History

Who was Mother Butler?

Origin of the Guilds

• Founding in America
• Founding in the Philippines
• Video – Clara Corpus Recalls the Beginning

Objectives

Apostolate

Membership

Activities

Who was Mother Marie Joseph Butler, RSHM?

(an excerpt from a pamphlet by Clara O. Corpus published in 1965 entitled “Who is Mother Butler?”)

Mother Butler was born Johanna Butler in Ballynunnery, Ireland on July 22, 1860. Katherine Burton, her biographer, says that, unconsciously, Johanna caused a slight ripple of disappointment in the family circle. The three boys who preceded her wanted, as most boys would, another member of their strong, husky clan rather than one of their weak and pretty counterparts.

Miss Burton says that Johanna grew into a fearless tomboy because she was so much at play with these brothers who soon looked upon her as an idol. She goes on to recount an epic of bravery in her childhood. One day, so the story goes, Johanna was playing with her friends around a deserted miniature volcano. Though inactive, it was the terror of the children. A bully among them decided to exhibit a bit of braggadocio. He took a little boy’s cap and meanly threw it in with a flourish into the crater. The children were petrified. Not so Johanna. She confronted with indignation the bully. Then she jumped lightly into the crater and retrieved the little boy’s cap.

Johanna, as a little girl just passed First Communion age, was often seen, even on a rainy day, walking to church on an early morning to help prepare the sacristy for Mass. Her special delight seemed to be to light the sanctuary lamp. When at home, she also helped her mother and sisters sew linen for the altar and repair old vestments. This was a special devotion in the Butler household.

At the age of seventeen, Johanna became a nun, Mother Marie Joseph of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Before long, she became foundress, educator and apostle of the missions. As foundress, she was responsible for the rapid expansion of the Marymount Schools all over the United States. As an apostle of the missions, she did something more than expected of her. She coupled her prayers with action. She chose one particular apostolate, and consequently, one particular way through which she drew others – like the members of the Mother Butler Mission Guilds – nearer to Christ: she stressed the value of sewing Mass vestments and linen with which to clothe properly the poor representatives of Christ in their dispensation of the sacraments. She herself always kept a supply ready for disposal at any missionary who came to her for help. Up to the very end, just a few days before she died, she said she examined a box of liturgical goods for the missions: “Continue this good work, and continue teaching the children to appreciate the privilege of sewing for God’s altar. You will draw them closer to God and help make them useful women in this sad world.”

Founding in America

Mother Marie Joseph Butler, Superior General of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary (1926-1940) was a woman with an insatiable zeal for the missions. The impact of her zeal was such that when she died on April 23, 1940, Marion Dolan, an alumna of Marymount, decided to perpetuate the charitable endeavor that Mother Butler started. Six years after Mother Butler’s death, the Mother Butler Mission Guilds, as conceived by Mrs. Dolan and approved by the Marymount nuns, was born.

Founding in the Philippines

The Philippines was privileged to be the first beneficiary of the Mother Butler Mission Guilds. This was due to a plea expressed by Reverend Thomas A. Mitchell, Society of Jesus, on behalf of the missions at a Mass in St. Margaret’s Church in Pearl River, New York. Not much later, Father Mitchell was assigned to the Philippines. It was at this priest’s suggestion that Clara O. Corpus, who was going to the United States, arranged to meet Marion Dolan. From this meeting was born the idea of founding the Mother Butler Mission Guilds in the Philippines.