AUSTRALIA
The Conversation
Judy Courtin
PhD Student, Faculty of Law at Monash University
As a young girl in the 1960s, I attended a Catholic boarding school. The nuns could be scary. When they walked the wintry and un-illuminated corridors of the convent, their knee-length rosary beads jangled against their ankle-length black habits.
The unfriendly “stomp stomp” of their chunky, black, lace-up shoes contrasted with the angular, white starched coif atop their head. The outer layer of their ensemble, the monastic cloth scapular, also known as the “yoke of Christ”, draped to the floor back and front. Their oft stern faces matched their garb.
These unforgiving medieval garments were in collaboration with, it seems, the Catholic teachings of the time. Among these were a fear of God; an even greater fear of hell; fear of communists; obedience to God and the religious; chaste thoughts (it was obligatory, in bed, to place one’s arms across the chest in the shape of a cross whilst thinking of Our Lady); and unquestioning belief in Catholic doctrine.
Fast forward to 2013 and the ageing and diminishing population of nuns now wears civvies and this once-Catholic girl, along with many thousands of others, no longer believes in God and makes up her own mind about what to think and believe.
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