Word: cornelias
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...young Episcopal clergyman from Philadelphia, Pierce showed intense ambition from the time he married wellborn, well-educated Cornelia Peacock in 1831. He took her to Natchez, Miss., where he had been offered a parish, preached there four years, then abruptly resigned his pastorate and announced his intention of becoming a Catholic. While admitting misgivings ("I once thought all Catholic priests instruments of the Devil"), Cornelia wrote to her sister: "I am ready at once to submit to whatever my loved husband believes to be the path of duty." The path was clear to Pierce: it led to Rome. Cornelia...
Although now a devout Catholic, Cornelia was also the devoted mother of two surviving children (with another on the way). But again she submitted to Pierce's judgment. Four years later, in Rome, they were legally separated. In 1844 she was accepted by Rome's Sacred Heart nuns as a postulant. Their oldest child was placed in a church school, but Cornelia was allowed to keep her two younger children, Ady, 9, and Frank, 3, in the convent...
Ready to Switch. The Connellys progressed spectacularly. Pierce was ordained a diocesan priest in the unheard-of time of one year, and Cornelia, although still a postulant, got an even more unusual advancement: by papal command, she was to go to England and found a teaching order. In 1846, Cornelia and two other novices set up a convent and school for the poor at St. Mary's, Derby. Submissive, obedient Cornelia showed another facet as superior of her little group: facing down carpenters and tradespeople, she got the new Society of the Holy Child Jesus off to a strong...
Meanwhile, Pierce had come to England too, as tutor for the son of a prominent Catholic peer; he tried to take a strong hand in running Cornelia's society. In Rome after their separation, the Connellys had seen each other every ten days; but in Protestant England even the most carefully chaperoned visits could start tales of convent immorality. He alarmed the hierarchy by bursting into Cornelia's convent. Bitter over the furor that arose, Pierce retaliated by taking their three children to Italy. In 1848 he returned to England, made a second descent on the convent...
...antipapist English press of the period, Pierce's next move was meat for scandal. In 1849, only a short time after he had tried unsuccessfully to get a cardinal's hat, he made another spectacular switch ("my allegiance to Rome was a culpable delusion"), sued Cornelia for resumption of his marital rights, and renounced his priesthood. He won the judgment; the Court of Arches ordered Cornelia to leave the convent and return to her husband or go to jail. For weeks Cornelia kept street clothes in her cell, ready to leave the country if Pierce or the authorities...