Today is the 58th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. It’s a day of great celebration on behalf of social justice!

In the case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. An earlier doctrine allowed for “separate but equal” facilities for black students and white students. But the Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” Within months, the Court also required public schools to move forward with racial integration “with all deliberate speed.” The significance of the case was huge, given that education has a big impact on a person’s ability to participate more fully in society.

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case. But it wasn’t the first time the issue of segregated public schools had been raised. That path for justice was well-worn, long, and arduous.

Today, I celebrate this historic case and all those who played a role in it! I also pray for people who face discrimination in today’s world, that through persistence and faith, the walls of intolerance and injustice will one day come tumbling down.

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Join us for a live prayer webcast this evening at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live. On Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Central Time, join us for Ask Sister, a live webcast where we take your questions and insights about God, faith and religious life.

Join us today for the Ask Sister podcast, a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about faith, nuns, prayer, religious life, and pretty much everything in between!

What: Ask Sister LIVE Podcast
When: TODAY at 6 p.m. Central Time (your timezone)
Where: www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE

Here are some of the questions we’ll address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Is it still a vocation if you’re attracted to a simple lifestyle in a convent community, but not so much to God and religion?
• The bible says that God punishes children for the sins of their parents. What does that mean? Isn’t life is hard enough with just our own sins?
• Would becoming a nun force someone to be a better person?
• According to scripture, wives are to submit to their husbands. Similarly, are nuns supposed to obey the pope?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS110 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on May 9, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Prince of Peace causes anxiety, romantic relationships a productivity downer, good discernment questions to ask nuns, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What to do when thoughts about Jesus, God, and religion lead to great anxiety, not feelings of peace?
• How do I know if the pure path (abstinence from worldly pleasures ) is the right path for me?
• Romantic relationships take a lot of time. How can a person deal with relationships issues and still have a productive life of service?
• What are some good questions to as nuns when you go to talk to them about discerning religious life?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Carole Garibaldi Rogers is an oral historian and a poet. She is also author of Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns (Oxford University Press, 2011). She recently blogged about the current situation involving the Vatican and U.S. Catholic Sisters drawing on her experience conducting interviews with 94 women religious across the United States and across religious communities beginning in the 1990s. Rogers’ message is clear: Get to know the Catholic sisters and nuns who are “behind the controversy”.

This is a welcome approach to the endless commentary on a situation that we continue to know very little about. Lest we baptize all of our personal opinions (indeed some rather scathing and unconscionable opinions) as undeniable fact, let’s shift the discussion and get to know U.S. Catholic sisters and nuns and see where religious life is in the ecclesial landscape.

Rogers first couple of blog posts introduce us to Sister Rosemarie Milazzo, a Maryknoll Sister, and to Sister Mary Rose McGeady, a Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul.

Reflecting on her work in Tanzania and Congo, Sister Rosemarie tells Rogers:

“That’s the cost of relationships. You’re into their lives. They’re into your life. We enter into the pain of people, and I guess for me it’s become more the pain of the world. It’s so deep. There are so many trouble spots and there are so many people who don’t get a share at the table. I hope my prayers are deeper. I hope my walking on this earth is gentler and more caring and more compassionate. I also feel that I have met the people and they’ve told me their story. So what is now my responsibility?” (read more at the Oxford University Press blog, May 6, 2012)

Sister Mary Rose, who succeeded Father Bruce Ritter as the Director of Covenant House, an agency to protect runaway teens, spoke to Rogers about her work:

“These kids are trying to figure out what they’re going to do with their drunken father who beats them or who sexually abuses them. Or they’re kids forced into prostitution to have money to buy their school books. What a different world it is. What it does, it just whets my appetite for what we do, to try to give these kids the second chance they need to get started over again. People will say to me, ‘How can you do that work all the time? Don’t you begin to feel overwhelmed by all these kids?’ And I always say, ‘The only way we can make a mistake is to stop.’ The only time the church fails is when it stops being a caring community.” (read more at the Oxford University Press blog, May 7, 2012)

Check out more by Rogers and her book Habits of Change at carolegaribaldirogers.net.

To see all the NUNDAY stories of Catholic sisters and nuns we’ve posted, visit the NUNDAY at aNunsLife.org. If you’ve got a photo and story (how you know Sister) of a real Catholic sister or nun, check out the details on submitting your photo for consideration.

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Join us for prayer tonight at 6 p.m.CT at aNunsLife.org/live – we pray together across the world using the Scripture of the day. During the prayer you can offer your prayers using the chat room.

AS109 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on May 2, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: disappearing prayer, Rules that nuns follow, charisms and Constitutions, mom encounters mum nuns, religious role models in schools.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Where did the prayer at the beginning of the podcast go?
• I hear people in religious congregations speak of a “Rule,” a Constitution, and a charism. Can you explain what is meant by these terms?
• A reading from the 1920 IHM Constitutions and the current Constitutions.
• Ways to understand the vow of obedience.
• Do you ever speak of a particular sister being an example of a “living rule”? If so, what would be her defining characteristics?
• A mom wonders if she overlooked her calling to religious life when younger. Would her choice have been different if her nun-teachers had talked with her about their lives?
• If more sisters were teaching in schools, wouldn’t that help get the word out about religious life and increase the number of vocations?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Two Catholic sisters who podcast on the Internet (me and Sister Julie)

Nuns on the Internet?! Yep. The topic is still making news, which is great! One of the latest articles, from the Associated Press, just appeared in ABC2News.com, the Huffington Post, CBSNews.com, and other major media sources around the world.

The article makes a point that merits emphasis—that interest in religious life is on the rise, and that sisters and nuns are using the Internet to raise awareness about what religious life is today.

These two things are interrelated. If a woman can’t imagine herself being a sister, even though she feels called to religious life, then it’s unlikely she’ll pursue religious life as an option. Case in point: myself. For years, religious life wasn’t even on the radar screen for me. Praying all day, yeah, that’s great. But I wanted action and adventure! What I didn’t understand then was these things are a huge part of religious life. When I became aware of that, hello religious life.

The article also quotes Patrice Tuohy of the National Religious Vocation Conference, which represents vocation directors in many religious organizations of women and men. She makes the point that interest in religious life is increasing. Contrary to a common misperception, it’s not just interest in orders that wear traditional habits. There’s a lot of new interest in orders of all kinds. The more awareness there is about the wonderful diversity of religious life, the more ways there are for people to imagine themselves in religious life.

One more thing—I kinda chuckle when I see the word “recruit” in the article. That’s not actually our job. It’s what God does! Our role is to help those who feel called by God to see the possibilities for their own life and to discern their calling. Maybe the discernment will lead to religious life, or maybe it will lead to a different way to serve God and others. But I sense that’s part of the renewed interest in religious life too—recognition that the traditions of religious life, such as discernment, can be of great service to the larger Christian community and beyond.

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Join us for a live prayer webcast this evening at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live. You can share your prayer requests in the chat room
On Wednesdays at 6 p.m. Central Time, join us for Ask Sister, a live webcast where we take your questions about God, faith and religious life.

Boxes are stacking up here at the convent as we get ready for a weekend pack-a-thon. Even Chloe is getting boxes ready! Early next week, we move the convent and the A Nun’s Life studio from Chicago to Toledo, Ohio.

In general, moving isn’t one of my favorite things to do. But what I like about moving is that it offers a metaphor for other aspects of life. For example, right now I’m sorting through things like books, files on my computer, photographs, etc., trying to decide what to take and what to give away or dispose of.

I try to be very thorough because the less I have, the less I’ll have to carry during the move. Plus, we have a steep set of stairs, so that’s an extra incentive. My goal is to bring along more of the things I really want and need, and fewer of the things I don’t.

The act of sorting out material items makes me think of non-material things that I value and want to have plenty of space for – things like compassion, a sense of humor, patience. This means sorting out things that take up too much space, like some of the impatience I feel when technology fails to cooperate. Or some of the frustration when things go awry despite careful planning. I’m sorry to say the list could go on, but you get the picture. As I sort material items, I imagine putting the unwanted non-material things in a composter, so they can be transformed. Yep, I feel lighter already!

Over these next few days, I invite you to join me in the sorting process. I have some extra boxes, so think about what you’d like to keep and what you’d like to send to the composter! It’s gonna be a great move!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer and chat tonight at 6 p.m. CT at aNunsLife.org/live.

Also a reminder — “Ask Sister” has moved to Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. Central Time. “Ask Sister” is a live broadcast where we talk with listeners about faith, community, ministry, prayer, and many other topics!

Join us today for a live broadcast of In Good Faith, a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie.

On Air: Today from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Central Time (your time zone)

Where: www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE

Guest: Sister Patricia Wittberg, SC

Sister Patricia Wittberg is a Sister of Charity of Cincinnati who ministers as Professor of Sociology at Indiana University – Purdue University. She is also on the vocations team for her congregation. She is the author of many articles and books including Creating a Future for Religious Life and Pathways to Re-Creating Religious Communities. Among her most recent articles is “A Lost Generation?” in America on young women in the Catholic Church.

The sisters will talk with Sister Patricia about her life and ministry, how she got into the field of sociology, and some of her insights and discoveries along the way of bringing sociological study to bear on religious life and vocations. In particular, we’ll talk about her article Lost Generation? and the situation of young people in the church today. We’ll also discuss Sister Patricia’s understanding of the “religious virtuoso“, the attraction to intentional communities, and analogies such as “family” for understanding and negotiating religious life.

Details: The broadcast is free and open to the public. You can tune in from any place you have internet access. We also have a chat room for you to use during the broadcast in order to connect with one another and with us. You can also submit your questions ahead of time by using the comment box below.

If new to A Nun’s Life podcasts, the podcasts are basically like tuning into a radio program, but instead of broadcasting it on the airwaves, we broadcast it on our website. All you have to do is visit our website and make sure the volume on your computer is up.

More information including upcoming shows and recordings of past episodes can be found at the In Good Faith program web page.

AS108 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on April 4, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: what to do with blessed palms after Palm Sunday, how nuns decide to relocate, a mom desires different life, convent vs. plain old house.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What’s the significance of palms? What should we do with blessed palms after Palm Sunday mass is over? WWJD about the huge number of palms used and the ecological issues that raises.
• How do nuns make decisions about moving? Does the vow of obedience come into play? Sister Maxine and Sister Julie tell the moving story of their upcoming relocation.
• A mom asks, Is it possible to live God’s call to religious life while residing with one’s family as a habited nun?
• Is a sense of failure in life the result of not acting on God’s call?
• I mentioned something about coming by the “convent” at a certain time and was told “It’s not a convent, just a house.” What makes a house a convent, and vice versa.

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Photo: Peter Lovino, 20th Century Fox

It’s time to build a new wing on the virtual convent of the Movie Star Sisters!

Jane Lynch, Jennifer Hudson, Kate Upton, and Larry David have entered the congregation of the MSS. I heard of this auspicious event in an ad for the upcoming Three Stooges movie. Welcome to religious life, sisters!

I can tell from the photo that you are prayerful, happy women, which is a characteristic of sisters! Even you, Sister Larry, although you are frowning in the picture. I’m sure that the Blessed Virgin Mary, who is standing on your head in the picture, will help you through your doldrums. (BTW, once when I was talking to a friend, I mentioned a sister in my congregation, Sister Kevin, and my friend exclaimed, OMG, men can join the convent now! Hehe.)

The photo also indicates that running an orphanage is your ministry. For decades, many sisters have served in that ministry, caring for children who had no other place to call home. The sisters provided safety, love, and a sense of family. Although you, my Movie Star Sisters, are in ministry for the purpose of comedy, may you draw inspiration from the compassion and love of your foremothers in ministry.

I also find it interesting that you wear full habits. Only a relative handful of sisters in the U.S. do that today. Most wear regular clothes, and some wear a modified version of a full habit. As you know, there are many theological reasons for why sisters wear what they do. Perhaps you’ve read The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters, by Quinonez and Turner–a great source of info.

You and I know that the habit wasn’t meant to be an ad for super-holiness or a way to sell products like NunZilla and the Boxing Nuns. But old images die hard in the popular imagination. Do not be discouraged, my sisters. Get out there and serve God and one another as best you can, despite the stereotypes. You may find it edifying to see Prof. Bren Ortega Murphy’s recent documentary, A Question of Habit: The Image of Women Religious in U.S. Popular Culture. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll leave wanting more! I give it two thumbs up. Also, we interviewed her in one of our podcasts—you can listen to it right on our website, on the In Good Faith podcast page.

In the meantime, my dear sisters, enjoy virtual convent life. You’ll be in the good company of other Movie Star Sisters–please say hi to Meryl, Susan, Whoopi, and of course Julie for us. And if you ever want to visit a real convent, get in touch with us here at A Nun’s Life! We’ll be glad to show you around.

Blessings and Peace,
Sister Maxine

P.S. Sister Jane, your character in Talladega Nights totally rocks! Plus you are terrific in Glee. And Sister Jennifer, you can be part of our choir any time! Also a confession: I don’t plan to see the Three Stooges movie, as I’ve never been a stooges fan. But I’ll keep you all in prayer for a good opening day.

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer and chat tonight at 6 p.m. CT at aNunsLife.org/live.

Also a reminder — “Ask Sister” has moved to Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. Central Time. “Ask Sister” is a live broadcast where we talk with listeners about faith, community, ministry, prayer, and many other topics!

AS107 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 28, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Guest: Dr. Margaret Susan Thompson. Topics include: nuns in history books, following God’s call into chaos, saying yes to God when tempted to say no, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

SPECIAL GUEST: Dr. Margaret Susan Thompson, professor of History at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University, where she also holds appointments in the departments of religion, political science, and women and gender studies.

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I want to study the history of Catholic sisters. Can I find that in a Women’s Studies course? In a U.S. History course?
• Why does history include primarily the experience of men but not women (let alone nuns)?
• In ecclesiastical history, which is often organized by a bishop’s term of office, where do Catholic sisters and nuns fit into that kind of organizational scheme?
• Dr. Thompson offers suggestions around how to research the history of congregations of women religious
• What if I take a risk and follow where I think God is calling me, and then all hell breaks loose? Is it a sign I should quit? Is God testing me or what? The nuns discuss a number of themes including Saint Ignatius of Loyola’s understanding of consolation and Saint Alphonsus of Liguori’s understanding of “il distacco” or “detachment“
• In scripture, Mary said yes to God without hesitation. But what if we’re tempted to say no?

On the broadcast we mentioned a number of great resources on Catholic sisters and nuns in history. Check ‘em out!

• Dr. Thompson’s own 18-lecture series on The History of Women Religious in the United States. The publishers of this series, Now You Know Media, have provided the first lecture for free. Listen to the Introduction and Lecture 1: Discovering Foremothers: Origins of Women’s Religious Life.
• Dr. Thompson on our show “In Good Faith” back in 2011
• Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Women and Gender in North American Religions. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1997. (be sure to check out the bibliography which we’ll post as a PDF asap!)
• Weavers of the Tapestry – the story of the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy of Newfoundland by Kathrine E. Bellamy, RSM (2006)
• Rebel, reformer, religious extraordinaire: the life of Sister Irene Farmer by Geraldine Anthony (1997)
• Work by Elizabeth Smythe including Wisdom Raises Her Voice: the Sisters of St. Joseph (2001)
• Work by Rosa Bruno-Jofréas at the University of Ottawa on Canadian French-speaking sisters
• Conference on the History of Women Religious

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Sister Maxine and Sister Julie bring you a collaborative blog post from somewhere in the midwest.

How did nuns do it in the old days? Traveling by stagecoach, steamboat, or mule? Sometimes we think it’s tough to travel by car, but at least we have Pink to sing along with as we drive these newfangled vehicles.

Imagine Saint Teresa of Avila in 16th century Spain traveling from monastery to monastery in the back of a mule cart. No Pink. No windshield wipers. Writes Mirabai Starr: “Teresa of Avila founded seventeen convents and monasteries throughout Spain. She traveled by donkey cart over rugged terrain, spending nights in squalid inns, enduring sweltering heat and bone-chilling cold.” (source: Saint Teresa of Avila, 2007, p. xxvii)

Wow and we thought it was tough to get up at 4:30 in the morning and NOT have the coffee on auto-timer.

What possesses people to do these things? These were nuns, many of whom were “cloistered” setting out beyond the monastery embarking on great adventures. They went out of their convents and their comfort zones for the sake of serving God and the world.

On this rainy morning in Chicago, we are just glad that we are not riding mules. Yet at the same time, we go forth with the same kind of energy and zeal and desire to serve God’s mission. True, we may not get ambushed by Wild West outlaws, but I’m pretty sure we’d have a good chance at talking sense into them as Sister Blandina Segale did with Billy the Kid.

What road trip stories about Catholic sisters and nuns do you know? We can’t wait to hear about them! Comment below!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer and chat tonight at 6 p.m. CT at aNunsLife.org/live.

Also a reminder — “Ask Sister” has moved to Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. Central Time. “Ask Sister” is a live broadcast where we talk with listeners about faith, community, ministry, prayer, and many other topics! All other weekdays the NL community comes together for prayer. Join us!

AS106 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 21, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: unresponsive vocation directors, disappearing nuns, is religious life dying?, body language at Mass, what nuns study in the novitiate, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I’d like to be a nun who works in health care or with people with disabilities. Book mentioned: Adam: God’s Beloved by Henri Nouwen
• I’ve thought about becoming a nun for a long time. But when I called the vocations director at a local convent, she never called back! What should I do? Links mentioned: How to Become a Nun and The Vocation Forum
• It is a very rare thing to see a nun these days. There must have been something that not only drew the young girl to a convent but also kept here there pre-Vatican II. What happened? The nuns put to rest some incorrect information about the decline or religious life with the very good news that it is very much alive!
• What is the proper hand-folding protocol at Mass? Should everyone keep their hands folded whenever we’re standing at Mass?
• What do nuns study when they’re in formation? Find out how the nuns are taught not to smoke, drink, or curse!

Do you have a question for us? Contact us and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Did you see this article in Huffington Post from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair? Mr. Blair wrote “My Female Faith Hero: Catholic Sisters” (March 8, 2012) for this year’s UN International Women’s Day on his Foundation’s blog. Check out these excerpts below and be sure to read the whole article!

Tony and Cherie Blair

One of the striking features of innovative interfaith work is the very high proportion of women and girls who are involved, despite the received image of mostly male religious leaders in dialogue…. This is, of course, typical of the willingness of women of faith to make new commitments, innovate, and take risks. The women who have inspired me most recently have shared these attributes: they are the Catholic Sisters who are dealing with sexual trafficking….

Nuns work with the police, get girls out of brothels, brave local mafias. They seem a long way from the old Hollywood movie nuns with their wimples and distinctive habits, bobbing out of cloisters to smile at Bing Crosby in a clerical collar. It is hard to remember that, not too long ago, they had to seek permission from bishops to study gynaecology, and some were even advised by their Mother Superior on how to vote.

Their celibacy is chosen. They give themselves entirely to caring for trafficked women, protecting them in safe houses, educating about the dangers of “attractive” job offers overseas, helping them escape from vicious pimps, making safe their return to their families in the midst of threats. This does not make celibacy easy or less of a sacrifice. Their spirituality is not incidental either. Dealing with young traumatised women at the very beginning of their recovery from rape and sexual slavery – if they ever fully achieve it – requires that amalgam of compassion and street toughness that does not come from reading “how-to-be successful” books.

I think what I admire most is their ability to champion human dignity when human dignity is the very last thing that the people they are working with have experienced. It means swopping a cosy convent parlour for the rigours of the street and the pain of empathy with people who have experienced some of the worst that human beings can do to each other by way of degradation and enslavement. (source)

And a random shoutout to those of you who celebrating the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA) — Mr. Blair became Catholic just a few years ago! Clerical Whispers had the scoop back in 2009!

Reactions? Comments? Kudos? Quandries? Have at it in the comment box below!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer and chat tonight at 6 p.m. CT at aNunsLife.org/live.

Also a reminder — “Ask Sister” has moved to Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. Central Time. “Ask Sister” is a live broadcast where we talk with listeners about faith, community, ministry, prayer, and many other topics! All other weekdays the NL community comes together for prayer. Join us!

The first time I heard music by the group called the Dogma Dogs was in theological school. My professor, seeing the students drift off a bit in the middle of our two-hour afternoon class, cranked up the song “Lent.” Next on the playlist was the dance tune, “21 Ecumenical Councils,” followed by the rock classic, “Pharaoh.” It was the comic break that we needed!

The songs are actually for helping children learn about their Catholic faith. But for adults, the songs have a cleverness that makes them funny, sort of like a “Grammar Rock” for religion.

So have a listen to the Dogma Dogs clips below, but beware — you might hear the words “Lent, Lent, Time to Repent” replay in your head all day.

Click PLAY below: Dogma Dogs, “Lent”

Click PLAY below: Dogma Dogs, “21 Ecumenical Councils”

Click PLAY below: Dogma Dogs, “Pharaoh”

Do you have a song recommendation for Lent or other seasons in the church year? We’d love to hear about them!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community for prayer and chat tonight at 6 p.m. CT at aNunsLife.org/live.

Also a reminder — “Ask Sister” has moved to Wednesday evenings at 6 p.m. Central Time. “Ask Sister” is a live broadcast where we talk with listeners about faith, community, ministry, prayer, and many other topics!

IGF015 In Good Faith with drummer David Nantais, recorded live on March 14, 2012. Produced by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include the spiritual roots of rock music, redeeming qualities of “the devil’s music,” music as a spiritual exercise, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Guest: Drummer and author David Nantais

What can rock music teach us about God? Quite a lot, according to David Nantais. Dave is the author of the book Rock-a My Soul: An Invitation to Rock Your Religion. He’s also the director of campus ministry at the University Detroit Mercy. A rock drummer, Dave has played in numerous bands over the past 20+ years, including a band called Skill-o-Bexx. He has attended over 150 rock shows since 1986.

Show Notes:

• A brief history of rock music–and its transformation from “the devil’s music” to prayer.
• A listener who wasn’t alive for most of the 70s or 80s asks Dave for advice to a newcomer to rock and roll — what are some “must hear” songs?
• The inspiration for the band name, Skill-o-Bexx.
• How campus ministry, biochemistry, theology and rock fit together for Dave.
• Dave talks about the African influences on rock music
• Dave’s playlist for rock music with soul: “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by the Who, “Human Touch” by Bruce Springsteen, and anything by Kings X

Details: The broadcast is free and open to the public. You can tune in from any place you have internet access. We also have a chat room for you to use during the broadcast in order to connect with one another and with us. You can also submit your questions ahead of time by using the comment box below.

If new to A Nun’s Life podcasts, the podcasts are basically like tuning into a radio program, but instead of broadcasting it on the airwaves, we broadcast it on our website. All you have to do is visit our website and make sure the volume on your computer is up.

More information including upcoming shows and recordings of past episodes can be found at the In Good Faith program web page.

AS105 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 7, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. With special guest Audra Turnbull. Topics include: spiritual inventory, advice to a celebrity, singing nuns, finding patience, picking a religious order, etc.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

SPECIAL GUEST: Audra Turnbull, author of the blog The Awkward Catholic.

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How to take stock of your spiritual life using a spiritual inventory. Consider the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love; the Beatitudes, the Examen of Consciousness, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, Mindfulness, and more as helps in taking stock of your spiritual life.
• A celebrity seeks to escape the pressures of the world. The nuns offer advice about discernment, religious life, the convent, and sensible shoes.
• Our guest, Audra, tests her knowledge on the fine points of religious life. Questions that people often have about religious life … but hesitate to ask. For example, are nuns allowed to throw snowballs? Check out the video below for a preliminary response from Winter 2011!
• What to do about being impatient?
• What is the difference between enclosed and cloistered?
• How to pick a religious community when there are so many?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

I am sure Caroline Flack thinks it was kind of clever to declare herself a nun after rumors about her relationship habits. Flack, the TV cohost of “reality companion show” The Xtra Factor (another Simon Cowell production), reportedly tweeted, “Decided I won’t make eye contact with a male human being again. Going to become a nun.” (source)

But you know, Caroline, many have tried to pull the nun card when they were in similar situations. Think Sinead who got married shortly after making her nun declaration. Think Emma Pooley (one of your country women) who declared her cycling fail to riding “like a nun in a habit”. In fact there was even a Facebook group dedicated to people declaring their nunhood after a bad relationship, too many relationships, or no relationships at all! Dear Natalie Portman and Heather Graham have also wrangled with nun-related issues.

Sure it’s a fun publicity stunt to draw attention, but in the meantime, you manage to reinforce a rather disrespectful stereotype of Catholic sisters and nuns. It sounds something like this:

• “My boyfriend/girlfriend left me so I’m going to become a nun.”
• “Since I can’t get a man then I guess I’ll become a nun.”
• “If I’m not in a relationship (or several) then I must be a nun.”

Basically being a nun is equated with not having a romantic relationship or not having sex. Never mind those pesky distractions like prayer, mission, ministry, and community. Consecrated celibacy, which is what we Catholic sisters and nuns profess, fits into a whole life commitment that is dedicated to God, and it is an adventure the likes of which would blow your mind!

I encourage you, Caroline, to understand what a nun’s life is really like before you make comments that are inaccurate and disparaging. Perhaps then when you declare yourself a nun, it will be because you have reached beyond yourself to help another person, or because you have immersed yourself in loving kindness, or because you have noticed the great beauty in your life and in the world around you.

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Join the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer at 6 p.m. CT in the chat room today. And don’t forget! Tomorrow is Ask Sister where you and Caroline can ask any question you’d like about being a nun!

Lent is a wonderfully fertile time for the soul. What do Catholic sisters and nuns have to say about Lent? Here are a few selections from across the nunosphere. What nugget of wisdom strikes you?

Lenten Reflections: Ash Wednesday – Sister Mary Zirbes, Franciscan Sisters of Little Falls

What Should I Give Up For Lent? – by Sister Margaret Dorgan, Carmelite Nuns of Eldridge, Iowa

“And we are [Jesus'] messengers who convey love and comfort to those whose emotional reserves are so depleted. In our fragile world, no age is free of losses. Christian compassion reaches out wherever we see sorrow. And Lent can be a time for opening our eyes to the sadness we have not paid that much attention to in our own small circle.”

Lent and Vocation Discernment – by the Dominican Nuns of Ireland

“Lent is always a very fruitful time for those extra little ‘nudges’ that God gives… So for those of you who are discerning your Vocation, embrace Lent this year as a particularly graced period for discernment!”

Gracious, Spacious, and Precious: Lent 2012 –  by Sister Denise Wilkinson, Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana

“I’m exploring notions about making my prayer deliberately mindful of those persons and beliefs that are different from mine; prayer mindful of those who consistently fall under my radar and attention because I’m simply not paying attention to the people and issues of Earth. Mindful of the all-encompassing embrace of Providence, I will consciously widen my own embrace of the other, the least, the oppressed.”

And don’t forget to see what the nuns here at A Nun’s Life have to say about Lent!

AS104 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 1, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: self denial as a spiritual act, Jesus and the widow’s mite, why God answers some prayers but not others, and does God hear our prayers

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Self-denial as a spiritual act–is there meaning in making a sacrifice?
• What to do when asked to give to a good cause? Revisiting the Gospel story of the widow’s mite (Mk 12:38-44).
• Why does God answer some prayers…but not others?
• Does God really listen to our prayers?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/ and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

What’s a cloistered nun like you doing at an awards show like this? That was the question on many a star’s mind last night. Reverend Mother Dolores Hart graced the red carpet at last night’s Oscars. Perez Hilton snagged a great clip where Mother Dolores steals the show from Tim Gunn and Maya Rudolph when she appears to the right during the primetime red carpet interview.

So what was she doing there? For one, she stars in Academy-nominated God Is the Bigger Elvis, a film about her journey from actor to nun. The award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) eluded her, but I’m guessing she celebrated with the folks of the Pakistani documentary film Saving Face. Mother Dolores also happens to be a card-carrying member of the Academy. She faithfully reviews the movies, including (insert exaggerated gasp) R-rated movies. I love this quote from Mother Dolores:

“I’m not afraid of sex in [movies],” she said. “Sex is not evil; it’s part of life . . . watching movies always tells me what’s happening in civilization and how much people are suffering.” (source)

It’s cool to have nuns represented in do many sectors of life including the movies! Mother Dolores is a cloistered Benedictine nun at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

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Join the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer at 6 p.m. CT in the chat room today.

AS103 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 22, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Sr. Marie Gabriel and Sr. Dorothy guest nuns, living the life of Jesus, too much bling in church, ways to pray in everyday life, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Sister Dorothy and Sister Marie Gabriel share their stories about the journey to religious life.
• What does it mean to “live the life of Jesus”? How the gospel stories influence our lives.
• Opulence in the church. What about fancy vestments, expensive church buildings, etc., in the face of poverty and need in the world? WWJD?
• Churches as praise to God and as a reflection of the image of God.
• Walking outdoors, poetry, music, meditation, and other ways to pray in everyday life.

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

“Do not think I am sitting here to pass the time away telling you that
religious life is poetry. It is the roughest kind of prose.”
- Mother Justina Reilly, IHM (b. 1848)

Tis the season to be romantic — an awesome thing to behold! Just a few letters away however, is the word romanticize — and that can be anything BUT awesome.

Let me start with my unabashed biases:

1. I love religious life.
2. I love being a Catholic sister in community with my nuns.
3. I never lived pre-Vatican II religious life having been born after the fact.
4. I love all things “nun” — from old-school nun stories, finding a beloved copy of Bernie Becomes a Nun, bumping giddily into nuns at the airport, meeting corporate board room sisters, and more!
   …. I honestly can’t help myself!

Sister Chloe the Convent Cat reads "Bernie Becomes a Nun"

Given #3 above, I have spent a lot of time reading and asking questions and learning about religious life not only in my Sitz im Leben but religious life throughout the years, across the globe, and spanning theologies and cultures. I’m no expert, but my explorations have been enough to give me a good flavor of religious life as a whole and to see myself situated within it.

One of the challenges in not having experiencing religious life before the second Vatican Council is that we can sometimes romanticize what it was like — nuns in their flowing habits, serenity and silence, compliance both within and outside of the convent, blissful singing and playing of guitar, etc. Aspects of these things were and continue to be accurate and beautiful! Yet it gets a little dicey when we begin to imagine that that is all it was or when we focus only on the poetry of religious life and forget the rugged prose.

In addition to the sisters and nuns whom I know, there are many great resources to check out in terms of seeing what religious life was and is really like. For historical scholarship I always turn to Dr. Margaret Susan Thompson, the leading expert on the history of Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States. Here are some links for Dr. Thompson:

• Guest appearance on In Good Faith – an hour-long show including a section where Dr. Thompson discusses what “the “good old days” of religious life was actually like.
• An 18-lecture series on The History of Women Religious in the United States. The publishers of this series, Now You Know Media, have provided the first lecture for free. Listen to the Introduction and Lecture 1: Discovering Foremothers: Origins of Women’s Religious Life.
• “Concentric Circles of Sisterhood” – an essay that appears in the book Building Sisterhood: A Feminist History of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Monroe, Michigan (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997)
• Faculty and publications information at her page on Maxwell School of Syracuse University

For theological and scriptural scholarship I turn to my own nun, Sister Sandra Schneiders.

• Guest appearance on our very first episode of In Good Faith
• Another guest appearance for our A Nun’s Life fundraiser where Sister Sandra talked about saints, saints, and more saints! Father James Martin, SJ, is also featured on this podcast — he’s got some great stuff on religious life and vocations as well!
• A series of essays on religious life initially published by National Catholic Reporter and now gathered in the book Prophets in Their Own Country
• Books on religious life by Sandra Schneiders

This is only a smattering of what is out there, but very good places to begin!

So let’s talk about past and present religious life? What are “romanticizations” that you’ve encountered? What questions do you have about “the good old days” and today?

P.S. Check out the last night’s Ask Sister where we tangled with this topic as well — recording will be up by Saturday!

* * *

Join the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer at 6 p.m. CT in the chat room today.

AS102 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 16, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: becoming a nun in the old days? hopeful husband-to-be wonders if convent trumps marriage, online vocation help, professional nuns, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What do today’s teenagers think about nuns?
• I have known a dear friend for over two years. One day I wish to be her husband. However she is seeking a life as a nun. Should I keep my feelings to myself in fear I may be in her way to a life as a sister, or should I confess my feelings?
• I have seen a few convents that have weekend retreats where women can go to experience what it is like. Is there any website where I can get a list of all convents that have these events? Be sure to check out Vision Vocation Network!

• • Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace
  • Poor Clares of New Jersey
  • Redemptoristine Nuns

    More info on scoping out nuns at aNunsLife.org/comeandsee – links to resources to help discern how to become a sister or nun

• What to do if you don’t get a good vibe from a religious community? Does that mean you don’t have a vocation?
• Can you be a speech language pathologist and a nun too?
• Knowing what you know now about past nun life, as opposed to modern day nun life, would you have joined then, or not?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/ and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

I was at our IHM Motherhouse in Monroe, Michigan, this past weekend. It is always great to be home and to hang out with my nuns. I want to tell you about this amazing moment that happened at the Sunday Eucharist. Chapel of course was filled with IHM Sisters, associates, family and friends of the community, and a variety of visitors.

I was sitting about midway back and in front of me was the family of one of our sisters who is in health care. Sister was in a wheelchair at the side of the row. Next to her was this precious young woman, a grandniece perhaps, maybe in her late teens, early twenties. The young woman had on a bright fuchsia and had fabulous blue-painted nails. She emanated vitality and youth!

When I first saw the family, I thought how sweet it was that they were here and wondered briefly what the young woman might have been feeling sitting there with her aunt and surrounded by so many adults and elders. I wondered if she felt uncomfortable or nervous or out of place. It didn’t take long for me to find out that my fleeting thought was far from the truth.

Around the time of the homily, the young woman turned toward her aunt and smiled  – a long, beaming smile. She reached gently for her aunt’s hand and for a few minutes the two just looked at one another with this profound tenderness and love. For the rest of Mass, they remained this way, hand in hand.

I don’t remember the homily or much of the rest of Mass but I can tell you that in that moment an old nun and a young woman preached one of the most powerful homilies I will ever have the privilege of witnessing.

* * *

Join the A Nun’s Life Community for prayer at 6 p.m. CT in the chat room today.

AS101 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 9, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: how nuns elect their community leaders, saying no to nun smear campaigns, the common good, the book of Genesis, varied images of God and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• The IHM sisters recently elected a new leadership team. How is this done?  Do sisters run against each other? Are there term limits? Is the process similar for most orders?
• What about general chapter for contemplative monasteries or for international communities? And differences or similarities?
• A listener named Anna talks about her joys and challenges in reading the book of Genesis and encountering a myriad of images of God — are there any wrong images of God? What happens when one image is used as the only image of God?
• Mentioned in the broadcast: “Are Our Images of God Growing?” by Pat McCloskey, O.F.M. in Catholic Update

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS100 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 2, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Highlights in honor of 100th episode, World Day for Consecrated Life, GPS rosary for religious life, vow of obedience vs. doormat, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• In honor of the 100th episode of Ask Sister, audio clips of some of our favorite shows: tin-can podcast #1, Chloe the Convent Cat, putting the “man” in “mantilla,” and the sisters’ best jokes.
• World Day for Consecrated Life–an opportunity to celebrate God’s calling in our lives.
• The Rosary as a GPS for finding one’s way to religious life.
• The Rosary as a Marian devotion, and the role of Mary in our lives and in the tradition of religious life.
• Fond memories of the glow-in-the-dark Rosary.
• How does one live out the vow of obedience, without falling into the unhealthy habit of being a doormat? The ups and downs of obedience not just for sisters but for all Christians!

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/ and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS099 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 19, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Mass fracas over word changes in liturgy, unruly use of church rules, finding a spiritual mentor, does God have plans for the world, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Why are some people vehemently upset about the changes to the Mass? Jesus is still Jesus in the Eucharist — isn’t that why we go to Mass anyway?
• Can I be a sister if I am not a conservative Catholic (or in other words, have a problem with strict applying of rules in the church)?
• Where to find a spiritual mentor when it seems there’s not one anywhere nearby.
• What are God’s plans for today’s world?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

IGF013 In Good Faith with Coach Cathy Rush, recorded live on January 18, 2012. Produced by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: coaching 1st national champs in women’s basketball, working with nuns, Mighty Macs movie, Future Stars summer camps & more

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Guest: Coach Cathy Rush

Cathy Rush was the head women’s basketball coach at Immaculata College (now University) from 1970-1977. She led Immaculata to three consecutive AIAW national titles from 1972-1974. Coach Rush also led the 1975 U.S. Women’s basketball team at the Pan American games to a gold medal finish. She was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on April 7, 2008. She was inducted into the women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame in 2005. She is the founder and president of Future Stars Camps.

Be sure to check out The Mighty Macs movie featuring Cathy and the Immaculata IHM Sisters!

Show Notes:

• From underdog to national champion–Cathy talks about her experience as a young head coach at Immaculata College and the team that won against great odds.
• What it was like to work with nuns at a women’s college.
• Cathy talks about the making of The Mighty Macs movie and its depiction of the nuns, the team, the school, and herself.
• How Title IX affected women’s sports at Catholic universities.
• Sports, femininity and young female athletes today.
• What it means to follow your dream, even when it leads to unexpected places.
• The development of Future Stars Camps for children.

Details: The broadcast is free and open to the public. You can tune in from any place you have internet access. We also have a chat room for you to use during the broadcast in order to connect with one another and with us. You can also submit your questions ahead of time by using the comment box below.

The podcasts are basically like tuning into a radio program, but instead of broadcasting it on the airwaves, we broadcast it on our website. All you have to do is visit our website and make sure the volume on your computer is turned up.

More information including upcoming shows and recordings of past episodes can be found at the In Good Faith program web page.

AS098 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 12, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: the difference between penance and sacrifice, speechless God, is grief a rejection of faith, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What is the difference between penance and sacrifice?
• Austerities and asceticism
• I don’t feel like God is telling me much. Am I going to hear a voice one day before graduation telling me to go to a convent? Or is saying “I want to go to college and study anthropology” sufficient?
• Measuring up to the holiness of friends and other people.
• My mother died recently and I’m very sad. But some of my bible study friends say, “She’s in heaven with God now and you should be happy about that.” Is my sadness somehow a rejection of my faith?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

IGF012 In Good Faith with Sister Patricia Daly, OP, recorded live on January 11, 2012. Produced by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include gospel values in corporate culture, Catholic nuns, corporate responsibility, socially responsible investing and more.

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Guest: Sister Pat Daly, OP

Sister Patricia Daly, OP, is a Dominican Sister of Caldwell , NJ and has worked in Corporate Responsibility and Socially Responsible Investing for over 25 years. She serves as the Executive Director of the Tri-State Coaltion for Responsible Investment, an organization of 40 Roman Catholic Dioceses and Congregations of Women and Men in the NY metropolitan area. Pat represents these institutional investors to the national Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility: 275 Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish organizations holding more than $110 billion in investments. Pat is also the Corporate Responsibility Representative for the Sisters of St. Dominic of Caldwell , NJ and consults for the American Baptist Churches in their Socially Responsible Investment Program. See Sister Patricia onCBS News!

Show Notes:

• Sister Pat’s community, the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, New Jersey, and her attraction to their commitment to social justice
• what it means to do socially responsible investing
• personal investors and institutional investors (including dioceses and other Catholic organizations)
• asking the question about where people who are poor, hungry, homeless, etc. fit in with our choice of investments
• “the power of one is not to be underestimated”
• helping companies do good in the community and also have just practices within their corporate structure and policies and how they are impacting society as a whole
• sometimes (especially in the early days) it’s a struggle for companies to engage with their shareholders about social responsibility
• how Jesus informs Sister Pat’s ministry — Jesus as a change agent who understood the abuses in the economic governance and faith systems and challenged them
• a critical vocation to speak up for people who have no role or power in society
• successes that Sister Pat has seen through the years, e.g., working with General Electric (responsible for much of the contamination), other companies, religious orders, and the community to clean up PCB contamination along the Hudson River
• the effects of global warming being addressed more and more compared to 20 years ago when they filed the first shareholder resolution on climate change
• criteria to evaluate companies in which one wishes to invest can be found at iccr.org, tricri.org, greenamerica.org
• disappointments that Sister Pat has encountered, e.g., addressed the irradiation of food but didn’t at the time have the resources to address concerns around genetically-modified foods
• is better to only invest in companies that have their social-responibility acts together or to stick it out in less socially responsible companies and demand change?
• it’s all about dialogue — understanding a companies culture and bringing in one’s concerns so that both can walk away and say “I did a good thing”
• the Catholic Church’s role in promoting socially responsible investing
• a quandary when a company that has questionable practices invests generously in church and community work
• the Occupy Wall Street movement
• abuses around compensation for senior executives
• what it’s like to be a Catholic sister in the board room and in the media spotlight
• Ford on the “best of” list of the really good guys in terms of social responsibility — also Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster) with food sustainability, Walt Disney Company with concerns in supply chain — not only make changes with their companies but instigate change within their industry
• a company that could do better is Exxon Mobil, especially around greenhouse gas emissions
• the so-called “sin stocks” — gambling, liquor, and tobacco stocks
• myth busted — the truth is that you can do well investing in socially responsible investing

Details: The broadcast is free and open to the public. You can tune in from any place you have internet access. We also have a chat room for you to use during the broadcast in order to connect with one another and with us. You can also submit your questions ahead of time by using the comment box below.

If new to A Nun’s Life podcasts, the podcasts are basically like tuning into a radio program, but instead of broadcasting it on the airwaves, we broadcast it on our website. All you have to do is visit our website and make sure the volume on your computer is up.

More information including upcoming shows and recordings of past episodes can be found at the In Good Faith program web page.

Sister Hiltrudis Powers of the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood, was an amazing nun and artist. She died on December 31 and left a legacy of beauty.

Sister Hiltrudis Powers was well-known for her work painting colorful murals, designing stained-glass windows, and making sculptures, silk-screened banners and other items that decorate churches here and abroad. (source)

She was born in Quincy, Illinois, and belonged to the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood of O’Fallon, Missouri. The sisters are known for their beautiful artwork.

In 1945, when Sister Powers was 25, the director of the embroidery department died. Sister Powers was named director of what came to be the Ecclesiastical Art Department, and this became her life’s ministry.

She specialized in stained glass, metal and wood. When newly appointed Archbishop Justin Rigali needed a coat of arms, the St. Louis Archdiocese commissioned Sister Powers to design and craft the work in copper and enamel on wood.

Before Vatican II, in 1962, her order’s art department made articles only for Catholic churches. After that, the department began making artworks for other denominations….

Sister Powers designed the miter and stole worn by Pope John Paul II during his visit to St. Louis in 1999, according to the order.

Here is an awesome sampling of Sister Hiltrudis’ work.

Stole for Pope John Paul II

Iron works in St. Joseph Chapel in O'Fallon, MO at the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood

Stained-glass window in St. Joseph's Chapel that Sister Hiltrudis Powers designed and help make.

AS097 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 5, 2012. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: travel troubles for road nun, Christian feminists – do they really exist?, building the kingdom of God locally and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What happens when a nun is traveling and runs into really bad weather? Is prayer her only option?
• What does it mean to be a Christian feminist?
• What does it mean to build the kingdom of God? How can we do that locally?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, 1774-1821

Dear Sister Elizabeth Ann,

Just a short note to say that I’m a big fan of yours! It’s not just because your feast day is on my birthday, which it is. Or that my momma’s name is also Elizabeth Ann (BTW she’s a huge fan too).

I really admire your sense of adventure, or whatever spirit it was that allowed you to say “yes” to God in so many different ways. Raised an Anglican in New York, you married and went to Italy with your hub and one of your five kids. (My mom and dad also raised five kids).

It must have been very difficult when your husband died in Italy. Yet even then, you did not lose faith. Even then, you turned to God. Maybe the challenge of being a single parent led you to such a deep desire to help others. Back in New York, you became a Catholic and raised your kids.

And then you began a religious order! Way to say “yes” to that one – the Sisters of Charity, Emmitsburg, Maryland, was the first order of women religious that originated in the United States! (My congregation was also founded in the U.S.!) Not only did you and your sisters help many poor young women by providing free Catholic education, but you left a legacy that’s still vibrant nearly 200 years later!

Throughout the day today, I’m going to pray in these words you wrote to a good friend in a letter in 1810:

“Faith lifts the staggering soul on one side, hope supports it on the other, experience says it must be and love says let it be.”

Thanks for the many ways you said “yes” to God, Sister Elizabeth Ann!

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer (Mon.-Wed and Friday) at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live. Join us there on Thursdays at 6 p.m. for the Ask Sister broadcast.

I was out with friends on New Year’s Eve and they joked saying, you are like the most interesting nun in the world”, a shout-out of course to the clever Dos Equis commercials featuring Jonathan Goldsmith as the Most Interesting Man in the World. I had to laugh because there is some truth in that! Not that I’m particularly interesting (after all, I was in bed by 11 p.m. that night), but there is something about NUN-NESS that is infinitely intriguing and captivating.

It has nothing to do with what we wear, although I did once wear an Easter hat that caused quite a stir. And it has nothing to do with what we do (I have ministered in bicycle stores and bars). I think it has much to do with seeing things and making choices that our society deems crazy and turning them into a blessing.

• making lifelong vows of  obedience, poverty, and celibacy
• making everyday and life decisions in common
• upholding the dignity of the “least” (e.g., the poor, the outcast, the enemy, the oppressed)
• holding secular and sacred not as opposites but as one
• believing that through the cross comes the resurrection

Even as a nun of 10+ years now, I am still wholly compelled by all that is NUN. It is truly an adventure that engages all aspects of my being — mind, body, spirit, memory, hopes, dreams — and is crazy goodness! What is cool is that I find that so many nuns are like this. Just listen to their stories of how they have lived. Read the histories and foundation stories of congregations. What’s not to love?!

As we head into the new year, I encourage you to tap into your inner nun and allow this new year to take on all sorts of awesome adventures that thoroughly engage you.

And in this spirit, “Stay thirsty, my friends!”

P.S. Some advice for the new year …

AS096 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on December 29, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: run-ins with the Blessed Virgin Mary, hanging on to pre-Vatican II stuff, adopt-a-nun, how to know and respond when God is calling, and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I’m not Catholic but have had a few run-ins with the Blessed Virgin Mary. What could this possibly mean?
• Is it wrong to hang onto pre-Vatican II understandings and expressions of the faith? Of religious life?
• I’d love to spiritually adopt a nun. How to I go about doing so?
• How do you know if God is calling you to something, and what can you do about it?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from which you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Icame across this article yesterday about Prof. Thompson, one of my fav historians! Through her work, she tells the stories of U.S. women religious and how they have shaped U.S. culture and society. Plus she’s a lively writer–she makes history come alive! I am grateful to her and all historians who help to share accurate, authentic stories about sisters!

Sister Julie and I were delighted to have Prof. Thompson join us on a live podcast last year. To hear a recording of the conversation, go to the In Good Faith webpage.

Are there sisters you know whose stories should be told? Please share your stories here and on the A Nun’s Life Discussion Forum

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer tonight and every weekday at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live.

During Advent, members of the A Nun’s Life community will be posting reflections on the Jesse Tree and the O Antiphons.

Day 15 :: Mary written by Sister Maxine

Artwork by He Qi

With Christmas just around the corner, ‘tis the season for Nativity sets. They seem to be everywhere – at churches, the grocery store, schools, my neighbors’ front lawns. Inside each of them is the familiar figure of Mary, about to give birth to Jesus.

In some of the Nativity sets, Mary wears a blue and white flowing gown and is surrounded by dramatic lighting. In others, she looks like a travel-weary young woman in threadbare clothing. In one very unusual Nativity set Mary is wearing a 1960s style peasant blouse and a long brown skirt probably made of organic material (Joseph was wearing sunglasses).

The various images of Mary make me think about the various Marys in my life, and the ways they symbolically give birth to something new. There are the two Marys who received me into the IHM congregation, certainly a life-changing moment for me. There is the good friend Mary whose death at an early age awakened in me a profound sense of the beauty of life. There is the Mary who was my first encounter with Vatican II theology and, to my astonishment, talked about an imminent, loving, caring God and a Church known as the People of God.

So as I go by the Nativity sets this year, I say a prayer for all the Marys in my life, the Marys who are the source of new life not only for me but in all the relationships around them. Thank you, Marys!

Who are the Marys that you know who bring forth new life? How have they affected you?

Mary, be with us as we seek to be a source of new life and hope in the world, to be the bearer of Christ to all we encounter in our life

* * Want to revisit the other symbols of Advent? Click here on Jesse Tree. * *

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AS095 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on December 8, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: nature and theology of grace, renouncing things one never had, nun vows, the Trinity as two men and a hen?, my church NO my church!, and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What exactly is grace? Is it like The Force or getting a shot of Red Bull?
• How does grace lead to freedom?
• Two men and a hen — A new image for the Trinity?
• Can a person renounce something if they’ve never had it? e.g., can I give up sex if I’ve never even had a romantic relationship?
• Aren’t the vows about renouncing things?
• Whose church is it, anyway? Is the Church my church, your church, God’s church, or our church?
• A Sister is interviewed on CBS News regarding the Apostolic Visitation and sisters’ responses

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/ and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

IGF011 In Good Faith with Father Anthony Gittins, recorded live on December 1, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include mission, evangelization, discipleship, and liberation; magisterium and ministerium of the Church; discernment and more!

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Guest: Father Anthony Gittins, CSSp

Father Anthony Gittins is a member of the Congregation of the Holy Spirit (Spiritans) and a professor of mission and culture at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, Illinois. For the past twenty-five years he has with and among homeless women on the streets of Chicago and in a shelter. For seven of those years he was part of Genesis House – a community where women struggle to escape from prostitution (from CTU website).

Show Notes:

• How Fr. Tony’s faith journey informs his sense of mission
• Edwina Gately and working at Genesis House

“Just love them, she said. And I thought how simple it sounds, and how complicated it is to love people.”

“Our job is to love them, not to judge them. And once they begin to love themselves then they have the responsibility to love their neighbor as themselves. But meanwhile it is their neighbor’s job to love them.”

• Ministering  as a pastor in Sierra Leone to learn the “grammar of the language and the grammar of the culture”
• Teaching theology at Catholic Theological Union through the lens of culture, e.g. the cultural implications of reading Scripture
• The relationship between mission, evangelization, discipleship, and liberation
• Mission is about God is intrinsically a God of movement, of engagement, of relationship — reaching out into the world … it is like God’s dynamic breathing out God’s spirit (God’s cosmic, creative breath that is sending forth) — and God’s breathing in (God calling people, reconciling people, embracing people, forgiving people)
• Evangelization is the way we talk about Jesus, the incarnation of God’s mission … Jesus’ mission brought down to earth … describes everything that Jesus does because Jesus is utterly and totally committed to God’s mission
• Discipleship is a one-word job description for us, a faithful living out of what Jesus was doing — not doing our own t hing but learning how to do Jesus’ thing by watching and learning from Jesus
• Liberation – Jesus says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and has SENT ME to liberate people, to set people free from anything that binds them in any way.”
• God’s mission has a church! The church’s job is to do God’s mission
• Discernment is required to know where we fit in God’s mission
• Discerning and making decisions “in good faith”
• The difference between feeling comfortable or content and feeling peaceful
• The Church and the relationship of tension between “power” and “piety”
• How to deal with “catechism flame-throwers”
• The relationship between Magisterium and Ministerium

Details: The broadcast is free and open to the public. You can tune in from any place you have internet access. We also have a chat room for you to use during the broadcast in order to connect with one another and with us. You can also submit your questions ahead of time by using the comment box below.

If new to A Nun’s Life podcasts, the podcasts are basically like tuning into a radio program, but instead of broadcasting it on the airwaves, we broadcast it on our website. All you have to do is visit our website and make sure the volume on your computer is up.

More information including upcoming shows and recordings of past episodes can be found at the In Good Faith program web page.

AS094 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on November 30, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: nun hairstyles, a question of morals, debunking nun myths for your friends, explaining nuns to a 4-year-old child, weird detours, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• A novelist wants to know what’s under the veil for sisters circa 1960: hair or no hair?
• A listener asks if there are moral qualifications to be a nun. We’ll expand the convo to talk about moral qualifications for vocations of all types.
• What to tell friends about nuns and virginity, nuns and trust funds, and nuns who are parents.
• Can sisters and nuns keep assets and inheritances when they enter religious life?
• Do nuns get an allowance or stipend?
• A mom wonders how to explain what nuns are to her four-year-old.
• Are weird detours part of God’s plan?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

I have always been fascinated with icons and iconography. I love the colors, the gold leaf, the aliveness, and the mystery of icons! It is a great blessing to have one of my own IHM Sisters as an iconographer because I get to hang around her studio, learn from her, and be in the presence of sacred art!

During our Fall Fundraiser, Sister Nancy Lee graciously allowed the A Nun’s Life film crew into her studio where she explained how icons are made and what they mean.
We did an 8-part series of videos which are available for free here and on the A Nun’s Life Youtube Channel. Part I is below and the others you can find at anunslife.org/iconography.

Part I: Becoming and Iconographer

Visit at anunslife.org/iconography for all 8 videos!

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Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer tonight and every weekday at 6 p.m. Central Time at aNunsLife.org/live.

AS093 Ask Sister podcast published on November 24, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. This is a Special Edition on Saints, holiness, and joy. The nuns are joined by Catholic superstars Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, and Father James Martin, SJ.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

Sister Sandra Schneiders

• What is the Scriptural basis for the saints?
• In iconography and in various visual renderings, the saints are often pictured with some kind of symbol that speaks to something about their life — Teresa of Avila is pictured with a dove and quill, Saint Joseph with carpentry tools. Centuries from now, what symbol would you hope would be associated with you?
• What does holiness mean in general as well as in the ups and downs of our daily life?
• What was it like first getting to  know the author of the Fourth Gospel?
• Check out Sister Sandra’s new book Prophets in Their Own Country: Women Religious Bearing Witness to the Gospel in a Troubled Church

Father James Martin

• What role do saints play in our prayers?
• Is it considered a miracle that some saints do not decompose after dying?
• Isn’t holiness a pretty serious thing? What role do joy, humor, and laughter play in the spiritual life?
• What’s the deal with relics?
• What advice would you give to people who want to live a saintly life?
• Check out Father Jim’s new book Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS092 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on November 17, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: call and dread in discernment, a novelist seeks info on real-life nuns, ministry to and with children, cooking and cleaning nuns, and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• The work of discernment: call and dread. Really?
• Novelist asks about nuns in childcare ministries, and Sister Camille Brouillard responds by describing what it was like to minister to children with AIDS.
• I found a description of sisters and nuns on a diocesan website that describes their lives in terms of cooking and housekeeping and wanting to be loved and, oh yeah, some prayer too. What’s up with that?

Do you have a question for us? Contact us http://anunslife.org/contact/and, using your computer, record your question on voice mail. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Ilove this reflection on discernment! For me, it pretty much describes in a nutshell my experience of discerning God’s call, especially at times when I find an intersection where I thought only one road existed.

Photo by Alesa Dam

The reflection was written by Sister Mary Fran Gilleran, IHM, and was published in Midwiving a Vibrant Future, by the Leadership Council of Women Religious.

The work of discernment sets a challenge before us. We enter a process of choice and decision-making with many aspects to it. The deepest calls of our lives, the times when we know we have to choose, are profound moments.

These moments always seem to have two sides: call and dread. A call that challenges us, that we know is right, confronts us with dread at the same time. We know this call will require new demands of us. It will require taking on and letting go of familiar patterns and ways of being comfortable. It elicits dread even though we know it is time, it is needed, it is even good for us and for the whole.

Midwives of the new must know when to push for the next stage and when to simply breathe in and through both call and dread. They are two sides of the same invitation. There is a time to throw away. And it is all part of one process.

How does this reflection resonate with your experience of discernment?

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Join A Nun’s Life community tonight for prayer at aNunsLife.org/live at 6 p.m. CT (your time zone) Come a bit early or stay a bit late and chat with us in the chat room!

AS091 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on November 9, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry.  Topics include: novelist needs info for nunfiction, hanging up on a call from God, how nuns pray, submissiveness, unholy spirits, gay saints

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• A novelist is looking for info for a new work of nunfiction
• Hanging up on a call from God? What happens when a nun leaves religious life?
• A rosary a day? How nuns pray.
• What is submissiveness?
• Unholy spirits and what to do about them
• Are there any gay saints?

Do you have a question for us? Using your computer, record your question on voice mail. It’s easy to do! Just click this Record link to get started! Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS090 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on November 3, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Special Saintly Edition. Topics include: saints in a cave, saintly symbols-coffee and ice cream, decommissioned saints, saintliness in scripture

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How St. Syncletica ditched her entourage and headed for a cave
• Coffee, bicycles, trees, open vessels, ice cream and other symbols of sainthood
• When saints go marching off the General Roman Calendar–where do they go?
• Sister Sandra Schneiders on holiness from the perspectives of St. Paul and the Fourth Gospel

Do you have a question for us? Using your computer, record your question on voice mail. It’s easy to do! Just click this Record link to get started! Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Idon’t know if saints ever did stand-up comedy, or if the Scripture writers ever LOL’d at what they wrote. But they do show us that there’s a connection between faith, humor, happiness and transformation. It’s what Father James Martin writes about in his new book Between Heaven and Mirth.

Sister Julie and I are delighted that Father Martin will join us for a live podcast on All Saints Day! It’s part of our very first A Nun’s Life Fun!raiser. We’ll talk with him about saints and the role of humor in the spiritual life. Join us in the live chat room during the podcast, which begins at 2 pm Central, to ask questions and share your best spiritual humor! Check out the sidebar to the right for more info about events during the Fun!raiser!

In the meantime, if you need a spiritual boost, check out this video clip of Father Martin sharing a joke with journalist Sally Quinn.

We hope you can join us for the podcast with Father Martin and for other fun and one-of-a-kind events during our nine-day Fun!raiser. A Nun’s Life Ministry relies on gifts from readers and listeners like you, who make these podcasts and this ministry possible. We encourage you to support this ministry that strives to promote religious life and to encourage people in living their calling. Please consider a one-time gift or a monthly gift to support the ministry. Thank you!

For many U.S. Catholic sisters and indeed for many Catholics across the U.S. and abroad, the Apostolic Visitation of American Women Religious that began in 2009 turned out to be a graced opportunity to reflect on apostolic, or ministerial, religious life. At the public helm of this reflection has been Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, professor emerita of New Testament Studies and Christian Spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She has served as president of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality and on te board of directors of the Catholic Theological Society of America. Perhaps her greatest claim to fame, however, is that she is a person deeply grounded in prayer who has given her life to serving God, the Church, and the world. She is a person whom I am proud to call my sister.

At the time of the Apostolic Visitation, Sister Sandra stepped up, offering her reflections on religious life into the public forum. These were certainly not random thoughts and opinions but ones steeped in faith and “in decades of biblical scholarship, religious life scholarship, and lived experience in a congregation.” (Sister Maria Cimperman, OSU, writing about Sister Sandra). These reflections, originally published by National Catholic Reporter, are now collected in the book Prophets in Their Own Country: Women Religious Bearing Witness to the Gospel in a Troubled Church, published by Orbis Books.

A note about the title … We can be a bit sceptical about prophets, especially when one self-appoints oneself as a prophet! The job description for a prophet has never been public acclaim or celebration or even a pat on the back. It is perhaps one of the most arduous of callings that exists. Yet the Church recognizes that some callings are prophetic by nature. One such calling is religious life.

“Religious Life has, from its inception, been recognized not simply as a ‘work force’ in the church but as a prophetic vocation…. For a hundred years before the [Second Vatican] Council a process of institutionalization, standardization, and even domestication muted to the point of virtual silence the specifically prophetic character of the life. Religious began to rediscover that important dimension of their identity as they emerged into public life by their increasing participation in social justice issues in the 1960s and their enthusiastic espousal in the Church of the agenda of Vatican II. Intrinsic to the prophetic vocation within the Judaeo-Christian biblical tradition is the tension between prophecy and institution.” (Prophets in Their Own Country, 22-23)

Though the Apostolic Visitation has faded from the news, the important articulations of who we are as women religious remain as well as the deep connection that women religious have across congregations and with the wider lay Catholic community (women religious are lay people after all). Sister Sandra’s book is a great springboard into deeper reflection on religious life as a gift to the Church and to the world.

Sister Sandra has joined us before at A Nun’s Life Ministry for our In Good Faith program, and she will join us again for a live broadcast on Tuesday next week, November 1, at 9 a.m. CST. We’ll talk with Sister Sandra about the saints as we honor All Saints Day. Join us! The event is one among many others to help kickoff the A Nun’s Life Ministry 1st Annual Fundraiser, and we encourage you to support this ministry that strives to promote religious life and to encourage people in living their calling. Please consider a one-time gift or a monthly gift to support the ministry.

What’s up with the news coverage of Anita Caspary?

Caspary, a luminary in religious life died at age 95 on October 5. She was a great woman, scholar, and leader. Her faithfulness to the call of the Second Vatican Council and her love of the gospel are impressive. Anita Caspary had integrity. Too bad that some of the recent news articles about her don’t.

The headlines give the first clue. Here’s the headline from a recent New York Times article: “Anita Caspary, Nun Who Led Breakaway From Church, Dies at 95.” A similar headline appears in the Washington Post: “‘Rebel nun’ Anita Caspary, leader of breakaway Los Angeles order, dies at 95.”

Breakaway? From the church? Really? In the 1960s, Caspary served in leadership for the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters in Los Angeles. The congregation took seriously the Vatican II call for the renewal of religious life. They began to make changes accordingly – in daily prayer times, in religious dress, in their types and locations of ministry, etc. (And they weren’t the only ones. Sisters across the U.S. were moving in similar directions.) But the archbishop of Los Angeles objected to the changes. And when the sisters didn’t stop, he retaliated.

Ultimately, Caspary and about 300 other sisters chose to leave the congregation and begin a new, non-canonical community. To my way of thinking, they didn’t “breakaway.” There wasn’t a “schism,” as the NYT article characterized it. The sisters left an oppressive, unfair situation. They did so after much deliberation and prayer. And their departure wasn’t from “the church” but from an abuse of power by some in formal roles of authority in the church.

Compare those headlines with this one, from the National Catholic Reporter: “Anita Caspary, religious visionary, dies in Los Angeles: ‘Integrity’ moved her community to sever canonical ties to church.” A great headline and a good article.

As I read the articles, I gave thanks for Caspary. I celebrate her life and her legacy to religious, the church and the world.

May you rest in peace, Anita Caspary.

Anita Caspary published a book in 2003, Witness to Integrity, that describes the events that took place during her time in leadership in the 1960s. It’s an interesting and informative account!

Rock star! That’s how National Catholic Reporter described the response of Catholic sisters to Sr. Sandra after her talk last Saturday in Notre Dame, Indiana. Rock on, Sandra!

Sandra’s insights into religious life are music to the ears! Her rendition of religious life past, present and future is one of the clearest and most articulate that I’ve ever heard. The NCR article does a good job of highlighting her key points.

I especially like Sandra’s explanation of why the works of Catholic sisters have changed over time. She describes how the changes in ministry affect the way that Catholic sisters live, what they wear, how they pray, etc. She also offers a compelling vision of religious life for the future – and there will be a future! (She opened her talk with, “Reports of the demise of religious life, to paraphrase Mark Twain, are greatly exaggerated.”)

I appreciate how Sandra links the past to the present, then suggests directions for the future that are already emerging. Here’s an excerpt about that from the NCR article:

Increasingly, religious women have taken their expertise into ministries that, while still in continuity with those of the past and arising directly out of their communities’ charisms, are not ones most Catholics tend to associate with “the Sisters.” Schneiders grouped them into four “clusters”:

• Social justice ministers focused on systemic or structural change, whose “theological glue” tends to be Catholic social teaching. These include social scientists, activists, lawyers, political and community organizers, economists and sociologists, urban farmers and legislators.

• Ministers who work directly with the victims of social injustice or natural disasters, whose theological glue is deep compassion for the suffering Body of Christ. These include chaplains, social workers, counselors, literacy tutors, providers of child care or elder care, managers of low-income housing, those who work in homeless shelters or with victims of torture or sex trafficking.

• Intellectuals, scholars and artists, whose theological glue is faith seeking understanding in our time. These include composers, performers, journalists, writers, teachers and researchers in theology, philosophy and the sciences.

• Ministers who address the thirst for meaning and transcendence, with the theological glue of spiritual nourishment and growth. They work in spirituality centers, campus ministry, spiritual direction, retreats, holistic healing, or as popular writers or speakers on the lecture and workshop circuit.

I encourage you to read the article and to share your responses to it!

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Join A Nun’s Life Community and the nuns for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone).

Question for you … If you had to summarize — or perhaps symbolize — what Catholic sisters and nuns are really like, what mainstream movie would you use to do that? What aspects of the movie would you point to as being particularly nun-esque? Note: The movie does NOT have to have a sister or nun in it!

Pray about it. Think about it. Then tell us about it using the comment section below or send us an email, Facebook, or Tweet and we’ll post it here!

For starters, here is Dead Man Walking (1995) with Susan Sarandon playing real-life nun Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ. One of the best portrayals of Catholic sisters today.

The aspects I particularly like are how the movie well portrays Sister Helen as a woman of prayer, justice, and community. Her story is definitely unique (as are all of ours) but it points to some universal characteristics about being a Catholic sister or nun. The care for all of human life, even life that we’ve deemed “unredeemable” is one of the most remarkable aspects of this film. Sister Helen lives out and is portrayed as living out what Cardinal Bernadin called “a consistent ethic of life“. This consistent ethic of life is one that you’ll find reflected in many religious communities.

Okay, now your turn! What’s a movie you’d use to symbolize what nuns are really like?

We have a special guest blog post from A Nun’s Life community member Joyce Elaine, who reflects on the heart and sole of discernment.

There are sandals that I wear that my closest friends affectionately call my “Jesus sandals.”

They are white and strappy with gold accents, and they do make me think of the sandals that Jesus is often depicted in. They are a special pair in my collection of “Jesus shoes.” I wear them to Mass, and almost always get asked about my discernment there. I wear them to family gatherings and again, I get asked about religious life: “What things can you do as a nun?” ” Do you go to school to become a nun?” I wear them where I pray with my church and sometimes with the nuns I know.

I also have a pair of black shoes that I wear on cold, wet, muddy, or rainy days. When I walk around with friends, the questions still pour out. “Can a nun be an electrical engineer?” “Is a nun allowed to keep her birth/baptismal name?” I also tend to wear these shoes when I am feeling sick or worried. They remind me that I’m carried by God.

My running shoes are also Jesus shoes. I wear them when I run, when I take walks, when I take bike rides, and when I work out. They are what I wear when I feel closest to God–when I am just myself.

What do your “Jesus shoes” look like? Please share your Jesus shoe stories in the comment box below!

* * *
Join A Nun’s Life Community and the nuns for prayer today at 6 p.m. CST (your time zone).

She dared to dream. They dared to believe.” The words are from the promo poster for The Mighty Macs. The movie is inspired by the true story of the coach, players, and sisters of Immaculata College. Against great odds, the small college won the U.S. national women’s basketball championship in 1972.

Yesterday, Sister Julie and I dared to drive through Chicago at rush hour to see an advance showing of The Mighty Macs. It was well worth it! We heard about the movie several months ago from our IHM “cousins” in Immaculata, Penn., home of the Mighty Macs. The movie will be in theaters beginning October 21.

During the movie, I was especially interested in the portrayals of the sisters. So I’m offering a few thoughts on the topic in this post. I’ll start by describing the story line.

The Story
The film is set in 1972, at Immaculata College (now University), at the time a small all-women’s college. The school then and now is run by the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM), of Immaculata, Penn., not far from Philadelphia.

The story begins as 23-year-old Cathy Rush takes on the job of coaching the Mighty Macs. She is newly married to a successful NBA referee. She also is searching for more meaning in her life, which puzzles many people. At that time, most women work in the home, not outside of it, and the roles of wife, homemaker, and mother are closely tied to a woman’s identity and value.

Rush takes the job, despite having no gym and no experience as a head coach. Meanwhile, the college itself is having severe financial problems and is at risk of being sold. Rush dreams of the Mighty Macs being #1 in the country. But the season starts badly as the Macs are thrashed by other teams. Rush, the players, and the nuns have good reason to simply give up, but they don’t. Instead, they draw on the strength and encouragement of each another and together go on to make history.

Some things I like about the movie
The movie reflects the reality that “a vocation” isn’t just for sisters, it’s for all people. Cathy Rush and Sister Sunday, who became the assistant coach, both found their “vocations” as coaches. Being a coach was more than just a job. It was a way for them to find deeper meaning in their own lives and to help others do the same.

One of the scenes I especially like in the movie is when Sister Sunday is in church, praying to God for direction. She doesn’t understand why God brought her to religious life simply to work in the Admissions Office of the college. She prays, “Send me a sign, any sign, as I will be listening for your voice.” Just then, to her annoyance, her prayer is interrupted by the sound of a basketball bouncing against a floor in the nearby makeshift gym. God has a sense of humor.

I also like the way that the sisters supported Rush and the players. The movie conveys a strong message about the power of community. In the movie, when no one else is cheering for the Macs after they’ve been crushed by the opposing team, the nuns are there, in solidarity with the players and coach. That’s what it means to be community – being with one another even when the chips are down. And as the coach and players learn, that’s also what it means to be a team.

The movie also carries a strong feminist message—that society benefits when all people have the opportunity to pursue their hopes and dreams. In some circles historically, there have been questions as to whether a sister or any woman for that matter, can be Catholic and a feminist at the same time. To that question in the discourse, the movie would say “absolutely YES!” It’s true that in the early 1970s, sisters might not have called themselves feminists. But thousands of sisters in the US and elsewhere have worked for decades on behalf of women—in education, in society, and yes, even in basketball!

Some things I don’t like about the movie
Ok, I understand the whole thing about artistic license for the sake of storytelling. But here’s a few things that raised issues for me.

The depiction of the priest as the one who would determine the fate of Immaculata is just plain wrong. The priest didn’t own Immaculata, nor did he dictate to the nuns how the place should be run. The nuns built Immaculata with their own hard work and wise decision making, and the college endured because of their efforts with others committed to an excellent Catholic education for young adults.

The depiction of the coach is also one I’m still mulling over. In some senses, her role is so powerful that it overshadows the roles of the sisters. The coach’s arrival at a critical do-or-die moment in the college’s history could suggest that she was largely responsible for the transformation of the college. I agree that she was a part of that transformation and a powerful symbol of it– no question! But I’d bet all of Mother Superior’s poker winnings in the movie that the college’s transformation wouldn’t have happened if the nuns weren’t already moving in that direction.

For more info about The Mighty Macs

Although the movie doesn’t come out until Oct. 21, you can read the book it’s based on: O God of Players, by Julie Byrne. There’s also lots of links to movie previews and photos of the Mighty Macs. Here are some for starters!

• The Mighty Macs on Immaculata’s website
• The Mighty Macs movie website
• The Mighty Macs on the Internet Movie Database

I’d love to hear your comments and questions about the images of Catholic sisters that you see in the promotional materials for The Mighty Macs. Please share them by writing in the comment box below.

Sinéad O'Connor, Irish singer and songwriter

Dear Sinéad O’Connor,

First, let me say that I have a great appreciation for you as a musician and as an advocate for women. I love the song “This is Mother to You” that you did with Mary J. Blige in support of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (GEMS).

As a Catholic nun, I too share your passion for advocating for girls and women. My religious congregation, the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Sisters of Monroe, Michigan, works tirelessly on behalf of girls and women through education, advocacy, social justice and systemic change, mentoring, and more.

Now I’m wondering about a curious statement that  you made recently in a column for the Irish Independent (August 22, 2011): ”I am in the peak of my sexual prime and way too lovely to be living like a nun, and it’s VERY depressing.” While I am sure much support is pouring in to assist you in your search for a companion, I wish only to offer a bit of advice on your mischaracterization of nuns. To reduce the entire life of a nun to the state of not having sex is at best wrong, and at worst a gross offense to the countless women religious who have served and continue to serve people throughout the world, including yourself, I might add.

The life of a nun is the most wild and unforgettable adventure that a person will ever have. Whether a woman chooses to be a contemplative, cloistered nun or an active religious sister — she is continually ministering on behalf of the needs of the world, celebrating the joys and the beauty of life, and bringing a compassionate presence in the midst of sorrow and suffering. A nun’s life is one of savoring this good life that God has given all of us, and working tirelessly to change systems that degrade life, to mend broken hearts, and to call ourselves and all of us to our best selves.

I feel bad that this essence of a nun’s life has eluded you and that the joy and meaning that you seek seems to have been reduced to sex and a stubbily companion. While both of these things can truly be awesome, they are not what makes you who you are as a person. That starts from within.

My prayers are with you, Sinéad, and should you ever feel up for the adventure of being a nun, you know where to find us.

Sincerely,

Sister Julie

Welcome to a special ENCORE PRESENTATION of Ask Sister podcast. The nuns are in nunly meetings all week but wanted to be sure you still had an opportunity to listen to an Ask Sister podcast. This is one of our favorite ones with special guest Sister Kathie Budesky, IHM, the director of Visitation North Spirituality Center.

As you listen to this podcast, jot down your questions and insights and then head on over to the A Nun’s Life Community Forum and start a conversation! Go for it!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

In this podcast episode, we chatted about the “Examen Prayer”, God and free will, the difference between vowed religious vocations and ‘non-vowed religious vocations’, and what to do when you don’t feel connected with God.

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS079 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on July 21, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: bible books aplenty, dropping “sisters” from liturgical language, control freaks and God, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
Here are some of the questions we address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I came across an older bible recently. It has more books than one I recently bought, e.g. the book of Enoch. Why are these bibles different?
• Do you find yourself allowing God to direct your ministry and life or do you need complete control over such matters?
• Why do some churches omit “and sisters” from parts of the Mass such as the penitential rite which says, “and you, my brothers and sisters”?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Cheers for the U.S. federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph for their public show of support for their sister Elizabeth Johnson!

Elizabeth Johnson is an internationally known theologian and a professor at Fordham University. She has done a great deal of work in the area of feminst theology. Recently, her 2007 book Quest for the Living God came under fire by the Doctrine Committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The nine-member group of bishops said, among other things, that the book failed to reflect the teaching of the magisterium. Johnson responded, saying in part that the bishops had seriously misinterpreted the book. Maybe that could have been avoided had the committee initially contacted Johnson to talk things over, a measure that’s included in committee’s own guidelines.

When the 900-member U.S. federation of the Sisters of St. Joseph gathered last week, it issued a corporate statement of support for Johnson. Around the same time, the Catholic Theological Society of America also publicly supported Johnson!

There are lots of issues involved in this matter – too many to address in detail here. And the situation continues to unfold.

To the Sisters of St. Joseph – way to go!! Standing together in regard to a justice issue is an important part of what it means to be sisters and what it means to be the church. For now, I’m going to re-read my copy of Quest for the Living God and savor it once more.

AS078 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on July 14, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: engineering nuns, total consecration, when the saints go marching off the General Roman Calendar, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Can I use my engineering skills as a sister? What kinds of ministries could I be involved in?
• What does “total consecration” mean theologically and how does it fit into a person’s daily faith life?
• Who in the Catholic Church decides if a saint like Christopher or a “place” like limbo no longer exists? How do they decide?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS077 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on July 1, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: The sisters fav Catholic jokes; discerning religious life; origins of A Nuns Life Ministry; why stay Catholic; and more!

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Guest host Regina Heater interviews the sisters about their experience of discernment
• The sisters’ favorite Catholic jokes
• What was the sisters’ “pre-nun” life like?
• How did A Nun’s Life Ministry begin, and what’s ahead
• Adventures of A Nun’s Life
• Why Catholic, why now?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from which you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Had a fantastic podcast last night with my partner-in-nunhood, Sister Maxine. The questions that folks asked us on Ask Sister (recording will be up this weekend) were fabulous and we got into some very good conversations. What I love most is the feeling of tapping in to what I love about being a Catholic sister. Conversations like the one last night ignite all these ideas and memories and hopes and feelings of goodness — and i am in awe over how God has taken me in and helped me to find a way of life that fits me — and totally delights me!

There are stories and memories in our IHM tradition that become like landmarks in our life. I was reminded of a couple of them during the podcast that were and continue to be formative in my life. I think we each have landmarks — in our IHM life, we hold many of them in common, just like a family might have landmarks in their collective life. What I’m amazed at is that when I stumble upon those landmarks, they still have the power to make present, as it were, the reality signified — kind of sacramental in a way. These IHM landmarks help me tap into my own self, and into our life of simplicity, humility, and zeal.

AS076 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on June 23, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: going on retreat, detachment from (YIKES) gadgets, nun-fiction writer seeks authentic religious life, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I want to go on retreat. Where would I go and what should I expect?
• Could you talk about what detachment from material things means? I’m thinking about religious life, and I’m scared about giving up my things especially my gadgets!
• Another novelist contacts the nuns! The author wants to authentically portray a modern-day nun for her sitcom-esque story. Help the nuns in their advice for the story.

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS075 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on June 16, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: college grad talks about volunteering for a year, recognizing God at work in daily life, called to be a nun or doctor (or both?), and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we address in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How to recognize God at work our daily lives — putting on our God goggles
• Should I become a doctor or a nun or can I do both?
• SPECIAL ON-AIR GUEST: Eilis talks about volunteering for a year and living the three pillars of service, community, and spirituality. We talk with her about the Franciscan Community Volunteers, helping refugees resettle in the U.S., how it has affected her faith, and more!

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS074 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on June 9, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: testing God, praying for safety in risky situations, religious medallions, psalm selections, does prayer really work.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Does participating in something inherently risky, like bike racing, equate to “testing” God?
• A lot of bike racers have religious medallions. My Mom also puts guardian angel pins in my car. Do medallions actually do anything?
• Does prayer really work? How can you tell?
• How does the church pick which verses of a psalm to use?
• What does it mean to test your “readiness” for a vocation?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Sister Theresa Coulter, IHM

Nothing can ever really take the edge off of the reality of death. Life is, and then it is not. Theresa is with us, and then one Sunday night, she is no longer here the way we have always known and loved her.

There is a song in our IHM tradition that speaks of our sisters who have died as “dwelling now in light, yet ever near.” In times like this, I have to trust the wisdom of my community and of my faith tradition because my plain old human emotions are not all that jubilant. I rather liked Theresa dwelling here and now. I loved her gentle spirit, determination, and courage to speak the truth. I like the Communion of Saints that are here with me, that I can rub shoulders with, revel in God’s mystery with, and share the bond of sisterhood with.

At the same time, I am a woman fiercely of the resurrection. I believe, as we read in yesterday’s Gospel, that God indeed desires peace for us, courage in times of challenge, and trust that God has already conquered the world! (John 16:33) For me, that conquering business does not mean overpowering the world, crushing it; rather it means that in all things — even persecution, suffering, and death — God is with us and has the final word. What is that word? Well, I think about Theresa, and I think of one word. Love.

IGF010 In Good Faith with Sister Barbara Reid, OP, PhD, recorded live on June 2, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. The nuns talk with Sister Barbara about finding God in everyday life, Sacred Scripture, prayer, biblical spirituality, and more!
Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Guest: Sister Barbara Reid, OP

Sister Barbara Reid, OP, is a Dominican Sister of Grand Rapids, Michigan. She holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC and is professor of New Testament and vice president and academic dean at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. Her most recent books are Taking Up the Cross: New Testament Interpretations Through Latina and Feminist Eyes , The Gospel According to Matthew: New Collegeville Bible Commentary Series , the three-volume work Parables for Preachers, and Choosing the Better Part? Women in the Gospel of Luke.

Topic: The sisters talk with Sister Barbara about her experience of living faith in everyday life, drawing on her work as a scripture scholar and as VP/academic dean of CTU, the first woman to hold that role.

Show Notes:

• The Bible as a way to understand our present experience of God in light of the experience of our ancestors in the faith
• New to the Bible? Suggestions for how to get started
• Conflicting images of God in the scriptures – who is the “real” God?
• Jesus, the incarnation of the loving God
• Biblical spirituality
• Ways to pray with the Bible
• Saint Dominic’s Nine Ways of Prayer
• Women in the scriptures and their messages for us today
• ”Feminism” – a commitment to dignity and equality for all people
• How the feminist perspective challenges interpretations of scripture that justify violence and abuse
• How to keep the scriptures “fresh”

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

AS073 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on May 26, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: does the bible prohibit women from teaching the faith, God and suffering, romance-mystery novelist returns, lessons from the rapture.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What is your take on why God allows suffering?
• Our romance-mystery-suspense novelist returns with more questions about her nun character (and assures us that the nun won’t get bumped off … yet)
• Does the bible say that women shouldn’t teach the faith? Which verses do that, and how should we interpret them?
• Rapture update: what have we learned?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS072 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on May 19, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: the surfing Madonna, purgatory discovery, why Jesus was baptized, dealing with mockers and naysayers, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.
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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!
Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How to deal with people who mock your life and the choices you’ve made
• Is it a myth or legend or truth that Saint Patrick discovered Purgatory?
• Why Jesus was baptized
• An apparition of Mary that’s causing waves in one California town
• Up for discussion: “The more someone is present on the internet, the less they are present in real life.”

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Last night at Sister Maxine’s graduation from Catholic Theological Union, Sister Mary Collins, OSB, received an honorary doctorate in theology.

Sister Mary Collins, a Benedictine sister of Mount St. Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas, is one of the premiere liturgical theologians of North American. As a “lecturer, writer, and editor, Mary Collins has been a pioneer figure in the liturgical renewal in the United States since Vatican II. She has attended to critical questions in liturgical theology, language, practice, and spirituality.” (source: CTU honoris causa announcement)

It was a true blessing to see and listen to Sister Mary. It reminded me of a piece she had written a while back on anamnesis, “corporate memory” … on remembering who we truly are.

Anamnesis is biblical language which was long ago taken up by the church and recently recovered as liturgical language…. Anamnesis speaks about a distinctive kind of human remembering. In common speech we are more likely to talk about its opposite, amnesia.

We are familiar with the disorder of clinical amnesia, a diagnosis given to name a memory lapse of a crucial kind. The amnesiac is not the person who has misplaced her glasses one time too many. She is the person who has forgotten who she is. She has lost her conscious awareness of the basic relationships that give her her identity. The amnesiac cannot answer when asked whoa re you? where have you come from? where are you headed? who are your parents? have you any family? where is your home? what kind of work do you do?

“Anamnesis” and “amnesia” come from a common Greek root. The biblical and liturgical use of the word is “anamnesis” rises from a perception that there is a disorder analogous to clinical amnesia that plagues the human community. To be human is to be threatened with spiritual amnesia. At the level of our spiritual identity we do not remember for long who we really are. Those ultimate relationships that give us our spiritual identity slip from consciousness all too easily, and we lapse into noncomprehension about our deepest identity.

(Mary Collins, OSB, Contemplative Participation: Sacrosanctum Concilium, twenty-five years later published by The Liturgical Press, 1990, p. 55)

In celebration and honor of our graduate, Sister Maxine, and all the women and men of Catholic Theological Union who have given their lives to “faith seeking understanding … consider this: What are some of the things that help you remember your deepest identity? What are the relationships in your life that are woven into that identity? How do you return from periods of amnesia?

* * *

Today I graduate from Catholic Theological Union. I’m looking forward to the ceremony, which will be held in a beautiful historical synagogue that’s across the street from President Obama’s house in Hyde Park, close to downtown Chicago.

The students from CTU (ctu.edu) come from all over the world. In the opening procession, each country is represented by a flag. It reminds me of the conversations I had with people from China, Korea, Thailand, South Africa, Ireland, India, and many other places around the globe. The conversations broadened my understanding of God and of the church and deeply enriched my faith.

Blessings and prayers to the graduates of CTU and to all other students who will graduate from high schools and colleges this month!

If there are special graduates in your life, please write their first names in the comment box below. We’ll bring all the names into prayer as a litany on Friday’s “Praying with the Sisters” podcast.

AS071 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on May 11, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Lady Gaga and Judas, blessed and cursed, dieting and Eucharist, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What’s your take on Lady Gaga’s music video “Judas”?
• Biblical imagery in Lady Gaga’s “Judas”
• If we are blessed by God when things go well, does that mean we’re cursed by God if things aren’t going well?
• Rohald Rolheiser’s and “blessed consciousness”
• Update on Lenten fasting by a province of Felician sisters
• Dieting and the Eucharist

 

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

We are delighted to announce that YOUR forum is here! The A Nun’s Life Community Forum is up and running and ready for you to use!

Carry on conversations inspired by the blog, podcasts, or chat room or strike up a new conversation about something of interest to you! We invite you to check it out, register (it’s free and easy!), and start exploring!

You’ll have lots of folks around to hang out with and to help navigate the new forum. We’d like to introduce you to two of the NL Community Forum moderators: Marsha West and Marguerite Krupp. Both have been members of the NL community for a while and both have professional expertise in facilitating the online community experience. We are truly blessed. Our thanks go out to them and to all the folks who have helped along the way including KCMayrie, Dominic our forum designer, the folks at vBulletin.org, and the Holy Spirit!

To access the forum, simply go to anunslife.org/forum or click on the menu item FORUM at the top of every page or on the home page of this website. For those of you who were members of the A Nun’s Life Vocation Forum in the past, we have integrated the forum within this one — to join the Vocation Forum, you must be discerning and request access from Sister Julie or Sister Maxine. Details are on the forum.

Let us know what you think, and any ideas, questions, inspirations you have about the forum itself or the A Nun’s Life Community! And be sure to spread the word far and wide inviting people to check out the new forum. Use the handy social media links below or send an email or shout from a rooftop!

IGF009 In Good Faith with Father James Bacik, PhD, recorded live on May 5, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. The nuns talk with Father Jim about finding God in everyday life, prayer, Christian spirituality, theologian Karl Rahner, and more!
Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Guest: Father James Bacik

Father James Bacik, a priest of the Diocese of Toledo, is the pastor of Corpus Christi University Parish in Toledo, Ohio and serves as a campus minister and adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Toledo. His doctorate in theology is from the University of Oxford in England. His many articles, chapters and books include Apologetics and the Eclipse of Mystery; Contemporary Theologians; Catholic Spirituality, Its History and Challenge and most recently A Light Unto My Path, a book on preaching he wrote with psychologist Kevin Anderson. He has lectured throughout the United States as well as in China, Latin America, Japan and Russia. Father Bacik combines the academic study of theology with the pastoral work he has been doing for many years.

Show Notes:

• Father Jim’s intersecting roles — pastor, theologian, academician
• Father Jim’s intersecting roles — pastor, theologian, academician
• Encounters with theologian Karl Rahner
• The Method of Correlation — bringing the scriptures and Christian tradition to bear on people’s everyday concerns
• The human orientation to Holy Mystery, Gracious Mystery
• “Jesus, the ‘P.S.’ at the end of a long letter of service”
• Contemporary Catholic apologists and the long tradition of Christian apologetics
• Mystagogy
• Even sin can be revelatory of God’s mercy and love
• Prayer as “truth-telling”
• The increasing diversity within the Catholic Church
• Father Jim’s current work on the issue of Catholic identity

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

AS070 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on May 4, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: feeling okay about the filioque, Ninja Nuns, living community, following in a religious brother’s footsteps. A surprise guest joins the nuns!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What’s up with the two Anglican Nuns at the Royal Wedding? Is the taller one really a ninja?
• Please explain the filioque and how the trinitarian relationship has implications for our daily life.
• How do ideas about the filioque relate to generosity and kindness?
• What has been your biggest struggle and/or benefit from living in community?
• Living in community, and living community
• Is God really calling me to be a religious sister or could it just be because my brother is a religious brother and I want to follow in his footsteps?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Lots of interesting things in the news about Catholic sisters and nuns! For your weekend enjoyment, check out the following nun stories:

Second time was the charm for Cebuano lass turned nun by Inday Espina Varona at ABS-CBNnews.com (April 27, 2011)

People do not need to be members of religious orders to live Pope John Paul 2′s message of hope. “You can be a lay minister, you can be in any kind of profession and still fulfill your Christian potential.”

Sister Maria said one lesson from Pope John Paul 2 is, that words are nothing if not backed by action.
“Witnessing is not just preaching,” she stressed.

Shareholder proposals companies don’t want you to see by Julianne Pepitone at CNNMoney.com (April 25, 2011)

The Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica filed a shareholder proposal in November asking AT&T to “publicly commit to operate its wireless broadband network consistent with Internet network neutrality principles.” It turns out that the St. Scholastica Monastery in Kansas owns more than $7,400 worth of AT&T stock. Other Catholic monasteries around the country joined the cause, filing their own requests. A few individuals also petitioned AT&T, including “Mike D” of Beastie Boys fame. AT&T did not respond to a request for comment.

So why do nuns care about such a geeky issue?

“Net neutrality can greatly affect underserved communities that have limited access to the Internet. We need to alleviate those social inequalities,” Kron [the contact person for the proposal] said, noting that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has published an open letter supporting Net neutrality. Unfortunately for the nuns and Mike D, the SEC granted a no-action letter on the basis that net neutrality is not “a significant policy issue.” Kron called the decision “shocking” and said the group “vigorously disagrees.”

Jane Lynch to play Nun in “Three Stooges” by Bill Belew at Examiner.com (April 29, 2011)

The actress will be playing the role of Mother Superior in the comedy flick. As usual Mother Superior has an orphanage, where Larry Moe and Curly live. Sean Hayes will be playing the role of Larry, Will Sasso will be playing Curly, while Chris Diamantopoulos will be playing the role of Moe.

AS069 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on April 28, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: what are nuns good for? Dial 666 for Devil, nun generations, romance-thriller novelist consults the nuns, Great Schism of East and West and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Is there a generation gap in orders of women religious? Do the older nuns ‘think’ different from the younger ones? or does ‘community’ transcend that type of thing?”
• We wanted to know what religions nuns are for. [Nun Note: So many ways to take this question but we'll do our best tackling it from all sides!]
• What’s the deal with 666? Is it really a sign of the devil? Should we be concerned when it pops up? [For more on hell-related items, descend to the depths of our blog and read Free Trip to Hell]
• Could you talk about what the Great Schism of the East and West is?
• A romance-thriller-suspense novelist asks for help with the character development of a young woman who may be thinking about joining a religious community.

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Just when I think stereotypes and negative portrayals of Catholic sisters and nuns can’t get any worse, I read something like this review of Sister Act the Musical. No, no it’s not the musical that is problematic. It’s the review.

Like Mormons, nuns are ideal subjects for musical theater. They seem likeable and wholesome, exotic yet familiar, and inherently optimistic. They sing in harmony as part of their daily routine. And there are endless chances for variations on a long-proven gag that was around way before “The Sound of Music”: tickle or test a nun in some way and you’ll find a far savvier, racier and worldlier creature than that drab habit would lead you to believe. Musicals need a repressive exterior and something deep that’s aching to pop out. Nuns make ideal sense.

(Source: Theater Loop by Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune, April 25, 2011)

NOTE: When this review was originally posted (it might be removed by now), it had this headline: “‘Sister Act’ on Broadway: Fun lurks beneath the habit”. Shame on whomever put that headline there but kudos to the Trib for taking it down.

Because I can’t bear to read it again, I thought I’d share my pain with you via a quiz.

1. What stereotypes are used in this review?
2. Are there more accurate images used by the author that could have been developed?
3. Is there another more compelling but less revolting way to put some pizazz in a story rather than relying on cheap, stereotypical images?

I await your wisdom. In the meantime, I must return to my singing and repressed exoticness.

* * *

Join the A Nun’s Life community for prayer at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone).

AS068 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on April 15, 2011, at the Motherhouse of the Racine Dominicans. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: making your own scapular, opposing human trafficking, becoming a nun, the Stations of the Cross.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Can you make your own scapular?
• How can scapulars be blessed, and what does the blessing do?
• Do the Racine Dominican sisters have associates, and if so, what is associate life like?
• The call to social justice–how the Racine Dominicans and other sisters are working against human trafficking?
• Ways to pray the Stations of the Cross, including an app for your smart phone!

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

IGF008 In Good Faith with Bren Ortega Murphy, PhD, recorded live on April 12, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. The nuns talk with Prof. Murphy about nun images in popular culture, such as Nunzilla, Boxing Nuns, movie nuns and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Guest: Bren Ortega Murphy, PhD

Bren Ortega Murphy holds a joint appointment in Communication Studies and Women’s Studies/Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago. She is the co-author of two books, Cultural Hegemony in the Unites States with Lee Artz and Voices of Strong Democracy with David Droge. Dr. Murphy has also written, directed and produced one radio documentary and two video documentaries, the latest of which is “A Question of Habit: The Image of Women Religious in U.S. Popular Culture.”

Visit the film’s website and check out the trailer below.

Show Notes:

• the fascination with Nunzilla, the Boxing Nuns, Late Night Catechism, and other images of nuns in popular culture
• what’s the big deal about nun images – they’re just funny, right?
• A Question of Habit, The Image of Women Religious in U.S. Popular Culture—Bren Murphy’s latest documentary
• why habits almost always are used in nun images in popular culture
• why so much nun kitsch but not so much priest kitsch in comparison?
• portrayals of sisters and nuns in popular culture “that got it right”
• buying nun image products – does it perpetuate stereotypes?
• the intersection of images of nuns and of women in popular culture
• the glass-ceiling phenomena in business
• what nun images reflect about popular culture

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live every first Thursday of the month from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

AS067 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on April 8, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: leveraging nunly shareholder powers for good, obedience and authority, associate commitments, marriage, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Can spouses release one another from marriage vows in order to enter religious life?
• What does it mean to make a commitment or covenant as an Associate of a religious community? What would such a commitment look like?
• The vow of obedience as it relates to authority and how the vow affects a Catholic sister or nun in daily life (for context, see our last episode AS066 Ask Sister)
• Plus the Sisters talk about nuns in the boardroom and how congregations are leveraging their shareholder powers for good

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Here at A Nun’s Life Ministry, we’re often asked about what the vow of poverty is and how it is lived both personally and as a congregation. While a significant aspect of the vow is that we hold all things in common and don’t personally own anything, there are other dimensions too. The recent news story about nuns challenging Goldman Sachs over pay, for example, highlights in bold relief the justice nature of the vow of poverty.

According to The Guardian, four orders of Catholic sisters, investors in Goldman Sachs, have requested a review of the bank’s remuneration policies. The orders are the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Sisters of Saint Francis of Philadelphia (who also recently questioned McDonald’s about its responsibility for child nutrition), and the Benedictine Sisters of Mount Angel.

As shareholders, the nuns requested a report that would include:

“1. An evaluation of whether our senior executive compensation packages (including, but not limited to, options, benefits, perks, loans and retirement agreements) are ‘excessive’ and should be modified.

2. An exploration of how sizeable layoffs and the level of pay of our lowest paid workers impact senior executive pay.

3. An analysis of the way in which fluctuations in revenues impact: a) the company’s compensation pool; b) the compensation of the company’s top 25 senior executives; and c) the company’s shareholders.”

So what does this all have to do with vowing lifelong poverty in a religious community? In this case, the vow of poverty compels us to call into call into question — responsibly, as the sisters have done — business practices that are unjust. We, like others who choose to live the Gospel, are committed to the just distribution of goods, to caring for those who are economically disadvantaged, and to changing structures that perpetuate the disparity of rich v. poor. (This of course takes us into yet another dimension of the vow of poverty and that is living simply and care of God’s earth … but that’s for another blog post).

I am encouraged and challenged by the sisters for taking a stand and calling the company to accountability — not with unkindness or rashness — but with a genuine sense of care and respect both for the company and for those who work for the company. This civil discourse is notable, especially when various reporters sensationalize the story by using uncivil language such as “a pack of angry nuns” … trash-talking indeed. The sisters call us to expand how we understand stewardship to not just how we handle our own shekels but how we as a human community care for one another.

What are your thoughts on this story? What questions and thoughts does it raise in you?

* * *

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

AS066 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on April 1, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: trash-talkin nuns, questions about becoming a religious after having been in prison or divorced, the vow of obedience, bathtub Marys, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What is the converse of the vow of obedience? Is that a struggle for you in everyday life?
• Is a divorced person whose ex-husband dies free to become a nun?
• The sisters consider a new podcast series … Trash-Talkin’ Nuns
• Is it possible to enter a religious community after been a felon?
• What’s the deal with bathtub Marys?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from which you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS065 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 25, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org Ministry. Topics include: psychics and nuns, meditating on Scripture, sisters in the parish, Celibacy in the City TV show?, meet Sister Mary Evoca, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I visited a psychic who told me to go to nuns for direction. Help!
• What does it mean to meditate over (or on) scripture?
• What is the role of Catholic sisters and nuns in parish life?
• What’s up with that new recording gizmo on aNunsLife.org/contact (aka our new portress Sr. Mary Evoca)
• Celibacy is CRAZY! Can anyone really live that way?

Do you have a question for us? Visit our new portress Sister Mary Evoca http://anunslife.org/contact/and leave a message for us. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS064 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 18, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Guest: Sister Julianna Vagnozzi, CSSF. Topics include: confession and reconciliation, chapel veils, Lent, a real nun on the set of Sister Act II, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• New Protestant religious order seeks advice on habits.
• What’s up with chapel veils and mantillas in church — too old-school, sign of respect, gender stereotyping?
• Confession and reconcilation
• Do habits “cause” vocations?
• Lenten solidarity with people who are poor
• A real sister gets into the act in the movie Sister Act II

Do you have a question for us? Visit “Sister Mary Evoca” at http://anunslife.org/contact and record your question or comments for us and the A Nun’s Life Community. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Iam often impressed by how creativity and compassion go hand in hand. The Sisters of St. Joseph in Australia provide a good example of this.

On Friday, the nuns begin a nationwide road trip to raise funds for disaster recovery in Australia. The nation has had severe floods and other natural disasters in recent months, and many people continue to suffer from the effects of these events.

Sister Julianne Murphy is in the driver’s seat for the seven-month project. She’ll lead the effort with stops across the nation for fundraising dinners, visits with young people at schools, and visits to areas affected by natural disasters.

All the funds will go to grants for local projects for disaster recovery, through the Mary MacKillop Foundation. Mary MacKillop founded the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1867 and is the first Australian saint (canonized October 2010) in the Roman Catholic Church. For more information about the Sisters Travelling Roadshow, visit their website ( http://bit.ly/ifC77w).

As the sisters get ready for the road, I pray that they will have a safe trip and that their Travelling Roadshow will raise lots of funds for people in need.

Please join me in prayer by writing a blessing for the sisters in the comment box below.

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

The Sisters of Saint Francis of Philadelphia are spearheading a proposal for McDonald’s Corporation that they respond to the public health concerns and data about the effects of fast food on the health of children. The Sisters are joined by a number of other religious communities including Benedictines, Dominicans, and BVMs as well as other health, financial, and educational organizations.

The Franciscan Sisters are shareholders in McDonald’s, owning more than $2,000 worth of McDonald’s stock, which gives them the right to make such a proposal.

PROPOSAL NO. 11: Advisory Vote on Shareholder Proposal Relating to a Report on Children’s Nutrition

WHEREAS, the contribution of the fast food industry to the global epidemic of childhood obesity and to diet-related diseases, such as diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease, have become a major public issue …

RESOLVED: Shareholders ask the Board of Directors to issue a report, at reasonable expense and excluding proprietary information, within six months of the 2011 annual meeting, assessing the company’s policy responses to public concerns regarding linkages of fast food to childhood obesity, diet-related diseases and other impacts on children’s health. Such report should include an assessment of the potential impacts of public concerns and evolving public policy on the company’s finances and operations.

For more information, read the full text of the Sisters’ proposal to McDonald’s as well as a story National Public Radio ran about the Sisters’ proposal.

I’ve read a number of comments on blog posts about this proposal and was struck by a few who thought it was odd that the nuns were shareholders at a corporation, especially at McDonalds. The nuns, some commenters implied, should stick to the classroom and out of the world of business and politics. Well, I got news for these folks. Caring for people and God’s creation and educating people around Gospel values must happen at all levels of society — on the immediate, front lines and at the systemic level. We need to tend to the wounds of the sick and influence health care police. We need to teach children in the class room and have a voice in the public sphere to be sure children are protected and cared for.

The Franciscan Sisters of Philadelphia, for example, are not only working on behalf of children and health as shareholders at McDonald’s, but they help run and teach at Mother Seton Academy which offers tuition-free alternative middle school education to the underserved population; they provide housing and support services for women and children; they run a family counseling center to help individuals, couples, and families; and so much more.

So charge on, my Sisters, and know that our prayers are with you as you walk into that board room.

* * *

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

AS063 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 11, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Guest: Sister Kathie Budesky. Topics include: the daily Examen prayer, God and free will, different notions of vocation, feeling unconnected to God, and more!

This episode was broadcast live from the IHM Motherhouse in Monroe, Michigan, with an in-house audience! Sister Kathie Budesky, IHM, the director of Visitation North Spirituality Center, joined Sister Maxine and Sister Julie on air.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Can you talk more about the “Examen Prayer”? What is it? How do you use it/apply it?
• How do we make sense of God and free will?
• What is the difference between vowed religious vocations and ‘non-vowed religious vocations’?
• What do you do when you don’t feel connected with God as usual?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

IGF007 In Good Faith with Mike Hayes, co-founder of BustedHalo.com, recorded live on March 8, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. Our hosts talk with Mike about parish ministry with young adults, technology, young adults and the church, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Guest: Busted Halo’s Mike Hayes

Mike Hayes, co-founder and senior editor at BustedHalo.com. Mike is also author of Googling God. He is currently in campus ministry at Saint Joseph University Parish in Buffalo, NY. His website is http://GooglingGod.com/.

Show Notes:

• being called to minister with young adults
• some of the spiritual challenges faced by young adults today
• parish ministry on a university campus
• the inspiration for creating BustedHalo.com
• Googling God — the Internet and the search for the Divine
• difference between on-line and face-to-face communication
• “Brief Relief” — a creative social justice approach
• campus ministry at the intersection of pre-professional coursework
• keeping it real — talking with young adults about controversial social issues
• how to make a place in the church for young adults
• advice on starting an online outreach to young adults

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live every first Thursday of the month from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

AS062 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on March 4, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: common v. personal prayer, spiritual poverty, preparing for Lent, ways to pray, and prayer and healing.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Is there a dynamic in community prayer that you cannot get from praying on your own?
• What is spiritual poverty? Should I run from it or embrace it?
• With Lent approaching, how do you plan to honor the season?
• The nuns’ favorite ways to pray
• Does prayer promote healing?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS061 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 25, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: cathedral v. basilica, dealing with depression, the basics on Catholic prayers, encountering less-than-nice vocation/formation personnel.

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• What is the difference between a cathedral and a basilica?
• Do nuns and sisters get depressed? Can prayer help?
• Unpleasant encounters with vocation/formation personnel — should this be a determining factor in whether or not to enter religious life?
• How to listen to Ask Sister in Spain…and other places around the world!
• Is there a comprehensive resource for basic Catholic prayers and practices?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS060 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 11, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: praying to Mary, missing God’s call, nuns in India, Saint Scholastica, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Do Catholics pray to Mary? What is the Church’s teaching, especially in
  light of 1 Timothy 2:5?
• Finding Catholic sisters in India — be sure to check out our interview with Sister Sabitha
• Can you become a nun if you have a child? (see also episode AS059 where Sister Hildegard talks about being a contemplative nun with grandchildren!)
• Is it possible to miss God’s call? What do I do if I did?
• Thoughts on Thursday’s feast of Saint Scholastica

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS059 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on February 4, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Guest: Sister Hildegard Pleva. Topics include: becoming a parent, nun, or actress, am I worthy of God’s calling?, apostolic or contemplative life, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How did you decide between being an apostolic sister or a contemplative nun?
• I’m 23 and feel like something is missing, the sense of fulfillment and happiness. I feel God is calling me, but I wonder, “Why me? Am I worthy enough of God’s call?”
• I am attracted to both being a religious and being a parent. This tug-of-war makes it difficult to listen to God’s voice, and I wonder if you have any advice for me.
• My dream is to be an actress – acting makes me happy. But when I’m at church I feel at peace and hear a call to be a nun. Help!

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

IGF006 In Good Faith with Sister Laurel O’Neal, a diocesan hermit, recorded live on February 3, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. Our hosts talk with Sister Laurel about about the life of a hermit, eremitical solitude, chronic illness, and more!

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Guest: Sister Laurel O’Neal, diocesan hermit.

Sister Laurel O’Neal is a diocesan hermit, theologian, spiritual director and author of the blog notesfromstillsong.blogspot.com.

Show Notes:

• what a hermit is
• historical origins of the eremitical life
• eremitical life in the Camaldolese Benedictine tradition
• discerning a call to eremitical life
• relationship of diocesan hermit to the diocese and bishop
• difference between eremitical life and other forms of consecrated life
• the daily pattern of life for a hermit — the horarium
• lay hermits
• the digital hermitage — a blog as a window to the world
• common misperceptions about the life of a hermit
• chronic illness and vocation
• the unusual vividness of chronic illness
• solitude in the life of a hermit
• deepening the relationship with God through solitude

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live every first Thursday of the month from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

For more information, including upcoming guests on In Good Faith, please visit the program page of In Good Faith.

Here in the Chicago area, we’re getting snow, snow, and more snow! Plus the winds are whipping around, so that when I look out the window, it’s like looking at a snow-globe that’s just been shaken. I’m not real fond of snow, but I love to engage with nature. So this morning, which BTW is World Day for Consecrated Life, I put on a ton of warm clothes and went outside with Sister Julie.

If there are religious sisters, brothers, priests or other consecrated persons who have been an important part of your life, we’d love to hear about them! Please share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

AS058 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 28, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: pooh-poohing a vocation, a matter of conscience, original sin and sex, sudden conversion, female Doctors of the Church, and more!

Special Guest: Sister Sarah Foster, RSM

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

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Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• How do you talk to people who do not understand your calling (e.g., to religious life) or who react in negative ways?
• Conscience. What is it? Is it formed by nature or nurture?
• Is original sin all about sex? Is sex really sinful?
• Why are there so few female Doctors of the Church?
• Is it possible to have a sudden conversion and have it “stick”?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

AS057 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 21, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: legit baptisms, stuff and the vow of poverty, novitiate reception ceremonies, looking for faith on the Internet, commitment to God, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• Is baptism in other Christian traditions recognized by the Roman Catholic church?
• When a person enters the religious life, what becomes of the person’s stuff?
• What was your novitiate reception ceremony like? How did you plan it?
• What are you thoughts on Christian websites with lots of inspirational articles, podcasts, etc. Is this a trend for future generations? Should people also incorporate an outreach such as attending a church service?
• How do I as a layperson consistently dedicate my life to God?

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling, and an email address in case we need to contact you. We’ll play your message and respond on the next Ask Sister podcast — your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.

Another Wednesday morning – one that’s totally out of the ordinary! Ok, so it didn’t look like that at first glance. After all, how can something as mundane as taking out the garbage at 7 a.m. be extraordinary? But in its own way, it was.

I trudged down the stairs and stepped outside, into air so cold it made my eyes water. The rain that had fallen yesterday was now a sheet of ice underfoot, and it reflected the rosy glow of the dawn. I walked into Pink Land gingerly, so as not to wipe out. When I returned indoors, the sudden warmth fogged up my glasses. I unfogged, and thought about the many transitions that a single day brings. We are always on the threshold of something new, even in ordinary moments. I’m not always able to see the extraordinary in ordinary life, but when it happens, I go into the day with more creativity, energy, and gratitude.

How have you experienced the extraordinary in ordinary life? Please share your story in the comment box below.

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Join the sisters and A Nun’s Life community at 6 p.m. Central Time (your time zone) at http://aNunsLife.org/LIVE for Praying with the Sisters live podcast and chat.

Bobbling, giddy nuns? Stern, ruler-wielding nuns? Holier-than-thou and out-of-touch? Not so, my friends. The Philadelphia Daily News recently published an article about the Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus (SHCJ) and did a great job at tapping into the real spirit and life of Catholic sisters and nuns.

AS056 Ask Sister podcast recorded live on January 14, 2011. Sponsored by aNunsLife.org ministry. Topics include: Benedictine monastics outside the monastery, godly anger, church-going dilemma for a Catholic-Protestant couple, not feeling called, and more!

Click PLAY below or right-click here to download the MP3.

Subscribe to A Nun’s Life Podcasts:

Ask Sister podcast is a live podcast where you have the opportunity to engage with us and ask questions about nuns, prayer, religious life, or pretty much anything in between!

Here are some of the topics we addressed in this Ask Sister podcast:

• I feel I have a vocation but recently I’ve felt “not called” anymore. Should I be worried?
• How can Benedictines be considered monastics when so many of them work in the world? … Sister Christine Ereiser, OSB, responds
• What would cause God to be angry with us? (from a discussion about Meribah)
• Is it okay to be angry with God?
• What are some healthy ways for a couple to attend church when one is Catholic and one is Protestant?
• Plus, an update from the “nun-ordering-pizza” debate!

Do you have a question for us? Call our toll-free Voicemail Hotline at 888-703-4732 and leave a voicemail for us with your question. Be sure to give us your first name and city from where you are calling. We’ll play your message and respond on the Ask Sister podcast. You can also send us an email or comment below. In whatever way you contact us, please know that your last name, email address, and any other private information will be kept confidential.