Sister Mary Whatsis

There are nuns.  In Nashville.  Did you know about this?  Actual real nuns who wear habits and everything.  And we are not talking about a few museum pieces here, we’re talking about a lot of young nuns, at least according to NPR this afternoon.  I have to admit that I did sort of know that there had been some nuns in Nashville.  That’s where I grew up and some of the people I went to high school with went to elementary school with the nuns.  Also, there were girls in Catholic School uniforms.  Enough said.

But I did not know that the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia were like totally blowing up.  They have a ton of new recruits.  Apparently some of them were really big fans of J2P2 and decided to sign up because he was a big fan of the Holy Orders.  It’s clearly also something more than that, because even if you do want to be a nun, there are easier ways to go about it.  The Sisters of St. Cecilia wear the full on nun stuff and get up in the dark to pray and all that.  After Vatican 2 there are a lot of orders that wear street clothes and sleep in.

Which, I think, is exactly the point of why a whole new group of women are attracted to the Dominicans.  Let’s face it, there is a lot of booshit floating around out there.  Discounting the digital realm where anybody with Photoshop and WordPress can invent an identity, the real world is full of people who are full of it.  Say what you will about someone who takes Holy Orders, they are definitely not posing.

So when someone goes in for an Order that is full on, I think it is overly simplistic to call them “conservative.”  A long black dress isn’t indicative of a single state of mind.  What I do think it shows is how, as one sister expressed it, these women have given up the constant battle with material ambition.  I’m not knocking those who know what they want and go out to get it, but for many of us the struggle to manage our appetites against our sense of decency is always present.  I’m grateful for these women who remind us that there is a greater reality just by the way they dress.