Tuesday, May 10, 2005

FIGHTING HARD FOR A LEGACY OF FAILURE

In my new screenplay, I have a scene in which an elderly dying man, stubbornly resists his stated attraction to be reconciled to God. After a wracking bout of bloody coughs, he rasps to the young priest hero of the piece, "I told myself my whole life, that I wouldn't turn to God in the end because I was afraid."

I got this line straight from real life. Suffering from Parkinsons, an agnostic aunt of mine said this to me one night a few years back, after a few glasses of wine. I remember being bowled over by the pathetic absurdness of it all, saying, "And? How is that working out for you?"

I have thought of this line many times in the last few weeks as the Church has gone through the process of electing the 265th successor to St. Peter. Suddenly, all the grey-haired dissenting Catholic pundits were back in their beloved limelight, stubbornly defending their disastrous tenure as the arbiters of American Church life. Watching them, I thought of my aunt. "Eventually," I thought, "one of them is going to break down and say, "Hell, we really screwed up, didn't we?"

How about Richard McBrien saying, "That freakin' Catholic philosophical tradition may have been oppressive and patriarchal, but damn if it didn't produce students who were more rigorous in their thought."

Or how about Andrew Greeley looking up from his latest soft-porn manuscript to shrug, "Humanae Vitae was right. Sex outside of total commitment objectifies women and de-civilizes men."

But the ones I'm really waiting for are the Joan Chittisters, osb, and the legions of other women who, in one lifetime, devastated the power and tradition of religious communities in the U.S. Certainly, some one of these unhappy women is eventually going to exhale, "Well, that was a mistake."

Because of my personal history, I find religious women to be the most egregious offenders in the "stubborn refusal to have a keen sense of the obvious" contest.

THE PLANET. THE PEOPLE. THE PREACHING.

Two weeks ago, I spent two days of meetings in a Chicago airport hotel. Waiting at the curb at O'Hare for the Wyndham shuttle, I found myself suddenly surrounded by a flock of overweight, grey-haired women in Walmart clothes and sensible shoes. "Nuns" I knew with certainty.

(It's so ironic that most American nuns went secular so as to get away from any kind of indication that religious life was anything special. The whole point was to blend in. But is there anything as conspicuous as a nun in lay person's clothing? Beyond not having the resources to dress well, they are not the kind of folks for whom accessorizing is a main preoccupation anyway. If it were, they wouldn't have been attracted to religious life in the first place. Sheesh...!)

As we boarded the shuttle, I said to one of the fourteen nuns, "What Congregation are you with, Sister?" The woman was annoyed at me for asking for some reason. I have experienced this cagey coldness before from the secular religious who, I guess, are too busy campaigning for social justice to be nice to strangers on an airport shuttle. The nun murmured back, "Sinsinawa" and then leaned into a conversation with the sister beside her.

"Sinsinawa," I thought. "Ah, Dominicans." (I love that I know stuff like that.)

Walking in to the Wyndham lobby, we were all greeted by a large sign which read, "Dominican Sisters Assembly: The Planet. The People. The Preaching." The sign - I found it on line here - was decorated with, a graphic of planet earth, I think with flowers on one side of it. It was clearly some kind of planet, anyway.

Taking it in, my head bent spontaneously to the side in perplexion. "The Planet? The People? I can give you 'the preaching' as that is, after all, a Dominican thing. But what about 'The devotion to Jesus in the Eucharist? The rosary? The enlightened intellect? Or, blow your mind, 'St. Dominic'?"

YOU KNOW YOU ARE TOO BUSY WHEN...

Still, I am someone who likes being around nuns. So, I was actually kind of enjoying the joke that I was going to spend the next two days surrounded by them. And, then, I thought to myself, "Hey, I'll be able to catch Mass here with them tomorrrow morning, instead of trying to convince myself to trudge the two miles to the nearest church. Cool."

So, I turned to the friendliest looking sister near me (I know it is my personal pathology, but secular nuns always look kind of scary to me), and I asked her, "Sister, what time are you all having Mass tomorrow? Would it be possible for me to crash?" I thought that given secular laissez-faireness, letting a lay woman crash the assembly's Mass would be an acceptable kind of rebellion.

But the sister looked back at me in confusion, "Mass?" she said. "And why would we be having any kind of Eucharistic liturgy on Friday?"

"Oh crap." I thought. "I just outed myself all over the floor here, didn't I?" Aloud I said, "Oh, sorry... I thought...well, because you're all sisters...but of course, why would you...I mean..." [retreat into stupid nervous laughing sounds]

The sister turned away from me like last week's blue-light special. A few seconds later she turned around again, holding a brochure out for my inspection. "We have a VERY packed schedule."

I decided to go get a beer and check in later. As I walked away, the sister called out to me, "We do have a meditation room. You would probably be welcomed to use that."

"Oh, hey, cool. Thanks."

My dark side took over. I couldn't resist. Soon, I was slinking down the hall, past the table displays about political protesting, following the signs for "Prayer Circle Space." I slipped inside, even now, looking around to see if Jesus Host was there somewhere, waiting to be asked for help in salvaging the Dominican communities in the United States. But no.

They had a circle of chairs around some kind of a mounted paper mache planet thing. I guess it was supposed to match the planet image that I had seen on the sign in the lobby.

There was no Jesus. No Mary. No Dominic. No Thomas or Albert. No rosary. No cross. No anything to establish this group as Domincans, nevermind Christians, nevermind Catholics.

But none of the sisters seems to mind. They were everywhere in groups of three and four, laughing and hugging, and just fine with the fact that everything they have as a community will end with them. There were no younger members.

Later on, I asked one of the nuns, also having a beer in the bar, why the community was meeting at an urban hotel. "Don't you have any retreat centers with some nature around? It seems like with your theme of "The Planet" you might pick a place that has some trees..." The sister gulped her beer and shrugged. "We need to get away from all the places we work. In a hotel, we don't have to worry about doing the dishes and making beds. We have a lot of work to do."

Talk about your understatement of the half-century.

The problem is, they won't get to the real work they have to do. They are going to die clinging with gritted teeth to their errors. They are going to see the property and the institutions sold off. So many wonderful places that were acquired through generations of sacrifice by the people of God and the members of their own communities. And they are going to watch it all with unflinching commitment to the revolution. They are so like the nostalgic Marxists who taught me in grad school. Even six years after the wall had smashed down, they just wouldn't give over that Communism was a failure.

Being stiff-necked isn't a virtue. It's just very sad. Somebody needs to tell the secular nuns that. Not me, of course.... (shiver)

49 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Being stiff-necked isn't a virtue." Have the Dominican nuns never learned that SUPERBIA --- pride --- is the head and origin of all sin, the most deadly of the 7 deadly sins? The sin whereby Satan fell? St Thomas taught this in his SUMMA THEOLOGICA and of course he was merely expressing the orthodox view. It seems the Dominicans have forgotten.

Anonymous said...

Barbara - good post and all too true, and sad. Thank God for Nashville is all I can say.

To anonymous though, don't mix 'em up. Those are Dominican SISTERS not Dominican NUNS. Dominican nuns, or moniales, are enclosed contemplatives and a VERY GOOD THING. They have not as a general rule fallen for the nuttiness of their sisters.

Anonymous said...

I just finished visiting the Dominican website and reading all the reflections and notes from the convocation---- YEESH! How providential to then stumble upon your post--- What you say is so true and just as sad. Great blog!

Anonymous said...

"Masses? We don' need no stinkin' Masses!"

Yes, there are plenty of Dominican NUNS in stable monastic houses that are in good shape. There are also young and fresh SISTERS coming up, too! http://www.nashvilledominican.org

and

www.sistersofmary.org

Lauren said...

These aren't real Dominicans -- once one has totally thrown off the Dominican spirituality and lifestyle, they're just random laypersons, not even lay Dominicans. Lay Dominicans know better than that -- when I became a novice in the Third Order, I was thrilled to be becoming a part of the Dominican family. However these sisters are totally rejecting the family. And, okay, on one level you can't really leave the family, not even if espoused to a really creepy person (Modernism), they've essentially done all they can cast off what makes Dominicans Dominican. And so while they're still part of the family, it's because they can't help it.

That make me sad.

Anonymous said...

When Teresa of Avilla was dying her last words were "I am a daughter of the church." I am aware of so many religious orders, women and men, who are in dissent. I have friends among them. I pray every day for them that they will turn back and become true sons and daughters of the church.

Bill White said...

Dear Barbara,

You wrote: But none of the sisters seems to mind. They were everywhere in groups of three and four, laughing and hugging, and just fine with the fact that everything they have as a community will end with them. There were no younger members.

Sounds like the good sisters practice their own form of contraception, while folks like the Nashville Dominicans are open to new life.

Cheers -

bw

Anonymous said...

I came here from the Anchoress blog and based on her description alone I was certain that your post would be about Sinsinawa Dominicans.

I had a very schizo education... split between Jesuits and Sinsinawa Dominicans. Lucky for me some conservative Jesuits got a hold of me before the Sinsinawa's did.

I will never forget getting into a yelling argument at a Ramadan meal at my University (don't ask). I had it when she told me not only that she believed that in many ways Islam is superior to Catholicism, and that women should be priests, and that the fact that there were no women Cardinals indicated that the church was going to die off because it wasn't moving with the times.

I finally just flat out asked her why she was a nun... and why the heck she didn't go become an Episcopal priest. That didn’t go over very well.

The fact that I went to a Sinsinawa Dominican School and was never introduced to Aquinas until I decided to further my understanding of theology on my own. In retrospect I should ask for my money back (or at least the portion that was supposed to be spent on religion class - which was long on 'Peace and Justice' and very short on Aquinas)

I truly think that I may have had a calling to be a nun... but to be honest the examples I saw were so very pitiful that I couldn't possibly consider joining them.

Sorry to write a novel in your comments… this is one topic that just makes me crazy.

Anonymous said...

A quick list of all the insults packed into this short article.

Religious sisters are:

1. Fat*
2. Grey*
3. Old*
* not uttered as some sort of empirical observation but as if these are bad things.
4. Bad dressers
5. Cold
6. Hostile to strangers
7. Scary
8. Blind to their errors
9. Akin to communists
10. Stiff necked


Now a list of the religious comments:
Religious sisters are:

1. Sinfully prideful
2. Secular
3. Non-Christian
4. Non-Catholic

Oh, wait....those are insults too; of course.....

Damn,here I was thinking that I'd become a good orthodox Catholic finally by burning my back issues of "America", and now I find out I have to go to Mass on Friday, too!!

Oh well, it's Saturday night, I think I'll go to CVS and buy a trashy Andrew Greeley novel and give myself some cheap thrills.......

Anonymous said...

Barbara, sorry I missed you. I'm a younger member of one of the OP congregations (of the 70 of us "newer members" there). I would have loved to have chatted with you. I'm sorry you weren't invited to join us for mass which was offered everyday we were there. And I'm deeply saddened that you felt so negatively responded to. I'll certainly share your thoughts with others from the convocation. Many blessings on your ministry in the media.

Anonymous said...

I think of my mother as she was dying. I think of the Dominican Sister coming down the hall- the mere sight of her could render a Fulton Sheen speechless. Entering the room, praying, knowing what had to be done, sending for a priest, arranging a Mass...... consoling, listening.

But then she would be off. To visit a shut-in, to see another dying person, bring the Bread, to help someone find grocery money, etc.

There still are thousands of these "daffy" usually older women, with few recruits yes but not necessarily no recruits either. Every day they visit the dying, the sick, the imprisoned, they vehementy oppose the madness of war typically. They instruct, counsel and pray. They reconcile dying AIDS victimes with their families. They run shelters and feed the homeless. They support issues of peace and justice and question our obsession with big often phallic shaped nuclear weapons. They teach and guide others.

Fewer in number, yes but far better educated theologically than our grade school sisters, they do question the church's male dominance and homophobia. They do not believe God could possibly be a man. They do remind us we must care for the planet or we won't have it. They do beleve Jesus invites all women and men to the table as equals. (What nerve!)They don't perseverate on the sexual do's and don't's all that much but generally encourage relationships built on love and growth in relationship to that which is holy. They live lives of service and simplicity in a society of plethora and selfishness. They do not claim to be perfect.

And these are people you criticize so vehmently. Why? Try asking yourself that!!!1

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