TODAY’S SISTERS: FREEDOM FOR WHAT?

This article first appeared in Saint Anthony's Messenger in 1977.  Written by Jason Petosa,  it explores the brave new world faced by American Catholic sisters as they live out the reforms of Vatican II.  

In the mid 1960’s Cardinal Leon Joseph Suenens of Belgium wrote a book with the mildly alarming title, The Nun in the World.  This book captured Vatican II’s spirit of reform, and it became the primer of renewal among sisters.

“I have come to preach peace to the world and war in the convents,” Suenens said.  He was an effective preacher.

American Catholics used to chuckle at cute pictures of roller coasters carrying nuns with wimples wobbling and veils flying.  But the smiles of Catholics hardened when the roller coaster of reform headed for civil rights’ marches.  And the smiles were lopsided when “the good sisters” shucked their billowy habits in favor of modern dress.

Were these “nuns in the world”?  Or “worldly sisters”?

Sister Mary Aloysius was an awesome, sometimes foreboding figure in the third-grade classroom of Holy Innocents School.  She was demure and devoted in the front row of church every morning at six o’clock Mass.

Then she took back her baptismal name, became Sister Barbie Brink, and showed up on the six p.m. news picketing government offices on behalf of welfare mothers.

Had Sister Whatever-her-name-is gone Communist?

When Sister Barbie left Holy Innocents it wasn’t because Reverend Mother slipped a transfer letter under her door.  Instead, Sister Barbie negotiated with her order’s personnel board for an assignment working in a soup kitchen for migrants, counseling unwed mothers, and teaching CCD at Holy Martyrs on Sunday.  (She would share an inner-city apartment with three other sisters, two young laywomen and thousands of cockroaches).

In the CCD program, Sister Barbie and the venerable Monsignor Michael O’Meara tangled frequently over guitar Masses, memorized prayers, the length of Sister Barbie’s skirt and veto power for the parish council.

When the “president” of Sister Barbie’s order sat down for her annual conference with Archbishop Benign of Metro City, there was tension underneath the polite formalities.  The president was sorry, she said, but only 50 instead of the usual 200 sisters were available for the archdiocese this coming year—and none for Holy Martyrs.  Many sisters wanted to be lay ministers of communion, and archdiocesan policy did not permit this ministry for women.  Thus sisters would go elsewhere.  By the way, the president asked, was it true Archbishop Benign was considering a slightly changed policy?

Was this reform?  Or revolt?There had 102 novices in Sister Barbie’s class; 80 had professed temporary vows and 60 had made final vows.  Twenty of this last group had left the order, which now has only two novices and 12 sisters in temporary vows.

Was this renewal?  Or a death knell?

According to some observers, Cardinal Suenens “war in the convents” is nearly over, or has, at least, moved on to less dramatic fronts.  But the casualty lists tell the story of the conflict:

                   ·   The number of American nuns is down 35 percent, from 181,500 to 135,000, the lowest number in 20 years.  For every three sisters in 1966, only two are left today, and those two are much older.  The median age of nuns today is 53.

                   ·     The number of recruits has dwindled to a trickle.  In 1974 there were only about 800 novices in the U.S., and less than 3,900 in the five-year period of temporary vows.

                           Every year there are about 1,400 fewer nuns.  Over 700 sisters annually are dispensed from their vows; more than 700 sisters die each year.

Numerically, sisters are in the last days of an era.  But numbers don’t even begin to reflect the changes in attitude which signal an even newer era than most American Catholics suspect.  For one thing, many sisters don’t care about their dwindling numbers.  For another, sisters took seriously Cardinal Suenens’ admonition to move into the world—and away from Catholic “ghettos.”

Today, for example, the number of sisters teaching in Catholic schools is about half of what it was 10 years ago.  This has meant a 74 per cent jump in the number of lay teachers.  It also means that parochial schools have entered a new financial era.  Twenty-three per cent of the elementary schools have been wiped out—with more closing every year. And Catholic high schools number one-third fewer than 10 years ago.

Where are sisters going?  No one has a crystal ball, and numbers alone certainly aren’t a solid basis for prediction.  In fact, the accuracy of most statistics about sisters is disputed.  But statistics can help identify tends.

SEARCHING FOR HOLINESS

One trend unrevealed by the numbers is sisters’ insistence on personal and structural reform.  They want to make holiness the heart of the matter.

“Holy” is what people are when they allow themselves to be loved by God and when they reflect that love by loving others.  The first part of holiness is being open to God, being receptive to all that he is and would have us be in his image and likeness.  This relationship can be terrifying because it is, as sisters say, a “faith response.”  It’s like Peter climbing out of the boat and walking on water when Jesus called him.

Once Peter’s feet were wet, what could he do?  He knew he couldn’t make it on his own.  So it was sink, or keep trusting that Jesus really did have his best interests at heart.

Most people are not as impulsive as Peter.  They wouldn’t get out of the boat in the first place.  But sisters have struggled to answer Jesus’ call.

Their struggles reveal two distinct approaches to promoting greater holiness of life:  structural reform and personal renewal.

             1)   Structural reform  
      In the middle of this century many sisters saw themselves as straddling the side of the boat.  They had one foot touching the waves and the other foot snared in fishing nets and anchor ropes.  Sisters saw themselves bound up by nets of order rules and ropes from Rome.  They were bound by structures and customs intended to help them renounce the world—but often hindering their response to Jesus’ call to give their lives to the world’s people as he did.

Many sisters preferred to be fools for Christ’s sake.  Like Peter, they wanted the freedom to get out on the water to see what Jesus would do with them next.  It was, and is, a risky proposition.  But after major and minor wars in the convents, and struggles with Rome, American sisters have won the freedom to take their risks.

“By 1970 there was nothing in my congregational structure to prevent me from being what I’m supposed to be,” says Sacred Heart Sister Maggie Fisher, development director for the National Assembly of Women Religious (NAWR).  “The burden was all on me, and I went physically cold.   There were no other scapegoats.  Now I have to ask, ‘What have I done with my freedom, with the possibility of radical conversion to Christ?’ “

“Liberated” sisters, like lay people, can no longer rely on Mother Superior to map out the details of God’s will for them.  Sisters today more often experience the difficulty of deciding the right thing to do at the right time.  And, like lay people, sisters make mistakes.

Our mythical Sister Barbie had to decide whether to continue her teaching in a parish school.  How did she discern what God wanted her to do?

In the old days she prayed for God’s help in accepting what she was told to do; she didn’t have much to say about the actual decision.  Today she talks over the decision with her superiors or with her order’s personnel board.  They consider her talents and desires and the needs that exist for sisters.  After presenting all these things to God in prayer, they try to work out a decision acceptable to all.

The same process is often used for decisions affecting a whole order.  Should the order abandon Holy Martyrs Parish?  What does God want in this situation?  One order has developed a set of criteria for use by laity, priests and sisters in evaluating the order’s presence in the parish.

Yet discerning God’s will in a situation is still difficult—almost like choosing the right husband or wife.  God doesn’t send a telegram saying, “That’s the one!”  There’s no absolute certainty you’re making the best choice.  But with God’s help you can be fairly certain of making a good choice.

“Discerning God’s will is difficult, and you live with that tension all the time; it’s part of the faith response,” says St. Joseph Sister Kathleen Keating, chairperson of NAWR.  “There’s always another period of growth.”

Personal Renewal

NAWR sisters put structural reform as a top priority.  They want to provide a better process through which sisters can confront their call to holiness.

Charismatic sisters prefer to put personal renewal first.  “Dealing with Church structural reform and social issues are the second and third floor of the building, but they are not the foundation of our lives,” says Sister of Mercy Ann Shields, director of the National Charismatic Ministry at the College of Steubenville, Ohio.

“The foundation of our lives is a call to love as I am loved,” she told 750 nuns last summer.  “If we don’t do this, then we have no right as religious to exist.”  She asked each sister to personally experience Christ’s love for her, and to share that love with the other sisters in her community.

Charismatic renewal among Catholics began with lay people, but in the last six years thousands of sisters have joined.  In 1974 the Charismatic Renewal Service Committee published a handbook which estimated over 100,000 people in special prayer groups.  Also in 1974, a small study by Benedict Mawn at Boston University estimated that 13 per cent of charismatics were sisters—one in 10 U.S. nuns.

No one claims to have accurate statistics.  But the trend toward a greater emphasis on holiness is consistent with 2,000 years of Church history.  In every era, lasting reform of religious orders occurred when their members were open to deep personal relationships with Jesus Christ.  Today, nearly all sisters admit that the structural reforms of Vatican II have helped prepare for the spiritual renewal now occurring in different ways among different sisters.

Speaking to charismatic nuns last August, Cardinal Suenens asked them to evaluate the link between holiness and their professional lives.  “Just because you teach mathematics, it is not your apostolate,” he said.  “That should bring you an opportunity to be with people.  Then you will see what your priorities are.  And the first priority is always ‘How can I make the Lord better loved and better known?’ “

Noting that a deep personal prayer life is essential to renewal, he said, “The drama today is not that the world is not ready to listen; it is that we Christians are not ready to speak.”

“As long as we count on ourselves, we are lost,” he said.  “Be open to the Holy Spirit who is inviting us to let him do the work…Then let the nun go into the world everywhere, because she is expected there.  The Lord is expecting you there.”

So today many nuns—those who began with structural reform and those who now embrace charismatic renewal—are in about the same place.  They are challenging the rest of the Church and society to rethink the values behind economic and political realities.  And holiness is their leverage.

But the expression of one sister’s holiness may be quite different from another’s.  To an extent this has always been true, but today there is much more individuality.

Orders see the different expressions of their sisters’ tastes and talents as a strength to be used for the Lord rather than a concession to weakness.  In short, orders still seek the bonds of unity in their sisters’ commitment to holiness and service, but no longer will they put up with the bonds of uniformity which unnecessarily limit their sisters.  Like Edith Bunker, in TV’s All in the Family, sisters are tired of being told to “stifle.”

It may be difficult for American Catholics to get used to sisters in different dresses, different occupations and different living quarters.  But American Catholics need to ask themselves:  Would I be willing to live exactly as my grandparents and great-grandparents did?  Even though I live differently, do I have love and devotion for my family and friends as my ancestors did?

Most Catholics would answer “no” to the first question and “yes” to the second.  So would most sisters.  They don’t want to be valued as sentimental favorites, nostalgic links to the “good old days.”  Like the rest of us, they want to be recognized for generous service.

WITNESSING GOSPEL VALUES

At the recent NAWR convention, sisters detailed some of the new life-styles they’ve adopted to witness their gospel commitments.  One told about living in a slum apartment with several other sisters among the inner-city poor.  Two sisters earn salaries, one as a teacher, another as a consumer affairs lawyer.  Their salaries help support two or three other sisters in full-time work among the poor.

In the Appalachian Mountains, two sisters share a housing project apartment with a lay nurse who pays much of the rent and many bills.  One sister works with poor youths in an alternative school and the other does parish ministry in a poor mountain Church.

“The basis of simple life-styles should not be the old asceticism (of renunciation), but a celebration respecting and reverencing the desire that our fellow travelers in the world can also share nature’s resources,” says Holy Name Sister Carroll Ann Kemp, a religious education director from Washington D.C.  Last year she co-authored a booklet on life-styles for sisters that has sold a surprising 7,000 copies.

Sister Kemp says that (and others) should adopt simpler life-styles not just to renounce materialism, but also to focus on the harmony of ecological and spiritual values.  Material consumption can become a way of life—too much food, too much energy, too many unnecessary things which complicate our lives, abuse the earth that God created, and deprive our poor neighbors of basic necessities.

Christian simplicity of life, Sister Kemp says, means a profound reverence for the poor and for the earth which nourishes all people.  Through this reverence sisters (and others) will develop a lean spiritual and material fitness.

Through their vows, sisters have always reminded other people of the radical gospel question, “What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his immortal soul?”  This reminder is a prophetic function of nuns’ lives.

Sisters stand prophetically with the poor, so that American Catholics feel reproached every time they hear the words poverty or minority or justice.  Often Catholics get resentful.  They feel they can’t do much to help the poor or sow justice in society—yet instead of comforting reassurance the sisters are a constant thorn in the side.

No doubt some sisters seem to rub people’s noses in the gospel instead of kindling the fire of love in their hearts.  But that lack of tact should not distract from the central issue of justice.  The sisters are taking their cue from a century of strong, authentic papal social teaching.  And, in general, American Catholics have been only mildly receptive to that teaching.

“The world needs signs and symbols of people dedicated to God,” says Mrs. Jean Eckstein, president of the National Council of the Laity, in an address to the NAWR convention.  “These people stir the masses and work for changes, sometimes taking leadership …sometimes risking misinterpretation in order to change.  So I applaud your movements through uncharted waters, and it is not too much to expect a lifeline of laity ready to give you artificial respiration should you use up your strength or need additional support.”  But Mrs. Eckstein warned sisters not to become a separatist group, failing to relate itself to the whole Church.

Another warning came from laywoman and author Arlene Swidler.  Sisters do have a special responsibility to help form Catholic thought.  But no one, whether sister, priest or lay person, should talk about subjects beyond their competence or take job assignments away from more competent people.  “If the argument for preferring sisters is that they have credibility or authority than lay people….consider this insult this is to dedicated laywomen and ask yourself what you are doing to right that injustice,” she told the NAWR assembly.

A changed perception of what vows mean partially explains the nuns’ new flexibility and militancy.  By forsaking possessions and the cares of family life, sisters have always seen themselves as liberated in a special way for such charitable service as teaching, nursing, care of orphans, and so on.  In our day, the most famous example of this love is Mother Teresa, the wonderful sister who labors among the destitute and dying people of India.

But American sisters today are asking what injustices in society allow people to remain so poor and abandoned, susceptible to malnutrition, disease and discrimination.  “It’s like the story of people on the bank of a river who saw a floating raft full of dead and wounded children,” explains Sister Kemp.  “The people buried the dead and cared for the wounded.  When another raft came down the river with other children, orphaned and unschooled, the people took in the children and taught them.  But the people never went up the river to find out what was causing these rafts of misery.  The world needs Mother Teresas today.  But it also needs other kinds of ‘mothers’ who will try to remedy the causes of human misery.”

Sisters have watched dedicated lay persons living Spartan life-styles, denying themselves family and wealth in order to work for various causes.  Today’s sisters see their Christian vows of poverty and chastity liberating them for similar plunges into high-risk quests for social justice.

Allied with the freedom of vows is the valuable moral support sisters receive from their communities.  And in some cases they use an order’s financial resources as weapons in the secular marketplace.  Some orders pool their stock holdings I large corporations to pressure the companies to be more socially responsible.

As sisters raise their voices today, they are challenging the morality of society’s economic and political priorities:

·      Why are migrant workers allowed to be exploited?

·      Why are the elderly shunted aside to end lonely days in quiet desperation, eating dog food instead of dining and dying with dignity?                                                                                        
·      Who is responsible for the inequities in our tax system?

·     Is the B-1 bomber the smelly pork barrel for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about?

·      How can humane child care, welfare and compassion be substituted for the crime of abortion?

·      Are right-wing dictatorships a foil for U.S. foreign policy?

·      Why can strip-miners in the Appalachian Mountains rip off the land and the people as well?

·     Why are textile mills allowed to pollute their workers with brown lung disease?

·    Which agribusinesses are driving family farmers off the land and driving up food prices in supermarkets?

As sisters follow up on these social justice questions, examples of their new ministries abound.  They have organized Network in Washington, D.C. to lobby in Congress for their social principles.  Sisters are occupying public office, managing housing projects and helping to organize labor, political and business groups among Chicanos, blacks and Appalachians.

How typical are the new nuns described above?  Aren’t there still lots of “traditional” nuns?

“You have to distinguish between traditional nuns and nuns in traditional ministries,” says Our Lady of Charity Sister John Eudes Duffy, director of pastoral ministry for religious in the Wheeling-Charleston, West Virginia diocese. 

“Only a small number of sisters are NAWR-type nuns creating new ministries.  Most sisters are maintaining the same ministries the Church has been doing for a long time.  They’re teaching in schools, nursing in hospitals, working in orphanages, etc.,” Sister Duffy points out.

“But for the vast majority of these sisters, life is also different from what it was 15 years ago.  There aren’t many nuns today who still have their mail censored, who don’t visit their families more often, who don’t have some say about the apostolic work they’re doing, who haven’t changed their habits somewhat or received the option of wearing regular clothes, who don’t have more personal freedom,” she insists.

“What was typical 15 years ago probably isn’t typical today, but neither is the way-out-front nun typical,” she added.

Change has not affected all sisters precisely the same.  Sister John is a good example of the resulting diversity.

While most nuns in new ministries have taken back their feminine baptismal names, she has kept her masculine religious name.  “St John Eudes was the founder of our community, and I really like the guy,” she says.  “Freedom works both ways, so I wanted to keep my name and I did.”  Although she wears regular clothes, Sister John cautioned that “not all traditional sisters are in habits, and some nuns in habits aren’t traditional.”

Reforming the Church

“The hope of the Church”—that’s what both the avant-garde and the more traditional sisters often hear themselves called.  They’ve even asked to reform the Church’s basic structures now run by clergy:  “For you and me to devote ourselves to social reform or an intense prayer life, or both, and to neglect the basic reform of Church structures can really be a kind of ego-massaging cop-out,” warns Church historian Leonard Swidler.

Sisters may feel that dealing with a floundering parish council or a bullying bishop is less satisfying and important than some work out in the world, Swidler says.  “But what about all the rest of the people
(in the Church)? …We selfishly have not concerned ourselves about their absolute need for a renewed and renewing Church.”

In their enthusiasm for other social action, sisters have worked hard to push government reform by obstinate public officials, but have backed off from persuading stubborn bishops to implement just personnel policies for Church employees, or to improve overburdened diocesan marriage tribunals.  Nor have they devoted much to reforming arbitrary decision-making procedures in some Vatican

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is probably the sister’s best contribution to ongoing reform of Church structures.  About 650 major superiors belong to LCWR, and its leadership meets regularly with the bishops.  In their “presence through dialogue,” according to past president Sister Barbara Thomas, the LCWR maintains a constructive relationship with Church hierarchy.

Interdependence—collaboration with others—was proclaimed the 1976-77 focus for the LCWR.  The group demonstrated what this means through the decision-making process of its annual meeting last summer.  For its leaders (and for many other sisters) the quality of the decision process equals the quality of the decision itself.

As described by Hubert Jessup in the National Catholic Reporter, this participatory process “exemplified the new model of a nonsexist, interdependent Church emerging within the LCWR.  In small discussion groups around circular tables, the assembly conducted its business through a discussion, reflection and expression process.  Decisions emerged slowly but definitely from this hybrid of Quaker-style meeting and modern social science.”  The same basic process was used by the NAWR at its convention last summer.

Present at the LCWR process was Rev. Basil Heiser, O.F.M., of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious.  He commented on the reflective manner of the conversations and especially on the prayerfulness which preceded decisions.  One sister said, “For the first time I came away with the feeling that every sister there owned every goal that was adopted.”  Another sister said she experienced the meeting as “a spiritual search for the religious community of the future.  I found great hope in it.”

But looking to sisters as the” hope of the Church” can’t work for long.  Clergy and lay people cannot afford to evade their own responsibilities for Church reform, sisters say.  Realistically, sister-power has probably reached its peak.  The numbers show, according to one research project, that recruits to religious life are down a whopping 90 per cent in the last 15 years.  That means, says Rev. William Ferree, S.M., that replacements for today’s nuns just aren’t there, although he foresees some help from the “second career vocations” of middle-aged and older women.

The sisters’ big number years in America are over.  “We’re not filling slots in given places any more, and besides we have no corner on the ministry market,” says Dominican Sister Marjorie Tuite, a member of the ministerial team at the Jesuit School of Theology in Chicago.

“The concern today is that we do not become an elitist group, but that we bond together with lay people in the Church’s total ministry,” she says.  “There is no concern for this or that community of sisters to endure, or even for nuns as such to endure, but that there be Christian witness however God chooses to evoke it.”

“Sisters are called the hope of the Church,” Sister Keating says, “but today they are not willing to rest on their laurels.  They are trying to see if they really are sources of hope.”  The basic concern today, she says, “is that we not be the victims of change, but rather that we have a hand in directing change.”

“I recall hearing a Methodist bishop talking about change,” says Sister of Charity Mary Ransom Burke, communications director for her order.  “There’s the fear that so much has been lost and we want to go back and pick it up.  We can’t do that.  You have to go ahead and you’ll find the important things you think you may have lost.”

“It’s not the work the sisters do, it’s how we do it that’s important,” says Sister Thomas.  “It’s what we are to the world.  We are called to bring a personal and corporate presence to the world, a presence that is tapped and discerned by the needs of the times, a presence that speaks of a faith response to Jesus Christ.”

There’s no treading water for sisters today.  They are walking across the waves, secure only in the faith that, like Peter, Jesus will not let them sink.  If the Lord has a better destiny in store for them, it makes no difference if sisters get a little wet and windblown.  And even if American Catholics get splashed a little, they too have a good reason to keep faith as the future unfolds.