TLM: Now what year are we talking about, roughly?COULSON: '66 and '67. There's a tragic book called , which documents part of our effect on the IHMs and other orders that engaged in similar experiments in what we called "sensitivity" or "encounter." In a chapter of , one former Immaculate Heart nun describes the summer of 1966, when we did the pilot study in her order-
TLM: "We" being you and Rogers?
COULSON: Rogers and I and eventually 58 others: we had 60 facilitators. We inundated that system with humanistic psychology. We called it Therapy for Normals, TFN. The IHMs had some 60 schools when we started; at the end, they had one. There were some 615 nuns when we began. Within a year after our first interventions, 300 of them were petitioning Rome to get out of their vows. They did not want to be under anyone's authority, except the authority of their imperial inner selves.
TLM: Who's that on the cover of that book []?
COULSON: This is Sister Mary Benjamin, IHM. Sister Mary Benjamin got involved with us in the summer of '66, and became the victim of a lesbian seduction. An older nun in the group, "freeing herself to be more expressive of who she really was internally," decided that she wanted to make love with Sister Mary Benjamin. Well, Sister Mary Benjamin engaged in this; and then she was stricken with guilt, and wondered, to quote from her book, "Was I doing something wrong, was I doing something terrible? I talked to a priest--"
Unfortunately, we had talked to him first. "I talked to a priest," she says, "who refused to pass judgment on my actions. He said it was up to me to decide if they were right or wrong. He opened a door, and I walked through the door, realizing I was on my own."
TLM: This is her liberation?
COULSON: This is her liberation. Now, her parents had not delivered her to the IHMs in order for her to be on her own. She was precious to them. She describes the day in 1962 when they drove her in the station wagon to Montecito, to the IHMs' novitiate. How excited they were, to be delivering someone into God's hands! Well, instead they delivered her into the hands of nondirective psychology.
THEY NEED TO SUPPLY THEM WITH FREE BIRTH CONTROL.
Notice that these dissident nuns do not talk about Jesus. It is obvious that they are not what is known as “intentional disciples.”
Pray for their conversion...or reversion as the case may be.
It’s easy to compare the dissident nuns with authentic nuns. The differences are stark. The Dominican sisters I know are all full of JOY. Their joy and happiness is contagious....and they are happy women of a wide range of ages. They are also finding themselves with the need to build additional facilities to handle all the new young women who feel called by Jesus in the same way. You hear “JESUS” frequently in their conversations. They are vibrant and full of a holy enthusiasm. I could add more...but you get the idea.
;-)