THEA BOWMAN, VIRGIN - 30 MARCH

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN MARCH

Saints celebrated on the 30th of March

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SERVANT OF GOD THEA BOWMAN, VIRGIN

Sister Thea Bowman FSPA, a convert, was born Bertha Bowman in 1937 in Yazoo City, Mississippi, USA. Her parents, Dr Theon Bowman and his wife Mary Esther Bowman, a doctor and a teacher, were Methodists. They later to moved Canton, Mississippi, where Bertha encountered the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration at Holy Child Jesus School. Aged nine, Bertha chose to become Catholic; her parents gave their consent.

When she was 15, she left home for La Crosse, Wisconsin, to attend the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration’s high school, later joining the community and taking the name Sister Mary Thea. Sister Thea is best remembered for her teaching; she helped children to grow in awareness of their gifts, their cultural heritage and their heritage as children of God. Through song, dance, poetry, drama, and story, she evangelized and catechized.

She loved the English language, and Sister Thea’s particular interest in rhetoric led her to write her doctoral dissertation on the relationship of pathos and style in Saint Thomas More’s A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. 

In her dissertation, Sister Thea argued that the appeal to pathos was an indispensable yet largely ignored element in More’s Dialogue. The work was written while More was imprisoned in the Tower of London as an attempt to comfort and encourage his loved ones, and by extension, all those who would face religious persecution in the future. Sister Thea argued that pathos not only strengthened More’s appeals to reason and authority, but that it also created a style marked by “the conscious desire to quicken imaginations, stir affections, and inflame hearts; the indefatigable endeavour to replace ungodly emotions by their opposites and to stir wills by confronting the emotions with their proper objects” (Bowman, "Pathos and Style" 180). Sister Thea went on to receive her doctorate from The Catholic University of America and returned to La Crosse to teach English and linguistics at Viterbo University.

Years later, she returned to Canton because of her parents’ deteriorating health. She then led the Diocese of Jackson’s first Office for Intercultural Affairs. Her gifts for preaching, singing and teaching led her to numerous speaking engagements across the United States. In 1984, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sister Thea went to her eternal reward on March 30, 1990. Her influence continues at Catholic Universities (Boston College, Notre Dame University and Xavier University of Louisiana, to name a few) and Catholic academic institutions throughout the US. 

She was declared a “Servant of God” in May 2018 and the U.S. bishops voiced their consent to her canonisation cause at their November 2018 autumn general meeting in Baltimore. Bishop Joseph R. Kopacz of Jackson, Mississippi, petitioner for Sister’s Thea’s cause said Sister Thea had a “timeless message”, “being the body of Christ in a more faithful way.”

Sources: https://english.catholic.edu/about-us/newsletter/february-2019-newsletter/article-sr-thea.html https://catholicphilly.com/2022/09/culture/new-documentary-on-sister-thea-bowman-highlights-her-faith-justice-work/ https://www.biola.edu/talbot/ce20/database/thea-bowman