During the past few weeks God has called some very talented women home. Katherine Graham (84) who transformed herself from a battered daughter and wife and then transformed the Washington Post from a mediocre newspaper into national institution. Then Eudora Weltly (92) who discovered stories in daily life and gave them to the world as snapshots of relationships set in the rural South yet transcending that region to reveal to us the human plight.

And now our Kathleen Short (88) born on April 13,1913 in the deep green hills of County Armagh, Ireland, one of ten children of Mary Quinn and Thomas Short. An immigrant at 16 who listed her work as domestic and a Dominican sister at 18, Kathleen was a very talented women who never buried a gift. If I just read the ways she served as a Dominican women that would be enough to show her talents. If you just read the obituary it is enough. But it isn't because Kathleen would want us to see more than the deeds she would want us to experience the underlying current of the deeds. She would want us to see what she saw: what drove her, what called her, what directed her? Yes it was her God but it was God couched in a spirituality that was in her very bones. I think Kathleen was a Celt in the very marrow of her being and the spirituality of the Celts is marked by certain soul talents if you will:

Love of Learning
For Kathleen the love of learning went beyond her elementary school education in Ireland, the completion of her high school at Mount Saint Mary Academy, the BA from Seton Hall, and the MA from Catholic University and the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Mount Saint Mary College. Kathleen's love of learning was also expressed in those years as an elementary teacher in Jersey City, Mount Vernon and in Newburgh. Then in her years in high school in Passaic. Kathleen loved learning and she shared it with her students. Some are here tonight to attest to that. But formal teaching was not enough. She also served as Executive Secretary of the National Catholic Education Association and as its Director of In-Service Programs. Here she influenced the education of hundreds of thousands of Catholic School students by championing Catholic education while providing training for their teachers and principals and all this while as she said" prophets of doom speak of the end of the schools." Nothing got her angrier. Kathleen exemplified the Celtic gift of love of learning as a scholar and as a resource for scholars. And she also exemplified that gift that scholars relish, the love of solitude and silence.

Love of Solitude and Silence
Can't you see why she was attracted to the Dominican life? She entered the Dominicans sisters here at Newburgh at 18 in 1930 just two years after coming from Ireland and made final profession in 1938. I have an image of her one of my first glimpses of her when I entered the congregation standing so erect in the long white habit her one hand under the scapular while a finger of the other was on her lips and she was staring out not seeing, lost in thought, lost in her God. But that quiet posture was not the one most remember, rather it was the actions, the quick movement, the determined stride we most remember. You see her faithfulness to the silence, the contemplation was manifest in her actions. Her actions in the life of our congregation were not the only way she used and developed this soul talent. She was president of the Dominican Education Association, secretary-treasurer, vice-president and president of the Dominican Mothers General Conference, which is now known as the Dominican Leadership Conference(DLC). During her tenure on the Dominican Mother's General Executive Committee the organization held its conference in Newburgh. This conference marked the first time the cloister superiors attended. We loved the conference because all the young sisters vacated Guzman for the college dorms. However we returned each evening to ready the beds, we were the Marriott of the Newburgh Dominicans. Well the superiors from the cloister had found a radio and were dancing in the halls one evening. You should have seen Kathleen's face as she came on the scene. But her activity also went beyond the Order and the congregation. Kathleen served on the first Executive Committee of the Archdiocesan Council of Women Religious and chairperson of its Finance Committee. She was on the committee that restructured the Conference of Major Superiors of Women, which became the Leadership Conference of Women Religious(LCWR). She represented the Dominicans superiors in Rome at the meeting of the Union of International Superior Generals and on and on. Evidently her soul talent for living deeply the motto of the Order "to contemplate and give to others the fruits of that contemplation" was also noticed by others. However there were times when she was so attentive to her thoughts that she neither notice what time it was or what the rest of us were doing. I remember vividly a February night; I was a novice and was sound asleep. The novice mistress knocked on my door and said Mother wanted to see me. Now I was sure I had done nothing to warrant a late night summons. I met S. William Joseph in the hall as I started down to Mother's room. We both were sleepy and confused. Now I need to tell you I had a very bad cold and a fever. It was an icy, rainy night. We got to Mother's door and she handed me two aspirin. She directed us to go out and find Torch, the white German shepherd and give him the aspirin. He had a cold. Well after leaving her door and going to the ground floor I promptly swallowed the aspirin. William Joseph was terrified. "What will we tell her when she asks what happened?" I replied, "We will say we gave the aspirin." Just a few years ago when I told her the story she roared laughing. "I guess I was a little intense" - an understatement. For Kathleen it seemed that time was sacred, that the future depended on the present, another of the spiritual gifts of the Celts she nurtured. Kathleen understood time as a sacred reality.

Understanding of Time as a Sacred Reality
Kathleen really understood and developed this principal of Celtic spirituality. She seemed to know intuitively that the now is where you hear the voice of God, in the every day actions and events you find God. You listen and you act. And she did. Elected Mother General (she hated the title) in 1959 she set about bringing a dream of a college into being. Fundraising was initiated, the building planned and members of the congregation sent for study to be ready to teach there. The Normal School founded by other giants of the congregation was to become a four-year institution of higher education. And she would literally see to each brick. Just ask any who worked on the construction of Aquinas. She monitored the bricks, the language and even telling the workmen to put on their shirts. And she did so without the full support of the congregation for there were some who questioned going into debt; wondered about taking sisters from other ministries to study for advanced degrees; and yes some who just feared that the college was a mistake. Yet she envisioned a college of about 750 in the future and delighted in its growth in these later years to 2000 with Master Degrees and yes with the acquisition of the Jewish Community Center. She served as first president of the college as well as Mother General although she did resign as president in 1964 but remained Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Now these are all formidable roles. Simpler times you think. No. Remember the Second Vatican Council occurred during her terms as Superior General. So she built a college and saw to the reform of our lives by planning for and calling the Special Chapter of 1968, which began the implementation of the reforms of Perfectae Caritatis and Gaudium Et Spes. But she didn't always see the reforms the way some of the rest of us did. Do any of you remember the letter about the triangle scarves for head coverings at the beach? I do. I was among some who got caught wearing them at Sea Isle. Then there were the sneakers. We were wearing sneakers with our habits to walk on the beach. Well she assembled us in the dining room and was emphatically making her point about how professed sisters do not wear sneakers. She pounded her fist into her hand. Just then behind her on the staircase appeared four blue sneakers on the feet of S. Margaret Michael and S. Mary Charles, Agnes Boyle. And do you remember Ruth Lindner asking about making a closet habit? Kathleen had no idea what she meant. You see some had made short habits in anticipation of a change to short habits. These hung in closets waiting for the permission. That was one time she did not find short an appropriate word. And there are many more stories. But for the most part the future was in the present. The future was the present. But neither time nor Kathleen stood still. She had that migratory movement of Celtic spirituality in her. She was always on pilgrimage. She was always on the road.

Migratory Wanderings, Pilgrimage
She just kept moving. Superior General, NCEA, Infirmary Administrator, Director of Senior Activities in Deal, New Jersey, Coordinator of Nazareth Community, Massage Therapist…massage therapist. At 78 years of age she went on to study massage and to obtain a license in Swedish massage to be able to assist in the wholistic health of others. She just kept listening to the call and responding. But as you attest to she did not move alone. Of all she cherished the Celtic spiritual principle of family, of relationships, of soul friends.

Family, Clan, Soul Friend
The most wonderful scene to attest to this was last week when the sisters and her family gathered around her bed. Yes there was the rosary but then there were the songs and the stories. There was the laughter and the tears. There was family. So please join me and share some of the stories with us now.
What I think captures Kathleen is that she loved being Kathleen. She loved being a Dominican Sister of Newburgh and she loved being a Dominican Sister of Hope. Kathleen was hope. And so as we bid her bodily presence among us farewell remember that the spirituality of the Celts see the after life as a thin veil that can be penetrated with the soul. So if I may Kathleen. I think when you stepped beyond the veil the other day your God, the clan of you family and the family of your Dominican sisters and brothers sang something like this: (with deference to the song writer)

We've taken you home again, Kathleen,
Across the ocean wild and wide,
To where your heart has ever been,
Since first you were God's bonnie bride
The roses never left your rosie cheeks,
We never saw them fade away'
Your voice never sad whene're you speak.
No tears bedim your eyes.

To that dear home beyond the sea
Our Kathleen has again returned
And here thy old friends welcome thee.
Your loving heart has ceased to yearn.
Where laughs the little silver stream
Beside your mother's cot,
And brightest rays of sunshine gleam,
Here all your grief will be forgot

Oh! We've taken you back again Kathleen,
To where your heart will feel no pain,
And where the fields are fresh and green'
You are home again Kathleen.
You are home again Kathleen.

A hundred thousand welcomes!

Sister Catherine Walsh, OP
July 30,2001

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