St. Christopher Ladies Guild Woman of the Month

Servant of God Catherine Doherty

I was first introduced to Catherine Doherty by Father John Ostrowski. It was an early morning weekday mass at St. Christopher and I arrived with a head full of worry. My brain immediately turned to a long to-do list, and I began to second guess my decision to attend mass rather than getting a head start on my tasks. Then, during his homily, Fr. Johnny O spoke of Catherine Doherty and her spiritual writings. He said that Catherine advised that we “fold the wings of the intellect” and open the door of our heart to draw nearer to God. I thought of the heron I had seen along the Rocky River, head tucked beneath its folded wings, at peace beside the rushing waters. I was intrigued to learn more about this woman and her writings.

Catherine Kolyschkine was born into a wealthy family in Russia in 1896. She was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church and deeply loved the powerful spiritual traditions and symbols of the Christian East. At fifteen Catherine was married to Boris De Hueck. After the Revolution of 1917, Catherine and Boris endured near starvation and civil war. They fled penniless as refugees to England where Catherine converted to Catholicism, and thereafter to Canada in 1921 where her son was soon born. Catherine worked hard as maid, waitress and salesclerk and developed a desire to serve the poor during this time. She was a gifted speaker, and her talks became popular on a lecture circuit across Canada and the United States, bringing her financial stability. In the early 1930s Catherine was devastated by the failure of her marriage, which was later annulled. Her call to serve Christ through becoming one with the poor intensified and she sought counsel from the Archbishop of Toronto, Neil McNeil. He encouraged Catherine to follow her call, and so she gave away her possessions and founded Friendship House, a community of lay people to serve the poor of Toronto. She also published a newspaper that boldly proclaimed the duty of Christians to serve the poor. There was much anti-Catholic bigotry in Toronto at that time, and Catherine was soon slandered and driven from Canada to New York City.

Living in Harlem, Catherine started Friendship House again, serving the African-American poor. Her movement grew and expanded to Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Portland, Oregon. Catherine developed a friendship with Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement. Together their prophetic voices urged Christians to put the gospel into practice in their daily lives. Catherine was also an early and forceful voice for racial equality in the 1940s. While some, such as Thomas Merton, recognized her fidelity to the Church, others were turned off by her blunt, Russian ways.  In 1943 she married a well-known journalist, Eddie Doherty. The couple moved back to Canada and founded an apostolate, Madonna House, in rural Canada in 1947. Madonna House continues to this day as a vowed community of laypersons and clergy with missions throughout the world. Many Catholics attend its training center each year to deepen their faith and experience the Gospel life.

Catherine was a pioneer, like Thomas Merton, in the introduction of Eastern spirituality to the West. She wrote many beautiful spiritual works that seek to marry her treasured Russian Orthodox practices to western Catholicism. Her classic work, Poustinia: Encountering God in Silence, Solitude and Prayer, speaks of the importance of the “desert” experience. (Poustinia is the Russian word for desert) Doherty explains that Russian homes featured a small room or closet where family members went to pray and find solitude. She felt strongly that this time of quiet prayer is where God’s mercy is experienced. This inner peace must then break forth into charity for others that does not count the cost. But one does not necessarily have to go to a special place to experience “the desert”. Catherine says that there are small “deserts” that come to us throughout the day, such as quiet time in the car, that are moments to experience God’s presence. Another book, Sobornost: Experiencing Unity of Mind, Heart and Soul, details her great devotion to the Holy Trinity which she believed dwells within each of us. Catherine Doherty died in 1985. Her cause for canonization was opened in the Catholic Church in 2000.