oxygen, and that nuns have been quite in helping this country achieve its greatness.Posted on 07/08/2009 9:42:30 AM PDT by NYer
The news that the Vatican is now making official inquiries into Catholic nuns in America and whether they are adhering to church doctrine obscures a very important history about nuns in this country.
For nearly three centuries, Catholic nuns have worked heroically, unselfishly, tirelessly, against all odds, to make this great country what it is today. The US economy would not have come so far through the centuries without the help of American nuns.
You rarely see the American history of Catholic nuns reported in the media. A bit of journalistic astigmatism, reductio ad absurdum.
But a new exhibit touring museums throughout America may cahnge all that. The new exhibit makes the courageous effort of Catholic nuns in shaping this country’s landscape quite plain.
I respectfully urge and invite Vatican officials to make a visit to this exhibit. Only then will they appreciate how many Americans feel that the work of Catholic nuns is as vital as oxygen, and that nuns have been quite in helping this country achieve its greatness.
The exhibit is called “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” and is organized by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an association of leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States.
The exhibit was done in association with the Cincinnati Museum Center. In the 3,200 square foot exhibit, you’ll find letters, artifacts, images and multimedia displays. It opened in Cincinnati, Ohio in May, kicking off a three-year tour (see schedule below), and is possibly headed to the Smithsonian Institution in the nation’s capital.
“We started this exhibit out of an intense desire to share the history of the Catholic sisters and their contributions to the history and culture of the United States,” Sister Helen Maher Garvey, a sister with the Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary order and chair of the history committee for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, has reportedly said. “The sisters feel very strongly that it is an untold story.”
Make no mistake, I am a Catholic, and I love my faith. I don’t agree with it on a host of issues. And it’s an atrocity that Catholic priests have committed outrageous, disgusting criminal acts of sexual abuse against the young, whereby they have molested and raped children. Every last one of them should be put on trial and, if found guilty, thrown in jail.
And yes, if you’re Catholic and you’ve been taught by nuns, you’ve likely run across the jokes about Catholic sisters, about being taught by a Sister George C. Scott or a Sister Mary Handcuffs or the Sisters of (No) Mercy, or Sister Mary Aloysius Expialodocious, you know, the nuns who will haunt you until you can recite your multiplication tables in your sleep. I get all that.
But what bothers me is this. The New York Times’ recent story noted that the Vatican inquiries have “startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition,” as their teachings may be at variance with the Vatican.
However, what is inconsonant is what the Times didn’t report in its elision of a story, that is, the extraordinary bravery and derringdo of Catholic nuns, nuns who arrived in America more than 300 years ago, when the first Ursuline sisters arrived in New Orleans in 1727, nuns who have stood under a bright light and lifted it higher in this during the country’s darkest hours, nuns who have helped stream forward a rushing river of love that began 2,000 years ago, to paraphrase Saint Bernard de Clairvaux.
Information like this, which comes from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious:
*Catholic sisters’ quiet heroism during the Civil War, the Gold Rush, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Influenza Epidemic, the Civil Rights Movement, even to this day in their work with Hurricane Katrina. For example, more than 600 sisters from 21 different communities nursed both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.
*Catholic nuns have served frontier communities, talked down bandits and roughnecks, lugged pianos into the wilderness, and provided the nation’s first health insurance to Midwestern loggers.
*Throughout periods of struggle and controversy, Catholic sisters have opened orphanages, schools, hospitals, colleges, universities, and provided other social services that have served millions of Americans.
*The U.S. Catholic school system is the largest private school system in the world, largely established and run by Catholic nuns. More than 110 U.S. colleges and universities were founded by Catholic sisters. The first American-born saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, SC, founder of Sisters of Charity, was a mother and widow who established the nation’s first free Catholic school (EMac: One of my favorite quotes: “Faith lifts the staggering soul on one side, Hope supports it on the other, Experience says it must be, Love says, Let it be.”–Saint Elizabeth Seton.)
*Today, approximately one in six U.S. hospital patients is cared for in a Catholic facility.
*During its founding, Alcoholics Anonymous received vital support from Sister Ignatia Gavin, CSA, who successfully advocated that alcoholism be treated as a medical condition.
*Catholic nuns have contributed to science. That includes pioneering research in infrared spectrography by Sister Miriam Stimson, OP, research which supported the discovery of DNA.
*Since 1980, nine American sisters have been murdered while working for social justice and human rights overseas.
*Since 1995, numerous congregations have participated as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the United Nations, focusing on global issues such as climate change, human trafficking, and poverty.
“I have to admit that I simply overflow with pride in, admiration and gratitude for such a phenomenal service and ministry within the Church, for the Church, over so many centuries,” says my friend, Sister Margaret Mary Forsyth of the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND). “When I go back to the high school students and permanent Deacons whom I taught, and ask them, ’how do we spell Church’?, they learned it very well–’P E O P L E!’”
And listen, too, to what Cokie Roberts, news analyst and author, has said:
“From the time the Ursulines arrived in New Orleans in 1727 up to today, women religious have made an incalculable contribution to this nation. Running schools, hospitals and orphanages from America’s earliest days, these women helped foster a culture of social service that has permeated our society. Over the centuries these courageous women overcame many obstacles–both physical and cultural–to bring their civilizing and caring influence to every corner of the country. Understanding and celebrating the history of women religious is essential to understanding and celebrating the history of America.”
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Upcoming showings:
“Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” has been scheduled at the following museums:
The Cincinnati Museum Center Cincinnati May 16-Sept. 7, 2009
The S. Dillon Ripley Center The Smithsonian Institute Washington January-April 2010
The Mississippi River Museum Debuque, Iowa February-April 2011
Check the exhibit’s Web site for updates: www.womenandspirit.org
Ping!
“We promised the Penguin we see her when you got out of the Joint”. - Elwood Blues
It’s a pity that nuns get a bad rap from a lot of folks. The history of nuns in the US is amazing. OK many of them today are theologically off kilter, but that still doesn’t take away from the good that they’ve done past and present.
I have tremendous admiration for Nuns! God Bless you, Sisters!
I have an enduring sense of gratitude for the quality of my K-12 education in Catholic schools, much of it by nuns.
Nuns in pantsuits and playing vestal virgins notwithstanding, nor for that matter some of the lousey and even cruel theology they pounded into elementary children in the pre-Vatican II days, they made near all he difference for me. God Bless every last one of them. Those who are of an age and a shared experince can appreciate what I mean.
Lol! The Blues Brothers is one of my all time favorite films!
Ditto! At the time, we often balked and complained but judging from the poor English grammar we see today, we owe these dedicated servants of God, a great debt.
And they kept the public school system honest. Most Catholic grammar schools charged no tuition, and the nuns had few responsibilities beyond teaching.
Someone to be particularly grateful toward for the role of nuns in Catholic education and life is 'Dagger' John Hughes. Unjustly forgotten today, Hughes was a formidable reformer as the Catholic Archbishop of New York in the mid-19th Century and was the force behind the creation of large Catholic school systems in New York and, by example, the rest of the country.
Hughes also:
. . . [put] Catholicism’s Marian Doctrine right at the center of his message. Irish women would hear from the priests and nuns that Mary was Queen of Peace, Queen of Prophets, and Queen of Heaven, and that women were important. The “ladies of New York,” Hughes told them, were “the children, the daughters of Mary.” The Marian teaching encouraged women to take responsibility for their own lives, to inspire their men and their children to good conduct, to keep their families together, and to become forces for upright behavior in their neighborhoods. The nuns, especially, encouraged women to become community leaders and play major roles in church fund-raising activities—radical notions for a male-dominated society where women did not yet have the right to vote. In addition, Irish men and women saw nuns in major executive positions, managing hospitals, schools, orphanages, and church societies—sending another highly unusual message for the day. Irish women became important allies in Hughes’s war for values; by the 1850s they began to be major forces for moral rectitude, stability, and progress in the Irish neighborhoods of the city.
"How Dagger John Saved New York’s Irish," William J. Stern
http://www.city-journal.org/html/7_2_a2.html
A crew of no-nonsense nuns (like the kind that taught me) would do more good for the nation's "unteachable" children than all the sensitive, caring, self-esteem raising, modern pedagogues put together.
DITTO
At his recent installation as Archbishop of NY, Dolan chose to wear John Hughes pectoral cross. He kept flashing it at the very long processional line of priests, bishops and cardinals, hoisting the cross in honor of Hughes.
She is utterly incapable of speaking or writing ungrammatically, is a dead cinch as a speller, and has a keen sense for flaws in logic.
:-) Several times each week, without fail, my boss asks me for the proper spelling of words. I was also educated by the good nuns in the Diocese of Brooklyn during the 50's and 60's. They used the Jesuit system of rote. Not only were we graded on content but also on spelling, grammar and penmanship. It was appalling to recently learn that many school districts across the US have now dropped cursive from the curriculum. It is also disheartening to note the number of young adults who cannot do 'mental math'. Only a few months ago, I encountered an 11th grader from one of the highest ranked local school districts, who did not know how many eggs make a dozen. That is shocking!
It seems we spend more and more each year on school taxes that produce poorer quality students.
a bunch of bull.
That is what nuns did in the past: The sisters are being examined because they are no longer doing that work. Too many are busy pushing the liberal agenda.
As for the nuns killed since 1980. I presume she is talking about the nuns killed in El Salvador.
But I knew a lay missionary pilot who quit when he found guns in the hospital supplies he was carrying.
Even (liberal) Andrew Greeley satirizes the connection in his book “Virgin and martyr”. The heroine foolishly gets involved out of a good heart, but others around her are ideologues...but in the midst is one quiet nun who is despised is the one who keeps her vows and actually does some good for the people.
It is these quiet nuns who are keeping the orders going...alas two of my friends left orders because they wanted a stricter order and a better prayer life, but they had trouble getting accepted by these stricter orders ended up married instead...their husbands agree with Martin Luther: If you want a good wife, marry an ex nun...
;-)
The history of nuns in the U.S. has nothing to do with the Vatican’s current investigation.
The problem is that today’s nuns don’t want to do good works, they want to be political activists.
(I attended parish catechism classes taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph, then I attended jr./sr. high school taught by the Ursulines, back when nuns wore the full regalia.)
That must have been long before my time.
I am pleased to hear that John Hughes is remembered and honored by his current successor.
I have had similar experiences with coworkers and superiors asking me to review their written work product. Catholic schools take themselves seriously and recognize that facility with language is essential to progress in academics and life, while the educational mission of public schools is deeply subverted by bureaucratic, political, and ideological considerations.
A few years ago, a friend of mine spent six weeks in rehab for a stroke. Not long into his stay, he was politely barred from trivia contests and word games in group rehab therapy because other patients resented that he seemed to always know the answers even when no one else did. There were resentful mutterings that he had an unfair advantage because he went to Catholic schools.
Actually, my friend went to public schools and was a convert to Catholicism in middle age. But it seems that the benefits of Catholic education are so recognized now that they are part of the Catholic identity.
We know that ... the author of this piece, does not.
Like you, I also was taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph, before they dropped their habits and began supporting the UN.
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