In May 2022, a new quote series began, called 'Quoting Silence: A month with ... '.
In this series, we stay with quotes from one author throughout a whole month.
In this series, we stay with quotes from one author throughout a whole month.
To access the Quoting Silence Collection, which contains the entire back-catalogue of quotes and their additional resource links, click the buttons at the bottom of this page.
This week's quote
Monday 6th May, 2024
Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer (Madonna House Publications, 1993 [1974]), 28.
Image: Marc-Oliver Jodoin, Ottawa, Canada, unsplash.com/@marcojodoin
To read more about Maria Harris' book, from which this month's quotes are taken, click here.
Guided Meditation
For a 5 minute audio guided meditation to accompany this week's short image-backed quote, above, click the play button on the smaller version of the image next to or below this text. To pause, and restart, click in the same place. To see the image full screen as you listen, click the expand screen icon in the corner. |
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Catherine de Hueck Doherty (1896-1985: a contemporary of the more well-known Dorothy Day, 1897-1980, who established the Catholic Worker Movement in the USA in 1933 - see here) was born into a wealthy Russian Orthodox Christian family who moved around the world following her father's postings as an insurance agent. At 15, she married her first cousin, Baron Boris de Hueck, who was 21. During the First World War, Catherine served as a nurse on the front line. Towards the end of the War the couple fled the Russian Revolution and, after stints in Finland and London, where Catherine was received into the Roman Catholic Church, eventually emigrated to Canada. Her experiences of a period of poverty as immigrants informed Catherine's future work.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, her marriage was not happy. Dissatisfied with a life of (new) material comforts, Catherine followed a deep call to give away all she owned and moved to work in the slums of Toronto. Here she established Toronto Friendship House as a source of food and clothing for the poor, and organised activities for young people. It was also a base from which she, and the community that gathered around her radical gospel message, used the social encyclicals of the popes to counter Communist propaganda. Read more of this story in her book, Friendship House (Sheed and Ward, 1946), and further info about this and the next phase of her life, here. Building on this work, in 1938 Catherine moved to Harlem, New York and set up another Friendship House as an interracial apostolate community, living with and serving the black community, and lecturing about racial justice.
Catherine's marriage was annulled in 1943 and shortly after she married Eddie Doherty, an Irish-American writer, who later became a priest in the Melkite rite of the Catholic Church - see here - after they had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 1955. Before this, in 1947 they moved back to Canada, establishing Madonna House in Ontario. It became an apostolic community of lay women and men, and ordained priests. By 2022 it had grown to be a community of more than 200 members, with 16 houses in six countries: see here.
Madonna House's publishing wing keeps Catherine's numerous books in print. The book from which this month's quotes are taken, Poustinia: Christian Spirituality of the East for Western Man, is one of a series of six in her 'Madonna House Classics'. You can see the full set here. For a list of all her available publications, see here. Her writing, though very much of its time - always gendering God as male and in a tone that can seem quite dated today - beautifully combines rich insights from the Eastern Christian tradition and its emphasis on 'prayer of the heart' with stories of her lived experience as a follower of Christ.
Those of you who enjoy watching youtube episodes about our authors, see here for a 25 minute presentation on The Spirituality of Catherine de Hueck Doherty: some of this is photos and a significant chunk is an interview about her with Fr Bob Wild, a former priest at Madonna House. For a short, six-minute video of Catherine speaking, see here. Since 2000 the cause for her canonisation as a Saint was presented to and is under consideration by the Roman Catholic Church.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, her marriage was not happy. Dissatisfied with a life of (new) material comforts, Catherine followed a deep call to give away all she owned and moved to work in the slums of Toronto. Here she established Toronto Friendship House as a source of food and clothing for the poor, and organised activities for young people. It was also a base from which she, and the community that gathered around her radical gospel message, used the social encyclicals of the popes to counter Communist propaganda. Read more of this story in her book, Friendship House (Sheed and Ward, 1946), and further info about this and the next phase of her life, here. Building on this work, in 1938 Catherine moved to Harlem, New York and set up another Friendship House as an interracial apostolate community, living with and serving the black community, and lecturing about racial justice.
Catherine's marriage was annulled in 1943 and shortly after she married Eddie Doherty, an Irish-American writer, who later became a priest in the Melkite rite of the Catholic Church - see here - after they had taken vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in 1955. Before this, in 1947 they moved back to Canada, establishing Madonna House in Ontario. It became an apostolic community of lay women and men, and ordained priests. By 2022 it had grown to be a community of more than 200 members, with 16 houses in six countries: see here.
Madonna House's publishing wing keeps Catherine's numerous books in print. The book from which this month's quotes are taken, Poustinia: Christian Spirituality of the East for Western Man, is one of a series of six in her 'Madonna House Classics'. You can see the full set here. For a list of all her available publications, see here. Her writing, though very much of its time - always gendering God as male and in a tone that can seem quite dated today - beautifully combines rich insights from the Eastern Christian tradition and its emphasis on 'prayer of the heart' with stories of her lived experience as a follower of Christ.
Those of you who enjoy watching youtube episodes about our authors, see here for a 25 minute presentation on The Spirituality of Catherine de Hueck Doherty: some of this is photos and a significant chunk is an interview about her with Fr Bob Wild, a former priest at Madonna House. For a short, six-minute video of Catherine speaking, see here. Since 2000 the cause for her canonisation as a Saint was presented to and is under consideration by the Roman Catholic Church.
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The Quoting Silence Collection
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The 'Quoting Silence:
A month with ... ' Collection
From May 2022 the 'Quoting Silence: A month with ... ' quotes are building into a new collection over the year. From this collection, you'll be able to access all the quotes and resources from any month by clicking the button.
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