Changing Face of Religious Life

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

A poster on the wall beside my desk reminds me to pray for vocations. It includes pictures of 28 women on the path to becoming Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. In fact, there are 30 such women in our community, but two didn’t want their pics on the poster. Thus goes the new age of freedom in formation.

However, the right to say you won’t be included in a community poster is not the only thing new. What also stands out is how these women reflect a changing church. Only 15 of those pictured come from the United States. The others come from the Philippines, Guyana, Jamaica and Peru. Older Mercies who welcome the new members are predominantly white and hail from families with roots in such countries as Ireland, Italy and Germany. Research from the Georgetown University-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) finds a similar picture nationwide. Today, more than a fifth of the people in formation in the United States are Hispanic; one in eight, Asian American; and one in 15, African American.

It’s hard to judge ages from pictures but it appears that most of these women are older than I was when I joined the Sisters of Mercy at 17. Now we don’t even accept women for formation until they are in their twenties. Four of the current group are in their twenties, five in their thirties, two in their forties and one, who was in another community before coming to us, is in her fifties.

Our younger religious have more education that I did starting out. Many enter with professional credentials, among them nurses, teachers and lawyers. Most of the women now in our formation process in the U.S. have their bachelor’s degrees, and some have master’s. There are two teachers, two in finance and three in nursing. One is a lawyer and one’s getting her master’s degree in theology. Another is a computer expert and one served in the U.S. Coast Guard. There’s a chef too.

Despite these differences, their vocation quest holds many similarities, no matter the age. They want a special relationship with Jesus. They pray. They enjoy other Sisters of Mercy of all ages. They also are romantic enough to follow Someone unseen Who beckons with a soul-searing call. They look about them and see needs to be met and want to do their part to make a better world.

Catholic schools for immigrants: A second bloodless social revolution

By Sister Mary Ann Walsh

As the immigration debate continues, one question hunts me: What can we do to educate immigrants’ children? The question eats at me because I and millions of others are children of immigrants. We grew up when it was expected that we would go to Catholic schools. As a result, children whose parents had little if any schooling got top-flight educations, went to college and entered the professional world. It was a bloodless social revolution that we didn’t even know we were part of. Everybody won.

The challenge now: How do we do the same for children of immigrants today?

First: We must aim high and avoid the discrimination of low expectations. These children need to know Catholic schools are there for them. Their parents need to see that attending Catholic schools is possible. Pastors need to push them.

Second challenge: We must make Catholic schools a realistic option. We need to explore and expand programs such as Christo Rey Network, the Jesuit initiative which provides solid academic education with real life work experience in business. Potentially college-bound youth earn their tuition as they work alongside business people. Another program is the Alliance for Catholic Education, known as ACE, and launched at the University of Notre Dame. Notre Dame and other college grads in the ACE program teach in low-income Catholic schools and earn their master’s degree in education free of charge. Still another is the Sisters Academy of Baltimore, an independent tuition-free Catholic middle school operated by several orders of nuns for girls from low-income neighborhoods.

Given the sorry state of urban schools, the government needs to do its part by supporting parental choice and allowing businesses to get tax credits from donations to alternative education for children in failing public schools. Sixteen states have parental choice programs. Pennsylvania has scholarship tax credits through which businesses receive tax credits for donations to school programs for the underprivileged. The effort benefits not only parents and students but also the neighborhood because Catholic schools are stabilizers.

Third challenge: We must be creative as we address a social problem. Head Start began in 1964 as an endeavor of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty. It helped level the kindergarten playing field as it offered reading readiness to preschoolers from families in need.

All of the above involve changes in approach by parents, churches, schools and government. They invite people to show the will to give educational opportunities to this new generation.

Research in recent decades shows Catholic school education works. Their students demonstrate higher academic achievement than their public school peers from similar socioeconomic backgrounds, note several researchers, including William Sander writing in the Journal of Human Resources as far back as 1996. The more disadvantaged a child is the greater the relative achievement gains he or she experiences in a Catholic school, according to Darlene Eleanor York in an essay “Growing Up African American in Catholic Schools.” A child who is black or Latino is 42 percent more likely to graduate from high school and 2.5 times more likely to graduate from college if he or she attends a Catholic school, according to Derek Neal writing on “Why Catholic Schools Spell Success for America's Inner-City Children.”

We’re at a critical juncture. The church has unabashedly worked for immigrant rights. Immigrants, documented and otherwise, provide services we all use – in homes, restaurants, construction, and health care, for example. A move toward Catholic education for immigrants’ children would be a sign of welcome and a wise national investment for the long run.

Fighting False Balance in the Media

Margaret Sullivan now wears the public editor hat at The New York Times and with a recent ombudsman column took on a huge media problem: False balance aka false equivalency. False balance reports are those that appear fair because they have two sides, except that one side reflects neither knowledge nor a right to speak.

Reports on Catholicism are especially vulnerable to false balance, and often it is achieved through manipulation of the name “Catholic” and religious symbols such as veils and Roman collars. More media than The New York Times fall prey to it.

Some agenda groups who oppose one or more Catholic teachings, for example, use the name “Catholic,” even when there seems little evidence of Catholics in their ranks and no evidence that they represent Catholic teaching. Catholics for Choice, once known as “Catholics for a Free Choice,” comes to mind. When some reporters, especially inexperienced ones, cover a story with a Catholic angle, they presume a mere use of the  term “Catholic” means knowledge. They will turn to any group with “Catholic” in its name to respond to an issue. Catholics for Choice is happy to talk whether it’s about abortion, nuns, pedophilia or the pope and AIDS. Apparently this satisfies some sleepy editor’s quest for balance. However, going to Catholics for Choice for a so-called Catholic view is like asking Catholic Atheists (yet to exist, I think) to opine on the meaning of God.

Surely the Catholic Church has a right to its “brand” which includes getting to say who validly can use its name. Be assured that a group such as Catholics for a Free Choice, founded by the former director of the National Abortion Federation, a trade association for abortion clinics, and funded by pro-abortion foundations specifically to neutralize the Church on abortion, doesn’t qualify as a legitimate Catholic group. It is hard to imagine how anyone can take seriously a group whose founder celebrated the first anniversary of Roe v Wade by having herself crowned pope on the steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.

However, religious clothing drew attention then, and, even today, religious clothing draws reporters. Media love veils and collars and attribute to them infused knowledge. For a picture, any nun in a veil will do. One sister who has been sans veil for decades, for example, donned one and drew cameras last February to lobby the Maryland statehouse for same-sex marriage. Her remarks about being a Catholic sister since 1961 were more crass in-your-face than Catholic as she stood against the Church on this issue.

A Roman collar, imagined or otherwise, also works for media. Once I got a call from a reporter who wanted to interview a priest. With none available, I suggested he speak with a knowledgeable layman. The reporter said that if he couldn’t have the priest, he wanted me. Asked why, he said he wanted a collar. I explained gently that in the Catholic Church I would not be wearing a collar anytime soon. Clearly he was less after an informed opinion than a stereotypical image. 

Margaret Sullivan has her work cut out for her at the Times. I hope she can stand up to reporters and doesn’t opt to do her job the easy way, and that she can stand fast in her fight for coverage that’s a fair reflection of reality. It’s a great goal for the nation’s newspaper of record and for all media.

 

CMSWR Backs the Bishops

Here's the statement issued yesterday from the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, posted on the organization's Web site:

March 18, 2010

In a March 15th statement, Cardinal Francis George, OMI, of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, spoke on behalf of the United States Bishops in opposition to the Senate’s version of the health care legislation under consideration because of its expansion of abortion funding and its lack of adequate provision for conscience protection. Recent statements from groups like Network, the Catholic Health Association and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) directly oppose the Catholic Church’s position on critical issues of health care reform.

The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, the second conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious in the United States, finds the provisions of the bill to include expansion of abortion funding and fails to include conscience protection. We believe the bill needs to include the Hyde Amendment as passed by the House in November.

Protection of life and freedom of conscience are central to morally responsible judgment. We join the bishops in seeking ethically sound legislation.

Mother Mary Quentin Sheridan, R.S.M.

President

On behalf of the Membership of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious

Apart from the support of the U.S. Bishops' position, what's particularly striking about this message is that Mother Mary Quentin Sheridan, RSM, really is speaking on behalf of the entire membership of CMSWR. As the news cycle of the last few days has shown, that may not be every nun in the country, but neither does this purport to be.

And Then There Were Nun

As someone who taught in Catholic schools, which Washington Post writer EJ Dionne attended, I applaud him for knowing sister is usually right. I can even excuse him for mistakenly accepting as true what a few dozen nuns said in a letter that was sent to Congress by Network, a nun social justice group.

Dionne made his case in a March 18 column titled “Listen to the Nuns” in the Washington Post. However, the signers he listened to were flat out wrong in many instances.

For example, they falsely said “we represent 59,000 Catholic sisters in the United States.” There were 55 names or groups listed as signers to the letter, with one, Sister Marlene Weisenback, signing twice (Does she have Chicago roots?). Sister Weisenbeck leads both the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) as well as her own community and signed for both. However, there are 793 groups of sisters in the USA, so there is no way that the 54/55 signers represent all the American nuns.

There are also religious order procedures to consider. Many of the endorsers signed on as individual teams -- that’s nunspeak for saying they represent only themselves, not their membership. It’s a way of keeping all heck from breaking out in the convent where opposition to abortion is stronger than what Network says (or doesn’t say, since it won’t take a position and avoids the issue).

There is also confusion by those who might equate Network with the LCWR. Network is a social justice lobby. In no way shape or form does it represent 59,000 nuns. Even LCWR, the organization of major superiors of hundreds of religious orders, can no longer claim to represent that many, since a percentage of U.S. orders belong to the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR). (With a hedge-your-bets style, some mother superiors belong to both. You can never be too careful!)

The Network letter also erroneously declares that the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. That would be true if the Senate version included Hyde Amendment language, but the Senate has refused to add this language. Maybe it’s pride. The Hyde Amendment came from the House of Representatives, the hoi polloi section of Congress. It’s hard to figure out why else the Senate would balk at language that has been satisfactory to the people since it was first passed in 1976. When applied, the Hyde Amendment says federal money cannot be used for elective abortion or programs that provide them.

EJ Dionne is a great guy. I know him personally and professionally. As a good Catholic school fellow has reason to trust the teachers who gave him his educational start. They were right when they taught him that two plus two equals four, so when they said 55 translated to 59,000 he believed them. That the nuns also tried to mislead the entire US Congress similarly is an embarrassment. But such may be political warfare where, as is said, the first casualty is truth.

EJ used Network’s letter to set the nuns against the bishops. That’s unfair. The bishops want health care that preserves the status quo in abortion funding, which means does not include expansion of abortion. The Senate seems to have dug in its heels and refuses to write in language from the Hyde Amendment (first passed in 1976), which says that no health care funds can be used for elective abortions or programs that provide them. That’s what the House did in its version of the health care reform legislation.

The media are having a good time with the nuns vs. bishops story. AP has called. CNN wants a Friday afternoon debate. CBS radio Boston has been on the phone. And Catholics in the pew want to know just what is going on.

All because of a letter from a group misrepresenting itself and the facts. Meanwhile the real problems with the Senate health care reform – unfair treatment of immigrants and threats to the child in the womb – get ignored.

Anti-Catholicism Makes Cartoon of New Yorker

The New Yorker, the magazine of urbane Americans, proves once again that anti-Catholicism still lurks in U.S. society. This time it’s in an article by the playwright Paul Rudnick, who seems to get his kicks by bashing religion. It is bizarre that someone who uses his literary skills to decry prejudice and stereotyping of gays opts to indulge his own prejudice against another group, Catholics. Catholics in the United States have had to fight such ignorance for more than 200 years (It came over with the Pilgrims). Rudnick’s recent rap on Catholics comes in snide remarks about religious sisters in “Fun With Nuns,” in the July 20 issue of the New Yorker.

Apparently the editors, who even are heralding the essay on the New Yorker Web site, don’t find any problem with Rudnick’s gratuitous slam: “Nuns can be dictatorial, sexually repressed, and scary—and therefore entertaining.” Nor did they bother to edit out a remark about which nuns should be “f…able.” A comment on a discussion at Disney about “Catholic teaching on vows of silence, poverty, and chastity” suggests editors at the New Yorker ignore inaccuracy as well as prejudice and poor taste.

Historian Arthur Schlesinger Sr. once noted that anti-Catholicism "the deepest-held bias in the history of the American people." Anti-Catholicism also has been called the “anti-Semitism of the liberal.” It seems on the rise now, perhaps because when a society feels troubled, as U.S. society does in the throes of the current economic crisis, prejudices arise. Feeling out of control, people grasp for security but making their world small, creating a mental enclave where they shut out everything they do not like, or understand, and/or fear.

Last week, the USA Today Faith & Reason blog was rampant with anti-Catholic comments in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s ground-breaking encyclical on the economy “Caritas in Veritate” (“Charity in truth”). Because the blog has a “Report Abuse” button and a staffer who monitors comments for such things as obscenity, name-calling and hate speech, some of the initial offensive remarks are gone. Yet more than a week later, mindless souls hiding behind the blog’s anonymity can still be read asking if you spell pope with “one or two ‘o’s,” advising the pope to do something that’s unprintable here and ought to be unprintable in a family newspaper’s blog, remarking that “someone needs to give the pope his meds” and opining that “the pope is disgusting and sickening,” adding for good measure, “Catholic is DISGUSTING.” Even more slurs and canards to be found on the Website, including “I guess the Vatican is finally going public with its plot to control the world.”

Maybe it is because anonymity emboldens cowards that blog postings on religion evoke rabid rantings. USA Today might want to consider its responsibility in publishing such tripe on the Web, though it is to be commended for not carrying the remarks in newsprint. They wouldn’t go down well with orange juice, toast and coffee at most hotels.

At least USA Today can be blamed only for not keeping up with its obligation to watch what bloggers post. The New Yorker, on the other hand, despite its history of fine literary criticism, intentionally runs Rudnick’s comments and even boasts of them on its Web site. It’s neither wise nor witty and makes the New Yorker a cartoon of a magazine.