Catholic discipline!

One day, Anna became entangled in a since-forgotten transgression and was summoned to the office of the Headmaster, Fr. Joseph White.

It was the custom then that misbehaving seminarians would be spanked with a wooden sandal or thrashed with a cane. The unwritten rule was to spank the offender with as many strokes as was necessary to bring about tears. The school record was fifty-two; Anna made it to thirty-five.

This was common both for male and female seminaries, in training for the priesthood or for missionary work.

“That spanking, in a healthy way, had a profound effect on her,” said her brother Andrew, also a seminarian at a different college. “It seemed to awaken her to some of the things she was straying from. She was humbled.”

Looking back years later in the Far East, Anna agreed: “After leaving Joe White’s room, I went downstairs to the chapel very chastened, knelt before the Blessed Sacrament, and said simply, “Thank you, Lord, I needed that.”

Records show that corporal punishment in such establishments would be administered to the bare bottom, and that the rod of correction was the more usual implement. Younger seminaries, again both male and female, would more often than not be punished by a Sister, rather than a priest.