« what motivates a person to become a nun?? | Home | Habits Revisted »
Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change
By Sister Julie | December 19, 2006
I read this news article by Catholic News Service and had to find out more about the Sisters of Selma. Below is some of the background which is taken directly from the film’s web site. Here is a list of the congregations who were the “Sisters of Selma”. Each link explains how that congregation’s sisters were involved.
from the film’s web site …
Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change
a one-hour documentary in production for Alabama Public Television
In 1965, American nuns from St. Louis made civil rights history in the streets of Selma, Alabama. At a time when many church leaders were reluctant to address the treatment of Blacks in the South, these courageous women defied authority—and a long history of simply praying for causes—to proudly take their message to the streets. When the image of these women of the cloth, marching alongside other protesters, graced the front pages of newspapers and magazines, Selma became a turning point for Rev. Martin Luther King’s movement and for religious people in America.
A Few Steps in the Right Direction
The time was the Sixties; the place, the deep South. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been working to bring voting rights to the region’s African Americans. For decades, local laws had all but prevented Blacks from voting. And those who did venture to the ballot box often faced harassment and even violence. Rev. King had decided to challenge the status quo once and for all. On a dreary Sunday in early spring, dozens of peaceful protesters gathered to demand voter registration reform. But the quiet resolve of the assembly was shattered when state troopers and the sheriff’s posse on horseback struck down scores of Black citizens. Dozens were badly injured and two killed in the days following. With much of the debacle shown on television news, “Bloody Sunday” stunned Americans, focusing nationwide attention on civil rights for the first time. A new feeling of outrage emerged, and civilians were not the only ones to join the fray.
Religious leaders left their pulpits to take to the streets—ministers, rabbis, and priests. Fiftyfour from St. Louis, Missouri took two chartered flights to Selma.
Four habit-clad sisters were in the first plane. Sister Mary Antona, a Sister of St. Mary, was accompanied by Sister Eugene Marie, her superior at St. Mary’s Infirmary. Being African American, Sr. Mary Antona had suffered racial segregation in her own novitiate program. She had prayed to go to Selma, knowing full well that sisters simply didn’t do such things. When the call came, Sr. Antona realized: “God was calling my bluff.” Sister Ernest Marie and her companion Sister Thomas Marguerite were on the same flight. They were Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and college teachers. They knew little about the Black struggle for voting rights beyond the buzz on campus, but going to Selma seemed the right thing to do.
In the second plane were Loretto sisters Sister Ann Christopher and Sister Christine Mary. They lived and worked with Black inner-city residents of St. Louis who embraced Rev. King’s peaceful methods. These Blacks were the people the sisters wanted to represent in Selma.
They did not anticipate the reactions of the South and of the Catholic establishment.
In Selma, the Missouri sisters were surprised by how much the Black residents trusted them. This was due in large part to the years of bridge-building by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester. They had met the education and health care needs of the poor Blacks of Selma since 1940. The Archbishop of Mobile-Birmingham had prohibited them from joining the demonstrations, so they fed, housed, and nursed waves of civil rights activists from elsewhere. They welcomed the nuns from St. Louis.
On the Wednesday following “Bloody Sunday,” the sisters led a procession defying a ban by church, city, and county authorities. Though the police cut the demonstration short, the images of these women in the national and international media had tremendous impact. People were shocked. A Gallup poll showed that the majority of Americans felt sisters should remain cloistered in their convents. For Dr. Martin Luther King the presence of the visiting nuns in the Selma demonstrations “had a special significance because the public knows a nun to be a woman of great sacrifice and dedication.”
For thousands of their peers, however, these women religious had made a thrilling statement because the event coincided with the Second Vatican Council, an ambitious four-year effort by Rome to modernize the Catholic Church. Sisters around the country were rethinking their vow of “obedience,” their missions, and their own segregation from the life of the nation. In the following weeks, many went to Selma to join the marchers. These Catholic women religious who marched in Selma inspired many American nuns to seek social and economic justice through their ministries well beyond the traditional realms of teaching and nursing.
This is a story of “aggiornamento,” (Pope John XXIII) the “updating” of societies resistant to change. More importantly, it is the story of a few women who took it upon themselves to become the agents of that change. What did they change? How were they themselves changed by the experience? Was it all for the better? Now in their 60’s and 70’s, the women reassess their roles in the Civil Rights Movement.
Topics: justice, peace, care, nuns in print and film, nuns who rock, saints and holy people |
December 19th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
Thank you for posting about this film. I’ll definitely look for it. I can’t remember now where I read about your blog, but I’m so very glad to have found it. Although I’m no longer Catholic, I was raised in the church and taught by nuns for eight years. How differently I might have felt about the church if I’d been raised in it during a different era (instead of the 60’s). What a remarkable thing it would have been to have read blogs by the nuns who taught me! In those days (in that order) all we saw were their faces–they seemed so intimidating and severe. It’s wonderful to read your thoughts and feelings of your religious life.
December 20th, 2006 at 6:40 am
With the gift of faith in Christ, Catholics undoubtedly have a different lens to which we strive for social justice, namely the commandment to love our neighbor which flows from this powerful faith.
But what worries me is the reshuffling of priorities in many of these religious communities that have lost their focus on Christ in place of social justice, in and of itself. As Pope Benedict said in “Deus Caritas Est,” “Practical activity will always be insufficient, unless it visibly expresses a love for man, a love nourished by an encounter with CHRIST.”
Of course, social justice is of paramount importance for Catholics. I just dont want us to lose the reason why we pursue this noble goal in the first place. PRAYER must be the center of all we do, otherwise we risk falling into “empty activism.”
To end with Pope Benedict: “In the example of Blessed Teresa of Calcutta we have a clear illustration of the fact that time devoted to God in prayer not only does not detract from effective and loving service to our neighbor but is in fact the INEXHAUSTIBLE SOURCE OF THAT SERVICE.”
January 11th, 2007 at 7:51 am
[…] A while back I wrote about Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change (click here to see my original post). The film is a one-hour documentary produced by Hartfilms in association […]