At the same time, the Catholic context added particular weight to the shame that attached to disability in the early twentieth century. A family’s social standing in Catholic communities of the era was connected to its reputation, and a daughter who was visibly different was a potential source of judgment from neighbors, from the parish, from the broader social world in which the family moved. The management of Rosemary’s visibility — keeping her in boarding schools, presenting her at public events in carefully controlled ways, ensuring that her differences were not conspicuous — was partly a response to this Catholic social context.
The lobotomy itself was not endorsed by Catholic teaching, and the fact that Joe Kennedy proceeded with an experimental procedure on his daughter without the family physician’s involvement and without his wife’s prior knowledge suggests that he was acting outside the normal framework of family and community consultation, rather than seeking and following guidance from his religious tradition.
The Women Who Cared for Rosemary
One of the consistent gaps in most accounts of Rosemary Kennedy’s life is the invisibility of the women who actually cared for her on a daily basis for most of those sixty-three post-surgery years.
The Sisters of Saint Francis of Assisi at Saint Coletta are mentioned in most accounts of Rosemary’s life, but they are rarely given more than a sentence. Sister Margaret Ann and Sister Leona are named as her primary caregivers in the Wikipedia article, but beyond their names, the available public record tells us almost nothing about them.