Live, teach and manifest

Sister Gerald Hartney, CSC

Adapted from an article by Susan Baxter and reprinted with permission from Today’s Catholic, March 24, 2002.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 2002, Sister M. Gerald Hartney, CSC, received one of the highest honors of her life:  induction into the Modern Healthcare Hall of Fame.

According to the February 18 issue of Modern Healthcare magazine, Sister Gerald was selected for her unprecedented accomplishments in healthcare finance.  At 92, such an accomplished woman might want to sit back and let her resume speak for itself, but Sister Gerald is eager to note that the honor really belongs to her religious congregation and her God.

“The hall of fame award for me will give witness of a Sister of the Holy Cross whose religious congregation was the forerunner of the Navy Nurse Corps during the Civil War and whose healing ministry continues in Trinity Health, the third largest Catholic healthcare system in the United States,” she said.

Her nomination to the Modern Healthcare Hall of Fame included that of the Healthcare Financial Management Association, in which she was an organizing member in its early years. In expressing her thanks in Chicago she gave credit to the small group of men with whom she had worked for 10 years — all of them on a volunteer basis.  At the end of that time, when a professional staff replaced them, there were 1,500 members and 22 state chapters.  Today it has 31,000 members and over 70 state chapters.  She expressed appreciation of her co-workers who served in the spirit of their Judeo-Christian commitment and were not separated by any theological differences.  She expressed the belief that they would receive their first paycheck when they win their last battle.

Erin go braugh
It is perhaps no accident that the greatest honor of Sister Gerald’s life came to her on the feast day of Ireland’s patron saint.  For although she has served God on every continent of the globe except Australia, Ireland is the nation that gave her the faith, and taught her about charity, justice and commitment.

“Faith and freedom, that’s what I grew up thinking about and longing for,” she said in an interview.  “I remember being a little child and thinking, ‘Who will go to China and baptize the little girls before they kill them.’  They were killing off female children even then and I remember thinking, ‘someday, I will go baptize them.’”

Sister Gerald was born Maura Hartney, right smack in the middle of the Irish “troubles,” in Limerick in 1910.  She recalls the violent centuries for Catholics and the long battle for those precious concepts, faith and freedom.

England had invaded Ireland 700 years before.  Later, Catholics lost their property.  In the 1600s, monks were burned in their monasteries during the persecutions launched by Oliver Cromwell, who paid his army with Irish property.  In the great famine during which millions died or emigrated to America, Protestants had set up soup kitchens that would feed any Catholic willing to renounce their faith.  Education was available only to Catholics who became Protestants.  Sister Gerald has a clear recollection of her parents preparing for the 1916 Easter uprising.

“Six times in 300 years the Irish had protested in blood against England’s cruel aggression.  During World War I when England tried to conscript Irish men to fight under the British flag ‘for the freedom of small nations,’ Irish leaders recognized that ‘England’s difficulties are Ireland’s opportunities’ and a national uprising was planned.  Soldiers dressed in English uniforms could enter the shops and tea rooms, and since customers were plentiful they could do so without attracting suspicion.  They would leave in civilian attire after having sold their uniforms to my father and his companions.”

At her Irish home, Sister Gerald stands by the old pump at Mayhill.

“My mother was busy dying uniforms green,” she said.  “We had a small business, a grocery shop and tea rooms in which soldiers came and went without suspicion.  The British later blew up our home without giving any ultimatum.  But through all of this, my father kept saying, love the English, love them — but hate their government.”

It was the oppressive government, he told her, that tried to destroy the Catholic faith and the freedom of the Irish, that was to blame for the troubles.  Her father had been imprisoned by the British, had been a hostage in Ireland, and the family shop and home had been bombed.

In April 1922, when Maura was age 12 she had accompanied her mother to the funeral of a young man who had been killed by the British. After the burial her mother said to her:  “Maura, remember that if your father is killed his soul will go straight to heaven.  He is fighting for his faith and his freedom.  If those who went before us had not continued to battle for centuries, we would not have the Mass today.  That is how I would like to be buried.  I would want to have the green, white and gold flag around my coffin and, as a soldier for Ireland, to have the shots fired over my grave as we heard today.”

That happened — but not to her father.  Five months later young Maura’s mother became the one female in Ireland’s continued battle for faith, freedom and unity who was killed in action.  She said, “My mother had a military funeral and was interred following her 35th birthday with others who died for Ireland in the Republican Plot in St. Lawrence Cemetery in Limerick.  Their graves are surmounted by a huge Celtic stone cross which is engraved:  ‘For the Glory of God and the Honour of Ireland,’” Sister Gerald recalled.  All of this later influenced her vocation to consecrated life.

Sister Gerald prays in the chapel at Saint Mary’s with Sister Lourdes Kelly.

After Catholic emancipation in 1829, national grade schools were opened under the English government.  They were supposed to be secular but nuns were the only teachers available.  Young Maura Hartney attended a private secondary school followed by education in commerce.  She successfully passed a public examination from London in the Royal Society of Arts.  She got a job in accounting, which brought her a comfortable wage.  But as a young adult, Maura had heard a sermon on hell that changed her life.

“I was all caught up in going to dances and buying pretty clothes,” she said.  “When I heard that sermon I thought, ‘all this will pass, I’m going to get older. I won’t be dancing forever.’”  It was at that moment Maura met Holy Cross Sister Carmel O’Brien, visiting from the United States.

“I told her, ‘Life is very short.’ My mother was only 35 when she died.  Here I was — I wasn’t living a sinful life — but all I thought about was clothes and going to dances with my companions.  I said to the sister, ‘I’m not thinking about going to heaven, or what’s going to happen to me when I die.’”

Sister Carmel replied by sharing with the girl her life in her religious community, how they lived a normal but simple life to serve God and teach the faith without proselytizing.  As Maura listened, her transformation to Sister Mary Gerald, CSC, began.  With great emotion, she recalled her first impression:

“As I listened, I realized that to live, teach and manifest the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the purpose of the Holy Cross sister.  Live, teach and manifest.  That kept ringing in my ears.

“I was in the middle of a dance, and it occurred to me that if I could go to America and join the sisters, I could be at the side of a dying patients and help them to heaven, or teach a little child in school about the love of Jesus Christ, I would be fulfilling that mission.”

An ocean between them
Maura was living a “normal life,” continued to go to dances, went to work and attended night school.

“And the call became stronger and stronger,” she said.  “I said to my aunt, ‘All I think about is money.’  When I got paid, I’d take my sister to a movie and we’d take the dog with us.  We’d buy ice cream for ourselves and for the dog.  All I was thinking about was the next outfit and the next dance. I knew I was being very selfish. My aunt said I offered all to God each morning — everything I did was for him.  I replied, ‘If the Lord doesn’t have my paycheck at the end of the week, he will not see me the next week.  I’m working for a paycheck.’”

Finally, she broke the news of her vocation to her father.  She told him she would be leaving Ireland to serve the spiritually poor in the United States.  She wanted, she told him, to minister to the many who were not getting Christ’s message of love and forgiveness.

“I knew that the Act of Contrition I could teach a child in the early grades could be the key that would open the gates of heaven for an old man.  I was realizing the depth of religious vocation, and I tried to explain that to my father.

“He said, ‘Why are you putting an ocean between us, Maura?  We may never see each other again.’  And I said, ‘Dad, if I stay home and marry someone, and he goes to Japan, I would have to go to Japan.’”

Her father understood her meaning, that she intended to follow Christ wherever he led, and within a year young Maura was boarding the Cunard liner “Cedric,” bound for the United States and the Holy Cross sisters.  As she watched her beloved homeland and family on shore fade from her sight, one thought eased the pain:

“I said to myself: ‘On my deathbed, I’ll be glad I did this.  I’ll have given God everything.  There’s nothing left for me.’”

A life of service
Sister Gerald said she “little dreamed” of the riches God had in store for her.

“I have served God on all continents except Australia — from Canada, every state except Alaska, in Central and South America, to Africa, Europe, and even three years at the Sea of Galilee — learning and teaching Vatican II to future leaders of religious life in Africa.”

Oddly enough, it wasn’t her fellow Catholics, but Protestants who called her to extend her gift for financial management into healthcare.

While she had served in New Mexico and Utah where there were opportunities for mission, “the congregation had a hospital in Fresno, California,” she said, “and I also served there in financial management. I knew that Catholic patients were receiving all the sacraments and comforts of the faith in illness and on their deathbeds, while the poor Protestants were dying alone like animals in the field.  I thought, well, I want to go and be Christ for them, too.”

This deep need to share the love of God with everyone, dying or not, along with the considerable talent in administration, proved to be the work God wanted to do through her.

She was the first to teach cost funding to Catholic hospital administrators and the first to figure indirect costs of operating hospital departments in order to obtain full reimbursement from third-party payers.  She instituted internal controls to prevent fraud and abuse, and was responsible for helping thousands of women and men religious to become eligible for Social Security benefits through bishops’ lawyers, as an act of Congress made this inspiration a fiscal reality.

In 1984, Pope John Paul II awarded her the highest honor given to non-ordained Catholics, the Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice Medal. She taught healthcare finance at Indiana University, Notre Dame, Duquesne and other colleges, and served the Archdiocese of Washington as director of finance and coordinator of pastoral planning.  She also had served 24 years in top administrative positions with the Holy Cross sisters, and was chief executive officer or chief financial officer for hospitals of her congregation.

The recent Modern Healthcare Hall of Fame award was presented to Sister Gerald at the American College of Healthcare Executives Congress in Chicago.  She accepted the award along with fellow 2002 inductees Jim Ludiam, instrumental in the enactment of the Medical Injury Reform Act of 1975, and Michael Davis, a widely published spokesman for insurance, group practice and preventative health care.  Only 60 others already share the honor — 10 women, including St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Frances Cabrini and Sister Irene Krause, DC, first female president of the American Hospital Association, and 50 men of outstanding achievement.

The honorees are enshrined at Philadelphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital, founded by Benjamin Franklin.

In her acceptance remarks on receipt of the award, she expressed gratitude for being among the number of those who had served healthcare in such outstanding ways and added that she believed they would all receive a great reward from a rich and generous Father.

The Modern Healthcare Hall of Fame award was presented to Sister Gerald at the American College of Healthcare Executives Congress in Chicago, Illinois, March 17, 2002. L to r: Charles Lauer, Sister Gerald and Richard Clarke