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It's easy to knock these
women. I myself, joke about my fear of nuns. I often tell people
I am still afraid of penguins. Yes, they really did scare
us with their thundering verbal "advice." And more than a few
were quick to reach out and "touch" us. But we deserved
everything we got and in a just world, quite a bit more. These
women raised us. Yes, they were part of what some will call a
cult. Some of them entered their orders as young as 14.
Some made up their minds even earlier. Sometimes the times
weren't kind to them. They worked long hours for little more than
their own support and sometimes they didn't even get that. Even
their attire, this kind of burka, must have been a cross to bear.
Maybe a little history is
in order. These beautiful spirits didn't just teach miscreants
how to read and write...and fear God. These women built and
staffed some of the best hospitals in the world. Roman Catholic
nuns went out into the battlefields during wars to care for the
wounded. They went out and sought those ill from dangerous
plagues. They went where they were needed...and they went driven
by faith and love. There are few in history who match them.
 I had a love-hate
relationship with the nuns. You can supply your own joke about that.
They were in kind of a mind control cult. Their job was to pull us into
the same organization. I still love each and every one of them despite
the hours I spent in tedium and fear. They raised us. We
feared them but they had their tender moments too. Once, Sister
JM sang to a sad and lonely little boy: "Can she bake a cherry pie
Billy boy, Billy boy, can she bake a cherry pie charming Billy?"
For a few seconds I was somebody special. My first crush.
Wouldn't you know I'd pick a nun! Well at least you know she'd
let me down easy.
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A nun gave me this note.
It wasn't always sweetness. I can remember another nun shaking her finger in the face of a kid who
was so full of himself he thought he could walk on water. He thought he was God's gift to girls, school
and society in general. She told him she would take him down "a peg or two." She kept her word.
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The Bells Of St. Mary's
is a movie that really displays the pluck and sweetness of the nuns I
knew. Ingrid Bergman really captured the way these women could be
sweethearts. And man, could they ever be strict. The same woman who
could comfort a scraped knee on the playground like a mother, could
tear you up for any indiscretion. You've not been chewed out if you've
not faced the wrath of one of these saints. Many of the nuns we knew
had joined their orders as teens. Many joined during the Great
Depression. They were not strangers to hardship.
The nuns of my youth
practiced a kind of asceticism that seemed out of
fashion later. Their vows were generally of poverty, chastity and
obedience. Their numbers declined drastically in the 60s.
I'm told their membership is starting to rise again. I was
educated by the Sisters Of Notre Dame de Namur and the Sisters Of
Charity. Both orders still exist. Sadly, or maybe
triumphantly, Sister Mary Gonzaga, Sister John Maureen and Sister
Terese Marian are no longer with us.
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For the love of God...