Father Jim Martin’s article The New Yorker Has Its “Fun with Nuns” about Paul Rudnick’s article has generated a lot of interesting discussion. There’s one comment in particular that I’d like to highlight (thanks to Jean for alerting me to it).

The comment is from “RP”, a religious sister ministering in Los Angeles.

… Thank you for what you wrote about sisters and how The New Yorker article depicted us, mocked us. I have been a religious for 42 years. I have met my share of “interesting” sisters; some with very heavy burdens that came to bear on the community as well. What the writer Paul Rudnick  failed to note is that religious communities are microcosms of society; almost every group is. We are human, but we are trying to be our best selves for love of God and others.

What surprised me is that whatever mix-match of writers and film makers came up with the hodgepodge of “Sister Act,” they got some parts right. My favorite scene is when the nuns raid the ice cream after a day of working hard in the neighborhood. That was so real. Maybe he’s fixating on the pre-transformed Maggie Smith mother superior character. He is believing his own stereotypes. That sense of belonging and community is what energizes gives so many of us to keep going for the sake of the Gospel. Then there is the scene between Whoppi and the novice. How does a writer get some parts so right and then forget? Maybe he wrote all the inaccurate parts of the film.

… All I mean to say is, Rudnick can mock, but he cannot win. Maybe he’s trying to be another Christopher Hitchens. God help us. These people are so much work.

The person making a difference last night on NBC news was a nun from Boston … a beautiful profile.

Anyway, thanks for taking on The New Yorker. Although I am an educator I find that defending against bias can sap ones energy; I prefer to engage in the media in a positive way by educating future media makers to work from the premise of human dignity and the common good.

And you know what? We just keep going. If we were not living and ministering for the love of God and people, we would never have stayed. It is why we stay.

I don’t know who Sister “RP” is, but I sense that she has a lot of “ballast in the boat” … a grounded woman whose trust and faith in God and in Religious Life is far greater than anyone’s mockery or derision. I particularly like her line, “I prefer to engage in the media in a positive way by educating future media makers to work from the premise of human dignity and the common good.”

What are some ways that we can engage in a positive way? A) to present Catholic sisters and nuns on their own terms, not as caricatures or mystical creatures or objects of derision; and B) to encourage the media (and ourselves) to approach ALL persons “from the premise of human dignity and the common good.”

By the way, be sure to check out the NBC piece that Sister “RP” mentioned: Flying Nun’ Takes Good Works Around the World on NBC’s Making a Difference feature (NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, July 14, 2009)

Father James Martin, SJ, has written a fine response to Paul Rudnick’s article “Fun with Nuns” in The New Yorker (July 20, 2009 issue). Rudnick’s article covers his efforts to get a screenplay (that would eventually end up as “Sister Act”) produced. But his attitude toward and descriptions of nuns is more than “slightly repellent” as Father Martin writes, it’s disparaging and insulting. It illustrates in bold relief negative stereotypes of Catholic nuns and sisters.

Pondering a possible screenplay using nuns, Rudnick muses that they can be “dictatorial, sexually repressed and scary.”  A grumpy elderly nun at a convent gift store looks like a “bat” or a “long fossilized chimp.”  “’I hate this!’ the chimp yipped,” he writes about the elderly woman who has taken vows of “silence, poverty and chastity” (fact checkers–you missed a vow: obedience) and has led what even she describes a “hard life.”  Rudnick admits that the prioress of Regina Laudis, which he visits to do a full two days’ research, is “kind and helpful,” but most of the article depicts the nuns—scratch that, all nuns–as at best cartoonish, at worst absurd.  “’Nuns,’ I declared,” writes Rudnick about his efforts to cajole studio execs into considering them attractive, “I’d do ‘em!”  (Later the same execs wonder which nuns in the upcoming movie are “f—able.”)

The nuns referred to are the sisters of the Regina Laudis monastery (read the A Nun’s Life post about Mother Delores Hart From Hollywood to Benedictine Monastery).

Do read Paul Rudnick’s piece Fun with Nuns (the link is to an abstract of the article — need to register for full article) and James Martin’s response The New Yorker Has Its “Fun with Nuns”.