For the next fifteen years, she lived a quiet life dedicated to prayer and the service of her community. She entered the Schenectady Carmel in 1960 and professed her final vows in October 1965. Thinking at first that she wanted to use her intellectual gifts in the service of others, she sought admission to the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in New York, but soon realized she preferred a contemplative vocation to an active one. F Nevins Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University.ĭrawn more and more to the Catholic faith, Frances felt a spiritual calling to consecrate her life to God after her divorce. Christine Marie of the Holy Spirit, OCD) on the day of her final vow profession, Carmel of Schenectady, Oct.
Frances sought (and was granted) a divorce and an annulment in 1958.Ĭarmelite Nun F. Citing their “irreconcilable” religious differences, the couple split in 1955. When I read it the first time, I thought that you were right, but now I can only say amen.” Shortly after their marriage, however, Frances claimed the Catholic faith in which she was baptized, while Paul refused to have their marriage blessed in the Church and would not agree to raise their future children as Catholics. I just read back over the letter you sent to me before our wedding telling me of the fine wife I was getting. In a 1954 letter to friend Joy Nicholson, Paul writes that “…we are very happy. F Nevins Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University.įrances Nevins married Paul Cawein in an Episcopal ceremony in 1953. Nevins and her husband, Paul Cawein, 1954. After earning her master’s degree in 1952 from Radcliffe College at Harvard, however, Nevins ceased her academic pursuits. Professor Edward Cranz, who supervised her honors thesis on Nicholas of Cusa, called her “the most brilliant student I encountered in a lifetime of teaching,” while the former president of the American Cusanus Society, Gerald Christianson, declared her “clearly gifted” and apt for academic life. Nevins graduated from Connecticut College for Women in 1951. In this blog, we offer a brief sketch of the “very unusual holy person” that was Frances Nevins, as an encouragement for all those who don’t know what they want to be when they grow up. F Nevins Papers, Special Collections, Catholic University. Nevins Connecticut College Yearbook Photo, 1951.
In August 2012, on the strength of the numerous personal testimonies, documents, correspondence, and spiritual writings she’d spent the last three decades collecting, Mullaney formally opened the petition for Frances Nevins’ beatification and canonization in the Catholic Church. But her quest to tell the story of Frances’ life didn’t end with the book’s publication in 2009. Christine Marie of the Holy Spirit, OCD, lived several callings during her short life: gifted academic, loving wife, and finally, Carmelite nun.Īfter Nevins’ death in December 1980, her longtime friend Joan Ward Mullaney, former Catholic University professor and Dean of the National Catholic School of Social Service, began gathering materials for a biography. Frances Nevins (1930-1980), later known as Sr. Good news for first-year students (and upperclassmen, graduate students, and faculty) who feel they don’t have their lives “figured out” just yet: you’re in good company. She is researching the sacramental imagination in 19th-century British and American fiction, as well as the best chai tea latte in Washington, D.C.
Our guest blogger is Sarah Zentner, a doctoral student in English at the Catholic University of America. Cover image, Frances Nevins: Mid-Twentieth Century Carmelite by Joan Ward Mullaney, published 2009.
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