By Rita McInerney

Sister Frances Whitman was a career woman when she entered the Grey Nuns of the Sacred Heart 25 years ago. This was in 1964 at a time when the Church was on the threshold of broad changes being wrought by Vatican II.

“Mine was what they call a delayed vocation,” she explained. She enjoyed working for Atlanta architectural firms, did so for about 14 years and found her work “enlivened.” Then she became interested in the Religious life and started “looking around. You look at the sisters you already know.” She knew a lot of Grey Nuns and over the next three years she started visiting with friends in the order. She made her decision to enter the congregation after much thought and inquiry.

She first became familiar with the Grey Nuns as a student at Christ the King School from fifth through twelfth grades, enrolling the first year the school was opened.

Life was very stable the first year of her novitiate at the Grey Nuns motherhouse in Melrose Park, outside Philadelphia. “Everything started to change in the second year,” she recalled. “Everything but prayer life, that hasn’t changed since I entered.” She liked these changes in convent life, found them “exciting. They made me grow. It’s really been an interesting time to be part of the Church, especially all of the things Vatican II brought to the surface.”

“God really knew it was better for me to wait,” she admitted.

When she entered, her order was semi-cloistered. The sisters could not go out alone, had to have a companion; they couldn’t eat with family members on visiting days at the convent.

The, “the year I made my first profession I was allowed to drive home (to Atlanta) with my family on vacation. It was a real treat.”

She came back to her native Atlanta to teach at Immaculate Heart of Mary School, 2855 Briarcliff Road. She taught for three years, then took a year to study for accreditation as a principal. She was five years as principal at IHM, from 1970 until 1976 when she began to feel “that education was not where I wanted to be at that point.”

She enrolled in night classes for the gerontology program at Georgia State and in August, 1976, found a part-time job at the Tribunal, the office of the archdiocese where annulment proceedings are handled.

In April, 1977, Father Edward Dillon, head of the Tribunal, asked Sister Frances if she would consider full-time work. “This is the way the Spirit works,” Sister Frances said.

To deal with her new responsibilities professionally, she attended summer institutes on the marriage tribunal at the School of Canon Law at Catholic University in Washington, D.C.

She had always know that she had “something of a gift for working one-on-one with people.” She uses this gift in her role as advocate. She is the first person who sees the material the petitioner for an annulment submits. It is her responsibility to clarify the proceeding for the petitioners and to interpret their story for the people who will be making the decisions.

She must also be available to the respondent, (former spouse) to make sure that he or she is accorded the same rights as the petitioner. About half of those she comes in contact with are non-Catholics.

Sister Francis responded with her lively laugh when asked if she was one of those “tenderhearted” women who make it so easy for American Catholics to obtain annulments. This was the view of women Religious in tribunals expressed by one Curia cardinal during the March 1989 meeting with the American archbishop at the Vatican.

“I do empathize,” she admitted, “but there is a strict canonical format that must be followed. It doesn’t help anyone if we try to bypass this.”

She tries to be open to what is presented and balance this with compassion. “We’re all in the service of truth in the Tribunal.”

Sometimes it’s hard to get the truth. “You have to be intuitive. You have to try and help them open up. There’s a lot of heartbreak.”

“By the time they come to us it’s a positive situation. They’re choosing to go through with it to get to the other side.” And on the part of the Tribunal staff there is always “the desire to help them get on with their lives,” she stressed. “I don’t get depressed,” she says when people ask her how she can sit and listen to all the problems and heartbreak of the marriage cases she works on. “We’re giving them life in the Church.”

She believes the “divorce mentality” of the current age makes is simple for people not to confront their problems. And with the stress produced by the pace of life today, people don’t feel it necessary to develop lasting relationships.

But the Church, she said, has not changed toward the marriage bond. It is more aware of the many facets of peoples’ lives that impact their relationship and is willing to listen to the problems. Before, she said, there was not the recognition there is today that some “crosses are not meant to be borne if they are really destructive.”

At the celebration for the seven jubilarians and those sisters leaving the archdiocese held Sunday, April 30 at the Village of St. Joseph, Sister Frances was presented by Sister Pierrette Remillard, G.N.S.H., as “a real Southern lady” endowed with the graciousness and hospitable nature the term suggests.

She is appreciated among co-workers and other Grey Nuns for her sense of humor, her compassion and depth. She is a good listener with an inquiring and creative mind and the ability to well express her thoughts and creative ideas.

Sister Frances celebrated her 25^th jubilee on the Tuesday after Easter at a Mass celebrated by Father Richard Kieran in the small chapel of the old convent at the Cathedral of Christ the King. It was an occasion with deep meaning for her, surrounded by members of her family and community. The old chapel’s stained glass windows depict scenes from the history of the Grey Nuns. She has a brother and sister living in Christ the King parish.

Twenty-five years after she joined the order she views her commitment as different today. “It is focused more broadly, almost made day by day.” She has lately become much more aware of how God affects her day-to-day living. “I don’t think it’s all up to me. Now I go with the flow, with a sense of the rhythm of life.”

Now, she finds, she makes her decisions based on all of the things present in day-to-day living intertwined with the spiritual values so central to her life.