Sweeping Changes By U.S. Nuns

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32119, 15 October 1969, Page 3

Sweeping Changes By U.S. Nuns

(By

JACQUIN SANDERS

The zest with which American nuns have reached for new freedom has come as a shock to the male hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. Laymen are less surprised—they remember the driving, strong-willed sisters who taught them in parochial schools. They have seen the tough, capable sisters who run hospital wards. They know that the image of the silent, modestly obedient figure in black has always been more apparent than real. But the change is clear now from every angle. Most obviously, the habit has been modified from its old severity. Some nuns are wearing dresses or skirts and blouses, with the only mark of their vocation a prominantly-worn necklace-cross. The customs, too, are changing. In some orders, praying and contemplation have been reduced. Nuns are emerging into the world, going into the slums and returning in far larger numbers than ever before to the secular universities. Some have taken back their secular names, resumed close relationships with their families, joined their new communities on protest marches and picket lines. They are also battling their bishops in a way the bishops never expected four years

ago, when Vatican Council II invited all religious institutions to re-examine their rules and experiment with new forms of service. A few bishops have taken the changes in stride. But for the most part the heirarchy has clearly decided that the pendulum has swung too far from tradition. A concerted effort, fully backed by the Vatican authorities, is under way to bring the nuns back under the old discipline. The main target now is the order of the Immaculate' Heart of Mary Sisters, a small but determinedly experimental group of 430 nuns in several western states and Canada. Most I.H.M. sisters have dispensed with the habit and with some, but by no means ail, of their formerly rigorous schedule of prayer. More importantly, they decided two years ago to withdraw more than 100 of their number from parochial-school teaching. Some went back to college for more training while others began to teach

in non-parochial schools in the slums. They also decided that “teaching” included work in slum programmes such as Head Start.

Finally, and crucially, they demanded extensive reforms of Los Angeles’s parochialschool system. Strong Opposition Almost at once the I.H.M. sisters ran into opposition from James Francis Cardinal Mclntyre, Archbishop of Los Angeles and probably the most conservative high churchman in the United States. When the nuns proved unresponsive to his disapproval, the cardinal struck back with an order that the entire order be dropped from the teaching staffs of the schools under his authority. By and large his punishment failed. Though 50 nuns separated from the majority and chose to go back to their traditional way of life, the remaining 380 simply went into their new “experiment” with more gusto than ever. More pressure was applied.

The apostolic delegate In Washington came out for a firm talk with the sisters. They talked beck, just as firmly. Confrontation Rome took a hand. Udebrando Cardinal Antoniutti, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Religious, which oversees the church’s male and female religious communities, sent three American bishops to confront the sisters with four specific demands: To adopt a uniform habit To return to teaching in the parochial schools as their chief community activity. To re-establish a fixed schedule of community religious activity. To co-operate with Cardinal Mclntyre.

The sisters were not having any. They fired off their answer to Rome: they would continue, as Vatican II had directed, to experiment with new forms of service.

Sister Mary Mark Zion, a lively, smiling woman, summed up the order's thinking: “We embarked on an eight-year programme of experimentation, and we just aren’t ready to end it now. Most of the four points [demanded by the Vatican] are beside the point. And if we co-operated with Cardinal McIntyre, all of our experiments would be washed out”

Nuns’ Coalition If the I.H.M. sisters seem difficult to church authorities, that is simply because they have not yet got round to dealing with Sister Margaret Ellen Traxler. A 45-year-old nun, who looks as if she ought to be the playing coach of a girls’ field hockey team, Sister Traxler began last summer organising the militant National Coalition of American Sisters.

In the first two months, 1800 joined. The organisation will speak up on social issues, taking stands In favour of striking hospital workers and grape pickers and involving itself in the civil-rights movement. It will also strike lusty blows for women’s rights. “If women in society have second - class citizenship, women in the church have third-class," says Sister Traxler. “It’s the nuns themselves who should determine whether they want to get out into the world—not the men. They don’t understand women —no man does.”

To which a good many bishops these days—not to mention a cardinal or twowill breathe a heartfelt “Amen.”—“Newsweek” Feature Service.

The photograph shows Sister Traxler.