Thank You Dear Sisters For Empowering Today's Youth

The Madames at the NYC 

Convent of the Sacred Heart 

on 91st St "Back in the day"

I had some ties to the Convent of the Sacred Heart School on Manhattan’s upper east side back in the late ‘80’s.  Even then I was impressed.  Here you had high-school girls from the wealthiest families in New York volunteering in AIDS shelters back in the day when Doctors were refusing to treat HIV positive patients for fear of a disease we did not yet understand.  This was a school that turned girls into women and prepared them to take their place at the top echelons of whatever career they chose to go into.  But then that was the way that the Religious of the Sacred Heart—those nuns in “back in the day” were known simply as “The Madames”-- approached education.  They were the drill sergeants of the Church’s women marines and they weren’t going to waste their time on the arts of Eisenhower-era housewifery.  So I was delighted a month ago or so to see the following article appear on the local newstation:    

Some high school students in Manhattan are using their math lessons to lend a literal helping hand.  They've created and built a prosthetic using a 3-D printer.  It's not your traditional high school math class. Instead, it's a brilliant blend of math, engineering and problem solving, all with a purpose. With the help of a state-of-the-art 3-D printer and a group called E-NABLE, students at Sacred Heart are now constructing prosthetic hands for children in need.

"It makes you want to go to math class every day, as funny as that might sound," one student said."

And how it all works is surprisingly simple and inexpensive. Through E-NABLE, the students were matched with 16-year-old Justyn, who needs two hands made, as well as Nathanial and Isaac, who are both 6 and need one hand each.  By calculating and scaling each boy's measurements and taking into account their unique personalities, the kids have been creating custom designs.

"We're designing him a Wolverine X-Men-themed hand, which is really exciting," one said.  They are designs that can easily become a reality with the help of the printer.  According to teacher, Tanya Lerch

"One of the biggest things you get that makes you cringe as a teacher is that question, of when are we going to use this in the real world," "So to suddenly have this project where they not only saw how it was helping the real world, but there was a real person receiving it on the other end."

When Lerch first heard of the E-NABLE project, she knew her students would jump on board. Now, the all-girls school on the Upper East Side is one of only a select few in the country participating in the project.

"They're using their heart, they're using their brain, they're here after school working hard when they don't have to be, I think it was a really nice change of pace for them to do something that is helping someone else, and to see that engineering can be used for the good of people."

It's truly a labor of love that will undoubtedly be well received this holiday season. In fact, Nathanial is planning to visit the school next Friday to receive his custom prosthetic in person.

"We take having hands for granted so often, at least I know I do, so I think the fact that we can give a little boy a hand that he doesn't have, it's something that's so simple and absolutely amazing," one student said.

And believe it or not, this is not an expensive endeavor. Granted, these aren't medical-grade prosthetics, but they're functional and only cost about $20 a hand to create.  The staff at Sacred Heart hopes upon seeing this, more schools will jump on board.

The Religious of the Sacred Heart, by the way, are members of LCWR.  This is one of the things that causes the fear and anxiety about the modern nuns of people ranging from Archbishop Lori and Cardinal Burke all the way down the ladder to the Katholik Krazies like our friends at Restore DC Catholicism and The Tenth Crusade (which apparently has moved back to its previous name from being—for a while—What The Pope Really Said.  Why do so many people fear competent nuns?  Is it because they serve as the perfect foil for us to see the incompetency of so many priests and bishops?  Whatever the reason, we need more women like the Religious of the Sacred Heart that can give our future generation both a mission and the tools with which to accomplish it  

Evangelical Catholicism and It's Not The Veil That Makes The Nun

I recently saw an article on YAHOO entitled “What’s It Like To Be A Thirty-Something Nun” (http://waysify.com/a/225086/what-its-like-to-be-a-30-something-nun)

Here is the opening paragraph:

Sara Marks is a 31-year-old nun. But, put away all your preconceived notions of how a sister should be — she'll defy all of them. Marks wears mascara and Calvin Klein dresses. She loves the Back to the Future trilogy and watches reality TV. She couldn’t live without a hair straightener. She loves to dance and wander around Manhattan ducking into adorable coffee shops. She travels and goes to the beach. She’s a photographer. She writes music and plays the guitar. She’s funny and warm and loves her life.

I wish I could say that the interview gets better from there, but it really doesn’t.  It’s not bad, mind you, it’s just—well—superficial.  About the best is

"We are normal people leading normal lives who happen to be committed to living simply, promoting social justice, and speaking out for those who are poor and marginalized. We are centered on God and faith, and we do pray, but we also sit down and watch television and go to the movies, just like anyone else."

This is good—but you know this is something that should be able to be said about every baptized Christian.  You don’t need to be a nun or a monk or even a priest to promote social justice or to speak out for those who are poor and marginalized.  Same about this quote about the vow of obedience:

It is really obedience to God’s word, to really listening to the other sisters, your friends and your family to learn what God is calling you to do. That is all fluffy and wonderful and sounds great on paper, but living that is hard. It is a balance.

I am not writing to denigrate what Sister Sara aspires to be—to the contrary, I only want her and others like her to aspire to be more.  but first let me defend her against some of the katholik krazies that write things like

Sorry to inform the readers, but these women aren't Catholic nuns. The Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia is a New-Age cult that has nothing to do with Catholicism or Christianity. They worship an entity they call the "Cosmic Christ" which is NOT the Jesus of the New Testament. This article gives no information to the person who would truly like to know what the life of a Catholic nun is like.

Sister Sara’s community, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, are a recognized community of Religious women in the Catholic Church.  The are part of the Sisters of Saint Francis of the Neumann Communities, a federation of Franciscan communities founded by Saint John Neumann, Bishop of Philadelphia, in the nineteenth century.  They are recognized as Catholic Religious by the Holy See.  Furthermore, all Christians  who hold to Christian orthodoxy worship the “Cosmic Christ” who is no other than He Who is described in Colossians 1:15-20.  

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness^* was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross [through him], whether those on earth or those in heaven.

Now I want to put all this in the context of the theme we have been touching on occasionally which is a response to George Weigel’s book, Evangelical Catholicism: Deep Reform in the 21^st Century Church.  Weigel’s Thesis, with which I could not agree more, is

The Catholic Church is being invited to meet the Risen Lord in the Scriptures, the Sacraments, and Prayer and to make friendship with him the center of Catholic life. Every Catholic has received this invitation in Baptism, the invitation to accept the Great Commission, to act as evangelists and to measure the truth of Catholic life by the way in which Catholics give expression to the human decency and solidarity that flows from friendship with Christ the Lord.

 But when he unpacks his thesis into what this Evangelical Catholicism looks like, Weigel tries to force a far more free Vatican II evangelical foot into a very narrow John Paul II shoe.  And when it comes to the place of Religious in a Vatican II Church, Weigel wants to return the nuns to veiled servitude and locked into the motherhouse at 5 pm for rosary, prayers, and a penitential supper of 2 day old bread, watery soup, and rancid cheese.  Nevertheless there has to be a via media between scrubbing the floors a la Audrey Hepburn in The Nuns Story and the somewhat vapid life of mascara and finding a Calvin Klein dress at the Goodwill that Sister Sara describes. 

I am not worried about whether nuns wear habits or whether monks catch a movie at the local ten-plex from time to time, but what I want of Religious is for them to blaze the trail for a more evangelical life for all of us.   I want people that can stop and make us question if we are on track towards the kingdom of God.  I see too many people around me, and around me at Mass, not concerned about whether or not their life style negatively impacts the lives of others.  When it comes to poverty I want to know how to have less so that other might have enough.  Can somebody show me how not to get caught up in the materialistic whirl that surrounds me with having to drive a gas-guzzling SUV or spending 200.00 on a pair of sunglasses?  Can someone show me how to love someone else without needing to control them?  Or show me how to love without becoming preoccupied that I am loved back? Or show me how to live life for simple pleasures and not constantly feed my id?  Can someone show me how to live for others, to empty myself in service for others as Christ emptied himself and took on the nature of a slave for me?  Can someone show me what the freedom is to live and do for the sake of pure love rather than to achieve or possess or control?  And above all, can someone show me how to “pray constantly” and live in that sort of relationship where all is God and God is all?  I think it is great that Sister Sara drives old ladies around and, from compassion for them, digs into her own near-empty purse to buy them a hamburger at McDonalds, but frankly, Sister, I expect even more of you.  Mother Theresa gave me more.  Saint Francis gave me more.  Most important, Jesus gave me more.  Show me how to receive what they have given us!  Don’t be good enough, be as good as you can be and show me how I can follow. 

Now as for that nut-case who whines Sorry to inform the readers, but these women aren't Catholic nuns…, honeychile, bless your black little withered heart, but when you give up your avocation as a Pharisee and are half as faithful to your vocation as a Christian as Sister Sara is to hers as a Sister of Saint Francis, I will take you seriously, but the criticism you level at her and her Sisters not only show your hypocrisy but your lack of basic Christian Doctrine and Catholic Church polity.  

A Path for the Wise

That picture of Mother Delores Hart in my last post drew an above average number of readers.  People love good old traditional nuns—I love good old traditional nuns, but then I believe that the monastic life in its various expressions—traditional and modern—is very much a hope for both the Church and the world in which we live. 

        Sister Joan Chittester, a member of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie PA, is a great example of the contemporary monastic.  I have never met Sister Joan though we have exchanged letters on a few occasions and she was a friend of a dear cousin of mine who died several years ago.  I have read a number of her books and find that while sometimes her ideas are challenging she can speak right to me.  One of my favorites is The Fire In These Ashes (Sheed and Ward, 1995).  In The Fire In These Ashes, Sister Joan says that the raison d’etre for monastic life is “to find God.”  You don’t become a monk or a nun for any other purpose than to find God. 

      I have always been a bit jealous of those who are called to the monastic life because at the end of the day, what is there except the search to find God?  I am a busy person.  I teach.  I run a library.  I give talks, retreats, renewal programs.  I am on committees.  I advise students with their research and papers.  I see people for spiritual direction.  I do a lot of things—but to what end?  Is life about keeping busy?  Or “putting bread and butter on the table?” I am a historian.  Do I really care about the Battle of Agincourt?  Am I supposed to think there is something worth caring about in the economic bubble of the twelfth century? Why should I bother with the Pirenne Thesis?  The fact of the matter is that history intrigues me not because some event a thousand years ago happened—things happening today have more import—but  because men and women in every age run around like ants on an anthill trying to find something? The question is: What are they looking for?  God?  No, of course not. At least not consciously.  But they are looking for meaning, for purpose.  And different people find different purpose in life.  For some it is love.  For some money. For  some power. For some freedom.  For some Beauty.  And does any of it last?  At the end of the day, does any of it matter?  No.  And so most just keeping running around in their busy circles.  But for those who wake up from their manic quest and realize how transient life is, the search then continues for that which is eternal. We want to set our eyes on some beacon that shines consistently drawing us on and through the pains and the sorrows, the transient joys and passing hopes of today.   Back in the third century people who realized how empty an unfocused life can be began going out into the deserts of Syria and Egypt.  They left their business and their families and their ambitions—and their religion—to live as solitaries, haunted by the realization that there has to be something more than money in the bank, love in their bed, a fancy house in which to live, and even moving ceremonies on Sunday mornings.  Perhaps the most startling thing is that they realized that a nice ceremony on Sunday morning wasn’t answering the call of their heart.  Here they were looking for God and they saw the emptiness of ritual and rite—the failure of religion to capture and hold the Divine Mystery.  Saint Antony Abbot is a prime example: he left his home and his pharmacy shop in Alexandria and shut himself up in an abandoned fort for over twenty years—never coming out, even for Sunday Mass.  

       Now I am not against Mass.  Far from it, I attend daily.  But Antony Abbot realized that the practice of religion was not enough.  There is something more, something beyond even the most fervent practice of religion.  Eighty some years ago Simone Weil wrote an essay in which she clearly distinguished the Love of God from the Love of Religion.  (Simone Weil, Waiting For God, trans. By Emma Craufurd, New York: Harper & Row, 1973.)  Religion is Religion—it isn’t God.  The Church is the Church—it isn’t God.  Religion or the Church can be the path to God and while it might advance you along the way, it ultimately will fall short of the destination. And often Religion or the Church are misused as paths that only circle back upon themselves.  Even the Sacraments will ultimately fall short.  The Uncreated can never be encapsulated in the created, the Creator in the creature.  This is why monks and nuns—real monks and nuns—have an affinity for agnostics.  They know how elusive God is.  God is always one step beyond us.  We arrive at the place where God was only to find that God has slipped away leaving a trace, a scent, some intangible sign that only makes us more ardent in our pursuit.  And at the same time we are pursuing him, ever more ardently, we begin to suspect that he is, in fact, pursuing us—luring us on ever deeper into  Mysterium—mysterium tremendum et fascinans.  And it is this that drives men and women into monasteries.  

        Sometimes in history the monasteries have taken on lives of their own—lives that distract the monk or the nun with the needs of administration, of building a church, of organizing the work, of feeding and clothing a community, of raising the money to do it all.  At the same time the formal prayers can easily replace the inner eros that impels the monk or nun on.  The need to practice the chant or shine the candleholders can seduce the heart away from its hunt and the monk or nun can forget the vision of their earnest years.  That is a tragic pitfall one hopes they can avoid. It is not unique to Christian monasticism—read the Dalai Lama and he will tell you the same about monks in his tradition who become lost in the superficial details and observances of their lives.   But monastic life is no place for religious people.  It is certainly no place for the pious.  Monastic life isn’t about the habit or the incense or even the chant.  All that is just icing on the cake—maybe even a seduction away from the heart of the life which is simply to seek God in his nakedness and in ours.

       And this is why we need to hear more of the monastic voices in the Church.  They have a wisdom that speaks beyond the superciliousness of the pious and directly to the dark night of the seeker.   As Elizabeth Barret Brownking wrote 

      Earth’s crammed with heaven

      And every common bush aflame with God

      And only he who sees takes off his shoes

      The rest sit round it

      And pluck blackberries

A lot of people are plucking blackberries—we need people in the Church today who can point and shout: “Fire!” For what a fire it is for those with eyes to see. 

History in the Making: The Sex-Abuse Crisis--Let's Stop Telling Lies

The John Jay College of Criminal Justice released its report on the underlying causes of the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church this past week.  The study was commissioned (and in great part paid for) by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.  It was a good idea to look for the roots of the problem and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice is an unimpeachable judge to the issue.  Nevertheless something went peculiarly wrong. 

The report found guilty the permissive atmosphere of the ‘6o’s and ’70’s.  Innocent of causing the immense harm done to thousands are mandatory celibacy, an all male priesthood, and homosexuality,

A study is only as good as how its purpose and limitations are defined and this study was skewed in that such controversial issues of Catholic doctrine and discipline (celibacy and all male priesthood) would not be called into question.

I am the first to agree that the issue is not celibacy.  Nor is it an all male priesthood.  I suspect that it is not even homosexuality—per se.  That is the root of the problem is not celibacy per se nor an all male priesthood, per se; nor homosexuality, per se. But in fact it may only be homosexuality—per se—that isn’t part of the foundational problem. 

Celibacy, when freely chosen by a psycho-sexually mature individual, is a noble adornment to the Church.  The man or woman who is capable of healthy intimacy but who renounces the rewards and compensations (and trials and heartache) of marriage and family to devote his or herself to the work of the Gospel is a witness to the compelling nature of the call to preach the Kingdom of God. 

The problem is that mandatory celibacy has proven to be a refuge for countless men (and some women) whose psycho-sexual maturity is at best questionable.  Individuals who are uncertain of their sexual identity or who are not comfortable with sexual identity or sexual appetites and feelings can be drawn to priesthood or religious life as an escape from having to confront the uncomfortable and challenging aspects of their own personalities. Let me give some examples.

In my workshops and teaching I have a fair amount of contact with enclosed (cloistered) nuns and been surprised how (proportionately) many have been victims of sexual abuse—primarily by family members or close friends of their families.  Withdrawal into the cloister has represented to them safety.  Now, when I say “how many,” compared to the numbers of women in society who have been victims of sexual abuse (some estimates are as high as 1 in 5) it is nowhere near that high. That “high” represents a cross-section of total mid and late -20^th century American society.  The picture changes when you look at the section of society from which these nuns come—that is to say European descent, white or blue collar, middle and upper-middle class, Catholic families and with high-school or college diploma.  Sexual abuse, especially abuse by a family member, knows no social, educational, racial, or economic boundaries, yet neither is it distributed equally throughout society.  I have no scientific evidence or even formal research on this issue, it is only an impression, but an impression built up over thirty years and stronger with each encounter. 

Let me also say that for many women who have been exploited in their youth, contemplative life within a sympathetic community of women, some of whom have shared the burden of having been abused, has been very therapeutic and many women have come to a health and maturity in their self-identity.  It is an example of where grace builds on nature.   

I wish I could say the same for men.  Here I think we need to break them into sub-groups which have certain features in common with one another and distinct to each group.  I would speak first of the monastic and semi-monastic communities, secondly of the apostolic communities, and thirdly of diocesan priests and societies of secular priests.

With women, or at least enclosed women, the issue that drew those with psycho-sexual issues has usually been instance of abuse in their pre-convent years, generally adolescent and post-adolescent.  With men, celibacy seems to draw to religious life or priesthood those whose issue is  avoiding dealing with sexual identity, most notably those who are confused about their being heterosexual or homosexual or those who sense themselves to be homosexual and are trying to avoid the implications of that awareness or to render it neutralized by adopting a celibate lifestyle.  This is not to say that same-sex attraction is not an issue among religious women, sisters (as distinct from enclosed nuns) in particular, but it doesn’t seem to be as strong an issues as it is among priests and religious men. 

In regard to those who are confused about whether they are (predominately) heterosexual or homosexual, a life of public celibacy permits them to avoid the issue.  They (think that they) don’t need to know the answer to the question that troubles them within.  Instead of being one or the other, they will choose a lifestyle that permits them—indeed seems to mandate them—to be neither. This is probably why the numbers of gay priests is so hard to pin down.  In addition to men who have come to terms with their same-sex attraction, and to those who are genuinely heterosexual, you have a considerable number of homosexual priests who are either trying desperately to convince themselves and others that they are “straight,” or in denial of any sexual identity at all.  Any estimates on the percentage of priests who are gay versus those who are “straight” must be based on criterion other than how the priests themselves identify themselves. 

In monastic or semi-monastic life this illusion of being-asexual gives way faster than it usually does in the apostolic communities or among diocesan or secular priests.  By monastic communities I mean those communities of men that are enclosed religious such as the Cistercians or some Benedictine groups.  By semi-monastic I mean monks from abbeys with apostolic ministries—parishes, schools, colleges.  Also semi-monastic should include those medieval mendicant communities with a more highly developed spirituality and intentional community life.  A deep interior life requires the individual to search every nook and cranny of the soul (psyche), shining the light of the Gospel (mental prayer) into every recess and coming to know oneself with as close an approximation to the Divine Knowledge of oneself as grace and honest prayer allow.  Moreover, a mature and secure community environment allows the individual the safety to raise the troubling questions and usually provides the fraternal support to face whatever truths emerge. 

It is often somewhat different in apostolic communities.  Some apostolic communities have as rich a spiritual tradition and practice as the most contemplative of monks.  I think particularly of the Society of Jesus.  Many however have more a sustaining piety than a genuine spirituality; or they have a spirituality but it is one that is meant to channel the energy outward into service of others without the rigorous solitude, the sort of pseudo-desert as it were, that will allow no stone to remain unturned in the search of self-knowledge.  In these communities it is possible for those who wish, and most of us wish to avoid hard work and to flee the unpleasant questions, to avoid dealing with the issues of psycho-sexual identity that drew us to lives of celibacy in the first place.  And then if “community” is not so much a network of relationships but more a catering and laundry service that frees more time for ministry, the individual often will not have developed the trust skills to let him allow others to accompany and share the burdens of self-knowledge. 

And then we have the secular priests, whether those who belong to some sort of society of non-vowed priests (Opus Dei, Oratorians, various missionary societies) or who are priests of an individual diocese. I have been very distressed to see how few secular and diocesan priests have a genuine spirituality.  They usually have a corporate piety—a set of exterior practices which regulate their relationship to God—but not a genuine spirituality that brings them into a profound and humbling encounter with God.  Their prayer is primarily that set of external practices: mass, the office, the rosary, “visits” to the Blessed Sacrament—all of which is done with devotion—but which doesn’t rise from within and bring to the surface with it all the spiritual angst of truthful self-assessment.    

Two key words in differentiating spirituality from piety are “interior” and “humbling.”  Genuine spirituality—and again I am a historian and am speaking from the writings of the mystics—shifts the balance of prayer from external practice to interior silence, indeed almost to the point of inactivity.  “Almost” is important as we don’t want to mistake quietism for orthodox spirituality.  The liturgy and even some measure of devotional prayer persist but the individual finds his or her truest prayer to be in silent attention to the Divine Mystery unfolding within his or her heart.  Genuine spirituality not only moves the individual from the Mystery without to the Mystery within, but brings the individual into a frank self-awareness where in the Divine Image as it unfolds in his or her soul one sees one’s own self reflected for both who one is and who one is called to be.  Genuine spirituality leaves no choice but an interior journey of self-discovery and self-knowledge.  The issues of one’s sexual identity must be dealt with—there is not only no escaping the question, there is no escape from the answers.

Too often I have dealt with priests and religious who are in profound denial of their sexual identity.  They tell gay-bashing jokes and use vulgar terms that deride gay people, or they are legalistic, harsh and unsympathetic in the confessional while they themselves are running from their own same-sex attraction. The most dangerous sexual-predators come from these ranks.  With no one they trust enough to confide in, with no one with whom they are sufficiently intimate to share their journey of self-exploration, they are lone wolves and when they see vulnerable prey—they jump at the bait.  Incapable of sufficient trust for adult-adult relationships, they turn to the only relationships in which they are secure: relationships with the younger, the less mature and/or the vulnerable.  In the case of priests or male religious who are gay this leads to inappropriate relationships with young men or post pubescent boys; with those who are “straight,” with underage and/or vulnerable women.  Of course, in the case of genuine pedophiles—those attracted to pre-pubescent children—we are dealing with a different phenomenon entirely, a genuinely psychiatric disorder.  This seems to be a very small number of clergy, no higher than that of the larger American population. 

So to say that celibacy is not an issue is, I believe, very misleading. Mandatory celibacy not only rules out those who choose adult-adult heterosexual life-commitments but provides an attraction and a cover for the psychosexually immature.  Some of these mature in the process of spiritual growth and healthy fraternity.  Others, unfortunately do not.  Spiritual maturity and healthy community will not change a person’s basic sexual orientation, but it will empower him (or her) to live as spiritually (and therefore psychologically) healthy adults.   

Perhaps on a future blog we can look at how an all-male leadership model complicates this picture, but for now what might bear thinking about is what seminaries and religious formation programs, as well as clergy on-going education and formation,  need to do to foster psycho-sexual maturation.   This probably won’t happen until psycho-sexual maturity becomes an identified criterion for hierarchical leadership.   

Let's hear it for the Ladies II

One of the first religious women to successfully avoid the canon law requiring vowed women to be enclosed (cloistered) was Mary Ward (1585-1645). Mary was raised in a devout Recusant family in Ripon and at the age of fourteen went to live in the home of a wealthy gentleman, Sir Ralph Babthorpe, and his family. This was a common practice at the time when a young woman or man of the gentry learned the responsibilities of their class in a socially prominent household. It was often where marriage connections were made and there was a strong network of Recusant (Catholic) families that helped Catholics marry within the faith. Yorkshire, particularly rural Yorkshire, being far from Protestant London, had a relatively strong Catholic community among its populace. Mary, however, did not find herself interested in a husband but felt drawn to the religious life, and for that she had to leave England as the open practicing of the Catholic faith was prohibited by law and thus there were no monasteries or convents. She crossed the channel in 1606 to the Spanish Netherlands to become a lay sister in the Poor Clares at St.Omer. The following year, using her dowry, she established a Poor Clare monastery at Gravelines in what is today the very northern edge of France. The monastic live was particularly severe. The nuns wore habits made of rough wool, were meatless except at Christmastime, slept on straw mattresses and practiced other disciplines common to the reformed orders of the time. None of that unsettled Mary, but the enclosure did. She felt very drawn to the religious life, but recognized the need for an apostolic community based on the spirituality and mission of the Society of Jesus. She left the monastery she had founded and gathered a group of like-minded women around her and formed the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary Ward recognized that one of the primary needs in early modern Europe, and the Church in early modern Europe, was the education of women. English Recusant experience showed her that the survival of Catholicism depended on women knowing their faith. In England, among the Catholics of means, the husband and father of the family often had to “conform” to the Church of England to avoid the legal and monetary disabilities imposed on Catholics by the royal government, leaving the practice and handing-on of the faith to the wife and mother. This made it imperative that Catholic women be educated in a Catholic environment, something quite impossible to do publically in England. What was needed was a religious community of women, independent and self-governing like male religious orders, without religious habits or other public marks of identity, who were themselves educated and independent-minded ladies. Their religious practices had to be discreet and simple, forgoing the elaborate choir ceremonial typical to enclosed orders of both men and women. The Ignatian influence on her own spiritual development—and so much recusant spirituality was formed by the Jesuits—stressed the interior life and mental prayer. But this created a very different model of religious life—like the Jesuits, totally non-monastic.
There were no formal ties between Mary’s group and the Jesuits—the Jesuits have always, following Ignatius’ explicit mandate—rejected a female branch of their congregation. Nevertheless, there were strong spiritual bonds. That was often to the detriment of the Sisters however as many in the Church resented the Jesuits for their non-iconic ways and were even more alarmed when women showed such independence. Bishops were often particularly put out as they expected religious, especially women religious, to be dependent on their authority and under their control. Consequently Mary Ward and her Institute attracted quite a bit of negative attention.
The new Institute worked not only covertly in England, but spread from Flanders into the Austrian Empire and Italy and Catholic regions of Germany. Its educational work among women won it many admirers from the upper classes and the nobility—and even the Holy Roman Emperor. In addition several popes expressed their admiration. Nevertheless, the Institute was suppressed by a commission of Cardinals in 1630 when asked by the Pope to evaluate the new community. Curiously enough, and somewhat inexplicably to moderns with a canonical mindset, the Pope (Urban VIII), an admirer of Mary Ward and her work, invited her to Rome where she and a community of her sisters lived and worked under his protection. In 1639 the pope wrote a letter of introduction for Mary Ward to England’s Catholic Queen Consort, Henrietta Marie, wife of Charles I. In 1642, just as the English Civil War was beginning, Mary returned to England and established a community at Heworth in Yorkshire. She died three years later and was buried in the Anglican churchyard at Osbaldwick, Yorkshire.
The Institute survived—initially and for a long time without canonical approval. In 1703 Pope Clement XI approved their Rule of Life and the Institute itself was given papal approbation in 1877 by Pope Pius IX. It leaves us with this question—why do we think that “nuns,” or actually apostolic communities of women—have to wear habits, live in convents, spend long periods of time at formal prayers in their chapels? No one is saying that monastic life—for women or for men—is not a valid form of religious life, but is it the only form? Perhaps the real issue, now as in Mary Ward’s day, is how much can women religious (or lay, for that matter) be trusted to make decisions for themselves? On the othe hand, Pope Benedict did name her Venerable. Prophets are not recognized in their own day.

The image today is a painting of the seventeenth-century religous founder, Venerable Mary Ward.