Box OSBCHI-A-116-1

Scope and Contents

This series has materials related to the ceremony installing Sister Karen Bland, OSB as prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago on June 25, 1995. It contains the direction statement from discernment, liturgical materials, and photographs.

Scope and Contents

This subseries is made up of calendars that Sister Karen Bland, OSB created on the computer during her term as prioress. There is also an email from Sister Karen to Sister Vivian Ivantic, OSB regarding the calenders.

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This subseries contains a list of monastery committee members for 1995-1999 and a copy of membership data that had been compiled for the 1998 Visitation.

Scope and Contents

Correspondence with individuals outside the monastic community. A letter from Saint Scholastica Academy director of education, Diane Arnold, reports on the destruction of the Poverty Gulch ecology station in 1996.

Scope and Contents

The bulk of this subseries is made up of letters that Sister Karen Bland, OSB addressed to the all of the Sisters of the monastery. There are a few letters to or from individual Sisters. Sister Karen also included copies of many of the general letters in her collection of Monastic Musings, her internal newsletter.

Scope and Contents From the Collection: Sister Karen Bland served one term as prioress of the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago, in between serving as Dean at Wheeling University and as executive director of Grand Valley Catholic Outreach. The material in this collection is related to that term in community leadership. She arranged and submitted most of this material to the archives herself. The collection's major series are correspondence, the internal newsletter, Monastic Musings, homilies, and a...

Scope and Contents

Sister Karen Bland, OSB created the Monastic Musings newsletter for internal communication with the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago; she published it from 1996-1999. In this set she compiled for the archives, she interspersed most of the letters that she wrote to the entire community between 1995 and 1999.

Scope and Contents

This is a duplicate set of the Monastic Musings newsletter only.

Scope and Contents This series contains the reflections on Scripture that Sister Karen Bland, OSB prepared and shared with the congregation at mass on Sundays, Feast Days, or Sisters' funerals. Most were delivered at Saint Scholastica Monastery and High School as well as at her home parish of Saint Joseph Church in Chicago, Illinois. Some of the reflections were given to the monastic community at evening prayer or Vespers during seasons like Advent and Lent.Sister Karen's homilies from before and...

Scope and Contents Sister Karen Bland, OSB attended the 3rd International Symposium of Benedictine Women which took place in Rome, Italy September 4-12, 1998. This meeting was an immediate precursor of the Communio Internationalis Benedictinarum. This series contains a letter from Sister Ruth Ksycki, OSB to Sister Karen requesting materials from each monastery for a display of Benedictine life in North America to be shared at the meeting and the photographs that Sister Vivian Ivantic, OSB shared for that...