Mary MacKilllop, the Australian religious founder who is to be canonized today, is an interesting woman. The media have made great play of the fact that in 1871 she came under ecclesiastical censure (her Sisters had reported an abusive priest, although Mother MacKillop herself seems not to have been directly involved) but have given rather less attention to her work for the education of the poor, her persecution from within the Church itself and the last difficult years when, confined to a wheelchair, she nevertheless succeeded in overseeing a major expansion of her congregation.

As far as I can see, no-one has commented on the breach between Mother MacKillop and Fr Julian Tenison Woods concerning the rule they had devised together for the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. When Mother MacKillop went to Rome in 1873 to obtain Vatican approval of her religious congregation, some modifications of the rule were made to which Fr Woods objected. Rather than accept that the Sisters were quite capable of deciding for themselves how best to live religious poverty, Fr Woods argued that they were compromising. Looked at from outside, it may seem a mere trifle; but I wouldn't mind guessing that it caused Mother MacKillop and her Sisters much pain. To be misunderstood and criticized by one's enemies is unpleasant; to be misunderstood and criticized by one's friends can be devastating. "Heroic virtue" isn't always to be measured in terms of scale.