There is ample evidence in the New Testament that Jesus himself did not display the low regard for women that would have been usual for a person of his times. He spoke with women and healed them, counted women among his friends and disciples, and used parables like the lost coin and the yeast in the dough that included women's experience. The Gospels report that the first person to see the resurrected Jesus was Mary Magdalen.

Much of the positive regard for women that was initiated by Jesus, however, was lost as the early Church sought respectability and relief from persecution by conforming to the social expectations of Roman culture. Still, Christ's vision of a community of mutual respect and equality for each person has found its champions in every century. Greater participation in the Church for women is part of a vision of respect for each person that goes back to Jesus and has never been entirely lost in the Christian community.

The roots of Notre Dame history are to be found in this dream of God for us all. In France at the end of the 16th century this vision was growing in Alix LeClerc. She became more and more convinced that God was calling her to the education of young girls whom she saw as being regarded as "worthless straw." Since no established structures existed for such a vision, she gathered five companions and with the local pastor, Peter Fourier, made plans for a new religious congregation. The Canonesses of St. Augustine of the Congregation of Notre Dame made their first consecration together on December 25, 1597. In spite of poverty, misunderstanding and resistance from church authorities, the new venture flourished and spread throughout France and into southern Germany. Since the idea of women religious without cloister was inconceivable to Church authorities, Alix and Peter negotiated for a form of cloister to which children could be admitted for teaching. Each convent included the free education of poor girls as part of its mission.

During the French Revolution the order was suppressed in France but expanded and spread in other European countries. In 1833 Caroline Gerhardinger (M. Teresa), a former student at the now suppressed school in Bavaria, established a new form of the Notre Dame Sisters. Her vision was of a new structure of small convents affordable to small villages, united under a central motherhouse and freed from strict enclosure. Hampered by all the misunderstanding and opposition that so often greet a new vision, she perservered and from their Motherhouse in Munich the School Sisters de Notre Dame spread and flourished.

While Mother Teresa was in the midst of her struggles to found the Munich Notre Dame Congregation, another creative servant of God was beginning his pastoral work in the villages of Bohemia. From the first years of his priesthood, Gabriel Schneider found himself among rural people who had long been served by ignorant or indifferent pastors. Father Gabriel used sodalities, music, retreats and long hours of spiritual counseling in the confessional to nurture the neglected faith of the villagers. He gradually became convinced that educated women were the key to renewed faith for the families and parishes. Urged on by this conviction, Gabriel began in 1846 to establish a parish school for girls in the village of Hirschau. Numerous efforts to obtain teachers from a variety of religious orders all met with insurmountable obstacles. His longest negotiations were with Mother Teresa Gerhardinger in Munich where he sent eight young women from Hirshau to be educated as teachers and religious. After many delays it eventually became clear that she would not be able to staff his school. In 1853 Gabriel recalled the Hirshau candidates from Munich and became the reluctant founder of a new religious congregation. The first profession and reception of the members of this new community were held on August 15, 1853.

These Notre Dame Sisters then continued Father Gabriel's dream of educating young girls to enable them to become a source of strength to the faith of their families and of the local church. By 1866 the Notre Dame Congregation had established the country's first college for Czech-speaking teachers.

In 1910 this concern for serving the neglected prompted the European Sisters to establish an orphanage as their first mission in the United States. After their establishment in the United States, the Sisters provided opportunities for a Catholic education to countless children, especially to girls of high school age who could not have had a Catholic education without the opportunity to attend boarding school. This service, along with the education of day students, was provided by Notre Dame Academy in Omaha, Nebraska, for almost 50 years. In the 1970's this same spirit of responding to unmet needs moved the Sisters to give substantial organizational and financial support to help establish Omaha's first shelter for battered women. Beginning in the late 1970's and continuing into the early 1990's, women who were seeking help for chemical dependency problems in their families found safe and inexpensive hospitality with the Sisters at the Motherhouse in Omaha. In 1995 the facility for housing these women was lost due to construction of Seven Oaks of Florence, a safe and affordable senior independent living facility that today provides 77 apartment units that are home to a population that is predominantly female. Currently the Sisters and Associates, through the Safe Homes project, advocate for support for Catholic Charities' Family Passages transitional housing and supportive services for women and their children who are leaving shelters. Meeting the unmet needs of women and children is a Notre Dame tradition that will continue into the future.

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-876-6238