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JM JA
24th July 2024, commemoration of St Christina
Dear Faithful Benefactors, Friends, and Family,
Live Jesus and Mary!
The bishop’s announcement on July 13th/14th,
2024, has deeply affected us. The bishop’s letter did not provide any
explanation of the findings of the Apostolic Visitation that would justify such
a severe decision.
Like
many of you, we have also read the articles published by various New Zealand media
outlets with deep sadness, as they contain insinuations and falsehoods against
the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, our Fathers, and Brothers, whom we hold in
high esteem.
Due
to our close association with the Sons, we, the Daughters, have also been
subjected to insinuations and falsehoods from the New Zealand media. On Saturday
July 20th, 2024, the Christchurch Press published a defamatory article against
us, claiming that we never gained approval from the Catholic Church, and that all
our fundraising efforts were therefore fraudulent. Understandably, our
families, friends, and benefactors are concerned about how we are coping with
this misinformation circulating in the media, which places us in a vulnerable
position. Additionally, the silence from the Diocese on this matter greatly saddens
us.
The
Bishop’s Letters
Alongside
the letters issued to the wider community and the Sons, the Daughters also
received a decree from the bishop stating that our private association is to be
suppressed. This is the first written communication we have received from our
current bishop. Unlike his predecessors, who showed interest in our activities,
there was no prior dialogue or conversation before this decree was issued. We
were deeply shocked and scandalised by this action. The decree provided no
support for moving forward nor any explanation for why this decision was made.
We have taken steps to appeal this unjust decision through the appropriate
channels.
Who
we are?
The
Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer is a private association of Catholic women
in Christchurch. In our association, we take private vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience to our statutes. We have chosen to make our vows private to live
our faith in peace. The media has made great issue over the fact that sometimes
we are referred to as ‘nuns’. We have always made it clear that we are officially
a private association of consecrated Catholic women. However, sometimes people
refer to us as nuns.
It
is no secret that today the Church is using power against women who want to
live their faith in a traditional manner. The Latin Mass is a prime example of
something ancient and sacred that has met with excessive hostility since 1970.
Many people forget that in 1970 there were 460 nuns or religious women in
Christchurch diocese alone. There were altogether 2659 nuns in New Zealand.
Where have they all gone? They were nuns with official recognition. They were
coerced into “updating” changing their rules, changing their dress. They were
told to “get with it” and in their modernisation they slowly melted away.
Official recognition did not help them. Are we officially recognised as nuns by
the Church? No, we have chosen not to seek official recognition at this time.
We may pursue official recognition in future when the time is right.
In
our association, we strive to live the spirituality of Saint Alphonsus Maria de
Liguori, the founder of the Redemptorist religious order, the “Congregation of
the Most Holy Redeemer.” Saint Alphonsus was a priest and bishop who lived from
1696 to 1787 and was canonised as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in 1839.
Pope Pius IX proclaimed Saint Alphonsus a Doctor of the Church in 1871, and he
is known as the “Doctor of Prayer.” In 1950, Pope Pius XII declared him the
patron saint of confessors and moral theologians. These honours were not for
his personal enjoyment but to present him as a prime example for the Roman
Catholic faithful to follow. He was particularly renowned for his devotion to
the Blessed Virgin Mary, his plain and simple teaching, and his outreach to
sinners of all classes, especially the poor and homeless. For St Alphonsus, the point of his
life’s work was very simple and very practical: his most important work was the
salvation of his own soul – to get to Heaven, and his secondary work was to get
as many other souls as he could, with God’s grace, to Heaven. Lest we forget:
that is also the whole, and only, point of the Roman Catholic Church. And, so
it is for us, the Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer, individually and as a
community.
Before the establishment of the Daughters of
the Most Holy Redeemer, there was no religious community for women dedicated to
living the spirituality of St. Alphonsus or leading a sacramental life in
accordance with the Traditional Latin Mass, as codified for all time by Pope St
Pius V. The Traditional Latin Mass provides an unfailing bright line to trace
that narrow difficult way which leads to salvation, following the footsteps of
countless canonised and uncanonised Saints and holy men, women, and children
who have reached Heaven. It provides us with sure avoidance of the broad road
that leads to perdition and of which Our Lord himself warned many would take.
For the Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer, the daily Traditional Latin Mass
and traditional sacraments are not merely a preference; they are a must. We
cannot live without them. We
unapologetically state that this is a legitimate aspiration, as expressly
recognised by Pope Benedict XVI in his 2007 Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum.
Religious life begins with a personal call from
God. In most cases, it does not start with a call from a bishop. Since the
beginning of the Church, men and women have discerned God’s call to leave the
world and retreat into a desert place to live a life of ardent love for Our
Lord through prayer, penance, and sacrifice. Convents and monasteries often do
not begin as initiatives of those in power and authority in the Church.
Instead, religious life springs up like a wellspring from the ground.
Perhaps
it is not well known that religious orders often begin in lowly beginnings,
just like our own, ignored or without much recognition, and sometimes with
hostility from the religious authorities. For example, St Mary McKillop the
foundress of the Australian Brown Josephite nuns was even excommunicated by a
bishop. We love our lowly beginning years. We are happy in our private
association because we have made our own promises to God and these give us
great joy and peace. Sacred promises made for the love of God are called vows.
They are made to God, not to bishops. Perhaps in time, a bishop may want to
recognise our promises to God. But at present, we do not want to risk hostility
from powerful authorities wanting us to change our life that is consecrated to
the love of Jesus. We do not want authorities to feel free to interfere in our
chosen way of love for God and people. We are not interested in having our
promises, our vows to God, raised up to some official status where people in
the Church would put pressure on us, struggle and try to manipulate us, even
use our promise of obedience to make us to change our dress, our life, our
promises to God; as well as to go to endless meetings and become “updated”. We
will carry on as strong, simple women; a lowly band of sisters, loving God and
unafraid of being ridiculed. We are women who want to love God in the old way
of belonging to him as nuns of our choosing. The 460 nuns from our Christchurch
diocese have all but gone. We feel that official recognition is dangerous to
our chosen path for now. Presently we choose to keep our promises without
asking for a special status. As Shakespeare said so well, “A rose by any
name would smell as sweet”. A nun is a nun, officially recognised or not.
Our
History and the Bishop’s knowledge of our existence.
Like the beginnings of other religious
orders, we also have a humble origin. Canon law does not require consent from
the bishop to begin a private association. The Association of the Daughters of
the Most Holy Redeemer began quietly in a small flat in Christchurch on
February 2nd, 2014, with the guidance and blessing of the Rector Major of the
Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer.
We first needed to be able to live the
proposed life and spirituality. Six months after beginning this life, on August
22nd, 2014, a founding member of the private association informed the then
Bishop of Christchurch, the Most Reverend Barry Jones, about our association.
The bishop responded with a fatherly letter, followed by a paternal visit from
the Vicar General of the diocese.
With the guidance of the Sons, on March
8th, 2016, we established an initial structure to give expression to the life
of the Daughters. This structure took the form of seven chapters under the
title of The Rule for the Hermitage and the Cell. To provide a structure
of governance, the founding members established the statutes for the Private
Association of the Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer on August 15th, 2016.
On 8th August 2017, the Vicar General
who was then acting as the Diocesan Administrator, installed the Blessed
Sacrament in our first house with a Eucharistic Procession.
In 2019, after his installation as the
Catholic Bishop of Christchurch, Bishop Paul Martin SM inquired about our association.
We responded to his request by providing information about our activities and a
draft copy of our statutes. Bishop Martin graciously acknowledged receipt of
this information.
Our
Presence in the Diocese of Christchurch and the Wider Community
The
life of the Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer is apostolic/monastic. This means
we help people and we pray. As explained
in our blog profile: “Our life
has two halves, a rich prayer life steeped in the Traditions of the Church,
which overflows into our work for others. We spend time visiting and helping
out families; offer support and companionship for older people in their home or
in care and aim to be there for those who need a listening ear.”
The
Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer have been actively involved in the Latin
Mass Chaplaincy, a diocesan ministry, serving and witnessing to an
ever-increasing number of fervent Traditional Roman Catholic faithful.
The
Daughters have played an active role in “Maryfest,” an annual event in the
Diocese of Christchurch for the past several years. This event honours Our Lady
through a procession and devotions. The Bishop of Christchurch entrusted the
organisation of this event to the Latin Mass Chaplaincy, of which we were a
part.
As
this is the bishop’s event, there is ordinarily an expectation that he presides
over it. If the bishop was unavailable, the then Bishop Emeritus, or the Vicar
General, would take his place. For each Maryfest, the Daughters were involved
in visiting schools, parishes, and ethnic chaplaincies, inviting people to come
and attend. We were also actively involved in much of the on-the-ground
preparation for many of the Maryfest events.
We have also been present at many
functions in the diocese. Notably, we attended the consecration of Bishop Paul
Martin SM as the Catholic Bishop of Christchurch in 2018, as well as the Chrism
Masses and funerals of significant individuals in our diocese. Additionally, we
played an active role in organising one of the official Traditional Requiem
Masses for the Emeritus Bishop of Christchurch, Bishop Basil Meeking, at St.
Mary’s Pro-Cathedral in June 2020.
The Daughters have also been
present in events within the wider community. We have always taken many prayer
hours for the “40 Days for Life Christchurch”, and we took part in the “March
for Life Christchurch” in 2020. Our photo was even published in the NZ
Catholic: https://nzcatholic.org.nz/2020/09/02/christchurch-march-for-life-in-alert-level-2/
These examples are just some of
the ways we have given witness to the unchanging and unchangeable traditional
Roman Catholic and Apostolic faith publicly and openly within the Christchurch
Diocese.
In
all our work in the community we have always been attentive to, and complied
with, all the safeguarding guidelines of the Diocese of Christchurch.
There
has never been anything secret about our work.
Finances
It
is well known that we do not live in diocesan accommodation, nor do we receive
any financial support from the diocese. We receive no salaries or stipends and
are not employees of the Church, the diocese, or the bishop, nor do we need to
be. In this regard, we are no different from any other religious order or
congregation. We depend entirely on donations from benefactors. There is no requirement
for us to be ‘recognised by the Church’ to appeal to the charity of
benefactors, as “The Press” insinuates.
We
are seven poor women. The Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer bought us our property
so we can live a life of devotion and support their work for the salvation of
the most abandoned souls. We have never received a penny from anyone unaware of
who we are and what we do; our ‘unofficial’ status is well known. We are not
ashamed of it. Our circle of benefactors is small, and our accounts are
available for everyone to see on the Internet.
Any
of us could join an official religious order in New Zealand or anywhere else in
the world and receive an official status, but this is not in keeping with the
inspiration that God has placed in our hearts. We deliberately choose this
humble path without recognised status because it is the way that allows us to
live for God. As a consequence, we live a very simple life. Official nuns
belong to institutions with vast financial resources now, especially after
selling up their convents, schools and hospitals as their vocations evaporated
with their modernisation. We do not have their wealth, nor do we wish for it.
We
have chosen a poor life, living without many comforts that official nuns enjoy.
Perhaps one can say that we are as poor as sparrows. We do not own the present
property we have graciously been allowed to occupy, nor the old house that is
here. Like most New Zealanders, the housing market is beyond us. In time,
perhaps we will own this property but not at any cost: first for us is our life
of devotion, living in this refuge with the Lonely Infant Jesus who was born in
a borrowed stable in Bethlehem.
Providentially,
today is the beginning of the novena to our holy father St Alphonsus, founder
of the Redemptorists. I invite you all to do the novena with us for the
intentions of our Association.
Let us unite our
sufferings to Our Lord on Calvary and for the hastening of the triumph of the
Immaculate Heart of Mary. We keep you always in our humble daily prayers.
May the Lonely Child Jesus bless you and His
Holy Face shine on you.
Devotedly,
Sister Niña Maria
Prioress
Daughters of the Most Holy Redeemer
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