The Leadership Council of Women Religion (LCWR) held its national assembly this year in Dallas, Texas (August 11-14, 2010). The gathering was an opportunity for education, reflection on issues pertinent to religious life leadership, networking, prayer and celebration.

Among the highlights of the week were the following:

Our own Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM received the 2010 LCWR Outstanding Leadership Award. Sister Margaret, a theologian and former LCWR president, played a key role in the renewal of religious life following the Second Vatican Council. In her response she gave testimony to the founding spirit of LCWR and its continued ministry and mission. (Download the full text of her response GIFT… In gratitude … and awe: A Response)

Richard R. Gaillardetz, PhD of the University of Toledo, spoke on the fidelity of Catholic sisters to the vision of the Second Vatican Council, noting that the tensions sisters are experiencing with the church hierarchy have significance for those not in religious life as well. “The way you respond to the ecclesial tensions you are experiencing right now will be a witness to all Christians, instructing all of us in how to most fruitfully and productively respond to the inevitable ecclesial tensions that we undergo,” he stated.

M. Shawn Copeland, PhD of Boston College emphasized that the prophetic ministry of Catholic sisters is critical for the future of the church. Noting that the Catholic tradition is in crisis, she asked, “How are we to live in the presence of God in this time of disappointment and diminishment? What are we to do in a situation in which nothing seems to be moving forward, when life-giving possibilities for the future seem foreclosed or beyond immediate realization? In such a situation, prophetic ministry not only is needed, it is imperative.”

In her address to the assembly, LCWR president Sister Marlene Weisenbeck, FSPA urged the body to claim its role in the church. She said, “We do not have to mimic our founders to find the answer about how to articulate our ecclesial role. The Gospel will show us what to do, how we must act with the attitude of Jesus who emphasized an inclusive love of all in right relationships. We take our power from the Word of God.” (Download Sister Marlene’s full address Called to Hope as Prophets, Artists, Healers, & Lovers)

Before the close of the assembly, Sister Mary Hughes, OP of the Dominican Sisters of Amityville, New York, assumed the office of LCWR president for 2010-2011.

(sources: Leadership Council of Women Religious and Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; see also US Catholic article LCWR Members urged to maintain ‘hope in the midst of darkness’)

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From the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR) about one of my nuns …

We are very pleased to announce that Margaret Brennan, IHM, has been chosen to receive the 2010 LCWR Outstanding Leadership Award. The honor will be presented to Margaret at the LCWR assembly in August in Dallas.

Margaret, a Sister, Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary of Monroe, Michigan, is a theologian, a former president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and a professor emerita of theology at Regis College (University of Toronto), where she taught for 25 years.

She has made numerous contributions to the renewal of religious life and has been a courageous voice in the church. Novalis Publishing released her memoir last year, What Was There for Me Once.

At the assembly … we will commemorate Margaret’s life and celebrate her significant influence as an inspirational leader in the church and in religious life.

Read more about Sister Margaret Brennan on aNunsLife.org.

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My dear friend and IHM Sister Margaret Brennan recently published her memoir, What Was There for Me Once (2009 Novalis) and last week National Catholic Reporter published a review of the book called “A life of change and renewal” (February 19, 2010).

In Sister Margaret’s book, we find not just a memoir but a compelling and insightful story. Kilian McDonnell, OSB, remarks, “Here is a story of a young girl, sister, novice mistress, elementary and high school teacher, president of the congregation, and university professor in the midst of rapid social change.” Sister Margaret “had a major part to play in developing women’s religious, academic, and spiritual lives in the second half of the 20th century.”

Here are a few quotes from NCR’s review of the book:

This preconciliar church experience was fulfilling and made sense to her — and she embraced it. Of religious life as it approached Vatican II, she writes: “While I was entirely happy in the traditional model of religious life as it had been lived for hundreds of years, I was open to the coming changes.”

The Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were among those religious who were quick to internalize the Vatican documents and the new theologians appearing on the scene. “To use the framework of [Jesuit theologian] Bernard Lonergan, I would say that for me the change from the traditional model of religious life to the Vatican II model was a process of conversion. In involved a real change in worldview, in horizon.”

“To keep the question of God — and God’s questions — high on the horizon of the world is worth the gifts of our lives,” Brennan says. And, without a doubt, her memoir attests to this purpose.

There are many things I love about this book — most especially to hear the voice of one of my sisters, one who was instrumental in my own vocation and religious life. I also love the way she writes with grace and a confidence in the providence of God. Sister Margaret also fills a huge gap in the Catholic and popular imagination about nuns and sisters. Kilian McDonnell notes this well writing that the book takes us through “the passage typical of many women’s religious apostolic communities from monastic models to religious forms more in keeping with their original active charism.”

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It is December 8 and that means it’s the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of the high holy days for us as Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters. Here are a couple of posts about this feast day, one from my dear friend and sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, called Lily of My Heart and the other is one I wrote for the Young Women and Catholicism blog.

For today, I have chosen an icon from Jesuit Father William McNichols, SJ. Though he has one of the Immaculate Conception, I chose this icon called The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart because it is stunning and speaks to me of this Advent season — the coming of God in our midst, the dawn of a new day.

The Triumph of the Immaculate Heart icon by Fr. William McNichols, SJ

How does this icon speak to you? What words of prayer or reflection or action does it inspire in you?

Happy feast day to you!

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Join A Nun’s Life community for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST
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A Nun’s Life is pleased to welcome Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, as a guest blogger today. Sister Margaret is the first IHM Sister that I ever met, and it is through her that I recognized my call to religious life.

“… the lily of my heart”

The date was the eighth of December, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. Dressed in white uniforms, white stockings, white gloves, and a light blue chiffon shoulder sash, the whole student body processed with lilies which were placed before the altar of Mary in the Sacred Heart Convent Chapel. “Oh Mary, I give thee the lily of my heart. Be thou its guardian forever.” Each year for all my twelve years at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, I, along with my three sisters and all of our classmates knelt to place our lilies, symbols of our dedication and innocence, to Mary. Later as a student at IHM Marygrove College in Detroit, Michigan, vested now in academic cap and gown but still with lily in hand, I once again placed a flower at Mary’s altar.

On July 1, 1945 I entered the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sisters in Monroe Michigan. Once again I knelt before Mary’s altar as a postulant – but alas! with no lily in hand..

The Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary took root in 1845. It was co-founded by Louis Florent Gillet, a Redemptorist missionary, and Theresa Maxis Duchemin a former Oblate Sister of Providence. On May 12, 1846, the bishops of the United States formally decreed the Blessed Virgin Mary, conceived without sin, as Patroness of the United States. A year later, on December 8th, 1847, the title of the IHM Community was changed from Sisters of Providence to Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the original habit from black to “sky blue.”

Each year on this Feast of Mary, IHM Sisters, now having grown into three religious congregations, solemnly renew their vows. For many years best habits and veils were worn (the scent of the cedar closets mingled with that of the lilies!).  Today, while the blue habit for the most part has disappeared, the dedication to Mary as model and type of the Church remains strong and vibrant. Commitment to the meaning and message of her liberating song on behalf of the poor and oppressed fuels a dynamic integration of prayer and commitment.

O Mary, I give you the lily of my heart. Be thou its guardian forever.

Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, is a theologian and travels the country giving talks and retreats on a variety of topics and persons in Catholic theology and spirituality.

Below is a review published in US Catholic (October 2006) by one of my nuns, Margaret Brennan, IHM. Margaret is a good friend of mine, a wonderful theologian, articulate writer and speaker, and a woman of wisdom and insight. Here’s what she has to say in US Catholic about the book Double Crossed:

Double Crossed
By Kenneth Briggs (Doubleday, 2006)

To “double cross” is to deceive or betray a person one is supposedly helping. But that word doesn’t adequately identify the situation Kenneth Briggs attempts to describe in Double Crossed, which contends that “much of the demise of religious orders at the dawn of the 21st century can be traced to the hierarchy’s refusal to make good on the promise of renewal made by the Vatican 40 years before.”

There is no doubt that many of the council fathers thought that women religious would be slow to enter into the changes in the church after Vatican II. Small wonder then that Vatican officials and many bishops experienced a “double take” at the alacrity, seriousness, and independence with which U.S. women religious internalized and undertook the renewal that inevitably would bring them into conflict with church officials. Their participation in the burgeoning civil rights, feminist, and peace movements, and their endorsement of the right of self-determination and the dignity and contribution of each person met with strong opposition from ecclesiastical authorities, with some notable exceptions.

Briggs’ thesis is well-intentioned but somewhat simplistic in its final analysis. Although he alludes to the painful struggles over the meaning, extent, and theology of renewal as mandated by the council, it is important to note—which he neglects to do—that many of those struggles arose from commitments of the women religious themselves to differing ecclesiologies.

Although religious life has dramatically diminished in size since the beginning of the council, it is good to point out, as Briggs does through the astute reflection of theologian Sandra Schneiders, that “the most miraculous aspect of the dying process was that so many communities remained buoyant even as the roof was falling in upon them. . . . They appeared ready to let the mustard seed take its course.”—Margaret Brennan