Posted on 10/25/2017 7:48:37 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Whatever happened to nuns? Once familiar figures in American culture, sometimes lampooned but more often admired, nuns and religious sisters (not the same thing) in the United States numbered 181,000 in 1965. As of 2010 that number had plunged by more than two-thirds and the visibility of these women was reduced by much more than that: Of those remaining, the vast majority are elderly (88 percent were 60 or older as of 2009) and many of them live in homes for the aged. Nuns and religious sisters are a dying breed.
Nuns, who lead cloistered lives, often in monasteries, and avoid contact with the outside world, and religious sisters, who tend to be active in charity and are often at work in hospitals and other places where their comforts are needed, are strongly identified with Roman Catholicism, though other religions have them as well. Nuns take “solemn vows” that require them to renounce all property but religious sisters take “simple vows” that allow them to inherit it.
What caused the ranks of these women of deep devotion so rapidly to diminish after that 1965 peak? American life certainly started changing rapidly in the 1960s, but factors such as the sexual revolution, the explosion in drug use, and the Vietnam War didn’t apply so much to the Catholic sisters. What did apply to them — what tore the foundations out from under them — was the 1962–1965 work of the Second Vatican Council, known as Vatican II, which ordered several steps meant to moderate and modernize Church practices. Henceforth, Mass would be celebrated in English or any other contemporary language rather than Latin, by a priest facing the congregants instead of standing with his back to them. And nuns learned that they could no longer consider themselves closer to God than anyone else. Their lifelong devotion to sacrifice seemed to be rendered moot.
This event is seismically portrayed in the thoughtful new film Novitiate, which centers on a graceful, sensitive teen named Cathleen (a riveting Margaret Qualley) who decides to take vows after attending parochial school. Her largely secular family and its disappointments fade to the background of her mind. “I’m in love,” she tells her disbelieving mother (Julianne Nicholson). She yearns to be a bride of Christ.
In an age of nonstop distraction, Novitiate has a mesmeric appeal. Despite the tightly circumscribed nature of life in the monastery by the harsh Reverend Mother (Melissa Leo) who tells the postulants (first stage of training) and novitiates (second stage) to consider her orders to be the word of God, we can sense what binds Cathleen to the vocation: the silence, the solitude, the solemnity. All of these things are even rarer as we watch the film today, which makes it that much more gripping. The Reverend Mother hasn’t left the monastery grounds in 40 years, and it’s impossible not to marvel at that level of dedication.
Cathleen’s poise is jolted by the arrival of a novitiate, Sister Emanuel (Rebecca Dayan) who transfers from another, less strict, order. “I thought it would be easier,” she says, and the statement sounds bizarre. Easier? Here? Where the Reverend Mother is known to hand out “the discipline” — a knotted rope — and order some charges to flog themselves with it? Later, though, Emanuel explains: Sometimes having more restrictions — fewer choices — can be “easier.” The film, written and directed by Margaret Betts, links this attitude directly to the departure of tens of thousands of nuns after Vatican II. The Church’s decision to modernize may have inadvertently cost it dearly. For Cathleen and the others, there is an intense need for a very different and more rigorous lifestyle than obtains outside the walls of the cloister. Breaking down barriers in hopes of allowing more people in turned out to have the unintended consequence of ushering those within to leave. Theologian Sandra Schneiders has noted that “religious life could no longer be understood as an elite vocation to a ‘life of perfection’ that made its members superior to other Christians.”
You could hardly expect a film about nuns made in 2017 to be as positive a portrayal as The Nun’s Story, Fred Zinnemann’s 1959 film that starred a radiant Audrey Hepburn, but Novitiate mostly avoids the usual cheap shots that tend to characterize films about Catholic matters. The Reverend Mother, while a mostly nasty figure, isn’t just the cartoon villain you’d expect and is genuinely anguished by Vatican II’s edicts. To her, the pre-Vatican II Church is perfection itself. Her conversations with God reveal all the pain of someone whose foundations have been ripped out from beneath her. Leo has a tendency to lay it on thick (and was richly rewarded for it in, for instance, The Fighter, which won her an Oscar), but with momentary exceptions her depiction is controlled rather than overwrought. Despite her occasional histrionics, Novitiate is mostly an open-minded consideration of the devotion that makes some women choose a life of limits, as well as a useful illustration of why inherently conservative institutions are wise to be skeptical about change.
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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