In the 1950s, an audience of nuns had to listen politely as ecclesiastical speakers addressed them as “venerable Sisters”. They squirmed and sometimes muttered under their breath, but their public response was the sisters’ staple commodity- they smiled.

If the speaker had even used a dictionary, he would have learned that venerable meant “capable of being venerated, generally implying an advance age”-Ouch! And in the categories of saints, venerable is applied to “these who have attained the lowest of the three degrees of sanctity.” Lowest? Indeed!

The Pious Cliché

Venerable is on its way out, but its substitute is the smug and patronizing cliché, “The good sisters”. Aren’t there good laymen, good priest, good bishops? Father Leo Trese spotted this as early as 1950:

“One of the priesthood’s baffling mysteries is how we dare to patronize these women whose sanctity, whose zeal and ability, often exceeds our own. Our facetious references to “the good nuns” or to “Mother Abbess” may inflate our ego, but there must be wincing in Heaven at the ingratitude of priestly ears. If there were table-talking among the saints, surely a high-ranking topic would be: “How do priests get that way?”

Key is Fidelity

Sisters are human too. They may get angry, or jealous or dissatisfied. But they so often rise above these traits of weakness that there must be a cause. I think it’s fidelity, loyalty and the continuity of a life given to God and consecrated by Him for special tasks.

These are not popular goals today. Much higher on the list are freedom, self-expression, and self-fulfillment. The good solid terms that are part of the new conciliar age (involvement, commitment, the right of conscience) are truly Christian imperatives, but when they stress self and its identity outcome. The involved person needs most of all the core of fidelity-to the Church in the world and the religious community. And the most conscientious adherence to one’s commitment, whatever it is, demands a loyalty to the form of life I have freely chosen and God has most generously blessed.

Of today’s tensions, how many rise in the needs of society and the Church, and how many arise in self—my way, my will, my talents?

More Than A Spokesman

Last year, Paul VI took up the subject of sisters that Vatican II had outlined briefly. He told the sisters why the Church loved them: for their faithfulness to Christ and fidelity to the gospel spirit, the service that religious communities give to mankind in hundreds of ways. But he emphasized this: ‘The Church loves you for your vivid, living example…If there is still so much good in the world, it is because there are those who look up to you, though they may not let you know, and who draw from your example the strength to remain faithful.”

Our sisters are teaching, nursing, supervising, doing social work in the slums, directing catechetically our schools of religion, praying in contemplation, easing the agony of incurable cancer victims. But a sister, any sister, just walking down the street in Georgia is more than a spokesman for the Church. She is a sermon, the voice, the act of God in person.

Recently a perceptive Catholic columnist, John Cogley, did one of his best essays: “Generation Gap hits the Convent.” With profound understanding, he discusses the “older” and “younger sister” (but he adds that is really not the point). The convents know this tension. It would help the laity to understand if they could grasp it. The decline in vocations, the leaving of sisters, the discontent in some of their lives are not “evils.” They are the elements of a situation that can either slow down our pilgrimage with Christ, or (if our trust in God is dynamic) can purify and refine the convent ideal, holding faithfully to this special dedication yet stripping the past of what is useless; meeting today’s needs but as religious women, not as their secular counterparts.

Don’t Crush The One

Cogley sees the older group needing the sense of security that the traditional life gave. He sees on the other hand, the “moderns” and their youthful background, their freedom and their revolutionary idea of a vacation. “The future, of course, belongs to the young…if convents are to survive at all, they will have to do so in terms that make sense to the contemporary generation.”

But we owe the “good sisters” of old (even thought we change the title) the hope that they will live their days happily. And the young ones (and we too) should do everything we can to help and understand them. Any institution that kicks the heads of those on whose shoulders it is standing is doomed. And change should merge the old and the new, not crush the one and exalt the other.

Our Own Senate

Our Sisters’ Senate, established by the Synod, is now in action. Last Saturday, nearly 150 attended a day of recollection at Conyers. They invited me to hear confessions, offer Mass with them and give two conferences, on the FIRST STEP (Prayer) and the ROAD (Religious Vocation). It was a privilege to be with them.

Our Senate might well take to heart Bishop Lawrence Casey’s words to the Paterson Sisters’ Senate last Sunday. In closely reasoned talk, this outstanding bishop made these points: “It will be your Council. You are mature, dynamic religious women, fully capable of running your own show.

“You are mature women, and you have a right to speak up without any fear of reprisals or recriminations.”

Our own Senate and your bishops join in a loud “Amen”.

Paul J. Hallinan

Archbishop Of Atlanta