Posted on 01/09/2003 10:11:34 PM PST by Coleus
From cloister to chaos to a new life
There is a photo Nicole Ingra keeps in the living room of her Kenilworth home of "clothing day" - the day she received her habit as a Carmelite nun. A crown of flowers rests on her head.
"That was a big day," Ingra recalled. "It was the first time I was called Sister John of the Cross."
All she wanted that February day in 1984 was to spend her life in cloistered meditation and prayer behind the walls of a Morris Township Carmelite monastery.
"Here I thought I was going to be basically forgotten by the world, living my life in solitude and seclusion," she said last week. "And look at what happened. I haven't had seclusion or solitude since then."
Her dream of obscurity as a cloistered nun was lost forever when Ingra and four other Carmelite nuns locked themselves in the monastery infirmary in October 1988 for a nine-month protest. Their fear: that they would be evicted because of their opposition to what they saw as attempts to liberalize what their religious order stood for.
The standoff became international news, spawning a media circus at the monastery and thrusting the private, conservative dissidents into the limelight. Since then, the eldest, Mother Philomena, died in February 1999. Sister Teresita is a Carmelite in a monastery in the Midwest, and Sister Maria is in a monastery in New England. Sister Bernadette, who was banned from taking solemn -or final -vows, along with Ingra, is believed to be alone somewhere in New York State practicing a hermit-like lifestyle.
"I've tried to correspond with her, but she will not answer if she is living as a hermit," Ingra said. "The mail doesn't come back."
For Ingra, 42, the controversy resulted in emotional turmoil, banishment from the order, and a new life as a holistic practitioner. This Valentine's
Day will be her fifth wedding anniversary.
"To this day I suffer over the loss," she said of leaving the order. "It causes me grief even now because I am not there. But I am very happy with my holistic practice. I have helped so many people. I can see wonderful results and people get better."
Ingra was shocked at the public interest their action stirred. Newspaper reporters and television crews from local stations and national networks were there.
"I never knew how it would escalate, how the press would make it enormous, and the nuns never contacted the media," she said. "I guess they wanted to know what goes on behind those walls. They saw quiet little nuns making a big fuss.
"But we weren't making a fuss. We were fighting to maintain our constitution and rules ... for the whole ideology of the order. And it wasn't for things such as eating candy and watching television like the press reported. It was a breakdown of our whole lifestyle, the destruction of what we stood for."
The changes, Ingra said, "were being crammed down our throats whether we liked it or not."
"We were commanded [by the prioress] to watch a video film, eat candy, and go outside in the parking lot, and we shouldn't have been out there," she said. "Bright lights were being put in our chapel, which is supposed to be subdued during prayers ."
The late Mother Teresa Hewitt, head prioress during the standoff, denied at the time that she forced anyone to watch television or to eat candy. (The monastery is still operating, with the nuns there practicing a cloistered lifestyle).
Ingra says she has no regrets about the stand she took.
"I never did," said Ingra, who spoke to the media through a window. "I'm sticking to my story. I've never deviated from the facts. I know what happened because I lived it.''
Looking back, she thinks it was preparation for what she is doing now.
"[What] I learned then is a lot about human nature," she said. "I saw the best and the worst of it. It gave me the knowledge I need to be able to work with the public as I do now.''
Ingra still lives a prayerful life. Her faith has been unshakable.
"In fact, it became stronger because of what I went through," she said.
Ingra goes to Mass daily and is active in St. Theresa R.C. Church in Kenilworth, Union County, where she is a member of the Rosary Society. She also is a lector, a Eucharistic minister, a vice president of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knights of Columbus - and a third-order, secular Carmelite (laypeople affiliated with the Carmelite order).
"That's the only way I can be a Carmelite now," she said. "In the third order, I am known as Sister John of the Heart of Jesus. My center is always Jesus. That's my beginning, my middle, my end."
She has traveled a hard road since leaving what she thought would be her lifelong home in 1989, after being hospitalized for an optic nerve infection.
"My health had broken down and I didn't want to be a burden to the nuns," she said. "I had migraines so bad, the doctors thought I had meningitis. I was actually undergoing a total physical breakdown from the stress. I was extremely weak, couldn't eat. We were crammed in a little infirmary for months ... we wanted to be alone and we couldn't. The pressure, the strain of not knowing what was happening, was terrible for us and our families."
She remembers changing from a habit and leaving the monastery in a dress borrowed from her mother.
"It was unbelievably painful," she said. "I was devastated because I fought so hard to stay there. If my health hadn't given out, I would have stayed to fight more. I loved being a Carmelite, the ideals, and wanted to preserve the traditions."
For their disobedience, solemn vows were denied Ingra - then Nicole Prescott - and Sister Bernadette, another junior professed (the stage after novice) in the infirmary after their temporary vows expired during the standoff.
"I wanted to devote my whole life to Jesus, and I thought the best way was as a Carmelite cloistered nun," she said. "You pray for the world through sacrifice. I wanted to give up everything so I could be the best I could be."
Now she was being forbidden to pursue that calling. After six years in the order, Ingra went home to her parents in Hillside where she grew up. "There's no halfway house for cloistered nuns," she said. "It took me a month to go out the door [of her parents' house]."
A steroid she was taking for her optic nerve infection caused an adverse reaction and led her to look into holistic medicine. She remembers the first time she got behind the wheel of a car in six years.
"It was like somebody living in the Yukon who suddenly finds herself driving in New York City during rush hour," she said. "You get hit with all these sounds. All of your senses are suddenly fired up."
Ingra started to look for a job, landing one in customer service. She was working three at one point to make a full-time salary and ended up becoming an office manager for a podiatrist. Then her boss retired, and she was out of a job.
She had been going to a holistic center in the evening to become certified in reflexology and aromatherapy. Now jobless, she volunteered at the center, becoming certified as a holistic practitioner with 10 certificates and diplomas.
In 1997, her father suffered a stroke. Ingra watched her sister do reflexology on his big toe, and he came out of a coma.
"That got me curious, and I was curious about what I could for myself and my adverse reaction to pharmaceutical drugs."
She got into aromatherapy, then herbal care and Reiki (working with the body's electromagnetic field), then holistic nutrition.
Ingra advertises on the Internet and in magazines, and people hear about her by word of mouth.
"I think my background as a nun has helped me work with people," she said. "I see them as individuals with individual needs and wants."
About six years ago, Ingra was introduced by friends to her future husband, Charles Ingra, because both were Yankee fans. She was married the next year in a Yankee blue dress and Charles, who works for a book company, in a Yankee blue suit.
Ingra could have joined another order but wanted only to be a Carmelite, and that was no longer possible.
"Even though I was forbidden to join a Carmelite monastery, I still live a [religious] lifestyle according to my state in life as a wife and secular woman," she said.
Once every three months, she visits the monastery for nostalgia.
"I have very mixed emotions," she said. "I look at what had been, what could have been. I feel very sad I am not there but I realize I have something else to do now in life. And I have to be faithful to this call that I have now."
Elaine D'Aurizio's e-mail address is daurizio@northjersey.com
I saw that too, kinda’ jumped right out at me. One would think that this kind of faith is impossible for a Catholic based on the postings of many non-Catholics. She understands that in the Church, all things point to Christ.
My Grandmother used to tell me that the area which I live in used to be famous for the ammount of religious that were in the area (There's atleast one more cloister of nuns in Morristown and also a Benedictine Monastery). The Jesuits even have a retreat house at the edge of town. Unfortunately all of the order's numbers have dwindled and the "Graying & Gaying" effect does seem to be happening, from what I've seen.
The Sister named Bernadette wears a Carmelite habit and lives in the diocese of Albany in upstate New York which is surprising if she was banned from solemn vows as a cloistered nun then she shouldn't being wearing their habit. Do you have any articles or info on the situation at that cloister that can be found by internet?
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