The old Catholic schools and the tough-as-nails nuns (or, more accurately, sisters) who famously staffed them often get a bad rap. Recollections include everything from run-of-the-mill punishments—like being forced to eat soap or having a chalkboard eraser fired at one's head—tohopefully apocryphal horror stories like being tied to a radiator.
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Catholic schools still exist, of course, but they are now distinguished chiefly for forcing their students to wear uniforms and for occasionally firing a gay teacher. There are fewer sisters doing the teaching these days (in fact, the entire U.S. population of women religious now stands at less than one-third of what it was in 1965.)
It's not just the schools that have changed. Catholic parishes have fewer on-site convents than they used to, fewer community and cultural events like the old street processions sometimes ending with communal meals, and often fewer altar boys—which is, given the sexual abuse scandal, perhaps not surprising. The result is that, as the communitarian dimension of Catholic school and parish life is diminished, a whole generation of young people is growing up without the distinctively hellish and wonderful mentoring that those “old nuns” could give.
A whole generation of young people is growing up without the distinctively hellish and wonderful mentoring that those “old nuns” could give.
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Call their attitude “cheerful world-weariness.” They knew how to face and challenge the fallen world without becoming bitter and without losing their faith and hope in the eventual triumph of God’s mercy. I am lucky enough to have had a few elderly sisters living at the parish I grew up in, though unfortunately I am likely part of the last generation that will get to experience that attitude in action.
The best descriptor for these women—they were strong, although you would never think of calling them “strong women”—might be spunky. My family used to cook a holiday dinner for the entire convent every Christmas, and the sisters would make sure it included wine. One of them told us about their vows of poverty and simplicity, one rule of which was that they must buy only the cheapest cuts of meat in the grocery store. Of course, she made sure to indicate her favorite cuts of hers, which her vows usually put out of reach. Another added that she preferred real soda and that the diet version tasted like “dirty water.” We would always begin and end visits with a prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the convent chapel, but in between were jokes and lively chatter.
I was in the lobby of our church with one of the sisters before Mass one morning when a young woman in beach attire went inside. I asked her (the sister, I mean) whether it was appropriate to chide people for dressing so casually in church. She replied, with a twinkle in her eye, that simply coming to church is admirable, and it would be quite wrong to judge the young woman for dressing so inappropriately as that. This ability to find humor rather than outrage or indifference, to remain kind and humble while believing oneself to be in possession of the truth, is by no means a common posture. God knows it is not common enough in the church.