Au Regard de Notre-Dame
heretical dissenting womenpriest, queerplatonic aubergine, former employee of the Catholic Church, Francophone cat lady hermitess, education and social work student, and somewhat episcopalian university student who works with nuns after class.
I know what boat I want to be in
Sr. Joan Chittister
I love the sisters whose congregations belong to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. I’ve lived in three convents run by three different religious communities who are part of the LCWR (almost four) and spend a good amount of time with one particular congregation in the States.
There is a lot to be said about these women. They do everything in their dioceses. For the community I volunteer with and have dinner with a lot, they are social workers, nurses, teachers….they run hospitals, schools, several diocesan offices, parishes, non-profits, they work to end capital punishment, the deportation of migrant workers, they work to end the cycle of poverty. They are intensely prayerful, compassionate women who have spent every day of their lives serving Jesus. They never get any credit from American bishops, especially not now. They got investigated instead by Cardinal Law (what the hell was the vatican thinking???)
They don’t wear habits, and haven’t since the 1970s. The way they are treated because of this is simply absurd. I’ve seen seminarians and priests dismiss them simply because they don’t “look like nuns.” Because I’m at the Motherhouse for all the feasts, some of the younger priests and even lay people mistook me for a sister, too (I dress like Nikki Grant meets Dutch lady theologians), and their attitude towards me and the sisters was absurd. And this wasn’t because of something the sisters did—it was because they weren’t ~traditional~ and didn’t wear a habit.
These are sisters who have literally gone across the world, started hospitals and schools where no one else wanted to go, took shit from priests and bishops for years, help the people no one else wants to, and love the people everyone wants to forget about. .One of the nuns I lived with had the ministry of working with Dignity USA before they were shut down by the vatican—and you know what? She still works with the LGBT community because love of Christ and welcoming neighbor and all that stuff in the New Testament
I understand that there is this move in the Catholic Church towards ~orthodoxy~ or ~traditionalism~. I was all for that at one point in my life, a very sad part of my life when I was a very depressed young teenager. That doesn’t give any priest, any lay person, the ability to insult them, to hate them, to hope their orders “die out.”
Because you know what? These women are the strongest women I know. They aren’t afraid of bishops, priests, or even the pope. They taught me about strength, about really serving Jesus (not the hierarchy), and about walking with one another.
tl;dr: if you are going to judge the LCWR on what they wear, hope their orders “die out,” and treat their sisters like shit while praising habited nuns as “better” you need look at your life, look at your choices, and you seriously need jesus.
| Sr I: | I got another speeding ticket. |
| Me: | wait, ANOTHER? |
| Sr I: | this makes three in only two months...but in two different states! |
| Me: | ........... |
| Sr I: | I have to tell Sr. Pat that we have to skip Christmas. I've spent our money on the speeding tickets. |
At a time when the sick died uncared for, and the uneducated died illiterate and the poor or addicted died destitute and minorities died invisible to the rest of society, women religious chose to challenge any and every system for the sake of the coming of the reign of God.
And in the end, they succeeded. But don’t be fooled: They did not succeed because their numbers were large or their influence was great or their social support was either broad-based or obvious. They succeeded because they refused to allow the ideas of the past to become the cement of the future. They succeeded because of the courage of women who went where they were told not to go.
"St Gertrude of Nivelles
my heroine forever
[please ignore the BLATANT grammatical error in the first paragraph of this piece. Time get yourself together]
The five women were from small town America but chose to live in the midst of one of West Africa’s most brutal civil wars. Each belonged to the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, a St. Louis-based Catholic order; each had volunteered to live in Liberia, not only as missionaries, but as desperately needed relief workers.
Three of the sisters have jubilees this year, and I get to go to their Mass and celebration on December 1!
