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Why don’t all sisters and nuns wear a habit, live in a cloister, or pray the horarium?
The National Catholic Reporter has a new article posted by Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, called Discerning Ministerial Religious Life Today (September 11, 2009). In this article, Sister Sandra helps explain why it is that all nuns do not wear a habit, live in a cloister, or pray the horarium. Essentially Sister Sandra is filling a gap in people’s experience of women religious. Many people have had experience of or heard about sisters who live a monastic form of religious life and sisters who live an apostolic or ministerial form of religious life. But it’s not always easy to explain how we got the two or how the two are similar and how they are dissimilar.
This essay is also a kind of continuation of a discussion on religious life by Sister Sandra in recent publications: the essay Why they stay(ed), the personal email that NCR published, We’ve given birth to a new form of religious life, and the address she gave to the IHM Congregation, God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009.
In this latest piece, Sister Sandra, a member of my own IHM community, responds to the question, What is ‘apostolic Religious Life’? which, as she notes, has been answered though often times with misinformation. The question appears in various forms, often around three main questions about lifestyle:
“Is culturally conspicuous, uniform garb (habit), fixed group dwelling from which members exit only by necessity and from which non-members are excluded (enclosure, cloister), and a daily schedule including shared meals, work, and especially the oral recitation of prescribed texts and vocal prayers, e.g., divine office, litanies, at several fixed times a day (horarium) essential to Catholic Religious Life as such?” The short answer is “no.”
The article goes on to provide a longer answer contextualized within history, scripture and theology.
This is a very important piece of writing and I recommend that you take a read, especially if you are considering religious life or know someone who is. Use it as a starting point to explore some of the issues and insights that Sister Sandra has raised. Whether or not you agree with what she has written, she has done a good job at naming the significant issues that can create confusion and misinformation.
Discerning Ministerial Religious Life Today
(National Catholic Reporter, September 11, 2009)
Please read the article and then join in the conversation below. (NB: The conversation actually got started on another post here so I moved those comment over here.)
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{ 21 comments }
In reading Sister Sandra’s most recent article on NCR, I have made progress in understanding what I struggle with when I read her there. I thank her so much for this informative article. She is an amazing resource: I am still reading “Selling All” and am so grateful to her.
I sincerely believe that there is a subtle but powerful confusion of her many “voices” in her writing in this context (NCR). She **does** have many voices – Sandra’s, Sister Sandra’s, IHM sister’s, scholar’s, woman’s, elder’s, etc. Each voice has its own and equal authority.
In that context, my sense is that – due to a lack of explicit identification of which voice is speaking in a given statement or passage or perspective – the very particular authority of that specific voice is confused and confusing. My concern is that, in this context, she seems to speak with many of those “voices” within the four corners of one page WITHOUT explicitly communicating those transitions within a narrative that is attributed to a single identity.
And, I am sorry to say it, this significantly reduces (for me) the usefulness and value of many of her articles there.
Sincerely and with great respect and gratitude and a promise to keep reading her, albeit with hopes for an increased ownership of her distinct voices,
Jean
Welcome back from wherever you have been, Sister J. Whenever I read Sister Sandra at NCR, I struggle with the reality that I **do** know progressive sisters who are asking many of the questions and enngaged in dialogue about many of the issues Sister Sandra states, in what I experience as her scholarly tone, language, style and authority, are resolved, off-the-table, attributable only to non-LCWR orders and sisters. What is a careful reader to do with that? I do know sisters – leaders and members of in their progressive orders – who have not taken the issues of “visible presence” off the table; whose tables are weighted with questions about whether fidelity to the evangelical counsels (in particular poverty and in particular in first world cultures) are significantly hampered when sisters do not live **in** community; who are listening very carefully to younger women who are saying “we have the works down; we need increased grounding in the spirituality and the post-modern world makes that difficult without the daily conversion and ongoing formation of live-in community. That Sister Sandra has taken these issues off her table is evident (and, if I am wrong about that, I need more information to accept that). What is very clear to me – from my own experience of progressive religious women – is that the issues are very much in play for many of them AND that, when Sister Sandra uses her academic/scholarly language, style and authority to suggest that these sisters just aren’t out there in appreciable numbers, I am dismayed by what seems a co-opting of her scholarly authority for use by her **experiential**, personal authority and I begin to have a difficult time trusting her articles on NCR. I remind myself that, when others “leaked” her personal e-mail about the then-newly announced Visitation, others muddied the waters of her voice: that e-mail made waves because of who Sister Sandra is as a scholar and not because of any extraordinary experiential authority (by which I mean that her personal experience remains – and I have no doubt that she would deny – one of nearly 60,000 women whose personal experiences is, thus, one personal experience of nearly 60,000 such experiences. For me that is a simple, incontrovertible fact. When she speaks as a scholar, relying on her scholarly resources and research including those termed “feminist” or “subjective” – there is a rigorous science there and it is a refreshing one: the “lens” of the researcher is explicity defined, owned, accounted for, distinguished as distinct from even those subjects whose perspective is shared in common with the researcher – her authority is not greater and her personal authority lesser. It is simply different and readers approach each with appropriatey different receptive lenses. I believe the two get confused in her NCR pieces and, again,I think those who “leaked” her personal e-maill bear some burden in that and I, frankly, hope they have apologized. But we are where we are, and my hope is that Sister Sandra will consider these observations . She is, as I said, a tremendous resource and it is troubling to read her deny realities that simply are not her own. Jean
Jean, thank you for sharing your insights into Sister Sandra’s writings; I always find your contributions thought-provoking and I’ve been thinking about this one since last night. I think I know what you are getting at, but I wonder whether Sandra can do what you are suggesting that she might want to do–that is, to somehow distinguish between or separate the various roles or perspectives that she brings to her writing. I guess one of the things I find both challenging and impressive about her work is that it is holistic–that she brings ALL the dimensions of her life to what she writes. Certainly, there are aspects of her thought that I don’t necessarily share in their entirety, but she is all the things she is, and I don’t think she compartmentalizes her life. I believe Sandra would not necessarily want you to “buy” everything that she says–but the fact that you think so seriously and deeply about things as a result of her efforts is part of what I suspect she is aiming at. Her truth is “a” truth, not “the” truth, eh?
Part of what the idea of “charism” of religious life expresses to me is that there are–and SHOULD be–many ways of living out religious dedication, even within the form of vowed religious life. Thank God (literally!) that there are ways that are appropriate to all sorts of people! What works for Sandra may not work for you, but each of you has something to offer and we are all richer for the diversity. I guess I don’t see her as dismissing alternatives to her path, so much as explaining certain paths that have more meaning for her, and rejecting absolutism of any kind. …
Anyway, I will continue to look forward to more of what you say.
Peggy – Thank you so much for your company in thinking this through. It is sincerely not my intention to “pile on”………what an ungracious response that would be to what I perceive as Sister Sandra’s deep and generous integrity. I appreciate, Peggy, that you seem to recognize that *my* intention is dialogue with a goal of understanding and not gratuitous debate or conflict. I would love help in sorting this, Peggy, because you *are* an academic (as I understand it) and, thus, are trained and fluent in the discipline and language of the kind of “textual analysis” I am getting at here.
I do agree, without any hesitation or qualification, that Sister Sandra’s intention is to reject absolutism of any and every kind, and that is one quality of her work that I find tremendously powerful **and** expressive of a deep fidelity to the “both/and-ness”of Catholic Christian faith and life.
I will chew on your response and get back to you. Jean
I’ve been thinking about Jean and Peggy’s comments above, and now that I’ve read the article, I understand a bit more where you are coming from.
Jean, Peggy is definitely a good person to walk with on this one because of her experience — both academic experience and lived experience of knowing, praying, and working with women religious.
The issue of voices is an interesting one to consider because I find that my approach to even reading Sandra has more tones of “lived experience” than the academic training I have in theology, Scripture, and religious life. I cannot help bring that to the discussion and it’s of course difficult to not take any statements about religious life personally because it is my vocation. Because Sandra is a religious and also a professional theologian and expert in her field, I imagine it must be really difficult to separate those things, and I guess I don’t want her too. But, having just had a healthy argument with one of my nuns this morning about identifying which “voice” she is speaking in so that I could better understand what she was saying, I can totally understand your concern here with Sister Sandra’s writing. Not sure though, as Peggy noted, that it can be otherwise.
Apostolic and/or Ministerial Religious Life is a lived reality today but its expression is amoeba-esque. Sandra’s work helps us with the articulation but we are still trying to negotiate our way with what has been, what is, what we hope is, what others expect this should be. Just as each community has its own unique charism, each community will find its own unique way of expressing this way of religious life. Dress, community life, prayer and spirituality, ministry are all in the mix. What I appreciate about Sandra’s work is her clear articulation and affirmation that what we are living, what we know to be true, is an authentic way of religious life. Even though we know this to be true, it is extremely helpful (especially when being attacked, dismissed, rejected by others because of our form of religious life) to hear from one of our own, one who is faithful and grounded in prayer, who has experience with the Church, with religious life, and with theology, scripture, and history, to articulate and put into words what we can’t always do because we are about our forms of ministry, just as Sandra is about hers.
Will also keep munching on this, especially around the question of whether or not Sandra is saying that this new form of ministerial religious life is defined in only one way.
Thanks, Jean and Peggy.
Sister Julie – Thank you for joining in this discussion. I am still chewing but want to say that I was delighted by your story about the healthy argument between you and your nun about which “voice” she was employing or speaking from in your discussion.
I know that this may all sound like gobble-dy-gook to many but it is very real and of concern, I think, especially because most of us engage and act in the world within a complexity of roles, each role arising from very particular circumstances, values, operatuve styles, purposes, privileges and burdens.
A very simple example is this: my stepmother is 21 years younger than my father and is, thus, only nine years older than I. She and my father married when I was 23. She is, at once, my friend, a mother figure, an older sister, my father’s closest person, a professional peer (we have worked in the same field), a same-age member in my extended family and, by her marriage to my father, a member of a different generation in my family. It is not uncommon, when we speak, that one of us has to stop the discussion and say, “are you speaking to me as X or Y?” or “I want to clarify that I am speaking to you as W or Z”. That clarification (she is speaking to me as my father’s wife vs. as my same-age family member or I am responding to her as a friend vs. my father’s daughter ) often changes in very substantial and both complex and very simple ways the mode in which we hear and respond to exactly the same words. It is admittedly a drag at times to go through all of that but the great benefit of it is that, in the 23 years since a 32 year old woman and a 23 year old woman became “stepmother” and “stepdaughter”, we have often wrangled meanings but never power and have remained close and understanding friends.
Back to chewing.
Jean
I am re-reading Sister Sandra’s article and have identified the passages where she loses me: when she reaches the 1950s in her historical overview and ending at her “Biblical and Theological Considerations”. Those paragraphs cover the general time period in which Sister Sandra has been a nun and, thus, she personally becomes a participant in the period of history covered in her overview (broad, general and comprehensive view, summary, treatment or survey).
I hear an unstated “I” – an unstated “we” – loud and clear and I even expect it: she lived this experience and continues to live it. How could she, as you and Peggy note, not speak of her experience without speaking from within that experience?
And yet Sister Sandra, in these NCR pieces, does not locate herself in her own story. That she is telling the story from the inside is evident, and I would say not only because we know who she is. In the depth and richness of those “1950s and forward” passages, there is an authenticity and an authority which announce proximity, participation. (Again, I believe that each position, each view, each degree of relationship with the material considered has its own and equal authority).
And so I stumble over that absence of an explicitly stated “we” when she arrives at the “we” part; the absence of an explicit acknowledgement that she has transitioned from “they” to “we”; the absence of acknowledgement that the distance of “historical overview” has given way to the promixity of ongoing personal life experience.
Your post helped me, Sister Julie, when you transition to the use of “we”. I wanted to ask you to identify that “we” for me: is it the “we” of you and Sister Maxine, the “we” of the Monroe IHMs, the “we” of Catholic sisters involved in ministerial/apostolic life, some other “we”?
When I read Sister Sandra’s writings about the lived experiences of Cathoic sisters of her own generation, I hear “we”. I hear “we experience”, “we feel”, “we think”, “we want”. “We” is active on the page but I do not see “we” on the page. I see evidence of “we” in that authentic depth and richness I note above. But “we” is speaking, on the page, through the voice and language and style – and from the assumed distance – of the non-participant scholar.
And I find myself scanning the article, looking for the passage in which Sister Sandra introduces me to this “we” and, in doing so, helps me locate *myself* in relationship to that “we” and that helps me determine how to interact with what I am reading. I am not sure that I can explain right now any better what I mean by that. I just know that there is a “dynamic” that happens for me when I hear but do not see Sister Sandra’s sudden “we” in the midst of more “distant” historical overview and analysis and it is a dynamic that causes me to wonder why that perfectly legit “we” is absent.
Help?
Jean
Jean, I think you raise some important issues. If you can get ahold of the sesquicentennial history of the Monroe IHMS [Building Sisterhood], you may want to check my introduction to the volume, which is called “Concentric Circles of Sisterhood.” It attempts to address the question of the various “we’s” you raise here. [If you can't find the book, I could email it to you--or perhaps I could send it to Sr. Julie and she could post it here; I have it as a MSWord file.]
As a historian, of course, I practice a discipline that is premised on the idea that one CAN fully comprehend that which one does not experience directly–which is not to say that we always DO (I certainly don’t, but I strive to). Thus, Sandra may or may not have less understanding of or empathy for the period before he entrance into religious life…. Anyway, regardless, when she writes about the period from the late 1950s to the present, she again may be writing about HER truth, or a larger IHM truth, or the truth of a sizeable proportion of American sisters. In my understanding of things, she is doing all three, although obviously it is presumptuous of me to try to speak for her. I will say that what she writes resonates with me as reflective of the reality of the lives of MANY sisters I have known and read about (for me, I don’t always differentiate between those I know “in person” and on the page), in a wide range of communities. …
I quote Peggy to start my comment ….. “I guess one of the things I find both challenging and impressive about her work is that it is holistic–that she brings ALL the dimensions of her life to what she writes. ” There were other passages later I could have used. Let me just say, as someone who entered in 1960, I felt she expressed my experience and that the historical perspective she brought into the article made it exciting for me.
Some admissions:
I have in the past not found Sr Sandra’s writing very accessible. That this one was excited me. Some younger Sisters find our experience of living an enclosed life in the cloisters, saying the full Divine Office, observing silence like any monastic house and at the same time operating day and boarding schools, quite incomprehensible.
My training did not include formal academic studies in theology, scripture or history, but to find this article was a joy. In fact, when I saw the question being discussed I immediately thought I must point out the value of Sr. Sandra’s article. I have already passed it on to others of our Sisters. I cannot quite grasp all that you are saying but tonight’s visit to the site has been so rewarding.
In other pages I have written to comment that all the changes which have taken place in religious life since Vatican 11 have been ratified by Rome after our successive General Chapters, so that “the powers that be” must be pleased that we have taken to heart so much of the “sings of the times” during these last forty years …… disingenuous of me I know, but worth thinking about in the context of the Visitations you are encountering in the U.S.
Thanks everyone for these posts. Retirement allows me to spend more time in such ruminations.
Joan OP
Hi Sister Joan, Thanks for writing and sharing the fruits of your life and retirement! Can I ask you a question or two?
As those of us in apostolic/ministerial religious life are striving to articulate our way of life, do you find it a challenge because you are a cloistered nun who continues to observe things that, by virtue of our calling, we no longer observe in the same way? Also, I would assume that over time just as religious sisters are growing into their particular calling that monastic nuns are also growing into their calling, specifically the way they live enclosure/habit/horarium et al. Is that accurate? I ask because monastic life is often portrayed as being a traditional way of life that has been unchanged for centuries but my (limited) experience of monastic sisters is that they are very much living a 21st century monastic life, not a medieval form which is how nuns are often portrayed even today.
Underlying my questions, in part, is the uncomfortable tension I sometimes sense between monastic nuns and ministerial sisters especially when trying to discuss what religious life is about. Since I swing toward ministerial and have no lived experience of cloistered life, I always want to be sure that in articulating my experience or understanding of religious life I do not simultaneously take away from monastic life. I hope that makes some sense. I grieve the fact that these two ways of life are sometimes pitted against each other, especially in the media but also among Catholics and sisters themselves. Would love to hear from you on this. Thank you, Joan.
Julie, thank you for your questions, because your interpretation show me that I have expressed myself badly. We are active religious, who previously lived in the ways that described a more monastic, cloistered life, while at the same time running educational institutions, both boarding and day students, both regular schools and special schools. When I first entered and for about ten years we wore a most traditional habit, which became more simplified with each passing General Chapter until now we wear appropriate clothing, along with a ring and a Dominican Crest.
The section in which Sr Sandra describes this life……. “Until the 1950s women Religious actually lived two different lives side-by-side: virtually the whole of monastic life at home and a full-time ministerial life in their apostolates. The typical non-stop 17 hour day — from 5:00 a.m. till 10:00 p.m. — in a pre-Vatican II convent involved modern women (dressed at all times in the restrictive fluting and pleats, floor length gowns, starched wimples and veiled headresses of 17th or 18th century peasants or nobles), struggling to “get in” to their daily schedule Mass, meditation, devotional vocal prayers, examen, some form of divine office, adoration of the Blesssed Sacrament, the rosary, stations of the cross, spiritual reading from assigned pious books as well as daily manual work assignments in the convent.
They also participated daily (usually in silence) in three meals in common including some role in their preparation and clean-up and spent an hour in common “recreation” which usually included handwork or mending, school work, parish or community tasks. Within the same day that included this full monastic routine they prepared classes and carried a full day’s professional schedule in school, hospital, or other Catholic institutions. They often taught catechism on the weekends and gave private lessons of various kinds to augment community income. In short, they carried all the burdens of the monastic life with none of the leisure for personal prayer, lectio divina, genuine community life, or ordinary recreation of monastics, and all the burdens of the apostolate without the professional preparation or privileges enjoyed by the clergy” , described this exactly.
I am not complaining about this way of life, but it became more and more difficult to live that way and explore new apostolates. A simpler style of dress allowed me to be more accessible when I was visiting a home of a family with a deaf infant, playing on the floor. More practical too when filling the car on the way home!! When cloister rules were relaxed we were able to do these things, which in my case meant that I could be much more effective in reaching these families where they lived and gave them the chance to be the first educators of their children. That part of the Vatican documents made me very excited, but taking children away from their parents and having them board did little to achieve this, so that when it was possible I set up early education centres with the focus on the family and the results were remarkably different.
I always found it ironic to understand that Dominic was the saint to establish an order where the men were mendicant and travelled two by two all over Europe and England in the universities, living the Augustinian rule as he had previously and as we do today. Certainly the first Sisters, technically “Nuns”, needed protection as they converted from heresy. But later, when the orders were suppressed, particularly in France and Ireland, the Sisters lived among the people of the neighbourhood, dressing as their neighbours did, until they could return to their convents (and schools).
I am sure Dominic, as an innovator, has his eye on us approvingly as we seek to be apostles, wherever the needs are.
This has been long and as it is bearly 2 a.m. I must go to bed. Thanks for the questions. I hope they are clarifying.
Joan OP
Sister Joan, it is wonderful to hear from you, and to have you share your perspective on religious life! Just this past weekend, I read a book called “Vocation in Black and White: Dominican Contemplative Nuns tell how God called them” (IUniverse Press, 2009), an anthology of brief essays by Dominican contemplative nuns in the US. Have you read it? [If not, if you give me an address, I'll send it to you and your sisters.] Also, recently I read “Cloister of the Heart: Association of Contemplative Sisters,” edited by Ann Denham and Gert Wilkinson (XLibris, 2009)–another fascinating look into contemplative religious life in the US since Vatican II. [I know a couple of the authors included here, so I am selfishly NOT offering to pass this one on.]
In many ways, I think religious life in the US and Australia have more in common than, say, the US and Canada–at least so far as apostolic religious life is concerned, so I’m always looking for recommendations of good books on Australian religious life. Anything you might have to offer–particularly about contemplative life there, about which I know very little–would be MOST appreciated!
Peggy, Sister Joan, Sister Julie – I am just starting to read your posts but wanted to stop and ask you all (and Peggy in particular) another question. First, I would love to read your intro “Concentric Circles of Sisterhood” (even the title gives me food for thought!) and will look for it. It does seem, given the current environment, that it might be a very useful general resource.
(It can seem so difficult, in American culture these days, to find dialogues that do not depend – for their driving energy – on monolithic identities and absolutist ideologies; dialogue seems so often combattive that it can be difficult not to just go ahead and give in and work out one’s defensive frustrations by adopting an artifically extreme position with which to give the other guy a good (ideological) bashing.
I like very much the idea of envisioning community – any community – as “concentric circles” of idenitities, voices, relationships…..and, in dialogue, using that concept to manage dynamics (recalling the central axis or center when conflict threatens to overwhelm connection and, once connectedness is restored, inviting each other to move back out and back and forth between those concentric identities, voices, relationships. (My quick-and-dirty first take on your visual of concentric circles. Wow! Peggy – even if that is not what you intend with your visual – there is so much richness possible in just your title that I want to read it. Sister Julie, please pass on my e-mail though I hope you will publish the piece here – it sounds very much as if the time may have come for a wider reading of it, given all of the real or manufactured tension around these days).
Peggy, I appreciate what you say about it being possible to become a “participant” in the past through the practice of history as a discipline (participant being my word not yours). I think that being a historian must be a wonderful adventure for that very reason! I also agree that Sister Sandra is writing “her truth” – and that she has several and is “right” to speak with and from all those truths and that, as you say, maintaining them as a whole, maintaining herself, maintaining her voice as a whole is a good and thrilling and allowable thing. (One of the thrilling moments of this past year for me was when Justice Sonya Sotomayor just came out with it: who I am informs who I am ……with its implicit corollary to the rest of us that who you are informs you are and I think that, when we come right down to the unspoken tenstions that drove the fracas, it is really that corollary which got the shite kicked out of her for a bit there).
Again, Peggy, I appreciate you sticking with me on this because this is a very sincere struggle for me and not at all an ideological one. (In general, I think Sister Sandra’s perspective is “da bomb” and, where I disagree with her, it is a matter of personal preference and whocares about that except Sister Sandra and me?) I want to say that my struggle is an epistemological struggle but am not certain I am using the term correctly to describe my struggle in this context. There is analysis coming from every direction these days and it is difficult to discern how to interact and use so much of it; there are no agreed-upon rules for creating most of the analysis to which we are exposed these days and so, I believe, each of us is wise to develop an intentional practice of reception and interacton with the analyses we encounter. One means is to choose one’s media sources and one’s “expert views” and just trust those but I find that limiting and that it requires me to restrict my interaction with the writer and the material on some important levels. And I think that leads us back to my quick-and-dirty take on your wonderful title “Concentric Circles”…
Perhaps I need to think through why I have no issue with Sotomayor and, yet, I struggle with Sister Sandra. Maybe it is as simple as the fact that I am aware of Sotomayor’s statements on this issue and I have simply not encountered Sister Sandra’s.
Though I go back and get stuck on her use of language like “and this is why sisters are upset…” and “this is primarily an issue for traditionalists”. I cannot stop myself from shouting at the page, “what is the source that allows those descriptive indicators of broad consensus”? I would not ask that – woud not shout that – if there were not, as I perceive it, a sudden shift in “the kind” of history she is writing and, thus, the kind of authority on which she is relying. I understand and believe (and have no problem with) what you are saying, Peggy: she is writing her truth throughout the article. I just cannot shake my sense that textual integrity – and a sincere invitation to dialogue – requires explication of a change in position that is, to my ears and emotional experience, evident in the text. I cannot shake my sense that, in service of what I believe is Sister Sandra’s rejection of absolutism, she has engaged in some subtle and defensive absolutism. Given what is happening and what may very well be “a target on her head”, I am not at all surprised by what I experience as a advocate’s tone that asserts “we exist. we are right to exist. you have no idea how very, very many of us there are and it is time you respnded to us as a reality”. (A friend called me this morning from another state and mentioned that his parish priest had just showed him a letter from their Archbishop with the announcement of a prohibtion on shaking hands in the sharing of peace and the receiving of the Precious Blood by the congregants. I panicked: in my head, I saw all priests saying all Masses in all churches with their backs to the congregation and was on the verge of a dramatic statement about the end of my discernment and the absolute foolishness of such a decision and my conviction that “Catholics” will just not stand for it when, of course, I know there are many who *would* stand for it. My friend, who knows me well, stopped me and said “it’s because of swine flu, Jean”. WHEW!
Most importantly, I just cannot shake the sense that the lack of an articulated and described “we” (in these NCR pieces Sister Sandra has written) contributes to the rancor and fight over “the truth” vs the reality that there are many truths, that there have always been many truths, that there always will be many truths in living with God.
Maybe, Peggy, you can point me to some readings that could help me think this through more?
Jean
Jean, I’m writing this in my office so (1) it will be brief, and (2) it may have to be moderated since I may not be allowed to post automatically from here. I did send an electronic version of my “Concentric Circles” to Julie earlier today, and she has said she will post it on this blog, so look for it here. As for other things to read, although it has nothing to do with religious life, a book I found very useful when I was working with the IHMs on “Building Sisterhood” was Mary Catherine Bateson’s “Composing a Life” (exists in several editions), and I quote it elsewhere in that volume, though not necessarily in the essay we’re posting. But it is an interesting “take” on telling the stories of women’s lives. On a more scholarly level, the June 2009 issue of the American Historical Review has several essays on biography as a historic form, which my department is discussing tomorrow, coincidentally, in an in-house seminar. If you can get ahold of that, some pieces of it may be worthwhile.
And now, I have to go and teach (or as one of my grad student friends used to put it, “make history”)–16 honors students in a class on 20th-century US politics through fiction. May they be better prepared than my 135 earlier today on the Modern American Presidency …. I think they will be, and so it will be fun!
By the way, Jean, I liked your use of “participant” and may borrow it .
Peggy – OH I wish I could be your student in that class on 2oth century US politics through fiction. I want you to know that I am sitting here fantasizing about what might be on that reading list! (Can you share it? I would live my life in seminars that use fiction and biography to open up history. Perhaps my all-time favorite example is Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”).
Thank you for the suggestions. I know of the Bateson book (and recall you suggesting it here whens omeone asked for books on spiritual writing) but have not read it. I will see what I can do to track down the American Historical Review articles (knowing that you all are discussing it will make it feel like I have company!).
Thank you for this wonderful company, Peggy, especially when you have so many others needing it.
Jean
There is text and there is context. In this case, Sister Sandra is addressing readers of the NCR. That is, she is not writing as a theologian, but as a sister; she is not writing prescriptively but descriptively.
As a lay reader, and one not involved in any debates about religious life, I didn’t encounter any confusion of voices. She writes beautifully about the hiddeness of women religious in the church and in the world. As I understand it, this hiddeness and lack of visible authority is continually frustrating but, as she points out, it is what allows sisters to follow Christ and participate in the Kingdom (if not the Vatican).
On to other aspects of Sister Sandra’s article. I think of St Catherine of Siena as a model of the God-centered legitimacy of ministerial/apostolic life! Her life during her years of travel present – as I understand it – an example of an exceptional degree of solitary and shared but perhaps not routinized comtemplative practices AND perhaps also an example of a mix of “living in community” and “itinerancy” that was possible only because of the geographic and numeric density of convents and monasteries in her world and time. I also just read a book which asks (though not as its primary consideration) who Clare may have been in another age: is there, within her personality and spirituality and capacity for leadership, a strong indication that – had her time’s vision of “women” been different – she would likely have been a ministerial Religious in the sense Sister Sandra writes about and in the sense that Catherine lived it?
I thought of that as I read Sister Sandra’s article and was very excited. For some reason, in the middle of it all, one of my favorite postcard images came to mind: that retro 50′s woman in an oxford shirtdress, big hair, bright lipstick and matching fingernail polish who say, “Oh no! I forgot to have a baby!” I have to think more about why that came to mind but I think it has to do with how ridiculous it is to suggest that women cannot be conscious and effective actors and drivers in their own lives and that their lives, when examined, will not be shown to be organic with an internal logic and consistency and, thus, “of a whole” in their development.
Back to chewing. Jean
Annie – Sister Sandra is writing for NCR readers AND that is a very diverse group of readers, Catholic and otherwise, something that is very evident from reading the comments posted to any small handful of articles on NCR. The “they” encountering the “we” of the article is pretty unpredictable, which I think is great. I think that tends to require that we put our assumptions and identities on the table and that, for me, makes it easier to really attend.
Annie, I guess I question whether the piece is explicitly descriptive without any subtle prescriptive energy. I’ll have to think about that. If the prescriptive energy is there in Sister Sandra’s writing (and like I said I want to think about it: it occurs to me that I may be struggling with a conflation, of my own making, of voice and motivation), I think it is most likely defensive in nature because of the amount of prescriptive energy being directed at progressive sisters. The transition in authority – scholarly experience vs lived experience – may also be where I think there might be a transition from descriptive to prescriptive energy. Sister Sandra has a perfectly expected and legit investment in how ministerial life is described and assessed – an investment that is necessarily different
from whatever investment she may have in how past forms of Religious life are described and assessed – and that investment, that motivation may account for the change in “voice” (as I have been terming it) that is apparent to me when she hits the 1950s onward in her historical overview.
Again, I think the investment is expected and legit. Your language helps me in my thinking, Annie, and I thank you for it. I am thinking that investment can topple the descriptive over into the prescriptive and, if so, that is tricky because investment can be powerfully yet elusively communicated. In this case – this case not just being Sister Sandra but the whole fracas precipitated by the Visitation – I think that has happened. There seems to be a minefield, whether on “the left” or on “the right”, that encourages agreement with and discourages dissent from the dominant description to the extent that the dominant description runs the risk of being prescriptive in effect, if not intent. But that makes me want, in dialogue about contemporary and in-process dynamics, even those in non-dominant communities to explicitly own and define their “we” and, in doing so, to inherently create legitimate space for any dissenting “we” and description. That women have long been denied that legitimate space makes that request of mine hard to swallow for some but I come back to Audre Lorde and her reminder that you cannot dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools.
I am not sure if that makes sense and I am aware that I am playing sort of fast and sort of loose with “descriptive” and “prescriptive”.
Annie, thanks for engaging in this with me. I am sincerely trying to find my way through this as I discern Religious life (which for me is clearly about apostolic/minsterial – contemplative life) and how to live it with fidelity to Jesus on every level and those levels are infinite. One of my favorite parts of Sister Sandra’s artice was when she notes that the Biblical context for understanding ministerial life is the New Testament. That statement, in itself, is absolutely wonderful and rich and deep and wide as a framework for considering ministerial life.
Your mention of “the hiddenness of women” is very interesting to me because it seems full of “both/ands”.
Jean
Jean
And it also possible that I simply am uncomfortable with anyone speaking “for” anyone other than themselves and.or those who have explicity accepted that person as a surrogate or representative. And I experience Sister Sandra, when she addresses contemporary and ongoing dynamics as her speaking “for” non-”traditionalist” sisters. And I have a hard time with that, even when I have no argument with the substance of her statements. I think “we” is a tremendously powerful pronoun, whether articulated or not, and I think it implies an explicit and conscious consensus and unity behind a specific voice and representative…………..and I am skeptical whenever someone uses “we” (articulated or not) without explicating the process by which that “we” voice came into being and its message formed and maintained. This is not specific to Sister Sandra. It is general. Most of us are impacted, in our assessments, by the collective voice (explicitly articulated or not…… and I think the voice of most “scholarship”, with its everpresent weight of “the academy”, articulates an essentially collective voice) and I want that power very carefully wielded and grounded. Academics and others’ with “privileged” authorities (professionals, writers, politicians, etc.) need, I believe, to be very careful in utilizing the collective when speaking about community issues and dynamics ) ****if**** they are to have integrity in their management of power and privilege. And I believe with every ounce of me (and I recently gained weight so I am laying some serious ounces on the line here) that Sister Sandra cares about that. And I believe she has most likely never written about her life and on the subject of her professional work in an environment like the current one, and that her personal interests and her professional focus have likely never collided with so much dynamic power.
Sister Sandra is daily in my prayers: I love who she is and how she loves and how generously she shares herself with God and neighbor. My questions do not change that at all.
And, Peggy, you are right, I would think, that in stimulating me in this way, Sister Sandra has certainly accomplished what most writers likely seek: her work has engaged me more deeply in our shared world.
Jean
Today is an Ora et Labora day for me … out on the farm helping some friends. So will jump back into this conversation later today. For now, wanted to let you know I posted Peggy’s essay (thank you!) on today’s post Concentric Circles of Sisterhood.
Jean, the website for my US Politics through fiction course is at: http://classes.maxwell.syr.edu/hst347/ [The one for my modern American presidency is at http://maxwell.syr.edu/hst341 You can always send me your comments through the email link there….