It has been an exciting week in the world of nuns. Because this was National Vocation Awareness Week, many newspapers and blogs ran stories about Catholic sisters and nuns, brothers and monks and friars, and deacons and priests. Here’s a bit of what I found about sisters and nuns.
Seeing the Results by Ray Kisonas of the Monroe Evening News (January 13, 2009) – a great article that shows the impact that Catholic sisters have had and continue to have in education.
“This lady made such an indelible mark on my life,” said Ron Pickard, who grew up in Monroe and now lives in Tennessee. “She had an influence on all students and that’s why we have such a gathering here today. It’s wonderful we have her with us. I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”
Nun Explains How the Sisterhood’s Changed by a reporter for CBS Channel 7 in Wausau, Wisconsin (January 10, 2009) – I felt compelled to comment on this article
But she realizes everyone believes they are meant to do something, and sisterhood may just not be for everyone…. “I say listen to the Lord. He does not tap you on the shoulder – a vocation is a feeling. ‘This is what I want to do.’”
Inspired by the skating nun by Ernest Hebert for the Boston Globe (January 5, 2009) – Don’t know how I missed this piece!
These were Sisters of Mercy. They wore long black gowns from head to toe and what looked to me like giant white bibs. You could see their faces, but nothing else, not even their hair, so from a distance it was hard to tell who was who.
The sisters pushed the tall sister onto the ice. The sister began to glide, picked up speed, twirled, her black gown expanding. Long before the movie “The Flying Nun,” I had grasped the concept. It took me a full minute to realize that the sister was ice skating.
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Since it is vocation awareness time…I have a question that I have never seen in print for comment or really heard asked in comversations. First allow me to say that I am a middle-aged former religious of a large international Franciscan Congregation (belonged to one of the US provinces) and that I have not now nor ever have had a desire for religious life to return to all that it was prior to Vatican II. There was, indeed, need for much change but also many good things that were thrown out simply in reaction to change. I left religious life 25 years ago and have had no regrets in making that decision considering how radical the changes in the Congregation were. With that said…
Is it really fair for the media, Catholic and secular, as well as for clergy, religious and laity to speak of former religious as having “broken their vows”, “gone back on their promises”, or “abandoned their Congregation”? What I mean is this: when a religious makes profession of vows it is always done within a very specific context and not simply to God in some abstract way. We ALL profess according to some rule or constitution or whatever document; we ALL profess within the context of a specific community whose Church-approved idenity is quite specific. In other words, when a novice makes profession is to according to a quite specific form of life that the Church has approved and she has studied and experienced. THAT is the context within which she makes profession.
So what is one to make of a Congregation that becomes so changed that it is no longer recognizable as the one in which one lived, about which one studied, and which was approved by the Church as such? I am not dealing here with minor changes that really do NOT affect the nature of a Congregation (i.e., change of habit style, change of prayer forms, change of residential community life forms, etc.) I am thinking of truly momentous changes that rock the very foundation of the Congrgeation such as open dissent by leadership council to Church teachings, abandonment of daily or even regular community life and/or comunity prayer, decisions of the Chapter to knowingly disobey Church directives in essentials of religious life, etc. One can truly and intelligently argue that such a Congregation is 1. no longer even a shadow of what it used to be (total reformulation not contunuity in renewal) and 2. no longer even Catholic in as much as it has, as a juridical person/body, declared itself in opposition to magisterial teachings of great import (sexuality, life-issues, nature of priesthood, reality of the resurrection) etc.
In such cases (and they DO exist) what is one to make of a profession made according to a specific Rule, in a specific Congregation, and all of this within the reality of being and living as a Catholic? Once such a radical reformulation is made, are the vows once made still the SAME profession for the Catholic religious? So my question is this: Is it the fact that former religious abandoned their Congregations OR is it more accurate to state that the Congregations abandoned them?
I am much interested in what nuns, former nuns and those aspiring to religious life think about this. Thank you.
haha, i remember seeing nuns ice skate in full habits. what a joy! and i remember how much younger they all looked the following year when they changed to the shorter skirts and veils and we could see their hair.
oh, and sister julie, have you ever seen the mini-series “the brides of christ”? i wonder what you think of the portrayal of the sisters in that. i loved it.
Hi Marla, Yes! I did see it and I loved it. Didn’t want it to end. I think it is a very good portrayal of how some communities made the shifts around the time of Vatican II. I loved it because it looked at the shifts from within the perspectives of the sisters themselves, trying to negotiate their personal relationships, their love of their community and the church, and their call from God. Did I mention that I loved it?
We posted a photo of “skating nuns” (sisters) from our archives on our blog earlier this week. Winters Past There is a photo of three sisters shoveling snow in their full habits as well.
Thanks for the link, Sisters! The pictures are fabulous. It is so nice to see these great black and white photos of nuns and to see that their real names instead of some goofy “nuns just want to have fun” caption.
i might mention again that i loved it, too!
I have never seen Suora’s question addressed in discussions like this either. What I remember from growing up in the 60s and 70s, when the flood of sisters leaving was so great (and more disturbing than one might think to us young ones watching), was a distinction between those who got proper dispensation from their vows and those who did not. I would assume that those who left because the community to which they had made their vows had changed beyond recognition would have been in the first category. It seems obvious to me such dispensed former religious should not be described as ‘breaking their vows’, etc. How many new communities were begun by religious who felt called to leave their first order or congregation behind? How many saints tried religious life, only to end up leaving, either for a different community, or a different path of life?
The difficulty was that unless you knew a sister well enough to know her story, you had no way to know. I suspect the media made most of those who left without dispensation and married in violation of their vows; few then (perhaps now too?) wanted to hear about religious (men or women) leaving congregations because of damaging changes. But were there records kept of why religious left?
I wonder how many women of the generations come of age since the 60s failed to try a religious vocation, at least in part, because of the apparent upheaval, for fear of ending up in the situation Suora describes?