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Mercy Archives
What are Archives and why do we keep them?
Archives are the accumulated records of an individual or institution
which merit preservation because of their possible subsequent
value to the originating source for legal, administrative or
personal reasons. Archives are also preserved for cultural and
historical reasons. Their use as source material allows researchers
to document fully and preserve the character and identity of
an individual or organisation.
Archival records come in many media, shapes, sizes and formats
including; individual letters, paper files, handwritten bound
volumes, scrap books, press cuttings, printed constitutions,
spiritual and devotional literature, photographs, maps, architectural
drawings, oral histories recordings, microfilm, floppy discs,
CDs, film reels, videos and DVDs.
Archives are the annals of a community, the acts of chapter,
the registers of profession, the minutes of meetings, the account
books, the annual school inspection reports, the correspondence
with dioceses, the documentation of interaction with ecclesiastical
and civil authorities, the title deeds to property, the personal
papers of individual sisters, the constitutions, the prayer leaflets,
the photographs of community life, the videos and cassette recordings
of jubilees, professions and special occasions.
Archival material need not be very old to be important. The
value of archival material lies in its usefulness to the creator
or custodian. Once it is no longer of pressing use for administrative
reasons it may become of great value to researchers.
Why keep archives and what should we keep?
It is not uncommon to hear the comment that archives are a waste
of time, money and resources. We live in the present and plan
for the future. Why dwell in the past?
Firstly we are required by Canon Law and church teaching to
do so. Pope John Paul II has described archives as places of
memory of the Christian community and storehouses of culture for
the new evangelisation. He has emphasised that the various religious
authorities have a responsibility which they cannot ignore; they
should preserve both ancient archives and current records. The
Church has a duty to guard and increase these records so as to
pass them on to generations to come. To this end the 1983 Code
of Canon Law requires that the whole patrimony of a congregation
must be faithfully preserved by all. This patrimony is comprised
of the intentions of the founders, of all that the competent
ecclesiastical authority has approved concerning the nature,
purpose spirit and character of an institute and of its sound
traditions (Canon 578).
This canon places an obligation on every member of the congregation,
but clearly the archivist holds a privileged and responsible
position as custodian of the collective memory of the congregation.
The church’s increasing commitment to its archives was
seen in June 1988 in the establishment by Pope John Paul 11 of
the Pontifical Commission for the Conservation of Historic and
Artistic Heritage. This was later renamed the Pontifical Commission
for the Cultural Heritage of the Church. In his address to members
of the Commission on 12 October 1995, Pope John Paul 11 defined
cultural heritage as including, the artistic wealth of painting,
sculpture, architecture, mosaic, and music, placed at the service
of the Church’s mission....the wealth of books contained
in ecclesiastical libraries and the historical documents preserved
in the archives of ecclesiastical communities. In February 1997
the Commission produced a circular entitled The Pastoral Function
of Church Archives which elaborates on the value of archives as
places of memory and storehouses of culture, celebrates their prophetic
evaluative role and outlines a concrete plan of action for their
preservation and use.
There are reasons other than Canon Law and church teaching for
keeping archives, manifestly practical reasons. Religious congregations
are administrative and corporate entities. They are employers,
run schools, own property, oversee development projects, raise
funds and administer the legal and financial affairs of the institute
and its sisters. Archives are integral to the proper functioning
of these administrations for the fundamental reason that they
serve as a memory. Just as individuals are dysfunctional without
a memory; so too are organisations. Without archival recall or
the records to facilitate that recall, the religious institute
would have no perspective on which to base planning, no example
of precedent to prevent the administration from making, repeating,
or avoiding mistakes, no expert knowledge other than often inaccurate
human memory, no means of proving entitlements or ownership, and
no way of defending oneself against, or responding to, allegations
of improper actions.
The current controversies regarding industrial schools and magdalen
laundries are practical and very painful examples of the need
for accurate record keeping and the preservation of archives
as well as the financial, legal and psychological damage that
can be inflicted through the absence of such records. Records
are the factual diaries of events. The absence of such records,
their loss through natural attrition, accidental loss or deliberate
destruction does a disservice to the congregation's work in a
difficult ministry and to the thousands of marginalised women
and children to whom the congregation ministered. The hurt felt
by many of those who spent part of their lives in care can be
compounded by the discovery that no record of that part of their
life survives, that their records and by extension, they themselves,
were not deemed worthy of preservation. The absence of records
can also leave a congregation vulnerable to attack and can add
fire to claims of deliberate obfuscation and a refusal to accept
responsibility for past actions. The extra research and resources
required to reconstruct missing information can be very expensive,
if it can be done at all, in terms of finance, morale, honour
and reputation. That is why we keep archives.
There is not a bursar, team leader or manager who has not spent
fruitless hours searching for records that were known to have
existed but cannot be found. This can be annoying, it can be
frustrating in terms of time wasted, but it can also have legal
and financial implications. We all know of cases where communities
could not establish title to a property and thus could not develop
it or dispose of it because the records had been locked away
in a secure place that no one can remember or burnt in an over-zealous
fit of housekeeping. Archives are not just an indulgence; they
are an administrative and legal necessity.
Archives also contain information that is of interest not only
to the creating institute, but also to researchers from a variety
of fields of knowledge. As historians and researchers turn increasingly
towards the investigation of social, economic and cultural history,
more attention is given to the sociological and cultural aspects
of the history of religion. Researchers are interested in the
family and social background of religious sisters, the life they
led, the work they did at local and diocesan level, the manuals
they studied, the difficulties they faced and the prayers they
recited. At a time when secular women are largely invisible in
history because of the lack of recognition of their role and
the absence or records dealing with them, congregations have
in their archives, records of women who managed their own finances
and exercised authority in hospitals and schools. Often such
records contain information gathered originally for a purpose
quite different from the uses to which the later researcher will
put them. Researchers, for example, have used account books to
assess changes in economic status or to trace spiritual development
through payments to spiritual directors or to those who conducted
retreats.
Archives are also of value to researchers within a congregation
and Sisters of Mercy are using archives to an increasing degree
to explore aspects of Mercy story and memory as witnessed by
the expanding number of recent publications on Mercy history.
Archives are part of the historical identity of the congregation
as a whole and of individual houses in particular. One can only
understand a society or congregation through an examination of
their codes, customs and activities. Archives are the tools of
understanding. They provide evidence of the historical development
of the congregation, the opening and closing of houses, the evolution
of ministry and the contribution to the wider community.
Dolores Liptak RSM in an address to the first assembly of American
Mercy Archives, Pittsburgh, October 1992, spoke of the need to
see both history and archives in their proper perspective: history,
as an essential means that should be in the forefront of every
process of understanding Mercy as a community; and archives,
as the important treasury that safeguards and ensures the future
of the missionary call. She emphasised that religious archivists
and religious researchers were responsible for keeping alive the
sacred story of their community’s journey and that the planners
should regularly tap into the congregation's story as the only
source for understanding the congregation’s mission. She
cited studies of the future of religious life that argued that
no community could either maintain its course or project its future
goals unless it was willing to recollect its past and test every
decision with relation to its tradition.
It is Christ who operates in time and who writes…His story
through our papers which are echoes and traces of the passage
of the Lord Jesus in the world. Thus, having veneration for these
papers, documents, archives means having veneration for Christ;… it
means giving to ourselves and those who will come after us the
history of this phase of transitus Domini (Pope Paul VI).
Marianne Cosgrave is the Congregational Archivist and works
from Herbert Street, Dublin, Ireland.
Email: mercyarc@indigo.ie
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