A new documentary about Catholic Sisters and Nuns has just been released. Interrupted Lives: Catholic Sisters Under European Communism is a one-hour documentary that “explores the experiences of Greek and Roman Catholic Sisters of Eastern and Central Europe sisters who at the end of World War II were trapped under Soviet domination as Josef Stalin seized control.” (source: USCCB press release)

The documentary will be released to ABC stations and affiliates later in September and hopefully we’ll have a copy soon so that we review it here on A Nun’s Life.

The executive producers are Sisters Margaret Nacke, CSJ, and Mary Savoie, CSJ, both Sisters of Saint Joseph of Concordia, Kansas.

The sisters realized the urgency (because of the age of sister survivors) of interviewing sisters who had “endured imprisonment, exile to Siberia, forced farm and factory labor, deportation, seizure of their schools and hospitals and expulsion from their convents.” (source: USCCB press release)

Preserving the stories of the extraordinary courage and unwavering commitment of these sisters is important historical data for the archives of the Catholic church.  Every effort was made by the Soviet communists and their satellite countries to suppress all activities of the sisters, depriving them of ministries that would in any way influence others and placing them in works that would negate any contact; therefore, whether on farms, in factories, caring for the elderly or incarcerated in prisons, sisters seemed undeterred in living their faith. (source: Sisters of Saint Joseph, Concordia, Kansas)

For more info on the making of the documentary, check out the Sisters of Saint Joseph link above and a 2003 article by Margot Patterson for the National Catholic Reporter “Preserving the gospel stories of today: Project seeks to record Catholic experience under communism” (September 19, 2003).

Women and the Catholic Church is always an intriguing and provocative topic. “Women of Faith: A Film about Women and the Catholic Church” is a new documentary by filmmaker Rebecca Alvin that explores this topic.

The one-hour film includes interviews with Maryknoll Sisters and Poor Clares and, among other things, looks at “the choice to lead a profoundly religious life in the Catholic tradition in the post-feminist era”.

According to reviewers of the film, there is no narrative, allowing the women to speak for themselves without the intrusion of interpretation or commentary. While a good idea, it’s important to note that no documentary can be completely “objective” because the very process of selecting and editing clips is itself an interpretation by the filmmaker. Still, I like the approach and appreciate it.

I’m hoping that the film will be screened in Detroit or Chicago as I’d love to see it for myself. The reviews have been interesting but I’ve not read anything from a nun perspective about the film.

Here’s one of the reviews for your reading pleasure.

Alvin Unveils ‘Women of Faith’: New documentary shines a light on local women and the Catholic Church in Cape Cod Today by Bethany Gibbons (April 7, 2009)

Also, you can check out the Women of Faith website — it’s got a few things on there, but unfortunately much is still “under construction”. Will write more on this when I am able to see the documentary.

Tonight HBO2 will premiere the film, called “They Killed Sister Dorothy” at 8 p.m. EST (see HBO write-up). The film is a documentary about Sister Dorothy Stang, SNDdeN.

Sister Dorothy was shot and killed in 2005 in Brazil amid a dispute with ranchers over Amazon rain forest land she wanted brought under Brazilian government protection.

The 73-year-old Sister Dorothy spent three decades trying to preserve the rain forest and defending the rights of poor settlers. She and her community worked with the poor in the rain forest of the Amazon basin in Anapu, Pará, Brazil. When wealthy cattle ranchers began destroying huge areas of the rain forest to make way for grazing land, Sister Dorothy became active in the Brazilian government’s Sustainable Development Project, also called PDS. She also became a Brazilian citizen.

For more information visit www.theykilledsisterdorothy.com.

I will be writing a review on the documentary within the next couple of weeks.

A while back I wrote about Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change (click here to see my original post). The film is a one-hour documentary produced by Hartfilms in association with Alabama Public Television.

“During the bloody marches of 1965 in Selma, Alabama, a startling new group of leaders joined the battle for civil rights: African American and white Catholic nuns. Nine nuns look back at the events that changed their lives and helped make Selma a turning point for Martin Luther King’s movement and for religious Americans.”

Starting in February which is Black History Month, the film will be aired on PBS Stations. Go to the film’s web site and click on “airdates” in the left menu bar, and then on “broadcast” to see when it might be aired on your local station. You can also see a very compelling video preview in the same window that opens up for “airdates” … click on “video preview”.

I haven’t yet seen the film and am looking forward to it. If you’ve seen the film, please let me know what you think about it.

I read this news article by Catholic News Service and had to find out more about the Sisters of Selma. Below is some of the background which is taken directly from the film’s web site. Here is a list of the congregations who were the “Sisters of Selma”. Each link explains how that congregation’s sisters were involved.

• Franciscan Sisters of Mary

• Sisters of St. Joseph  of  Carondelet

• Sisters of Loretto

• Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester

• Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

from the film’s web site …

Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change
a one-hour documentary in production for Alabama Public Television

In 1965, American nuns from St. Louis made civil rights history in the streets of Selma, Alabama. At a time when many church leaders were reluctant to address the treatment of Blacks in the South, these courageous women defied authority—and a long history of simply praying for causes—to proudly take their message to the streets. When the image of these women of the cloth, marching alongside other protesters, graced the front pages of newspapers and magazines, Selma became a turning point for Rev. Martin Luther King’s movement and for religious people in America.

A Few Steps in the Right Direction

The time was the Sixties; the place, the deep South. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had been working to bring voting rights to the region’s African Americans. For decades, local laws had all but prevented Blacks from voting. And those who did venture to the ballot box often faced harassment and even violence. Rev. King had decided to challenge the status quo once and for all. On a dreary Sunday in early spring, dozens of peaceful protesters gathered to demand voter registration reform. But the quiet resolve of the assembly was shattered when state troopers and the sheriff’s posse on horseback struck down scores of Black citizens. Dozens were badly injured and two killed in the days following. With much of the debacle shown on television news, “Bloody Sunday” stunned Americans, focusing nationwide attention on civil rights for the first time. A new feeling of outrage emerged, and civilians were not the only ones to join the fray.

Religious leaders left their pulpits to take to the streets—ministers, rabbis, and priests. Fiftyfour from St. Louis, Missouri took two chartered flights to Selma.

Four habit-clad sisters were in the first plane. Sister Mary Antona, a Sister of St. Mary, was accompanied by Sister Eugene Marie, her superior at St. Mary’s Infirmary. Being African American, Sr. Mary Antona had suffered racial segregation in her own novitiate program. She had prayed to go to Selma, knowing full well that sisters simply didn’t do such things. When the call came, Sr. Antona realized: “God was calling my bluff.” Sister Ernest Marie and her companion Sister Thomas Marguerite were on the same flight. They were Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet and college teachers. They knew little about the Black struggle for voting rights beyond the buzz on campus, but going to Selma seemed the right thing to do.

In the second plane were Loretto sisters Sister Ann Christopher and Sister Christine Mary. They lived and worked with Black inner-city residents of St. Louis who embraced Rev. King’s peaceful methods. These Blacks were the people the sisters wanted to represent in Selma.

They did not anticipate the reactions of the South and of the Catholic establishment.

In Selma, the Missouri sisters were surprised by how much the Black residents trusted them. This was due in large part to the years of bridge-building by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester. They had met the education and health care needs of the poor Blacks of Selma since 1940. The Archbishop of Mobile-Birmingham had prohibited them from joining the demonstrations, so they fed, housed, and nursed waves of civil rights activists from elsewhere. They welcomed the nuns from St. Louis.

On the Wednesday following “Bloody Sunday,” the sisters led a procession defying a ban by church, city, and county authorities. Though the police cut the demonstration short, the images of these women in the national and international media had tremendous impact. People were shocked. A Gallup poll showed that the majority of Americans felt sisters should remain cloistered in their convents. For Dr. Martin Luther King the presence of the visiting nuns in the Selma demonstrations “had a special significance because the public knows a nun to be a woman of great sacrifice and dedication.”

For thousands of their peers, however, these women religious had made a thrilling statement because the event coincided with the Second Vatican Council, an ambitious four-year effort by Rome to modernize the Catholic Church. Sisters around the country were rethinking their vow of “obedience,” their missions, and their own segregation from the life of the nation. In the following weeks, many went to Selma to join the marchers. These Catholic women religious who marched in Selma inspired many American nuns to seek social and economic justice through their ministries well beyond the traditional realms of teaching and nursing.

This is a story of “aggiornamento,” (Pope John XXIII) the “updating” of societies resistant to change. More importantly, it is the story of a few women who took it upon themselves to become the agents of that change. What did they change? How were they themselves changed by the experience? Was it all for the better? Now in their 60′s and 70′s, the women reassess their roles in the Civil Rights Movement.