How Catholic Nuns Shaped America, Elizabeth Macdonald, Fox Business, July 8, 2009

How Catholic Nuns Shaped America

By Elizabeth Macdonald
Fox Business
July 8, 2009

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2009/07/07/how-catholic-nuns-shaped-america/

The news that the Vatican is now making official inquiries into Catholic nuns in America and whether they are adhering to church doctrine obscures a very important history about nuns in this country.

For nearly three centuries, Catholic nuns have worked heroically, unselfishly, tirelessly, against all odds, to make this great country what it is today. The US economy would not have come so far through the centuries without the help of American nuns.

You rarely see the American history of Catholic nuns reported in the media. A bit of journalistic astigmatism, reductio ad absurdum.

But a new exhibit touring museums throughout America may cahnge all that. The new exhibit makes the courageous effort of Catholic nuns in shaping this country’s landscape quite plain.

I respectfully urge and invite Vatican officials to make a visit to this exhibit. Only then will they appreciate how many Americans feel that the work of Catholic nuns is as vital as IRELAND ELECTIONoxygen, and that nuns have been quite in helping this country achieve its greatness.

The exhibit is called “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” and is organized by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an association of leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States.

The exhibit was done in association with the Cincinnati Museum Center. In the 3,200 square foot exhibit, you’ll find letters, artifacts, images and multimedia displays. It opened in Cincinnati, Ohio in May, kicking off a three-year tour (see schedule below), and is possibly headed to the Smithsonian Institution in the nation’s capital.

“We started this exhibit out of an intense desire to share the history of the Catholic sisters and their contributions to the history and culture of the United States,” Sister Helen Maher Garvey, a sister with the Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary order and chair of the history committee for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, has reportedly said. “The sisters feel very strongly that it is an untold story.”

Make no mistake, I am a Catholic, and I love my faith. I don’t agree with it on a host of issues. And it’s an atrocity that Catholic priests have committed outrageous, disgusting criminal acts of sexual abuse against the young, whereby they have molested and raped children. Every last one of them should be put on trial and, if found guilty, thrown in jail.

And yes, if you’re Catholic and you’ve been taught by nuns, you’ve likely run across the jokes about Catholic sisters, about being taught by a Sister George C. Scott or a Sister Mary Handcuffs or the Sisters of (No) Mercy, or Sister Mary Aloysius Expialodocious, you know, the nuns who will haunt you until you can recite your multiplication tables in your sleep. I get all that.

But what bothers me is this. The New York Times’ recent story noted that the Vatican inquiries have “startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition,” as their teachings may be at variance with the Vatican.

However, what is inconsonant is what the Times didn’t report in its elision of a story, that is, the extraordinary bravery and derringdo of Catholic nuns, nuns who arrived in America more than 300 years ago, when the first Ursuline sisters arrived in New Orleans in 1727, nuns who have stood under a bright light and lifted it higher in this during the country’s darkest hours, nuns who have helped stream forward a rushing river of love that began 2,000 years ago, to paraphrase Saint Bernard de Clairvaux.

Information like this, which comes from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious:

*Catholic sisters’ quiet heroism during the Civil War, the Gold Rush, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Influenza Epidemic, the Civil Rights Movement, even to this day in their work with Hurricane Katrina. For example, more than 600 sisters from 21 different communities nursed both Union and Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

*Catholic nuns have served frontier communities, talked down bandits and roughnecks, lugged pianos into the wilderness, and provided the nation’s first health insurance to Midwestern loggers.

*Throughout periods of struggle and controversy, Catholic sisters have opened orphanages, schools, hospitals, colleges, universities, and provided other social services that have served millions of Americans.

*The U.S. Catholic school system is the largest private school system in the world, largely established and run by Catholic nuns. More than 110 U.S. colleges and universities were founded by Catholic sisters. The first American-born saint, Elizabeth Ann Seton, SC, founder of Sisters of Charity, was a mother and widow who established the nation’s first free Catholic school (EMac: One of my favorite quotes: “Faith lifts the staggering soul on one side, Hope supports it on the other, Experience says it must be, Love says, Let it be.”–Saint Elizabeth Seton.)

nun21*Today, approximately one in six U.S. hospital patients is cared for in a Catholic facility.

*During its founding, Alcoholics Anonymous received vital support from Sister Ignatia Gavin, CSA, who successfully advocated that alcoholism be treated as a medical condition.

*Catholic nuns have contributed to science. That includes pioneering research in infrared spectrography by Sister Miriam Stimson, OP, research which supported the discovery of DNA.

*Since 1980, nine American sisters have been murdered while working for social justice and human rights overseas.

*Since 1995, numerous congregations have participated as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the United Nations, focusing on global issues such as climate change, human trafficking, and poverty.

“I have to admit that I simply overflow with pride in, admiration and gratitude for such a phenomenal service and ministry within the Church, for the Church, over so many centuries,” says my friend, Sister Margaret Mary Forsyth of the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND). “When I go back to the high school students and permanent Deacons whom I taught, and ask them, ’how do we spell Church’?, they learned it very well–’P E O P L E!’”

And listen, too, to what Cokie Roberts, news analyst and author, has said:

“From the time the Ursulines arrived in New Orleans in 1727 up to today, women religious have made an incalculable contribution to this nation. Running schools, hospitals and orphanages from America’s earliest days, these women helped foster a culture of social service that has permeated our society. Over the centuries these courageous women overcame many obstacles–both physical and cultural–to bring their civilizing and caring influence to every corner of the country. Understanding and celebrating the history of women religious is essential to understanding and celebrating the history of America.”