The Center for the Study of Spirituality at Saint Mary’s College hosted a three-day conference over the weekend exploring the legacy of the College’s third president, Sister Madeleva Wolff, for the 60th anniversary of her death. Director of the Center for the Study of Spirituality Dan Horan and current College President Katie Conboy joined a group of professors from Saint Mary’s and other universities to speak about various aspects of Wolff’s life and tenure as president.
Wolff, who died in 1964, served as president of the College between 1934 and 1961. A graduate of Saint Mary’s herself, she was a prolific poet and established the School of Sacred Theology in 1943, the first Roman Catholic institution to offer graduate degrees in theology to women.
The first session of the conference highlighted Sister Margaret Guider, a professor at Boston College, and professor Sandra Yocum from the University of Dayton.
The session began with a few words from Horan, which then led into Guider giving a brief overview of Wolff’s life as a sister, professor and president of the College.
Wolff’s influence on women’s education of theology, Gudier argued, “managed to make a way where there was no existing way.” By creating the School of Sacred Theology, Wolff attempted to combat and reconcile the gap of knowledge between men and women religious at the time. Not only did higher education give women religious the needed experience to teach theology in other Catholic schools, but it opened a door for women to study alongside men.
“The School of Sacred Theology served, and continues to this day, as a model that gave rise to many institutes throughout the world … setting forth a movement that would challenge relationally and systematically the gender barriers, the cultural biases and the family attitudes so often sustained and exacerbated by ecclesiastical, Episcopal and clerical prerogatives and prejudices,” Guider said.
Yocum followed with greater insight into Wolff’s legacy laid down by the school as she explained the curriculum compared similarly to the rigorous academics men attending seminary would experience, including, “two years of theology, fundamental dogmatic law, spiritual church history, the encyclicals, with three summer sessions of Sacred Scripture; Greek, Hebrew, archeology, hagiography and canon law.”
This was intentional for Wolff, according to Yocum, in order for her to create “a new era in Catholic education.” While Wolff was met with initial resistance from other top Catholic theology institutions, her persistence inspired other schools across the world to follow her lead in educating women.
“Madeleva’s dedication to providing what was deemed throughout its existence, the most up to date and rigorous of theological studies, affirmed the significance of women participating in the wider church's mission,” Yocum said.
Five other sessions were held on Friday and Saturday, inviting notable speakers such as Sister Eva Hooker, Notre Dame professor Katie Bugyis, professor Margaret Gower, professor emeritus of the University of Massachusetts Boston and Avenues editor Thomas O’Grady, professor Susan Mancino and professor Sally Geislar. Each session focused on a particular aspect of Wolff's life, work and impact on theology.
The seventh and final session of the conference, which focused on Wolff’s educational philosophy, concluded with talks from Conboy and Notre Dame theology professor David Clairmont.
Clairmont described Wolff as a Holy Cross educator who responded to secular debates circulating in American higher education at the time.
“One of the distinctive, although perhaps not unique, aspects of that educational vision that I'd like to explore briefly today is the life of the mind in a community of persons, where each person travels a unique path toward a shared educational horizon, a horizon variously colored by the sunrises and sunsets of each life of faith,” Clairmont said.
Conboy identified what she sees as two key lessons in academic leadership from Wolff — a relaxed grasp and taking responsibility.
The “relaxed grasp,” Conboy said, allowed Wolff to establish a functioning organizational structure at Saint Mary’s and reimagine the curriculum in an environment of traditionalists.
“The relaxed grasp may help us understand Sister Madeleva’s presidency, but it is also the leadership lesson for today's Catholic colleges and universities for many of us. Our missions and our founding documents can make change difficult rather than enable it,” Conboy said. “We get so attached to fixed notions of our institutional identity that we're unable to ask whether our curriculum and our supporting co-curriculum speak to the longings and aspirations of a new generation.”
Wolff, she argued, did not fall into that trap.
Conboy also described a moment early in her presidency in 2020, during the widespread protests that followed the death of George Floyd. Seeking guidance while crafting a statement to the Saint Mary’s community, Conboy recalled walking to Wolff’s grave and asking aloud: “Well what would you do?”
Conboy then returned to her office, thumbed through a copy of Wolff’s book “My First Seventy Years” and landed on a page where Wolff was reflecting on her own decision to integrate the College in 1941.
“She was willing to take the blame, because when she was asked if she would admit Black students, she said, ‘I knew only one answer, the right one,’” Conboy said.
Relating to her more recent experience as college president, Conboy recognized the hardship that comes along with following such a philosophy.
“I more recently discovered in painful ways that the environment that we live in today produces a much different speed and force of reaction to a leader's decision than Madeleva had to deal with in her era. But the result is the same: you take the blame,” Conboy said.
Since reading Wolff’s memoir, Conboy said she has tried to take the advice to heart in her own leadership decisions and applied them to the College’s modern-day success.
“[Wolff] understood that everything must evolve if it is to survive, and she was unafraid to help the Catholic college change its mind. It's no wonder, I think, that Saint Mary's remains one of the eight Catholic women's colleges still alive in America today,” Conboy said.
