Word: cornelias
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...death was a bitter milepost in the life of an extraordinary woman-a life that began in a fashionable, upper-class Episcopal home in Philadelphia, ended in an English Roman Catholic convent, and may be crowned by beatification by the Roman Catholic Church. In The Case of Cornelia Connelly (Pantheon; $3.75), British Roman Catholic Author Juliana Wadham brings back to life a reverberating scandal that burst upon the U.S. and Britain in 1849, when the Catholic Church was struggling to re-establish itself in England...
Ready to Submit. To gay, pretty Cornelia Connelly, her son's death was a clear and overpowering answer to a prayer she had made the day before: she felt that she was too joyous and too fortunate, and asked to be allowed a sacrifice to give her love of God a deeper meaning. The source of both Cornelia's joy and piety, and the corrosive catalyst of the remainder of her turbulent life, was her husband Pierce Connelly, a charming, hypnotically persuasive ecclesiastical eclectic...
...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...