From sndohio.org

“Her death came less than a week after meeting with the country’s human rights officials about threats to local farmers from loggers and landowners.

After receiving several death threats Sister Dorothy recently commented, ‘I don’t want to flee, nor do I want to abandon the battle of these farmers who live without any protection in the forest. They have the sacrosanct right to aspire to a better life on land where they can live and work with dignity while respecting the environment’.”

I am overwhelmed. Perhaps, someday, Sister Dorothy will be Blessed Dorothy Stang or even Saint Dorothy Stang.

I got out my books on Romero and found this by Marie Denis:

“As he walked deliberately into the jaws of the hellish violence that held sway in his beloved homeland, Romero knew that his life was in danger. He knew as well that the roots and fruits of his own life were in the poor community that he had come to love and call his own. ”

Romero: “I have frequently been threatened wiith death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death, but in resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador.

May my death, if it is accepted by God, be the liberation of my people, and as a witness of hope in what is to come. You can tell them, if they succeed in killing me, that I pardon them, and I bless those who may carry out the killing.

But I wish that they could realize that they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God – the people – will never die”.

****

From Romero’s final homily, which today I imagine him giving at a Mass for Sister Dorothy:

“One must not love onself so much as to avoid to getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us …those who try to fend off the dangers will lose their lives, while those who out of love for Christ give themselves to the service of others will live, like the grain of wheat that dies, but only apparently. The harvest comes about only because it dies, allowing itself to be sacrificed in the earth and destroyed. Only by undoing itself does it produce the harvest… This is the hope that inspires us Christians. We know that every effort to better society, especially when unjustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us…Let us all do what we can”.

And, finally,

“I wish that [Sister Dorothy's killers] could realize that they are wasting their time. A [sister] will die, but the church of God – the people – will never die. And Sister Dorothy will rise again in the poor farmers of Brazil.”

***************

Critical moments in my discernment have been so various and unexpected. The grieving joy and joyful grief overwhelming me – as I learn about Sister Dorothy’s sacrificial love and her resurrection through global concern for her beloved forests and poor neighbors –
is so evidently one of those moments in my discernment. Sister Dorothy is, to me, already Blessed Dorothy Stang.

Let me clear: I am deeply moved when I encounter sisters wearing traditional habits out and about in the community, just as I am when I see priests in clerical collar and cassock. The symbol is powerful and beautiful one among many other powerful and beautiful symbols of God’s love in our world. I am grateful there are so many.

That said, I have been reading a lot of online dialogue about what I would call a “culture war” focused on women religious. Many critics of orders that do not wear traditional habits seem to use the absence of the habit as a battle cry in their war against those orders.

I am stunned by the anger that has been bundled and packaged into this debate about the habit.

The “absolutist” argument for the habit, in my opinion, is so over-reactive in its reductiveness as to become a satire of Hamlet: “To habit or not to habit, that is the question”, the ultimate existential question in the case of women religious. (Where is Tina Fey when I need her?)

The fact that the first question out of the gate about this sister’s murder was whether she was wearing a habit took my breath away.

What is important is not that the Catholic sister Dorothy Stang was murdered.

What is important is that the power and wealth of a small group convinced them that it was okay to murder a human being simply because she asked them to share. One human asked some others to be good neighbors. And was shot six times for that simple, loving, God-given request.

Dorothy Stang’s identity as a nun is important now for this simple and profound reason:

through our horror at her death, we recognize her companions in life

———– her friends, the poor people of Brazil she served ——-

as children of God, no less beloved and precious to God than Sister.

As much as God and we love Sister Dorothy for her total gift of self to God and all creation, we should love our neighbors, God’s children, the poor people of the world who are being slaughtered across the Earth for asking the wealthy and powerful among us to share, to be good neighbors.

Sister Dorothy’s death is a clarion call for us to care about those who we do not recognize us our neighbors.

And none of them are wearing habits.

Jean

Day by day, day by day, oh dear Lord, 3 things I pray:
To see Thee more clearly, love Thee more dearly,
follow Thee more nearly, day by day.

I did see your note, and am sorry I did not respond, my sister-in-the-art-of-homemade-theology. Those words you asked about were mine.

I always appreciate, Dee, how honest you are; how comfortable you seem to be with asking questions. You said once that you lead retreats; they must be lovely, infused with your willingness to be a learner, to be company in that journey.

Oh and Dee! Day by Day, from Godspell! When I sing it, I have this sensation in my chest, almost like I am going to soar into the sky, heart and lungs first.

And dogs: they are fine, truly fine.

Jean

That is a very beautiful meditation indeed.

“Were you there when they condemned my Lord?” appears to be a spin-off of an old gospel hymn. I can’t remember the title now. But one of the first lines is “Were you there when they crucified my Lord.” The rest basically follows the lyrics you typed.

BTW, thank you for your thoughts on the “into the depths” thread. They were helpful. I also responded to your entry … if you wanted to read my reply …

Peace,

dee

It also occurs to me that, if a habit would protect a nun from a murder to which she would be otherwise victim, there are likely many nuns who – in an act of radical Gospel accompaniment with God’s people – would choose NOT to wear a habit. (Same with brothers and priests).
In such an environment, the habit would serve as privilege, rather than as a sign of God’s love for all, most especially for “the least of these”.

I am reminded again of Blessed Oscar Romero. His life was threatened because of his advocacy for the poor of El Salvador and his loving efforts to evangelize the powers (including the US) persecuting the poor who sought peace and justice. Priests were being murdered; the nuns I mentioned above would be killed after Romero’s death; and 70,000 Salvadorans would die by the time the war ended. And yet Romero refused to travel in armored vehicles.

He refused the privileges of his station within the Church (and society) and, in doing so, taught and celebrated the station of the poor within the Church (and society): beloved children of God.

If a habit serves as a functional “armored car” in environments where the lay person is at risk of murder simply for seeking justice, then I can imagine many a sister, brother and priest in those environments declining – in deep and holy sacrifice – those protective clothes.

Jean

The first stanza is the lyric (sung by Neville), followed by the meditation and prayer by Fr Bayhi, for the First Station. It strikes me that it is a fitting meditation when thinking of martyred Sister Dorothy and, most importantly, the poor Brazilians, God’s children for whom she paid her life.

*************************

Were you there when they condemned my Lord?
If you were there when they condemned my Lord
Oh, sometimes it bothers me
Oh, it makes me want to tremble
Don’t it make you want to tremble
If you were there oh when they condemned my Lord

****

Our Lord is condemned to death.

It doesn’t seem fair. What did he ever do to deserve it? Chesterson said if Christ would come back we would not crucify Him. We are much too civilized for that. We’d simply invite Him to dinner and make fun of everything he says. How many have carried crosses they never asked for? Condemned for their past, chastised for their present, despairing for their future. Crucified in the name of Christian righteousness or religious piety. Condemned for their color, their race, their dialect or their belief. Condemned because they were told they were ugly, incapable, dumb or incompetent. Condemned for their personal preference, crucified for their personal limitation. Unfortunately, the condemnation is not to death, but to life – a life of shame, anger and worthlessness that comes only because one is black, white; Jew, Gentile; gay, straight; rich, poor; productive, impaired; handicapped, able-bodied; single, divorced; educated, ignorant; the condemnation that is laid upon us all. Some of us did not ask for it. None of us deserve it.

Let us pray.

Lord, help me to recognize you not only in the saints and the martyrs, and those we consider holy, but help me to see You in the innocence of the children, the wrinkles of the aged, the fears of the confused, and the cries of the angry. Help me never to be the executor of the present who condemned you centuries ago on a cross and now uses mere words to condemn you today in the name of God, whomever we have made Him to be.

Our Lord is condemned to death.

Nonetheless, the issue is a red herring in contexts such as the deaths of Sister Stang and others. I know for sure that Blessed Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador, was not only in his vestments but was in the act of consecrating the Bread and the Wine when he was killed by an assassin who had entered the Cathedral.

Blessed Oscar Romero stood with the poor of El Salvador and was murdered for the sake of the powerful and wealthy. Sister Dorothy – in standing for the Brazilian rain forest – stood for Brazil’s people and the Earth and was murdered for the sake of the powerful and wealthy.

A veil and a habit would not have protected her, and it is dangerous – wildly dangerous, I think – to suggest otherwise. We must call evil by its name, and this evil is named GREED, not “Sister’s appearance”.

I am reminded that references to what a rape victim was wearing at the time she was raped are not allowed in court cases (at least in some states). This is in response to the awareness that mention of her clothing suggests that the victim could be blamed for what happened to her (“she asked for it”).

I am uncomfortable with your question (and the fact of your anonymous screen name on this blog; I think you may be the first “anon” I have ever encountered here and, paired as it is with your question, it catches my eye).

If God’s will could be accomplished through the habit, I have no doubt that every religious woman and man would eat, sleep and bathe in theirs.

Jean

“I started developing a mentality of resistance that, if it didn’t make sense to me, then maybe it just didn’t make sense.”

- from the book “Texas Radicals in the Sixties”

I wish I had HBO!