parts of the world."72

Through an ambitious speaking schedule, Sister Mary John reached an even wider national audience of Catholic colleges and universities.73 She presented the Regis Lay Apostolate as a model low-cost, high-impact lay volunteer venture that other schools could replicate. At schools like Emmanuel in Boston, the College of St.

69. "Lay Apostle Susan in Land of Muktuk." 70. "Teachers Need for Missions in America," The Heights, March 8, 1957. 71. "People Helping Out . . . The Lay Apostolate," The Heights, October 30, 1964;

"Teachers Need for Missions in America," The Heights, March 8, 1957; Sister Margaret Cantwell, S.S.A. in collaboration with Sister Mary George Edmond, S.S.A., North to Share: The Sisters of Saint Ann in Alaska and Yukon Territory (Victoria: Sisters of St. Ann, 1992), 207.

72. "Lay Apostle Susan in Land of Muktuk." 73. "Report on Lectures on The Lay Apostolate," Box 116, RCA.


Theresa in Winona, Minnesota, Mundelein College in Chicago, and Albertus Magnus in New Haven, she addressed student audiences directly and called on them to volunteer and help meet the need of mission schools, inspiring some as she had inspired her students back at Regis.74 At conferences, she was able to connect directly with leaders and administrators at Catholic colleges. Under these circumstances, she often presented the workings of the Apostolate: how it began, how it was funded, how to work with mission schools, the process of recruiting volunteers, and other operating details. She would then challenge those in attendance to return to their home institutions and follow her example, having already laid out the need of the mission schools, and given her audience a veritable step-by-step guide of how to respond. Speaking to a gathering of the National Catholic Educational Association, she stated, "What we accomplish through this program is infinitesimally small against the need. For this reason I would like to see all Catholic colleges do a like work."75

In addition to these speaking engagements, Sister Mary John also personally fielded direct inquiries and requests from Catholic colleges across the country. In this way she served as a consultant to inquisitive students and staff from various schools who sought guidance in starting volunteer programs of their own. The student government at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, wrote, "Your labors have caught the eye and imagination of many of us interested in promoting the role of the laity within the Church."76 Another group, from Gonzaga University, explained that "A group of about 20 Catholic college students and graduates from Spokane are forming a lay apostolate mission booster organization based on the same plan as yours to support Alaskan mission schools . . . we feel that you could offer us much valuable information and advice that our group may progress more efficiently."77 A particular success worth noting, this Gonzaga group eventually led to the creation of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, the largest Catholic postgraduate volunteer organization in the United States today.78

74. Address to Emmanuel Students, 1956, Box 118, Folder 7, RCA. 75. "Christian Leadership – A Challenge to the Colleges," N.C.E.A. Meeting, Grand

Rapids, Michigan, Box 116, RCA. See also Speech from National Federation of Catholic Colleges, Box 116, Folder 7, RCA.

76. Kevin P. Doran to Sister Mary John, January 19, 1960, Box 118, Folder 11, RCA.

77. Mission Boosters President to Regis Mission Club President, February 18, 1959, Box 118, Folder 10, RCA.

78. There have been approximately 12,000 JVC volunteers in the course of the program's existence. See also "JVC is . . . ," Jesuit Volunteer Corps., accessed February 10, 2012, http://www.jesuitvolunteers.org/about-jvc/jvc-is; Simon Hendry,


Like the Gonzaga forerunners of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, Sister Mary John's efforts and the example of her Regis volunteers provided a model that numerous schools followed. The result was the creation of similar programs across the country, though the majority of these programs were located in the Northeast at schools like Fairfield University in Connecticut and Salve Regina in Rhode Island. As one 1959 letter to Sister Mary John from Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania, announced, "I am happy to report that one senior is already signed up with the mission in West Palm Beach. I am hoping that her generous example will be an inspiration to next year's class."79 Of these programs, several made sure to give credit where it was due. One example was St. Joseph College in Maryland. In its program's informational brochure, it wrote of a larger model that had "originated with the mission unit of Regis College, Weston, Massachusetts, under the direction of Sister Mary John."80

By the mid-1960s, the same influences that had helped spark the Regis Lay Apostolate in November 1949 – the lay apostolate, a shortage of nuns, the need for lay missionaries – spawned the creation of similar programs elsewhere. Further encouraged by papal encyclicals that endorsed the use of lay missionaries in 1957 and 1959, by the early 1960s other formal programs for lay Catholic volunteers and missionaries, often with larger budgets and greater resources, had sprung up outside the direct influence of Sister Mary John and the volunteers from Regis.81 The Regis Lay Apostolate, the first of these ventures to appear on the landscape of American Catholicism, became one of a host of programs like the Lay Mission-Helpers Association, the Volunteer Teacher's Service, and the Papal Volunteers for Latin America, as well as the establishment of the Peace Corps and VISTA.82 The volunteer program that had once been in a league of its own was eventually overshadowed amidst the larger movement it helped pioneer. As such, it was with little notice that the program came to a close in 1972 shortly after Sister Mary John was appointed to a new position within the Sisters of St. Joseph. But the Regis Lay

S.J., "Ruined for Life: The Spirituality of the Jesuit Volunteer Corps" (Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, 2002).

79. Sister M. Angelica to Sister Mary John, April 6, 1959, Box 118, Folder 10, RCA. 80. "Advancing Frontier for the Laity: A Lay Mission Program," St. Joseph College,

Scrapbook, RCA. 81. See the two encyclicals, Fidei Donum (1957) and Princeps Pastorum (1959). 82. Paul LaForge, S.V.D, "New Lay Missionary Organizations," The Christian

Family 53 (December 1958): 14-15; J.G.G. Coniff, "Time for Greatness," Columbia (January 1958): 17-19; J.J. McQuade, "The Peace Corps – An Apostolic Challenge," Direction 7 (June 1961): 4-11. To date, no substantive work has been done on the creation of these programs unrelated to the Regis Lay Apostolate.


Apostolate left behind a remarkable legacy. As one 1958 headline in the Worcester Sunday Times proclaimed, "Regis College Pioneered Mission Teaching Plan."83 In keeping with her vision, Sister Mary John and the women of Regis helped shape a larger movement of Catholic lay volunteers that has continued to grow and provide services to those in need.

Conclusion

The story of Sister Mary John and the women of the Regis Lay Apostolate is important for several reasons. Understanding the history and evolution of the program adds crucial insight into the origins of the American Catholic postgraduate volunteer phenomenon it helped pioneer, a phenomenon distinct from strictly missionary ventures like the Grail Movement.84 A look at the genesis of the Regis Lay Apostolate also reveals some of the influences – the lay apostolate, insufficient numbers of nuns, and Catholic missionary zeal – that engendered this movement's origins and development, in particular the impact of Catholic Action and the lay apostolate. In 2012, an estimated 19,000 lay volunteers annually give a year or more of their lives through Catholics postgraduate volunteer organizations such as the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and the Alliance for Catholic Education.85 Like the Regis "lay apostles," these volunteers gain invaluable life experiences in lieu of financial rewards. Through their hard work, they provide critical low cost support to innumerable schools and social service agencies domestically and internationally. The story of the Regis Lay Apostolate does not provide a comprehensive history or complete understanding of this movement. It would be in error to say that it was the singular seed from which Catholic postgraduate volunteerism sprung. Still, it was a heavily influential program, and is an important first chapter of a larger narrative that remains to be written.

The Regis Lay Apostolate and the Catholic volunteer model it pioneered also raises questions about the lineage of non-Catholic postgraduate volunteer efforts like the Peace Corps. In her typed

83. "Regis College Pioneered Mission Teaching Plan," The Worcester Sunday

Telegram, November 30, 1958. 84. For more, see Alden Brown, The Grail Movement and American Catholicism,

1940-1975 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989). 85. Estimate from Catholic Volunteer Network, phone conversation with author,

May 7, 2012. For more Catholic postgraduate organizations, see the website for the University of Notre Dame's Center for Social Concern, "Postgraduate Service Opportunities," www.centerforsocialconcerns.nd.edu/postgraduate/.


recollections of the Regis Lay Apostolate, Sister Mary John, in none too subtle terms, insinuated a direct connection between the two programs from one moment in the program's existence. Apparently John F. Kennedy, while on the presidential campaign trail, met a few Regis volunteers teaching in New Mexico. Hearing of the program, as Sister Mary John wrote, "He was extremely impressed and said 'Why would we not do this on the national and international levels – people helping people.'"86 This was not the singular spark for the Peace Corps. Histories of the program bear witness to the agency's diversity of influences. However, lay Catholic postgraduate programs, starting with the Regis Lay Apostolate, existed for over a decade before the iconic agency was launched in 1961 under the nation's first Catholic president. Additionally, the Catholic lay volunteer movement was particularly strong in Boston, home of the Kennedy family. Furthermore, the task of organizing the Peace Corps was entrusted to the devoutly Catholic Sargent Shriver. Yet, in Peace Corps historiography no mention of a relationship between these two contemporary volunteer impulses has yet been made. This paper suggests that some sort of association, while not directly causal, remains to be further explored.87

In the same vein, this paper also speaks to a larger postgraduate service model that has become institutionalized in American society through programs like Teach for America and City Year. Again, it would be an error to claim that the Regis Lay Apostolate was the direct predecessor to these present day institutions. But as Sister Mary John and her Regis volunteers constitute an important part of the evolution of Catholic postgraduate volunteer organizations, their story is also an important step towards a more complete historical understanding of the larger postgraduate model of postwar American volunteerism.

86. Untitled history of Regis Lay Apostolate. 87. For more on the Peace Corps, see Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, All You Need is

Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); Stanley Meisler, When the World Calls: The Inside Story of the Peace Corps and Its First Fifty Years (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011); Gerald T. Rice, The Bold Experiment: JFK's Peace Corps (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).

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