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Posted on 03/11/2008 6:40:54 AM PDT by NYer
LAFAYETTE, Ind.- Millions of middle-aged and older Catholics remember Sister Mary Margaret, their third-grade teacher. She told gory stories about the martyrs, lived and breathed The Baltimore Catechism, and made you hold your nose to the blackboard if you didn’t do your homework. Fuel for some funny stories, yes. But noted Catholic scholar Robert Orsi says that Sister provided fervent religious formation and helped transform Catholics into one of the most educated, most successful segments of American society.
Teaching nuns in 1960 were “the most educated sisters in all Catholic history,” he said in a lecture at Purdue University Feb. 8. “They had been going to summer schools since the 1920s … The idea that these were ignorant women who knew nothing about the world was simply not the case.”
Orsi, who earned a doctorate from Yale, holds the Grace Craddock Nagle Chair in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. His talk, titled “Growing Up Catholic: A Case Study of Catholic Children in Mid-20th Century America,” drew a crowd of approximately 150. It was based on the research he did for a book on the social and cultural history of 20th-century Catholic childhoods, which will be published by Harvard University Press.
The lecture was sponsored by the Aquinas Education Foundation and the Religious Studies Program at Purdue.
Well prepared for the world
“My dad is Irish-Catholic, so it’s interesting to hear how he grew up,” said Michael O’Neill, a Purdue economics major from Indianapolis. “I grew up in Catholic schools, too. Our sisters said they would pray for us students.”
Orsi previously taught at Fordham, Indiana University and the Harvard Divinity School. He is past-president of the American Academy of Religion. The author of several books, he is an expert on Catholicism in the United States.
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AND there's a sequel.
I went to St Athanasius, a Catholic elementary school in Brooklyn. The nuns wore those black habits in 90 degree, 80 % humidity, and it made them mean, but I learned discipline, good English, and patriotism.
We have a church FULL of nuns in regulation habits from the (non-cloistered) convent down the street, and a cloistered group another mile away. Here in Los Angeles. Things are turning around, imho.
I sent my son to a “Catholic” school in Tucson; the nuns wore jeans and t-shirts and were lefties and half of them were lesbos.
What a tragedy!!
I had Sisters of Mercy for 6 years, until 1963.... The irony of that name still makes me chuckle. Of course, I spent so much time sitting outside the Mother Superior’s office that people thought I was her secretary, but that’s another story! :)
Great, funny book, BTW!
“I went to St Athanasius, a Catholic elementary school in Brooklyn.”
Pagan babies from China with Irish names? Remember the prissy rich kids who would buy their very own own Asian baby (for $5.00) and name it Kevin Brendan or Mary Margaret?
Yes, it is very good news from the darkness of the LA Diocese. We also have Latin Mass EVERY Sunday at 1. Y’all come.
I remember Sister Mary Margaret, but I had her 2nd grade. She was in charge of the altar boys. Tough does not even begin to describe her.
Do you have proof that they were lesbians or are you just another Catholic basher?
My parents adopted a child from Hong Kong through a Catholic orphanage. The nuns in the orphanage were Italian, and gave her the name “Lucia”.
Where?
One of the teachers and I became good friends; she was a very devoted Catholic and appalled by what went on in that school.
It was 180 degrees from the discipline of the Catholic school I attended as a child.
BTTT!
My sisters and I attended Catholic Girls’ School from Grade 8, and it was a great antidote to the Sixties as well as the chance to learn stuff and not spend all our time paying attention to the boys. Sister made sure our skirts were regulation length — she’d tell you to kneel, and if your skirt did not touch the floor, it was detention for you. Any garment not regulation required you to phone home (or call your Mama at work) and request that you be picked up and taken home to change and tell her the garment that was out of plumb. You most certainly did not want to do this.
For those of us who were ladies in the Sixties, this was very heaven; and it was also proof positive that going without sex for a day would not, in fact, cause you to wither up and die, as the Sisters lived into their third decade even back in the Sixties and some of them were much happier than our mothers.
By the way, I was one of the few outside Doctor Who who knew what a Panopticon was; our detention room at school was one. The naughty girls sat in carrels with our faces to the wall and no eye contact with anyone. Sister sat in the middle of the room — or maybe she didn’t, but you did not dare turn around to see. Should you need to leave the room, you raised your hand without turning your head, and Sister would escort you there and back again. You had fifteen minutes to eat lunch, in silence, at your carrel, and then you returned to your work.
Most of us did not need more than one visit to straighten us out.
Love your story!
My sisters and I really enjoyed The Blues Brothers as we had exactly the same reaction to “The Penguin” even though we were many miles apart when we saw it. No matter how bad those bad boys were, they had absolute respect for her!
It’s St. Therese in Alhambra, a bit south of Pasadena. Come join us.
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