Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America

One day in 1917, while cooking dinner at home in Manhattan, Margaret Reilly (18841937) felt a sharp pain over her heart and claimed to see a crucifix emerging in blood on her skin. Four years later, Reilly entered the convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Peekskill, New York, where, known as Sister Mary of the Crown of Thorns, she spent most of her life gravely ill and possibly exhibiting Christs wounds. In this portrait of Sister Thorn, Paula M. Kane scrutinizes the responses to this American stigmatics experiences and illustrates the surprising presence of mystical phenomena in twentieth-century American Catholicism.Drawing on accounts by clerical authorities, ordinary Catholics, doctors, and journalists as well as on medicine, anthropology, and gender studies Kane explores American Catholic mysticism, setting it in the context of life after World War I and showing the wars impact on American Christianity. Sister Thorns life, she reveals, marks the beginning of a transition among Catholics from a devotional, Old World piety to a newly confident role in American society.