Sister Catherine Margaret Carden, one of a team of two Maryknoll sisters who in 1946 created the first Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD) program for the Diocese of Honolulu, died July 25 in Maryknoll, N.Y. She was 93 years old and a Maryknoll Sister for 73 years.
Hawaii was her first assignment as a Maryknoll Sister. In those days she was known as Sister Marcus Marie, her religious name borrowed from her father’s first name.
In an undated letter about her life she wrote to make things easier for her funeral planners, Sister Catherine spoke of her five years in Hawaii.
“Sister Patrice Cadden and I were privileged to start the CCD program with Hawaii’s first native priest, Father Benedict Vierra,” she said. “Our Maryknoll Sisters had many wonderful Catholic schools but there were thousands of children in public schools. We trained dedicated lay people to be catechists.”
Describing her religious vocation as an invitation to dance with God, she wrote that her time in Honolulu “was such a beautiful ALOHA part of the Dance.”
Sister Catherine, who was affectionately called Sister Kitty, also worked as a missioner in Peru, Mexico, Colombia and New York.
Born on March 27, 1920, in Carbondale, Pa., to Marcus A. and Gertrude Corrigan Carden, Sister Catherine entered Maryknoll on Dec. 8, 1939, with a diploma in secretarial studies. She would later go on to earn a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree in theology.
After helping develop Honolulu’s CCD program, she was sent to Stockton, Calif., in 1950 to train catechists there and to teach catechism. “That’s where I found my love for Hispanic peoples,” Sister Catherine later said. That passion led her to assignments in Latin America.
Sister Catherine was sent to Lima, Peru, where she did pastoral work and trained catechists from 1960 to 1964. She then went to Mexico, where she opened the first Catholic convent in Cuernavaca and worked with poor migrants from Lima. In 1966, she went to Colombia, where she served as executive secretary of the Catechetical Institute in Manizales, which offered training in theology and pastoral work to priests, sisters and laity.
From 1971 until her retirement in 1988, Sister Catherine developed an English as a Second Language program for the public school district of West Haverstraw, N.Y., and was lauded by the superintendent there as the best teacher he had ever worked with.
Following her retirement from teaching she continued to minister to the people of West Haverstraw, volunteering at a local organization which helped the community’s homeless, hungry and needy. She officially retired at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Ossining in 2004.
Sister Catherine’s funeral was July 31 at the Maryknoll Sisters Center in Ossining. She is buried in the Maryknoll Sisters cemetery at Maryknoll, N.Y.
