Subject: RE: sister, sister
From: Baader, Cecilia (cbaader@casecorp.com)
Date: Mon Feb 14 2000 - 10:05:23 EST
Scottie Bowman [rbowman@indigo.ie] wrote:
> I don't know what American nuns are like & I wonder did
> Salinger - really. Despite the jolly, sporty image promoted
> by Hollywood, most nuns of my acquaintance 'entered' from
> the pressure of either ambitious/devout families or from
> the unresolved neurotic conflicts of adolescence - & retain
> much of the regret, even bitterness, inherent in these situations.
Twelve years of Catholic school and four years in a Catholic dormitory in
college have given me more than my fair share of opportunity to make friends
with nuns. Jolly and sporty? Sure, some are. Angry and iron-fisted? That
too. Real vocations or simply pressurized? A little of both there too.
I think that the mistake that so many people make with the good Sisters is
to forget that they're human, with the same human failings as everyone else.
Sister Anne Lawrence would have made an excellent officer in the Gestapo,
while Sister Agnes Ann was born to be quietly wonderful, and Sister Mary
Blaise, with her manly voice and manly features, had enough charity in her
not to flunk me in Calculus the semester that I skipped class nearly half
the time. (I surely deserved to.)
I was usually made much more miserable by the lay teachers than by women
like my jolly, sporty Latin teacher, Sister Mary Gael: "Salvete, omnes!"
she'd cry gleefully at the beginning of class as we'd respond, "Salve,
Soror." We'd then launch into the Pater Noster, sing Christmas carols in
Latin, and smile at her wacky love for a dead language that suddenly came
alive under her tutelage.
Sister Mary Simeon would often forget what she was saying and would chew on
chalk until it came back to her. Sister Judith Anne would frighten us all
with her stern demeanor... until the day she stuck her head in the door of
our Latin classroom, asked "Ubi est tui sub ubi?" and hurried away, giggling
to herself. Stunned, we slowly realized that she'd told us an off-color
joke. [Translated literally, "Where is your under where?"]
Perhaps it's because I happened to go through school with the Vatican II
generation, the ones that stayed because they wanted to, not because they
had to, but I never felt separate from them. I don't know that I'd
characterize any of them as particularly holy. They were simply themselves,
with wonderful parts and annoying parts. I wouldn't dare to try to put a
single label on them; they deserve so much more.
So everyone is a nun? Once you tear away that habit from your clouded
vision, it's a bit more clear. It's like Seymour's Fat Lady. We're all the
fat lady, we're all the artist-nun. We're all wonderful and flawed and
dependent and any other adjective that you can find. We're all Christ.
There's a thousand variations on the theme, but that's what I always thought
it meant.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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