Throughout my Catholic childhood, we were regularly encouraged by the nuns and priests to pray for a vocation (where vocation, of course, meant becoming a nun or a priest). When I was in high school, my friends and I put a spin on it and joked about praying that we not have a vocation.
For my friends and I, the strategy apparently worked, and no one ended up going in the convent.
At one point, I was quasi wooed in. Along with girls from throughout our order's province, I was invited my senior year to attend a gathering of student council officers. It was a conference, with a couple of overnights thrown in, at the motherhouse. There we were housed in a rather drab and dreary dorm setting to discuss weighty Catholic school student council issues, like how to punish those who smoked in uniform. We were adjacent to the area where the postulants - these were the girls fresh out of high school who were in formation to decide whether to become professed sisters - and, while we weren't exactly encouraged to mingle with them, we were encouraged to watch them. Look! They're normal girls! They play basketball! They eat ice cream! They sing songs from Sound of Music and the more wholesome numbers from West Side Story, which was pretty much "Maria." They're just like you!
One of my closest friends was also in attendance, and neither of us was all that charmed by our peek at nunnish life. And we knew a failed recruitment effort when we saw one.
That same year I was more personally, albeit lightly, targeted, as often when I was in earshot of a nun at our school, she would smile and say "it's the ones you least expect."
I can't remember her name, but she was new to my school that year and obviously hadn't heard that one of her colleagues had been telling her classes that I was "preaching dangerous heresy" because in religion class I questioned why taking the birth control pill was the mortal sin equivalent of murder. (One of my friends always said they lost a generation when, morally and mortally-sinnishly speaking, they equated French kissing with mass murder.) According to Sister CP, who was certifiable, I was also a known communist because I'd suggested that the senior class project be raising money to help fund a school in Nicaragua. (This never happened. Our big fundraising project was buying a sign for the school's main gate.)I suppose this nun thought I'd be a good nun because I was a good student and personable. Oh, and I wasn't boy crazy. (I.e., I didn't have a boy friend.)
Anyway, the girls in my class who did enter the convent were not in the "least expected" category. Both were in the Sodality, a religious organization that the more pious girls joined. Sodality was one of the few clubs at my school that I didn't participate in.
One of these girls lasted about a year. She married, had a family, and became an artist. (Actually, she always was an artist, and a very talented one.) The other girl - a sweet and gentle soul if ever - is still "in." We were never particularly friendly, but we briefly reconnected a few years ago and had lunch a couple times. After teaching for a while, she has devoted her life to social justice, working with refugees, battered women, poor kids, and any other group in need that came her way. Sweet and gentle she may have been, but plenty tough.
Anyway, after so many years in Catholic school, I have always looked on nuns with some degree of fascination and interest.
I find their "career choice" to be quite weird. Who would chose this life? But then, of course, I had successfully prayed away any putative vocation - perhaps the last thing I actually prayed for before I realized that, while I may have been baptized a Catholic, I was pretty much born an atheist.
So, nuns...
In any case, the latest nunny-bunny object of my fascination and interest is the story about the trio of ancient nuns Sisters Rita (82), Regina (86), and Bernadette (88) in Salzburg, Austria, who recently made the headlines.
People are calling us the rebellious sisters!" Rita says with a giggle and a glint in her eye.
The three Augustinian sisters — who use only their religious names — recently ran away from a nursing home and, with the help of a local locksmith, broke back into the convent that used to be their home. Rita jokes that they are octogenarian squatters.
Giggles aside, Rita says they were taken to a nursing home against their will two years ago when church authorities shuttered the cloisters as nun numbers diminished. "When the opportunity arose to return to our beloved convent, we didn't wait for his permission" (Source: NPR)
Instead of waiting to (holy) see the priest who was their overlord, the nuns enlisted parishioners who hired a UHaul and move them back into the place they'd called home for decades. Since their move back home, the trio has been supported by a growing cadre of friends, including former students.
Needless to say, the prelate, Markus Grasl - who stuck them in the nursing home when the convent's numbers dwindled to just the three and it was no longer viable to keep them there - is not happy with the nuns' great escape. Nor with their media-savvy decision to go public. Christina Wirtenberger, a former student, is an adviser and key supporter of "'operation get thee to a nunnery.'"
"We invited the press along to prevent the provost [Grasl] from turfing the sisters out of the convent," Wirtenberger says. "I was told that he would not be so bold in front of the press."
With the nuns growing public exposure and support - and their 70,000 Insta followers - the hierarchy felt they had to fight back. So Grasl "brought in a PR firm specializing in damage control."
Spokesman (PR flak) Harald Schiffl has been pecksniffing the pushback. The nuns were consulted before the move. The move was in their best interest. These nuns on the run are breaking their vows. And in fine pecksniff fettle:
Schiffl says the nuns' social media presence is unbecoming of their order and that their superiors take a dim view of it.
"Without all the media interest, a viable and sustainable solution would have been found long ago, causing far less damage to the church," Schiffl asserts.
Make that Shiffl pecks and sniffs.
Sister Bernadette - remember that she's 88 - counters that their use of social media is not god-awful. It's god-given:
"So heaven uses tech to spread the word? God arranged this, not us!"
Then there's this from a priest supporter:
"The church authorities fear the media like the devil fears holy water because they'd rather keep hidden what is going on behind closed doors," [Father Wolfgang] Rothe says.
And of course, what would a story about nuns in Salzburg be without a mention of the Von Trapp family.
As it turns out, Maria's granddaughter Elisabeth, who is singer - runs in the family, I guess - became a friend of Sister Bernadette a while back, and has sung in the convent:
"I believe Sister Bernadette has a message," von Trapp says. "It has a lot to do with how she has taken care of the community and who is now surrounding her."
There's no denying that as you age, you do tend to need more care, and a nursing home may in fact be a reasonable setting for aging nuns from a shrinking-into-oblivion community, from both a health and financial standpoint.
But the outside-the-convent community VonTrapp mentioned is rising to the occasion.
Among them is Karin Seidl, another former convent student. She says the sisters have devoted their lives to the community and now it's time to give back.
"This is their home! And although we've organized for 24-hour care starting next week, I live just three minutes away so I'm also on hand," Seidl says. The church is surely about practicing 'love thy neighbor,' not just preaching it."
She says the sisters are as devout as they are defiant and that they deserve agency and dignity in old age.
As do we all.
Can't help but rooting for them, no?
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Image Source: MSNBC
And a shoutout to my brother Tom who sent me this article.
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