The Scandinavian Mission of the Sisters of Saint Joseph : A female Counter-Culture in Nordic Society

Författare

Yvonne Maria Werner

Redaktör

Urs Altermatt
Jan De Maeyer
Franziska Metzger

Summary, in English

It is well known that Catholic nuns and sisters played an important role in modern society, and that they in many ways paved the way for the entrance of women into professional life within the social sector. Modern research has also pointed out their social achievements as missionaries in the third word. But it is less known that female Catholic congregations also led school, hospitals and other social institutions in Protestant countries in northern Europe. These religious institutes accompanied the reestablishment of the Catholic Church in Scandinavia in the mid-nineteenth century, In my article, I will discuss the Scandinavian missionary activities of one of these institutes, a French congregation named La Congregation des Sœurs de Saint-Joseph from Chambéry in Savoy. The Sisters of St Joseph started their missionary work with a small community in the Danish capital Copenhagen in 1856. Sixty years later there were around eight hundred St Joseph Sisters living in communities spread across the Nordic area. The Chambéry congregation, which developed a broad range of activities within health care and education, was the most successful of the female religious institutes at work in Scandinavia.

From a Nordic point of view, these Catholic sisters represented an alien culture that in essential matters conflicted with prevailing norms. They were part of a female world that in many ways constituted an alternative both to Lutheran domestic ideology with its emphasis on marriage, biological motherhood, and domestic duties, and to the middle-class liberal and socialist feminist movements. The Catholic sisters, in other words, embodied a female counter-culture in modern society, a third way between Protestant 'familyism' and feminist women’s movements.

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