REVEREND MOTHER MARY HERLINDA MCCARTY was born in Chickasaw, Oklahoma on January 22, 1911, with the given name of Linda. Her parents were Claude Sylvester McCarty and Agnes Lorena McCarty, nee Lee. There was a family connection with Robert E. Lee, second cousin to her maternal grandfather. Her father’s side of the family claimed a connection with the infamous Billy the Kid. Her family traveled much during her childhood—she told of traveling in her uncle’s saddlebag on a horse across the prairies of Colorado at the age of six months, and the same trip in a covered wagon some years later.
Linda McCarty became friends with some Catholic neighbors and a playmate took her to Benediction and May Crowning. She had never before seen statues, there were flowers and candles flickering everywhere, and when the altar boy rang the bells as the priest raised the monstrance, she thought the sound of the bells came from the monstrance itself! She said it seemed like Fairyland to a little girl. She wanted to learn everything she could about the Catholic Faith.
At the age of ten her mother made the decision to place her in a Catholic boarding school in Denver, Colorado, and she soon asked to be received into the Church. She was baptized on May 19, 1923, with the name of Theresa Amata. She made her first Holy Communion on May 20, 1923, and was confirmed the next day, receiving the confirmation name of Fidelis. She did not know that her confirmation name meant “Faithful”, but the name proved to be prophetic.
By the time she reached the sixth grade, she wished to enter the convent, but her pastor told her she must wait. She prayed that if she did not have a vocation, that God would give her one, and eventually she entered the community which had educated her, The Franciscan Daughters of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, now known as the Wheaton Franciscans. When the time came to submit suggestions for her religious name, she asked her mother what name she should give. Her mother told her that she couldn’t think of a name she liked better than Linda. Sister told her Superior about it, and when her name was announced, she became Sr. Mary Herlinda of the Sorrowful Mother. (Saint Herlinda was a Benedictine abbess.) One of the Sisters laughed, saying, “Oh, they just put a patch on it!” Mrs. McCarty appreciated the gentle tact of the community: Sister remained “Her-Linda”.
Sister Herlinda completed her high school education after her entrance into the community and in the course of time attained a bachelor’s degree in education as well as studying for a master’s degree in theology. Her perpetual vows were taken on May 19, 1933, exactly ten years after her baptism.
During her years as a teaching Sister before the changes of Vatican II, Sr. Herlinda was sent on many assignments, more than once as Superior, serving in such places as Wauconda, Wisconsin; Raymond, Iowa; Denver, Colorado; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Pueblo, Colorado. Her first assignment was to teach in the same school she had attended as a child, in the same classroom. Her favorite class to teach was fourth grade, and her favorite subject was religion. She had constructed in her classrooms a miniature altar with meticulously crafted tabernacle, altar cards, vestments, and everything needed to teach the children about the Holy Mass. One of her fellow teachers remarked, “Sister, your students won’t remember you. But they will remember what you taught.” However, some of her students remembered her very well, and that remembrance later would have some important consequences.
The “spirit of Vatican II” brought accelerated changes into the religious life. Updating and gradual elimination of the Franciscan habit seemed to represent further serious changes such as discontinued observance of silence, cafeteria meals replacing community meals in the refectory, Sisters living in apartments rather than in the convent itself. These “lifestyle” changes were accompanied by changes in prayer practices, modernization of the Mass, and on the part of some Sisters in the community, experimentation with eastern mysticism. After her years of teaching, Sr. Herlinda spent several years on assignment in Rome, Italy, where she was relatively unaffected by many of these trends, but after her return to the United States, troubled by the modernization of her religious community, Sister spent three years in exclaustration.
Returning to the Wheaton Motherhouse for knee surgery, after recovery she and another Sister spent three years of volunteer work at Oak Park Hospital in the Chicago area. Recalled to the Motherhouse, she spent several years in soul-searching and discussion with her superiors, as it became increasingly clear that she and the officials of her community held different beliefs about the practice of religious life and the practice of the Catholic Faith itself.
Sister Herlinda’s differences with the Wheaton Franciscans intensified when a former student of hers introduced her to the facts about the Society of St. Pius X. She began to attend Mass at the SSPX chapel in Chicago. The superior of her community did not approve.
By 1996, she had reached the point of departure. She made arrangements with Father Peter Scott to leave Wheaton, Illinois to seek refuge at the SSPX chapel in Dickinson, Texas, where there was a convent serving as a refuge for Sisters from different communities. She arrived in January of 1997, and said that she was filled with a joy that never left her.
Toward the end of 1999, on the advice of Fr. Carl Pulvermacher O.F.M. Cap. (R.I.P. 2006) Fr. Eugene Heidt contacted Sr. Herlinda with the idea of forming a new community of traditional Franciscan teaching Sisters to help with SSPX schools. Her initial reaction was that she was too old, but Fr. Heidt convinced her that she still had much to offer, and in February of 2000, she moved to Silverton, Oregon. The fledgling community soon had younger members joining, and Sr. Mary Herlinda became Mother Mary Herlinda, governing the Franciscan Sisters of Christ the King until February 2003, under the direct guidance of Father Heidt. The Community moved to its present location in Kansas City, Missouri under their direction in November of 2002.
In February 2003, Mother Herlinda retired from her post as Superior to be cared for by the Sisters she had helped to form, and reached the age of 95. She received Extreme Unction a month before death, and Viaticum on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. By the next day, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady (her title day), she was no longer able to receive Holy Communion. She passed peacefully into Eternity on September 17, 2006, the Feast of the Stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi. Requiescat in pace.
