The Silence We Keep: A Nun's View of the Catholic Priest Scandal (11 page)

At Saint Stanislaus School in East Chicago, Indiana, nuns were far more a part of our daily lives than priests ever were. In the 1950s, the Sisters of Saint Joseph (Third Order of Saint Francis) not only educated us, but they also helped raise us. In those days, Catholic schools were run by the sisterhood, which meant that we literally spent more of our waking hours with sisters than we did with our own families. Nearly eight hours a day, five days a week, nine months a year for nine years, each day began at 8:00
A.M.
with mass and Holy Communion under the constant guidance and close supervision of the Sisters of Saint Joseph. For nine of our most formative years we were surrounded by nuns. I remember a very big sister telling us early in life, “Children, never forget that we nuns are like God. We are everywhere.” And they were, often appearing silently out of thin air. Obviously I never did forget.

While occasionally terrified by what we now recognize as physical abuse (I, too, got knuckle-whacked by a sister with a steel-edged ruler), I was always one of those Catholic girls to hang around after school, and not because I had to. Veronica Hargrove (my best friend still) and I stayed after school nearly every day to help Sister clean the classroom, but even more so to get a breathtaking religious prize for volunteering—such as the praying statue of Mary as a little girl, which we believed to be magic, and the floating Blessed Mother pen, which I still have. I was a friend (as was my family) with nearly every sister I
knew in grade school and high school, yet never was there even a hint of anything sexual, not toward me or any of my friends. I can’t think of a single nun who made us feel uncomfortable in a sexual way.

For as close as we felt to the nuns who taught us, and for as much time as we spent with the sisters both in and out of class, never did any of us see the inside of the convent, much less spend the night there regularly (as victims did with pedophile priests in the rectory). Outside of class, there was no contact with nuns in grade school, and not that much in high school. At the end of the school day, it looked as if the sisters were locked up in the convent for the night, not appearing again in public until morning. We never knew what nuns did behind convent doors. That was the greatest mystery of all.

Only a few of us saw the inside of the convent, and when we did, it nearly made the school newspaper. We never saw anything other than the parlor or kitchen, and only for a split second (we were never allowed to sit down). Because my family owned the neighborhood Normal Bakery (that was its name), I got to see the convent kitchen several times. Whenever my dad donated cakes and “buns to the nuns,” the cook sister had us deliver them right into the kitchen. She also slipped sticky unwrapped hard candy into my coat, making it inedible with pocket fuzz. Only once did I get anything edible from her: a boring apple one Halloween. Maybe that’s why I can’t remember her name.

I heard a similar story from a nun who in grade school was brought into the convent parlor with a few other girls (never boys) for a well-deserved treat. Telling the girls not to sit down, Sister disappeared briefly and returned with a jar of peanuts and measuring spoons. Each girl held out her hand, got one
tablespoon of peanuts, and then was told to leave. That’s how laughably limited contact was between nuns and girls while the sexual abuse was going on between priests and boys. The chance of contact with nuns outside the classroom was nonexistent. Even those of us who joined the sisterhood at the age of eighteen never saw the inside of a convent until after we entered—at least nothing above the main floor, and only those areas designated as communal (parlor, chapel, dining room). Recently I asked my best nun friend, Holy Cross Sister Mary Ann Pajakowski, if she ever spent time inside the convent before joining. In return I received a very funny e-mailed response:

I think I was in our grade school convent twice—once to eat burned apple slices in the parlor which was a treat for three of us girls who got pulled out of school to clean church, and the other time was when the same three of us were pulled out of school to throw out the very dry Christmas tree for the nuns—it was so dry that we didn’t want to carry it out and clean up the needles, so we pushed it out the third floor window and of course got hollered at blah blah blah. So for 9 years of Catholic school that was it. Only one time in high school, and that’s because I tripped and skinned my knee in the summer and cleaned it up in the parlor of Saint Joe High. One other time was when Sister Octavia measured me for the hem of my postulant skirts—she was put out because my hips were crooked and she had to pin all the way around.

Such is the extent of the personal contact girls had with nuns in and out of the convent. What this goes to show is how
profoundly different sisterhood is from priesthood, inside and out. Our religious and community lives are lived in an entirely different manner.

As we look at sisterhood in the beginning, in the Middle Ages, and now, it will become clear how differently celibacy is experienced by men and women in general, priests and sisters in particular. In the priesthood, we saw celibacy emerge in the fourth century with the force of a no-sex rule for already married priests, and today we witness daily the disastrous results of that misguided kind of thinking. The history of celibacy in the priesthood appears as one of nothing but enforced failure. Celibacy never works as a rule because that’s not what it is and that’s not its divine intent. Nothing can be further from celibacy’s divine truth than a no-sex rule. That is celibacy at its crudest.

For the women in the early church, however, who by the fourth century were pretty much squeezed out of Christianity’s priesthood, celibacy emerged as the sacred key to an apostolic lifestyle. For the Church Mothers, celibacy had everything to do with the complete freedom necessary (like that of every man) to pick up and go with the apostles. Celibacy provided our first sisters with the freedom they needed, inside and out, to continue doing the priestly works of Christ, “ordained” or not. While for men in the priesthood celibacy became the great oppressor, for women in the sisterhood celibacy became the great liberator, the great equalizer within Christianity. Being excluded from priesthood never stopped the Church Mothers from doing apostolic works. No one or nothing could stop the sisterhood from living priestly lives because they, too, were touched and called by God.

When freely chosen and gladly welcomed, celibacy in the sisterhood has everything to do with how powerfully a handful of
women experience God and how totally liberating the experience is. So much so that priorities shift and interest becomes lost in everything but tending to lives of service, keeping the divine fires burning, keeping Holy Mother Church alive and well. Other than the work of making life divine, nothing matters in the sisterhood, least of all sexual liaisons. God-given celibacy emerged as a liberating priestly power among women in the early church, as it does now. It was experienced as a divine energy, a creative power that couldn’t be taken away, denied, or silenced. It’s still true that everything else in life pales in comparison to what women find in celibate sisterhood.

For example, most sisters I know don’t care who makes the most money; who has the most prestigious job; who is the skinniest, most stylish, smartest, or most attractive. Nor do we believe the one who dies with the most things wins. Sisters I know take exception to all the ways in which women and men are preoccupied with privilege, with competing and outdoing one another. Everything about us tends to be countercultural in that way, including the relatively plain way we look, in or out of habit. (Regardless of what we wear, my sister Debbie swears she can spot a nun in any crowd.) From what I can see, all that matters in the sisterhood is how free celibacy leaves us, inside and out, to be sisters (and priests) in all the ways we can. And from what I’ve experienced, all that matters is how sweetly celibacy binds together women as sister, leaving us with the pure pleasure of one another’s company and all the pure joys of sisterhood.

Too hard to believe? Too good to be true? Yes and no. Yes, because the history of celibacy in the sisterhood is just as sordid and seedy as it is in the priesthood. Well, sort of. Historian Jo Ann Kay McNamara is careful to note in her history of nuns that the sisters were never as decadent as the priests: “Some nuns in some houses were incorrigible and some houses were
disgraceful, but the great majority of communities at any given moment were free of sexual misconduct.”
¹
Unlike the priesthood, where a permissive culture of privilege and sexual activity exists, the sisterhood cleaned up its act and changed its thinking completely (long before I arrived on the scene). Strong warnings about sex between sisters were a big part of “sister formation” from day one in the Sisters of the Holy Cross. The message was seriously clear that any sexual activity between sisters (or anyone else) would result in swift and immediate dismissal; there was zero tolerance from day one. They weren’t kidding, either. Several suspects were whisked away in the middle of the night, never to be spoken of or heard from again. We knew they were gone for good when their napkin rings disappeared from the breakfast table. That’s the only way we knew someone got sent home; and that’s how nuns used to shun, with a whole other kind of silence. I suspect some still do.

We could also be dismissed immediately for being in one another’s cells (bedrooms) at any time, or if we grew too attached to a particular friend, more commonly referred to as PFs. Not even the appearance of impropriety was tolerated. Disinterest was the total name of the nun game and that included one another as well. No best friends allowed. No social coupling. No special attachments because a closeness with one separates us in that way from the rest. Well, we had PFs anyhow. We found soul mates, thank God, and no such separation or sex I know of happened; and it didn’t happen, I suspect, because no one I knew wanted it to. That thought wasn’t in our minds. No sister I know was ever obsessed with sex or went crazy from lack of it.

That’s not to say that sexual activity never occurs in the sisterhood, or that sisters are mysteriously immune to being in love. Both are bound to happen to someone sometime, and in the
sisterhood they happen so rarely so carefully, and so soulfully. Every sister I know who’s been there will tell you the same thing. Being in love is never about sex. It’s what feels like another God-given call, something equally divine. There’s no greater turning point than that in anyone’s life, not to mention the life of a nun. Celibacy is a lifetime effort in the sisterhood, as is any loving vow. On occasion it may become necessary to leave it for a while in order to find out more deeply what celibacy is again, what it is we were called to in the beginning, and what it is we’re called to now. When sisters fall in love, most find it necessary to take time out. That’s how profoundly sexual relationships can shift attention and energy elsewhere. They, too, are full of the loving power of God.

In the sisterhood I’ve known, it’s customary to take leave for a while if we decide to move forward with a sexual relationship, so as
not
to cause scandal (which is why we don’t see much of it). The sisters taking leave are more conscious of scandal than anyone else and great care is taken to give not even the appearance of impropriety. Even so, I’ve never known a sister who, by anyone’s standards, is even close to what you’d call sexually active, promiscuous, or deviant. That’s why you don’t see nuns living double lives or getting arrested picking up girls on street corners. Unless I am completely blind, you will never see in the sisterhood the sexual depravity we see in the priesthood. From day one, sexual relationships in the sisterhood were declared unacceptable, and as far as I know, that zero-tolerance policy hasn’t changed one bit.

Even in the 1970s, when sexual activity between newly Vatican II-liberated priests and sisters appeared rampant (especially on university campuses), its impact and consequences were received quite differently by the priesthood and the sisterhood. One sister told a 1970s story of her superior and the pastor
literally taking off together in the middle of the night. Everyone was shocked first by the dramatic and scandalous getaway, then again months later when things between them didn’t work out as planned. The priest was readmitted to priesthood without much ado, while the sister was shunned by her community (she probably still is today). While both responses seem wrong to me, it’s clear that the sisterhood had zero tolerance for their behavior, while the priesthood saw it as no big deal. In the priesthood, sexual activity and regrettable consequences are not uncommon. Nothing affects the ordained ability to be a priest, not even criminally deviant behavior. In the Catholic priesthood, and according to Catholic teaching, a bad priest can still deliver good sacraments, the ultimate privilege. Not so in the sisterhood.