SISTER MARY EMIL PENET, I.H.M.: FOUNDER OF THE SISTER FORMATION CONFERENCE

shape the first national organization of American women religious, the Sister Formation Conference (SFC; 1954-1964), facilitating the integrated intellec-tual, spiritual, psychological, and professional development of vowed women religious. In the decade preceding Vatican II, her leadership generated a renewal among religious communities focusing first on preparing young sis-ter teachers, then sisters of all ages, whatever their ministries. Her education-al contributions affected sisters ’ development and ministries, their contribu-tion to Vatican II aggiornamento, and later touched the lives of female col-lege students, seminarians, and Catholic laity. I am happy to inform you that the reports of the committee on your preliminary oral examination were very satisfactory. The examiners indicated that your work in the department of Philosophy has been of outstanding quality and that the examination itself was considerably above average. (R. Henle, personal communication, November 3, 1949) So wrote Robert Henle, S.J., to Mary Emil Penet, I.H.M., as she drew herphilosophy studies to a close at Saint Louis University. Rumor used to go about the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Congregation that one member of the examining committee offered the left-handed compliment that “Sister Mary Emil has the mind of a man.” A year later, Penet defended her dissertation with the same able wit and wisdom that she had evinced at her orals. On June 5, 1951, Penet was award-ed a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Saint Louis University. She titled her dissertation Property and Right in Representative Catholic Moralists of the Thirteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (1951). No mean achievement, it was comprised of over 688 carefully annotated pages followed by 27 pages of bibliography. As a ground-breaking study of singular scholarship and thor-oughness on the early development of the understanding of property an