Posted on 10/25/2017 7:48:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
RE: Mrs. JimRed was a teaching nun before we met.
Just curious, what made her leave?
During the Middle Ages women could not live alone, they needed to live under the guardianship of a male. That was a problem because there were many more women than men. The men were off fighting and getting killed in various wars and Crusades.
So where would the women live? The convents required a sizable dowry that only the rich could afford. The Beguines offered an alternative. They were ‘sort of’ like convents but not as strict, not as expensive, and the vows were not eternal. Women could enter the beguine and maybe leave at a later time.
Maybe we need to begin the beguines again! ;-)
After asking the first time and not getting an answer, I never really pressed her for a reason; I figured if she wanted me to know, she’d tell me.
I suspect that it was the lack of freedom to come and go as she pleased.
In 1965 I entered 1st grade and was taught by Nuns for the subsequent 8 years. I have a love and respect for them that I will carry to Heaven.
Some thoughts that will surely get me flamed.
- My grandmother was one of 11 children. Four of her sisters became nuns. Nobody has 11 children anymore. So obviously the pool of potential nuns has shrunken precipitously. And back then large Catholic families pressured some of their kids to become nuns and priests. Many of them did so and then ended up not being bitter and unhappy with that career choice. Having nuns and priests in place who did not really want the job is not necessarily the best thing for the Church.
- Being a nun makes for a lonely old age. You give up having a family of your own, and when you get old the Church does not always provide all of the resources needed to take care of you. So you have to rely on the kindness of nieces, nephews and cousins. A lot of people who have seen this with their own eyes would not make the same choice. When a local community got down to 11 elderly nuns their order sold off their convent and sent them off to a Presbyterian Senior Care Center (where you can see them wandering the halls in their habits).
- A lot of communities became infested with left-wing nutjobs and lesbians. When I was a kid my mom tried to befriend some nuns in a nearby convent, and was shocked to learn that one of them had ordered thirty copies of The Joy of Sex to give to her class at a Catholic high school! It turned out several of them had kooky sex hangups (this caused my mom to develop a theory that a lifetime of celibacy does really bad things to the female brain). Even if she was wrong on that, I don’t think a lot of normal women would choose to enter a convent and have to deal with that element 365 days a year.
- 80% of nuns in this country a hundred years ago were working either in Catholic hospitals or Catholic schools. The Church has pretty much gotten out of the hospital business, and the schools are dwindling rapidly. So if we had all these nuns today, what exactly would they be doing?
inadvertent? lol
Impeccable penmanship is a true joy to see these days. It is undervalued by the educational system of the last several decades.
After reading these posts, I searched for a woman who was a prep school classmate. I knew she had gone into the convent, but hadn’t stayed. How fun to find a picture of her with a group of young women at the Mother House! She looked just as I remembered her.
Now that women have so many more career choices, I’m not surprised ‘nun’ is pretty far down on the list. Also, if you were poor and Catholic and wanted an education, being a nun who was sent to nursing school or teacher ed might sound OK, now you can get a scholarship or student loan. Being a nun has to really be a vocation (as it always should have been), and not just a way to leave home or get a degree.
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