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Years of Purification: 1869-79 183
their sense of mission within the universal Church. A few months after her
return from Rome, she went away again on the doctor’s orders to southern
France. It was from there she sent the revised Constitutions with the
Prefect of Propaganda’s accompanying letter, to all the SHC] com-
munities, requesting their signatures. Weary, ill and aging—she was sixty-
one in January, 1870—Cornelia had lost perspective on the problems her
sisters had regarding the Constitutions and her authority. This was
especially true of the sisters in Preston, in the north of England. Two other
sisters who were in no way alienated from her recorded her miscalculation
of attitudes and the consequences of the circulation of the revised Constitu-
tions:
The Sisters were unexpectedly called upon to hear, (and in some
cases from those who showed little prudence and less tact) that they were
to accept changes in the Rule—that Rule which had become their
mainstay, and for which they had been trained by their mother to make
any sacrifice, and to remain faithful to death.
The record continued:
Reverend Mother was much distressed by the dissatisfaction which this
Rule caused almost universally among the Sisters. She had not calculated
on the effect it would produce . . . . There is no doubt but that Reverend
Mother Foundress made, unconsciously, a very great mistake in trans-
acting this important business through different local Superiors. Had she
delayed until her return to England [from France] and read it publicly in
each House, her personal influence would have upheld the ‘Cor unum et
anima una,’ but the mere perusal of it individually had no such effect.
Though all signed, all were not united . . . . Letters of disapproval and
protests arrived from all sides.°*
M.M.F. Bellasis, who gave us the major part of this record, had an
important insight on the nature of the crisis that was rising. She saw that a
Society which had been governed for so long—twenty-four years— by per-
sonal government, that is, largely by the founder’s personal influence, was
not going to respond to a serious problem without that support. Gradually,
through the Spring of 1870, Cornelia, who had returned to England,
brought many to see that the need for approbation was paramount, and
that she herself had sacrificed some of her own preferences in revising the
Constitutions, especially that of general-for-life. But even with these gains,
particularly with the communities in the north of England, crisis was by no
means averted. Truly “she had not calculated on the effect” she would pro-
duce by asking the three SHCJ communities in Preston to send their
signatures of consent to the revised Constitutions. Her own record of what
transpired was as follows: “. . . all the Choir Sisters . . . were told that they
were perfectly free to make their observations on the revised Constitutions,
but some three or four in Preston signed their names to them and at the
same time secretly reserved their dissatisfaction . . .” In further notes, Cor-
nelia specified: “The Preston Cabal . . . those who made their objections to