Yellow fever and mockery

Many years ago, when I visited relatives in Augusta GA, my uncle pointed out a statue of the Madonna in a garden next to a mansion. 

At that time Georgia was virulently Anti Catholic, and he was amazed to see this obviously Catholic statue there. Then he found out the reason: during the civil war the mansion was a hospital for the sick and wounded, and some Catholic nuns were among the nurses. And the nuns put a statue of Mary in the garden, so they could take a few minutes to relax and pray.After the war, they left, but the locals left the statue in it's place as a reminder of their deeds.

Nuns nursing in wars (5000 in the Civil War) and epidemics, or just founding hospitals in the middle of nowhere is nothing new. 

What is new is that their sacrifices and work has been ignored or written out of history, while it is de rigueur to ridicule them: we even are seeing a major league baseball team lauding those who ridicule these sisters with little outcry.

the ridicule is just another version of trendy AntiCatholicism, of course. 

But although their ridicule is aimed at Catholic sisters, it also is ridicule of non Catholic sisterhoods, such as the Anglican orders and Deaconesses.

What brought me to post about this was an article in the Anglican site Virtue on line, which mentions that the Anglican orders are facing the same problems of loss of members as their Catholic counterparts.

But then I ran across this paragraph:

In 1878, five CSM Sisters responded to the yellow fever epidemic in Memphis, Tennessee. Four of the Sisters and two Episcopal priests got the dreaded mosquito-borne disease and died. They were: Sr. Constance, Sr. Thecla, Sr. Ruth, Sr. Frances, Fr. Louis Schuyler and Fr. Charles Parsons.

They are now considered the Martyrs of Memphis and their commemoration was added to the Episcopal Church's Lesser Feasts and Fasts in 1981. Their feast day is celebrated on September 9.

so at least the Episcopal church remembers their sacrifice.

But of course, they were not the only ones who fought that epidemic that killed over 5000 people: This site (historic Memphis) remembers the numerous doctors, nurses and others who helped nurse the sick

and this film gives an overview of the epidemic but while lauding the work of the heroic doctors, barely discusses the sisters and others, including the local black nurses, who died because they stayed to nurse the sick.

,

https://historic-memphis.com/memphis-historic/yellow-fever/fever-5_small.jpg

MacnamarasBlog notes:

Between 1873 and 1879, nearly eight thousand people died during Memphis’s Yellow Fever epidemics. While ministering to the sick, some thirty-four physicians lost their lives, along with twenty-four police officers and twenty-four firefighters, two dozen Catholic priests, and fifty women religious. In Memphis’s Calvary Cemetery there stands a monument to the priests, but none to the Sisters.

Italics mine.

Sigh

As Ms Mueller writes: 

The world has turned its back on the Sisters of St. Mary and many other faithful and prayerful Sisters-in-the-Veil -- Catholic, Episcopal or Anglican -- yet embrace the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence as the Los Angeles Dodgers prepare to bend their collective knee to the rainbow-colored Pride altar.

Shame.

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Update: A history of New Orleans yellow fever epidemic is portrayed at the end of the film about Mother Henriette, whose sisters nursed in the Yellow fever epidemics of 1853