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Getting to Know Sister Eva-Maria Ackerman
Since the news of the Apostolic Visitation to U.S. Communities of Women Religious, there has been much discussion and speculation about the Visitation and about the Catholic sisters leading the Visitation. One of those sisters is Sister Eva-Maria Ackerman, FSGM. Sister Ackerman is the spokesperson for Mother Mary Clare Millea, ASCJ, who was appointed Apostolic Visitator by the Vatican.
Sister Ackerman was recently profiled in the St. Louis Review, the weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis where Sister Ackerman has been director of the Office of Consecrated Life.
Sister Ackerman discusses her new role as spokesperson for the Apostolic Visitation.
“I’m grateful for having 12-plus years here to prepare me to understand how important the visitation is,” Sister Eva-Maria said. “I’ve learned a lot from religious, and I’ve been inspired by the generosity and dedication of so many and their witness. I’ve seen how even more important religious life is for the Church, and therefore an initiative like the one that is going to be taking place, with its intended goal of renewing the life of women religious, will only strengthen the Church. Religious life is really a gift in the heart of the Church, and the stronger, the more vibrant religious life is, the more vibrant the life of the Church.”
“I am in awe of what women religious have been able to do despite declining numbers and a higher median age. The communities are still vibrant in a lot of ways, but all of us can grow and renew with great energy. Nothing is impossible with God in this regard.”
I look forward to getting to know Sister Ackerman and Mother Millea as they begin this significant endeavor. Let us pray for both sisters and their work and for all communities of women religious in the U.S.
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I don’t know if Sr. Eva-Maria will have the opportunity to see these comments, but if she does please tell her I am asking for her and that I pray for her frequently, and I hope she will remember me in prayer from time to time. She is truly a wonderful woman and her advice and good counsel were such a tremendous blessing for me in the early months of my vocational discernment. Also please let her know that I am now in the process of applying with the Augustinians and I should know something by May.
Of course, if she does not get the opportunity to read these comments, well, I will be praying for her in thanksgiving anyway
I do not know Sr. Eva-Marie, who may be a wonderful woman. However, I *am* concerned that both sisters selected for the visitation so far are from the more conservative CMSWR group of congregations, with no one from LCWR, which represents the overwhelming majority of sisters in the US. Both CMSWR and LCWR are recognized by the Vatican, and in fact LCWR is older, as well as bigger. Why is this? I wish that the rationales for these selections were being shared by those in charge.
Again, my concern is not with either individual who has been selected so far, but with the nature of the process, which I find really problematic.
Sister Julie and/or other sisters here – Could you please talk some about what is meant when Sisters refer to one organization or community as (more or less) conservative than others? That word and its antonyms (liberal? progressive? less strict? more permissive? ) are so context-specific that I know I, in the midst of my discernment, am not at all sure what those words mean in this new world. Are we talking politics? Spirituality? Community culture? The anxiety expressed certainly tells me the words are also loaded in the religious world. I am trying very hard to pay attention to the assumptions I bring (consciously or not) to this new spiritually-grounded and -committed life I am exploring, and that means all language is up for questioning. Thanks for helping me understand.
Hey – Just wanted to clarify: to my masters-educated, 20-years-as-a-professional, 45 year old ears, my question sounds naive and even “stupid”. But it *is* sincere.
I certainly don’t know Sr. Eva Maria Ackerman. But I notice that she is the head of the Office of Consecrated Life for the Archdiocese of St. Louis and presumably was so under Archbishop Raymond Burke. This could be a little troublesome I suspect. In my opinion, Burke, a welcomed guest on EWTN any day of the week, was a highly legalistic, despotic type of hierarch. I would imagine you had to march to the beat of a very particular type of drummer if you wanted to work with him. (As of a few months ago, Burke was sent to Rome as head of the department for Canon Law I believe.) I don’t know if any of you heard of the story of the Polish parish in St. Louis – too long to go in here. Suffice it to say, Burke is not known for his compassion or pastoral temperment. I will pray for my sister friends – especially those without habits!
dee
Does anyone mind explaining CMSWR and LCWR? I found their respective web pages with their mission statements, but I have no clue what the difference is.
Thanks and God bless! I will be praying for the sisters mentioned and for the communities they visit!
JJ – I did the same, briefly, and have the same questions. Deerose, I always love your posts. I felt anxious reading your last post, as I have reading some of the others that touch on these issues of differences among congregations and lived expressions of Catholic faith: what might it mean about religious life? I am a longtime social worker, who deeply loves the work itself and one of the things that has increasingly resulted in my disaffection with the systems in which I have worked (just about every corner of the field and several states), is the loss of daily, concrete and visible, focus on the deepest principles that we say undergird our work. My own return to the Church, after 30 years away, was prompted by shared service with a very traditional Catholic community during a natural disaster several years ago. I immediately recognized their “conservatism” and they immediately recognized my “liberal feminism”. But there was no need to speak of it because we were focused on our shared service and, in that service, we immediately recognized each other’s commitment to (Gospel) love and accompaniment: the corporal works of mercy. In time, my counterpart in the running the project (I was there as a paid disaster worker and they had opened their community and its buildings and their families’ wallets and refrigerators) and I did begin to speak of our differences and became fast friends because each conversation began, spiritually, with an acknoweldgement that we were “gathered in his name” through our shared work and its common roots: the first two commandments (I shied from that admission at the time, though I had always acknowledged that my social work was an expression of my awareness and acceptance of Catholic social justice teachings). My counterpart from that conservative Catholic community and I might have been, in other setting, considered “natural enemies” but he has become my dear friend, my spiritual brother and, through our friendship and shared work, I found my way back to the Catholic church and into this new life. I sincerely believe that I could accept God’s invitation, finally, (I had heard God’s calling at different times in my life but, as I told my friend, I was not going to be a nun unless God dragged my a** into a closet full of habits and locked me in and turned the thermometer way down and, besides, I had intellectual issues with what I called “that divinity thing”) because it came in a situation rife with all the stuff that so often steals our attention away from why we serve and that invitation – and the graces that filled our lives, the lives of the people we served – were more powerful than all our human, temporal stuff, and the graces that filled all our lives changed all our lives. Our worlds got wider and more beautiful, and our spiritualities got deeper and more beautiful. I am so grateful for the story about Sister Eva-Marie pairing the leaders of these two organizations – who apparently come from two different Catholic cultures – because it tells me she knows that God’s world is magnified and glorified when we accept that difference *can* create unity.
Last thought (for now anyway): This all brings me back to wanting to know more about how these cultural issues are dealt with in Catholic women’s religious life. I do not intend to put you on the spot, Deerose,
though you seem sturdy enough for a direct response. Is being “a welcomed guest EWTN any day” code for something in Catholic religious women’s language? (Let me clarify that I have never seen EWTN – I hate what tv does to my life and day; one episode of Battlestar Gallatica or Ballykissangel and I want all 300 episodes NOW!, and the commercials have the collective effect of depressing me, and network news makes me dislike other people and the world in ways other people and the world never do – I do love Amy Goodman on the radio; so I don’t own a tv) but many of my friends from that “conservative” community love EWTN – the older people or parents at home with children, in particular, seem to love the company of the rosary, etc., in the morning and at other times throughout the day, and they say Mother Angelica is very funny and sincere). I am anxious at the possibility that the statement “a welcomed guest on EWTN any day”, attractively rich and layered though that cultural shorthand is to the reader in me, raises the spectre for me that even in religious life there may great tolerance for and currency in making “the other” out of others. That scares me, frankly.
Have I missed something here that signals to readers that it can be assumed that everyone here will understand what that statement means and will share the same response to EWTN’s “welcomed guests”? (I believe Sister Julie fully intends this to be a safe and comfortable and homey place for ALL Catholic women and all other comers as well). If so, I am grateful for the experience because it provides another area for discernment for me. I remain very much a “progressive feminist” ***and*** I am deeply, deepy moved – often to tears and often to the most profound sense of love and “home” I know – by more conservative, traditional expressions of Catholic faith and belief. I hate to think that, as in the secular world, there might be widespread comfort with placing those two realities at opposite ends of a Catholic continuum and then reifying that continuum. Another option – the one I fell in love with – is embracing, even about this kind of issue, the paradoxes that constitute the root of Catholic beliefs and faith, and the power of those mysterious paradoxes to guide us beyond ourselves, beyond our human, temporal constructs and equations and comfort zones. That option has presented me with the hardest, most challenging experiences of my life and, now that I (almost) am done being absolutely furious that I have apparently chosen to accept the invitation, I want more even as I also want to curl into a fetal position as I anticipate “what fresh new hell” might be coming the way of my little human self to help me grow beyond that little human self.
JJ – I went back to the sites again and see many immediate differences: look at the pictures; the “papers” and articles; conference titles and brief descriptions; etc. I am deeply drawn to both.
I found this on the website for CMSWR, in the late 2008 statement from CMSWR’s president, and find in it a beautiful articulation of what I hope to find in any genuine spiritual encounter:
“The Vatican Council’s Declaration on Religious Freedom (Dignitatis Humanae) establishes the ground rules: “…people explain to one another the truth they have discovered, or think they have discovered, in order thus to assist one another in the quest for truth” (DH 3). Pope Paul VI called this “a kind of thought transfusion…an invitation to the exercise and development of the highest spiritual and mental powers a man possesses” (ES 81).
In dialogue, it is important to listen not only to what the other person says, but, perhaps more importantly, to what he has in his heart to say. Dialogue calls for humble receptivity to the other. It thrives on friendship. Dialogue is communication in a comprehensive way. It prepares the way for the discovery of a more inclusive truth. Then comes the challenge for each one, for, as truth is discovered, we are obliged to adhere to it. We are obliged to change. As Pope John Paul II tells us in Ut unum sint, we must even be prepared to have “our particular truth proven wrong through sincere dialogue.
In this way, dialogue serves as “an examination of consciousness,” for, as Pope John Paul II constantly affirmed, we can know ourselves only in relation to another. We are not speaking about what used to be called a “revelation of conscience,” not about revealing moral good or evil acts; but, rather, as we speak and give of our very being to another, the other person reflects back to us the truth of his experience. In this way, we become more aware of our own limitations, of our inability to love as we desire”.
Absolutely beautiful. Full of feminist psychoanalytic themes on interdependence, as I understand them. And straight from the Vatican and reiterated by CMSWR’s president, Sister Eva-Marie’s organizational president. Full of the beauty of right relationship, of Gospel relationship.
I find it challenging to consider, in the following way, the choice of two CMSWR members to lead the Apostolic Visitation, given what I read about the relative size of the two groups:
CMSWR is the minority community of the two, and minority voices and experiences and contributions are historically lost due to the sheer volume of the dominant voice. Perhaps these appointments can be respected as an effort to ensure that the volumes will be equally set on both the minority and dominant voices among the communities, not so that they may be compared but so that each may be expressed fully and powerfully. Dominant communities, in their natural and expected human fear of loss, often anticipate that the minority voice intends to drown out the more dominant one, when so often minority voices seek power so that all voices are heard with equal clarity and respect and generous curiosity.
It is challenging, I think, for progressive communities to see themselves as “dominant voices” (when they, in fact, are) and to be mindful that, as such, they are very likely to engage in many, if not most, of the dynamics of less progressive communities when they are dominant. As I have read many of these posts, I have felt the desire to defend and amplify the voices and validity and beauty of “minority” religious communities, even though the community I am in discernment with is a member of LCWR and does not wear the habit and, in its founding charism and apostolate, was profoundly progressive. I have felt that to such an extent that I have worried I will find myself
unhappy with less traditional communities because of a concern that these discussions communicate a self-protective and -interested bias against more traditional communities, whereas I view the traditionalism as firmly rooted in a love and interest outside themselves. I believe that all of the communities are firmly rooted in love for God and God’s people and sincerely do not mean to question whether one community’s love is deeper or more genuine than another’s. Complicated stuff to talk about and sort out.
Okay now I am being a drag, I know. But the final chapter of the CMSWR National Assembly 2008 Presidential Address knocked my socks off:
I will conclude with this reflection from our Holy Father on the Our Father: “The word “our” is really rather demanding. It requires that we step out of the closed circle of our “I”. It requires, then, that we strip ourselves of what is merely our own, of what divides. It requires that we assist the others – that we open our ears and our heart to them. When we say the word “our”, we say yes to the living Church in which the Lord wanted to gather His new family. (Jesus of Nazareth 141)
The whole thing is really terrific.
Jean:
EWTN is, for many, a controversial network. My traditional, conservative friends call it ultra-conservative-reactionary and my more progressive friends will not even watch it. I personally like some of the programming including the rosary but my favorite is “The Journey Home” on Monday nights. This show broadcasts conversion stories – many of which are fascinating.
IMO, EWTN generally presents the Church and the world in terms of black and white. For example, short of verbalizing his name, folks like George Bush were fully supported while nuns NOT wearing habits are forbidden from being aired.
I personally do believe that Catholics from both ends of the spectrum, as well as those in between, can come together to work for one common faith if they desire to do so. One needs only to focus on that which unites, not that which divides. IMO, EWTN tends to polarize and judge whenever the opportunity arises (in programs of a more political nature). For this reason, I have difficulty with them as I do with clergy like Archbishop Burke. I believe compassion and love trump legalism.
dee
Hi Dee – I appreciate your response. Your description of EWTN helps me understand why you described Archbishop Burke as a “welcome guest”. (More on Burke in a minute).
I have to say that I am not troubled in the least by what you tell me about EWTN. If it were the voice of the universal Catholic Church, I’d be very concerned about a narrow scope of Catholic material, perspectives and voices (and clothing), regardless of what small part was presented. Since it is not, I am not at all troubled by the idea that it apparently tailors itself for a very specific (but also apparently HUGE) population of viewers within the Catholic community worldwide. Obviously, for many of those viewers, many other expressions within the Catholic Church are wildly controversial, so much so that many EWTN viewers reject those expressions, just as you say your more progressive friends completely reject the EWTN expression. It seems unfair and polarizing – and pretty much a lost cause, even with St Jude’s help – to demand tolerance for one’s perspective in matters of faith if one has not already extended a very active and generous tolerance of the other’s perspective.
Regarding programs of a more political nature: in our political lives, we do make judgments and every community has identified “bottom lines”. Bottom lines are, by their nature, black and white and often polarizing (if the issues were not extremely challenging and complex and needful of a response, a choice, a decision, a judgment, they would not become “bottom lines”, right?) I am guessing I would flinch at a lot of the EWTN political programming but I flinch at a lot of political expressions, even a lot of the ones I agree with in substance.
I read a lot last night and today about Archbishop Burke (the issues with the St Stanislaus, the priest and the ordination of the women priests) in an effort to understand where you were coming from with the “welcome guest” idea.
I think this is a perfect example, Dee, of what we are talking about. There are so many Catholics, so very very many who would honestly and with the most faithful and generous intentions – and perhaps a great deal of pain – view the priest’s actions and perspectives as absolutely beyond the pale, as wildly polarizing and so unloving and so unnecessarily controversial that they would refuse to hear him speak, just as some of your progressive friends refuse to watch EWTN. (I also read Burke’s very detailed response about the St Stan’s issue, posted on the Archdiocese’s website, and I found myself thinking the guy seemed pretty reasonable and the priest less so. I did not find Burke unusually or inappropriately legalistic in the context of the Catholic Church as we know it (and maybe not in most mainline churches)).
I would most likely have refused to watch EWTN in the past (when I owned a tv), and I am so glad that my more traditional friends, in their generous but very painful (for them) willingness to learn about and accept and even embrace my less traditional spirituality, taught me to learn about and accept (despite some real pain for me) and even embrace their more traditional spirituality. In that exchange, I experience the deepest love and compassion; in that exchange, I believe God is present.
Jean:
Thank you for your response.
In my view, part of the problem with EWTN is although it is NOT the voice of the Universal Church, it does (mis)represent itself to be. They act as if their views were authoritative. As such, a viewer who is not familiar with the Church can be deluded into thinking EWTN is, in fact, the official mouthpiece of the Faith. Just as I hold Catholic sisters up to a higher standard than I do ordinary lay people (a topic discussed here before), I hold a Catholic network up to a higher standard. And, frankly, EWTN falls quite short. If they were to present both sides of the coin, and most in between, I’d be much more comfortable with it. EWTN is really the only substantial Catholic presense in the media and it is very skewed. I find that unfortunate. Watch it sometimes if you get a chance.
My more progressive friends don’t actually “refuse” to watch EWTN. They merely choose not to. I don’t find that intolerant – just as I wouldn’t find it intolerant if a conservative didn’t want to read the Jesuit publication, “America.” Either party can do what he/she wants with free time.
I’d also have to add that I don’t think many or most people can be clearly divided into the conservative/liberal, traditional/modernist mode. Personally I’d say I’m moderate with more progressive leanings. I am pro-life (i.e., from womb to tomb), love worshipping the Eucharistic Lord in Adoration and adore Gregorian chant. I often pray the Stations of the Cross during Lent but also read the National Catholic Reporter.
As far as Archbishop Burke is concerned, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. The good Lord knows there are many different opinions out there in this world.
Good luck on the journey!
dee
Dee – Thanks to you, too, for your responses. The dialogue is very fruitful for me. I got interested in EWTN and St Louis and lost track of what I was really concerned about. Even with all this context, I still feel anxious – as someone in discernment – when I go back and read your first post about some concern with Sister Eva-Maria as Apostolic Visitator because she worked in an Archdiocese office under Archbishop Burke, a “welcome guest on EWTN any day”, and a resulting concern for sisters in orders that do not wear habits. Was he ever actually a guest on EWTN or, as I asked earlier, is that cultural shorthand for “Burke is an activist ultraconservative priest to the extent that he will not tolerate any diversity or dissent in his staff “? I have assumed you are a sister, Dee and, in my discernment and in my life as a social worker, I clearly am concerned about cultural tensions, meaning-making within them and how relationships and communities may be impacted, concerns which your e-mail (among many others) highlighted for me. Thus, that tight string of equations in your e-mail left me a little breathless and afraid. In part because no such tight set of equations could be fairly drawn about me (or you, clearly): Years ago I worked in an abortion clinic. I always understood that abortion ends human life and I always believed it was morally wrong, for the same reasons I believe that capital punishment and deadly environmental practices and systemic oppression and neglect are wrong. I also believe deeply in the integrity of the individual woman’s choices about her body. I also am aware of the profound stresses and suffering experienced by many – children included – when unplanned/unwanted pregnancies occur in conditions that are hostile to adult survival and well-being. With the support of my spiritual director and others, I struggle persistently with those co-existing spiritual and political and social realities. I love the deeply traditional and reverent Catholicism of south Lousiana where I live now, having fallen in love with this Catholic world during disaster service. I am uncomfortable with what I perceive as unnecessarily dramatic and persistent attention to homosexuality. I am ambivalent about the idea of women as Catholic priests. I absolutely expect that men, including the clergy, receive and respond to me as an equal. Obedience to my spiritual director, who I chose very carefully, and my priest is challenging but wonderful in its parallel with learning to discern God’s will. I, too, love holy hours before the Blessed Sacrament and have found that “making a visit”, as my priest and spiritual director says, is the most important thing for me to do when I am overwhelmed or afraid. I read across the spectrum, Sojourners to Fulton Sheen. My moment of conversion, if there is a moment, came in the middle of the night in a field, at the edge of a rose garden protecting a grotto and a crucifix, near a fire circle where I had sat with my friends while they prayed the rosary every night during our shared project following a disaster. I was overwhelmed and scared and far from home in so very many ways and we were all approaching burn-out and I was in charge. I laid on a bench and cried and talked to the sky and heard myself say, “I need some help here”. And it seemed that, in the bushes all around me, the birds woke and began to sing. Had the birds been singing all along and I was too upset to notice? Maybe. But, as a sister at the local seminary said, what is true is that, in the perfect language for responding to a panicked, solitary outdoorswoman, God offered me the chance to notice I was not alone, that I did have help ….and I noticed. And, yet, I still struggle with some of the more mystical aspects of the New Testament. If you knew my particular spiritual director and my comfort in that relationship, so many false equations would arise about me, Dee. And if a person knew me well and also of my spiritual director’s comfort in our relationship, another set of false equations would arise about my director. That’s the personal stuff behind my anxiety about your first post in this thread. That tight set of equations in your e-mail among others set off some alarms for me in my hybrid spiritual state, despite the fact that my discernment director knows all of this. Thank you so much for the dialogue and the company, Dee.
Jean:
Good luck with your discernment. I’m sure it is a very challenging time for you as it should be I would imagine. It’s clear to me at least that B16 does harken after earlier times. Just how far he will go, I don’t know. I guess there is really nothing anyone can do about these visitations except to hope and pray they will be fair, balanced and equitable – as they may be. I’m just a little skeptical about the intent. But I am admittedly a skeptic by nature. I generally feel one needs to be open-minded but not naive.
I feel that women religious are a very special and tough breed. With the grace of God, time and time again, they rise above all the politics with love and commitment, and live authentic Gospel-driven lives in ministering to the world the way that is needed. Will Benedict’s report change this, I doubt it. It might behoove you to read books on the history of women religious. They are very insightful and inspiring. I don’t remember the name of the few I read but I found the histories to be most helpful.
Jean, I am an active, committed Catholic laywoman. I work with the Diocese on their ecumenical/interfaith commission, copresent retreats, am an RCIA catechist, etc. I am a Benedictine oblate too (as is B16). I am close friends with a number of sisters with whom I discuss all sorts of topics. I have a 14 year old daughter who is an extremely deep and spiritual young woman. She has mentioned on many an occassion that she would consider becoming a nun. It is for this reason mainly that I am on this website and follow what’s going on in the world of women religious. Plus, I feel we religious women, consecrated or not, need to stick together.
Peace and blessings,
dee
Hi Dee – I appreciate your post and knowing a little more about you. I appreciate what you say about your sceptic’s eye; I have one, too. I also respect what I would call your “mama bear” spirit with reagrd to your daughter and the breadth of possibility in the world she may want to enter. Your spiritual life sounds very rich and very generous and, as I said earlier, I always enjoy reading you. I am so glad to hear your experience of women religious, as women who rise above the politics with love and commitment and that we need to stick together, whatever our states in life (and I would add with men religious, whatever their state in life, and non-religious men and women, too)!
I have read some great pieces on women religious as individuals and communities, consecreted and not, but would be very interested to know of more, if you think of the names of those you have read. The last was by Marie Dennis, an extraordinary lay leader in the Marist community; the next one in the stack is about Dorothy Day – one of my favorite women of all times and an amazing leader. I am heading over to Xavier later this week to search their stacks for reading on Saint Katharine Ann Drexel. I have been blessed with the opportunity to devote almost all my time right now to discernment and, thus, never feel that I have quite enough books stacked up on the floor next to my bed…and my writing table…and my bathtub…and my couch. So send me lists of books. (Whenever I hear “Benedictine oblate”, I think of Kathleen Norris and, most particularly, her book “Amazing Grace”. a friend just gave me a copy of “The Virgin of Bennington”, which I am loving both because of her beautiful process of self-knowing and because of my love of poetry, a deep passion which I have always believed was formed by my Catholic childhood, the liturgy and the beauty of scripture. The beauty of the word and the Word spoken aloud astonishes me so much that I cry at Mass and at poetry readings.
I am more a fan of Norris prose than her poetry, but much of her prose reads like poetry to my eyes and ears). Anyway, any book suggestions would be most welcome. And I look forward to reading you again, Dee.
Quick correction: Marie Dennis is a leader in the *Maryknoll* community (and also Pax Christi), not Marist.
Jean:
Two books that might be of interest to you are:
-Catholic Nuns in the Making of America
and
-Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millenia
Both are historical accounts of religious life; one focuses on the U.S. while the other is a survey from the beginning of Christianity.
Interestingly, my daughter is making her confirmation this year and the name she chose is Katharine, after St. Katharine Drexel. She felt connected to her because she was a somewhat contemporary American woman living in PA (We are in NJ) who had a strong sense of social justice and worked for it. I don’t know how much you know about Katharine now, but she was indeed a remarkable woman of great generosity and vision. As you probably know, she started some of the first schools for blacks and Native Americans with the fortune she inherited from her family. Her step mother, a relative of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy, was a wonderful woman of faith who set a solid example for the young Katharine by feeding the poor from her mansion in suburban Philadelphia. There is a St. Katharine Drexel Center and Shrine in PA. We are planning on taking a trip there when the weather gets better.
I feel strongly that people like St. Katharine Drexel should be part of the American history curricula of our public high schools. Young women and people of faith (as well as the rest ) need to know the substantial contributions of Katharine as well as those of other religious women like her.
dee
I am really confused. Why is EWTN controvesial? Personally, I like the shows. I mean, yeah, the traditions in the Mass are rather similar to those before Vatican II, but still it is a Mass. The body of Christ is still made flesh in the Eucharist. Okay, there is one issue though that I have with EWTN. In the Mass, I don’t know, but I feel that I am less of a Cathlic because I don’t wear those veils to Mass or recieve the Eucharist on my tongue. I would be afraid to do those actions becasue they are foreign to me. Or what if I chose a less orthodox order of sisters? Would I be considered less than the ones than them?
But overall, I like EWTN. I get to watch daily Mass, when I can’t get it otherwise, and I like to pray the Rosary with the nuns of Our Lady of Angels convent. Plus, I really like Mother Angelica; she’s hilarious. Actually, I am really mad at the cable company for taking away my favorite station.
And as for the apostolic visitation, I am not worried. I have faith that it will all be all right. I doubt that the Pope would allow such a thing to happen. Getting rid of non habitted orders? That’s crazy. And our Pope ain’t crazy.
Pax tibi to all!
Dee – Sisters is one of the books I read but I had not heard of the other so thank you! Katharine, for Saint Katharine Ann Drexel, is also my confirmation name. Small world. I love her story and the charism and apostolate of Sisters of the Blessed Sacramant, her order. I am envious that you and your daughter are near enough to go to her shrine, which is also where the Motherhouse is. A really beautiful movie about another American (French Creole) woman is The Courage to Love, about Mother Henriette DeLille, foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Family. These women, such hometown heroes, if you will, bowl me over.
Discerninglife25 – here in South Louisiana, it is very common to see many people receive the Eucharist on the tongue (a traditional practice; I love the intimacy and the reverence of it) and to see some women, especially older women, with lace on their heads, just as it is common – if you walk into Mass fifteen or so minutes early – to be greeted by an entire congregation praying the rosary together. It can be awkward to receive the host on the tongue (my parish priest and I have a joke that I go through periods of almost biting him and I used to worry, when I participated in the Eucharist with a priest I do not know, that I would look like a gaping baby bird, but in that rare church here where I might be one of only a few receiving the host by mouth, the priests and Eucharistic ministers always read my body language). Your priest or Eucharist minister could teach you the meaning and how to indicate that you wish to receive in that more traditional way. Once you are in the habit, no pun intended (okay, well, maybe), it feels very natural and, again, I love the intimacy and reverence of it. (It would be a great topic for Sister Julie!)
I know Sister Eva Marie through the blogosphere. She used to author her own blog but, as I recall, decided to stop blogging due to the needs of her ministry and community obligations. What I remember from her blog entries is that she is passionate about consecrated life!
Blessings,
Lisa
One additional thought I’d like to share based on my life experiences: Let us be cautious about labeling religious primarily based on whether they do or don’t veil. Some of the most conservative people I know don’t wear veils and some of the most liberal/progressive people I know do wear veils (and more traditional habits). This practice of categorizing, while I understand the logical basis for it, is risky business. The fact that one chooses to be part of a congregation that veils does not mean anything really about one’s world view about the internals and externals of religious life.
That said, while in my way of thinking I would have been inclined to appoint co-visitators, I also realize that there would have been, in appointing co-chairs, the risk of erroneously reinforcing dichotomous thinking about the two groups being opposite of one another. I wonder if we have given any thought in these related discussions to what the feelings might be if the LCWR were leading the visitation instead. That’s just a question to encourage us to think of Mother Clare being selected on the basis of who she is individually and not because of her congregation’s affiliation with one or the other conferences.
Blessings,
Lisa
Lisa – Thank you for your thoughts. One of the things I fell in love with – and fall in love with all over again, every time I encounter it in Catholicism – is that, at its core and through Jesus, we are asked to anticipate, seek and embrace – in ourselves, God, others and in our experiences – the “both/and” of things rather than the “either/or” of things. That demand is profoundly challenging and, as we participate in the Eucharist before the Crucufix, that demand is profoundly life-giving.
Lisa:
I think there is an element of truth to your comment about veiled/unveiled sisters. I once went on a retreat led by a veiled nun in a long robe. She was super erudite, intellectual, one of those people whose talks expand your mind no matter who you are. She was also very progressive. I don’t have any examples about the other way around, but I’m sure there are plenty.
In theory, I don’t think it would be better if a sister from the LCWR was in charge of these visitations. I feel you need both sides, as well as those in between.
dee