ARTICLES
January 2001 ARTICLES
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Ballet Was My First Convent
The Story of A Hermit Nun
By Robert Kumpel
Given the current shortage of priests and nuns, it's hard to imagine that a young, intelligent woman desiring to become a nun would find no order to take her. Yet that is exactly what happened in the case of Sister Mary Alphonsa Nicassio.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Sister Mary Alphonsa, 50 (she declined to share her given name -- she considers it a past identity), knew she wanted to become a nun since she was eight years old. "We moved around LA quite a bit," she said. "I went to Westchester High School and St. Anastasia's Church, where I received my first sacraments. When I was much younger, I'd look at the pictures of religious life in books and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
"I didn't play any sports, but I practiced ballet," continued Sister. "That was my first convent! We all had to look the same, you never got to talk to anybody and it was wonderful! It was a chance to perfect something that was beautiful. It's a very old art, very disciplined, and I loved classical music. I studied voice and piano. I also studied choral direction. I couldn't afford to go to college, but it would have been wonderful. My dream was to go to Julliard."
The changes wrought by Vatican II created a crisis in her life. "I've always been faithful to the Catholic Church, but at one point, when everything changed, I couldn't go to Mass. They didn't have the Tridentine Mass, and I felt that the Church had taken the Mass away. Then, by the grace of God, I heard that someone was still saying the Tridentine Mass -- an independent, retired Jesuit. I am so grateful to these independent priests, because they have saved the faith for us. The Holy Father has said that we should have the Tridentine Mass available, but the bishops are not obedient."
After high school, Sister Mary Alphonsa pursued her vocation while supporting herself by working for the city of Los Angeles and hiring herself out as a musician. "I started by going to different monasteries, trying to see where my vocation was, seeking spiritual direction. The closest one to me was Dominican, in Hollywood. They saw in me more of a Benedictine spirituality and they directed me to the Benedictines. I went to St. Andrew's monastery at Valyermo and the Camaldolese in Big Sur, and I found that was very much where I fit in."
Sister originally intended to join a traditional religious order. "I wrote to all the different convents, and visited many of them, but I couldn't find anything at that time -- the late 1970s -- that was maintaining the traditions. It was a very big disappointment to me. All these changes were going on in the church and I couldn't find any place that had the traditional Roman Catholic Mass. The traditional breviary was not being used and even the rosary was not a primary focus of their prayer. They didn't even pray it together. With every tradition it was, 'oh no, we don't do that anymore.' There's more opening up now because the traditional movement is starting to get a foothold.
"It was devastating," continued Sister Mary Alphonsa. "My spiritual director was the chief theologian to Cardinal [Timothy] Manning before he was under Roger Mahony. I ran into the modernist blocks, so I continued to do retreats and study. I tried to get the canonical approval (Canon 604) which allows a woman to take a perpetual vow of virginity and still live in the world. I went after that, fulfilled all the requirements, and was approved by the tribunal of the archdiocese of Los Angeles -- then it was thrown out by Roger Mahony. In fact, he wrote to me and said that a vow of virginity was not necessary for discipleship to Christ.
"So I said, 'O.K., I'll apply again in another year,' and I did. I was being represented by the judicial vicar, and Cardinal Mahony said, 'I don't even want to hear about it, because I'm not going to even consider this.' But I was given permission to apply to different dioceses and I found out that the bishops were not even bothering with it because the vicars were going towards the feminist attitudes.
"My spiritual director really stood by me," said Sister Mary Alphonsa. "He said that things should have opened up, but the way the church was, I wasn't going to fit in at any convents. They were all becoming focused politically on the feminist view. The traditions were all put on the back burner. The breviary was changed, the habits were either changed or eliminated, and we had the Novus Ordo rite, and it has its own religion. Rome has admitted it. Cardinal Ratzinger has said that it's a novelty, and that's true -- it follows along Protestant lines.
"The new church doesn't want nuns to look different from anyone else. Their philosophy is that we're more approachable that way -- but if somebody doesn't know what you are, why will they approach you? One person said I needed to get more involved in social justice."
Sister Mary Alphonsa continued her search for the right religious order. "I thought," she said, "'there has to be a convent out there that's still doing it,' and there wasn't. I went through San Bernardino, San Jose, other places and finally, one woman at a diocese -- I won't mention any names -- was going to represent me to the bishop. I had all my paperwork in order, and I kept waiting. Finally, I called her a month later and asked what had happened. She said, 'he's not going to do anything at this time.' So I asked her if she had actually submitted my case to him. She said, 'no. He's too busy.'
"That's what you get, and I'm not the only one," Sister lamented. "There's a woman in Orange County who's been going after this canon for about ten years. I just gave up on it, and it was a good thing I did. I had a very old confessor who one day told me, 'you don't know what you're getting into. If you get this approved, you will be under a bishop, and the bishops are crazy now. You may get something, but you're not going to like it. That bishop's going to tell you what to do, how to do it. You'll have no support. Nothing.' If you had the true Catholic Church and a bishop that accepted that, it would be wonderful."
Even though the door of canonical approval closed on her, another door opened in 1988. "I went to the Camaldoli in New York and they started me with some simple promises." Bernard Fellay, a bishop of the Society of St. Pius X, consecrated her, and she began her life as a Hermit Sister of Saint Benedict. While she admitted that the Society of St. Pius X is schismatic, she noted that they have valid orders and sacraments. She said, too, that she does not adhere to everything they believe. She has not sought further canonical approval from the archdiocese of Los Angeles or the diocese of San Bernardino because she does not want to be placed under bishops who are disobedient to Rome.
"Benectine spirtituality is very simple," explained Sister, "and there are a lot of artists in the Benedictines, so that was right up my alley. The Rule of St. Benedict was almost exactly as I had been living, so it wasn't a big shock."
Sister Mary Alphonsa' hermitage is located near Hemet, in Riverside County. "It's not even on the Thomas Brothers map," she said. "I've got about a quarter of an acre here and it's very quiet." A priest, Father James Wright, offers the Tridentine Mass for her on Sundays and Holy Days. She supports herself with a small pension from the city of Los Angeles and self-produced religious tapes. "I also have a couple of piano students. I don't advertise, because it's a very private place here."
Both of Sister's parents are still alive and she has a younger sister who is an attorney in San Diego. At first, her parents weren't enthused about her vocation. "They wanted it because I wanted it," said Sister Mary Alphonsa." I didn't get any encouragement until I was on my own and took the ball and ran with it."
Sister doesn't see a promising future for women's orders if the current trend of militant feminism and lesbianism continues. "The epitome of religious life is feminine. We are supposed to imitate the Mother of God. In the new way, I see a lot of sisters with very short hair, wearing tailored things. They're taking over, just like they want to be able to say Mass and take over the man's role. My case is very unusual, but it's becoming more common because the nuns that left the convents are either by themselves or living at home. Where do you think they all went? We've lost 125 thousand nuns since the changes came after Vatican II!"
Still, Sister believes it is possible to live the traditional religious life, in spite of the obstacles. "I would tell a young woman today to talk to another woman living the religious life -- a life she could respect and likes. Visit the convents. See what kind of religious life they are living. There are traditional convents and orders, but she will need some help, because some of them are sede-vacantists [schismatics who do not believe John Paul II is the legitimate Pope]. You need to ask about that, and they'll be very open about it. But the traditional movement is in full swing. The Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter has started an order of sisters too. If she wants the traditional Roman Catholic sisterhood, she needs to go to Mass where there is a traditional priest -- not necessarily associated with the diocese. The dioceses are headed for modernism -- it's only a matter of time. The Church has been forced underground as we head toward a one-world religion. We have so many home chapels and that's where you're going to find the true faith. You're not going to find it at parishes anymore as one-by-one the churches are being desecrated. At the same time, for every one that goes down, there are more and more underground churches."
A woman "inspired and interested" in religious life, said Sister Mary Alphonsa, must remember that "it takes a process of time because it is a very important decision. You don't just 'check in'. God moves you slowly, but He doesn't leave you half-done."