The Digital Nun

Hi everyone. I did another film. This one is a little three minute tour of our chapel at Providence Heights. I have my office in this same building and I live near here.

This is where we attend daily and Sunday masses. I hope you like it. If it doesn’t start right away , don’t give up, it will just take a few seconds.

Peace to all,

Sr. Judy

In keeping with trying to tell about my life, I thought I would include something here about some volunteer work that I do. For the past few months, I have been a volunteer at Animal Friends in the North Hills area of Pittsburgh, and I tried, with the help of my able camera operator, Sister Clarice Carlson, to make a short film about it.

I recently got some new video software and I haven’t yet figured out all the bells and whistles on it. So this film lacks titles and smooth transitioning from one scene to the next. So, I guess my films will not win any Oscars…yet.

Below the film I have put the website for Animal Friends. If you are in the Pittsburgh area, it’s really quite a nice place to volunteer.

Again, once you push play, the video is taking a bit of time to start. So, please don’t give up.

Here is the website: www.animal-friends.org

Well, I am back now from Detroit. It was a busy week there, with two vocation talks, and three presentations, along with the radio interview on Busted Halo.

Now that I am home though, I have a little time to concentrate on doing some writing for the Digital Nun, and I thought I might share an experience I once had with prayer.

One of the requirements of making an application to religious life is often an autobiographical statement. During my application, I took the writing of my autobiography very seriously and ended up writing this 60 page tome. (I found out later that the community was expecting maybe 5 pages.)

Once I had it done, I took my completed autobiography to a friend and asked her to read it over for me. She came back to me and said that she thought it was all very good except for one thing. She said that there was this nice flow to it, until I got to my spiritual journey. At that point, writing became choppy and disjointed, and she wondered why.

Although I never said so, I knew that it was because I lacked confidence in talking about my spirituality. I was always better at speaking about faith, prayer, and the Gospel, in general terms, but when it came to my own journey, I would kind of subtly shy away from the conversation. Nevertheless, I returned to my extensive manuscript, attempting to make my spiritual journey flow.

Because I had no computer of my own, I was using a co-worker’s and could only work on it after everyone had gone home. I had been in the habit of staying at the office sometimes until 11:00 at night, pouring out my life story onto the keyboard. On the night that I was trying to update the spiritual section of my autobiography, however, nothing much was pouring out. What I was mostly doing was sitting and staring at the screen. It got later and later and I still had made no substantial improvement on my work, and I was frustrated and tired.

One thing that I really remember about that night was how everything around me highlighted my being alone there. A desk lamp over the computer table gave the only light in the whole office, which sat on the edge of the woods. Outside the open window next to me, all was dark and the sound of the crickets only made the silence seem louder.

I was, by this time, spent and instead of continuing to grasp for any words that might sound good to the Sisters, I just sat there and stared at the screen. That’s when something happened that I doubt I will ever forget. There in the eerie silence I heard a voice. It was not an audible voice, but rather something inside me that at the same time beyond me. The voice said just these few simple words: “You know, I really am real.”

That was all there was. At that point, everything around me kind of faded into the background and I was alone there with those words. I really am real. They were repeated over and over again inside me and each time they seemed to go a little deeper. I was stupefied really because at that point I knew, beyond any shadow of a doubt not only that God was real, but that all of God’s promises were real. I also knew, all at once, how unsure I had been up to that point that God was real.

I can’t overstate what happened next. I was euphoric. If God is real, I thought, then that changes everything! I am here as part of this magnificent creation and my only purpose grow in union with God. I knew then what Julian of Norwich meant when she said, “… all will be well, and all will be well, and every kind of thing will be well”.  I stopped caring about when I would finish the autobiography and just kind of floated out of the office to my car, and home to my bed.

The next day, at morning mass, I was absorbed by this feeling that we are all a part of this Mystical Body and that all the people there were my sisters and brothers. I felt a genuine love for each one of them and I wanted to say it out loud, even though I didn’t.

This feeling carried me through several days, but just like the Apostles, I have to leave Mount Tabor. Still, I have never forgotten that experience and to this day, almost 15 years later, I am still drawing spiritual nourishment from it. (Jesus said that if you drink the water that He gives, you will never thirst again.)

I wanted to share this experience with the people who read this blog, because everything God gives us is meant to be shared. I hope some of you will want to share here as well.

Peace to all of you,

Sr. Judy

P.S. I eventually finished my autobiography and managed to cut it back to a mere 15 pages.

Hello everyone!

I am still here in Detroit. Last night I was a guest on Father Dave Dwyer’s “Busted Halo Radio Show” talking about this blog, telling my vocation story, and discussing the Providence Companions in Mission (temporary commitment) program.

This morning I gave a presentation at a parish near to Detroit on “The Counterculture of Community”. The people were really very welcoming and receptive, and a number of of them stayed around afterward to ask questions. While it was all very nice and there were nice connections being made there, I wanted to write about this one question that kind of took me aback. One of the parishoners said to me, “Now that you Sisters really aren’t in Catholic schools anymore, you’ve kind of lost your purpose, haven’t you?”

I had no sense that this person intended to offend in any way. Rather is came across to me as a simple statement that we lost our purpose by leaving Catholic schools. Then someone else said to me that many people today really don’t know what Sisters do these days. I thought … wow…I’ll bet that that’s true. When I look back at my own life, before meeting women religious, I don’t know if I could have said what they did. So, I thought that I would say something about what some of the Sisters in my community do.

The Sisters of Divine Providence sponsor a number of ministries. We have two schools (one pre-K through 12, and one that is K-8) as well as a college. We also have a summer camp, a homeless shelter, a family support center with a childcare program and programs for teens, adults and families, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse, and a shelter on the Mexican border to assist those seeking refuge in the United States. We also sponsor two reteat centers and a house of prayer.

As far as what our Sisters  are doing, we are teachers and professors, retreat directors, principals and administrators, nurses, chaplains, campus ministers, social workers, dancers, psychologists and therapists, liturgists and pastoral associates, childcare workers, librarians, lawyers (canonical and secular), physical therapists, activities directors, secretaries, early intervention specialists, artists, and peace and justice coordinators.

I say all of this not to be on the defense, but because I think it’s important that people know that we are out there working in order to participate in the building up of God’s kingdom on earth. I would not like to think that there are people who think we have outlived our purpose …and since the Scripture says that the “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.” (Mt. 9:37), there’s really no one who is working for the sake of the Gospel who can outlive their purpose.

Anyway….just a few thoughts.

Peace to all,

Sr. Judy

Well, this week I am off to the Motor City.

I am going in order to deliver a presentation called “The Counterculture of Community”. I will be offering this presentation three times in three parishes in the Archdiocese of Detroit and its purpose is to discuss the effects of excessive individualism in our U.S. culture.

While I was at Boston College I studied this topic I became interested in the impact that an increasingly individualistic culture is having on our Church here in the States. By individualism I mean that one’s focus tends to be on oneself, or on oneself and one’s family, but not so much on any greater community beyond that. The effect of this, when it comes to faith is a more or less privatized spirituality. The person believes in God, but their faith is not a shared faith, and it is often a kind of homespun set of beliefs that support that faith.

It seems that as a nation, we are becoming more and more individualistic, not only in our faith, but in other areas of life as well.

I don’t want to bore anyone with a bunch of statistics, but let me just offer a few to illustrate the point.

·        The United States divorce rate is the highest in the world at nearly 50%.

·        Participation in the PTA (as an example) is down from earlier memberships of the 1970’s by 60%.

·        Political participation (voting, working for candidates, etc…) is down by 30-40% from the 1970’s.

·        Attendance at weekly Mass among Catholics is down from 74% in 1957 to 31% in 2004.

People really are just becoming less and less likely to become involved in things outside the home, and the effects have been very detrimental to our society and to our Church.

So many people are now in a kind of go-it-alone faith journey, saying “I am spiritual but not religious.”, and they are missing out on the support of other believers. They are missing out too on the nourishment that is offered through regular participation in an intentional faith community. I can’t imagine how I would be able to maintain my faith without community.

The other Sisters and I thought that if people could have a lived experience of what it means to belong to an intentional faith community… a community of people who are together for the express purpose of living out their baptismal call to participate in the Gospel mission… then they could learn how important community is to the Christian life. Then they would want to bring those values and commitments with them wherever they went, whether that be into their marriages, their parenting, their ministries, their parishes, or wherever it might be.

Of course, if after a person had an experience of living in our community, that person wanted to enter religious life, we would be very happy for that. But we want to believe that living this life even for a period of time would be a valuable experience to the person and, through that person, to others.

I don’t know if anyone would want to weigh in on this issue. I would love to hear from people. Do you see our society as too individualistic? What do you think are the causes of this? What do you think we ought to do about it, if anything?

By the way…thanks to all of you who have been visiting this site. I really like doing this and I am so happy when I see that people have been here and were thoughtful enough to leave comments.

Peace to all of you.

Sr. Judy

Well, I am going to be on the Busted Halo Radio Show as a guest of Fr. Dave Dwyer. This is a show that is on channel 159 on Sirius radio which is The Catholic Channel.  Tuesday night is vocation awareness night and I will be interviewed at 8:20pm this Tuesday, May 6^th, talking about my blog and also about the Providence Companions in Mission, our program for temporary commitments to religious life. (You can read about this program if you go to the temporary commitments page.)

So, if you have Sirius radio, and unfortunately I do not, maybe you can check it out. And since I don’t think I will actually hear the show, maybe you can write and tell me how I did!!

Peace to you all.

Sr. Judy

Yesterday I discovered RSS feeds. For those of you who don’t know, this is a way to feed into the most up-to-date information from another site and have it show up on your blog.

 I thought this was really cool and I wanted to do it. Another Sister suggested to me that I try the LCWR site. LCWR stands for Leadership Conference of Women Religious. It was founded in 1956 to help its members to carry out their service of leadership and further the mission of the Gospel in today’s world. (http://www.lcwr.org) I am happy to say that it worked and you can find it down on the left.

In looking for this LCWR feed, I was surprised to run across a blog that attacks the LCWR (and member communities) for its attempt to apply Catholic Social Teaching to the issues facing our nation and world today. The assertion seems to be that the LCWR is a misguided organization that has abandoned its Catholic identity in its drive to advance a liberal agenda. 

The site lists many of LCWR’s published statements from the last 6 or 7 years and says that it is because of ideas and attitudes like this that we have few vocations. The comments made in response to this were mostly negative to the LCWR (18 out of 20) and many were remarkably hostile. Common among the comments was a sense of dismay over the lack of mention of the Pope, and the continual attention to “things of this passing world”.  One person called the statements of the LCWR “pathetic dribble”.

They also state that what these LCWR Sisters are concerned with have nothing to do with the Church. At this point it was me who felt dismayed. The plight of the poor and marginalized have everything to do with the Church. One only need to read even portions of his encyclical “Sollicitudo rei socialis” to know this.

The comments also praised some Sisters, but it was mostly for wearing habits. Beyond that, they seemed to know little of what these communities are about. The writer of the blog asked why anyone would want to join a community because of the stand it takes. I would ask then, why would anyone join a community just to wear their habit?

Our founder, Bishop Wilhelm Emmanuel von Ketteler, was active in trying to secure justice for workers in Germany, and encouraged us to pay attention to the signs of the times. If the only way we could get new vocations was to abandon our commitment to carry out the social teachings of the Church, and to put on a habit simply because some people think that this is the only way to holiness for religious Sisters, then, sad as this would be to me, I would rather not have any.

 Here is the site if you wish to visit it:

 http://closedcafeteria.blogspot.com/2007/08/out-of-habit-issues-of-lcwr.html

 As always, I welcome your feedback.

This is the third entry in my series on the habit. I am not sure that I intended for this to be a series, but it seems to have turned into that.

What makes a habit a habit?

The type of habit of which we usually think has its origins in Europe, but there has never been an official habit of the Catholic Church. Different communities have always worn different habits. Some were a long black dress and a long veil, but some ‘veils’ were really coronets with wings. According to Elizabeth Kuhns in her book “The Habit: The History of the Clothing of Catholic Nuns”, different communities wore their habit for different reasons. For example, while the Benedictines’ and the Dominicans’ habits were intended to set their Sisters apart as women consecrated to God, other communities donned habits in order to blend in among the people they served. The Daughters of Charity, for example, chose their habit because it was the common dress of the poor of the day.

While some communities were committed to simple habits, sometimes made of rough material, some were not. According to Elizabeth Kuhns,

 “…the Benedictine abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1197) had ‘lavish taste’ and designed ‘elaborate crowns … from memories of her heavenly visions. She allowed her nuns to wear these ornaments along with loose, flowing hair and floor-length, luxurious white silk veils on feast days, reasoning that Christ should be presented with as much beauty as they could offer.’”  

 Still, there were a couple of things that were true of most, if not all religious communities during these earlier years. The members were expected to dress common clothing.

So, maybe the only thing that makes a habit a habit is that it is something worn by all members of a religious group. Maybe it is simply a way of dressing that is reflective of a calling, but does it have to be a dress with a veil? Could a habit be a sort of common dress, but something more reflective of our times and culture?  

Could a group of Sisters, for example, decide to wear a polo shirt with the name of their community, or some other type of insignia embroidered on it and perhaps a simple pair of slacks or a skirt, and call it their habit? What about the veil? In a society where so few women wear head coverings, is it necessary for women religious to do so?

 In my own view, I think that a habit, or common dress, could be something simple and modest that will serve to make the members of a community more visible in public, and serve as a subtle reminder to the wearer of her identity and commitment, but needn’t be something that bears no resemblance whatever to the everyday dress of the times.

This is a follow up of yesterday’s post ‘Why Do Young People Want Habits?’.

 Again, because I think that this issue is an important one to young people who are considering a vocation to religious life, it’s probably a good idea to talk about it.

  So, what about the pros and cons of wearing a habit? I’ll begin with the pros.

 On the positive side, a habit contributes to simplicity. A person who wears a habit does not have to give much of her attention to clothing and can therefore give that energy to other pursuits (hopefully worthwhile ones). She doesn’t have to go shopping for clothes, and doesn’t have to concern herself with whether she has the right clothes for this or that occasion. (Being a person who really does not like shopping for clothes, or worrying over whether I have the right clothes for the right occasion, I have to admit that, for me, this is one attractive quality of the habit.)

 Another positive is visibility. When Sisters wear habits, people know they are Sisters. It is an unmistakable symbol of someone’s commitment to the Church and to God. When Sisters are not visible in society, I think it makes it harder to attract new vocations.

 Lastly, I think that a habit can be a reminder to the person who is wearing it. By this, I don’t mean to imply that those of us who are not wearing habits are forgetting who we are. What I mean is that I think that wearing clothing that is particular to a person’s identity can act as a subtle but concrete reminder throughout the day of the commitment she has made. There is something to be said for being clothed in the garb of one’s identity.

One of the possible drawbacks to the wearing of the habit is the tendency for others to forget that the person wearing it is just a human being like everyone else.

I was intrigued by an article that appeared on another blog called: “A Nun’s Life” authored by Sr. Julie Vieira, IHM. (www.anunslife.org) The article appeared in the Washington Post and was entitled:

“Buzzworthy Sisters in Habits Headed to Va. School”

It is about the Nashville Dominicans, a community of habited Sisters, opening a school in Northern Virginia. Here is what some of the parents said about the idea of having their children taught by Sisters in habits:

 “I’d love my children to be taught by a nun! It’s just unheard of, especially in this day and age,” said DeRaymond, a 41-year-old mother of two, practically squealing. “They’re going to say ‘No’ to a nun? Not do their homework?” Meyer, 39, a mother of three, nodded in agreement: “To have them be taught by nuns in a habit — that alone will make a major difference.” (By Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, November 25, 2007; A01)

My question is why this mother thinks that a child will not say no to a Sister, and why this other mother thinks that the habit will make the difference. It’s as if they think that being a nun, and especially one in a habit, places the wearer on such a pedestal that no one would think to say no to her. To me, it feels as if they no longer view these Sisters as a mere humans, but as someone rather above it all. 

(One danger in this scenario is that the person wearing the habit, in the face of such treatment,may also forget that she is human like everyone else and begin to act the part of the holier-than-thou.)

As a person who taught junior high school, with Sisters both in and out of habit, I can say that the habit may make a difference for a short time, but when the novelty wears off with the students, the habited Sister has to rely on her classroom management skills just like everyone else.

Another drawback is the whole nostalgia piece. Often when people see the habit, they are drawn to their memories, or what they have heard, of a simpler, purer, and more stable past. They may see women who are quiet, unassuming, quaint and kindly, and content to live in the shadows of a male dominated Church and society.

The problem with quaint, is that quaint is never relevant. A person who is quaint has an old-fashioned charm, is interesting, and pleasing, but is rarely a mover and a shaker.

I actually don’t think that this image is based in reality. I am troubled more because people seem to want to see Sisters in this way. The image of a Sister who will stand up to the Church hierarchy like St. Catherine of Siena, or who will fight for reform in society like Sr. Helen Prejean, or Bishop Oscar Romero, seems these days to be less attractive to people in general.

In all, however, I think that the habit has merit. Habited Sisters are in no way obligated to maintain an image that is not based in reality, and needn’t respond to attempts to put them on a pedestal. Habited Sisters have the advantage of visibility and are not burdened with having to maintain a wardrobe.

I would love to know people think. If you have any thoughts at all about this topic, please don’t hesitate to submit them in a comment.

In my next entry, I will discuss the difference between the habit and common dress. So, again, stay tuned…