ARTICLES
November 2003 ARTICLES
Contents © 2003
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
Witness to Insanity
New Book Details IHMs' Struggle with Cardinal McIntyre
By Charles A. Coulombe
Among the two biggest influences upon my life as a Catholic was the uproar over the Immaculate Heart (IHM) sisters abandoning their habit in 1967-68. At the time they taught me at Blessed Sacrament School in Hollywood. The second biggest influence came in my high school years when I had the by-then retired James Francis Cardinal McIntyre as my confessor. A new book, Witness to Integrity, by Anita Caspary (in religion, Immaculate Heart Sister Mary Humiliata), chronicles the first event and thereby touches upon Cardinal McIntyre, in whose reign it occurred.
It was with some trepidation that I opened the book -- those were unpleasant times for anyone associated with the Immaculate Heart sisters; this was particularly true for their students. My first grade (1966-67) was untroubled: Sister Mary Esther gave us an excellent introduction to reading, spelling, art, arithmetic, music, and above all, religion. Over the course of the year, she made the story of our redemption come alive. Vividly recounting the story of the Old Testament, she filled us with anticipation for the coming of the Messiah. And when at last He did come -- and we realized that He was the Christ on the crucifix, in the stable at Bethlehem, and in the Tabernacle -- well, it left a powerful impression that never left me.
But a storm was brewing, did we but know it. Over the summer, the IHMs met in chapter. There, they created new rules which meant, in essence, the abandonment of traditional religious life -- including the habit. When the 1967-68 year began, they announced that they would be adopting lay clothes and resuming the names they had prior to religious life. It was explained to us that this was somehow going to benefit the students; at the same time we were made aware that Cardinal McIntyre did not want them to do this.
Over thirty years later, it still strikes me that the sisters thought little about the reaction this would cause on the part of students and their parents. Some supported them; but for most of us, it was a tremendous trauma -- one made worse by the fact that those students who registered their disapproval were made, one way or another, to suffer for it. For all their talk of freedom and openness, the ladies could be quite dictatorial.
That they did not see this, then or now, is evident in Sister Mary Humiliata 's book.. The received wisdom among conservative Catholics is that the IHMs were ruined through being used as guinea pigs in Dr. Carl Rogers' psychological experiments in 1967; this is the view espoused by Rogers' assistant, William Coulson. But although Sister Mary admits that Rogers' workshops influenced the 1967 chapter, she denies that their influence was malevolent. Moreover, she angrily charges Coulson's description of the experiments and their results to be "false and inaccurate."
But regardless of Rogers' work among the sisters, it is obvious that the problem with the IHMs went much further back. Even in the '30s, when Sister Mary was admitted to the order, there were tell-tale signs. She recounts how, in response to the question on her application, "why do you want to enter religious life?" she answered, "to help others." The Reverend Mother who interviewed her asked in reply, "my child, what about your own soul? Didn't you think about that?" Sister Mary apparently gave no answer and thought that she would be disqualified as a result; instead, she was accepted.
Sister Mary Humiliata writes that she felt an impatience with what she calls "spurious supernaturalism" ever after. Her opinion of the traditional structure of religious life was that "these restrictions were designed originally to provide a kind of protective shield from a world viewed as replete with temptations that would distract a sister from her search for God. The effect, however, was to separate her from those she served and to foster a childlike mentality, since decisions about her own daily life were made completely by others."
Sister Mary makes it clear where the IHMs stood, theologically, from the beginning of the '60s. The speakers they invited during and after Vatican II included Fathers Daniel Berrigan, Bernard Häring, Hans Küng, and Eugene Kennedy, and layman John Cogley (who later apostatized to the Episcopal Church). The Sisters who ran the order drank deeply from this well. Nevertheless, Sister Mary Humiliata professes herself to have been "shocked" when Cardinal McIntyre declared to her that he had heard that the IHMs and their college were "liberal."
Apart from a few grudging admissions that he prayed a lot and was concerned for the poor, Sister does her best to paint the cardinal as an irrational tyrant. She gleefully quotes Atlanta archbishop Paul Hallinan as saying that McIntyre's views on the liturgy were "absolutely stupid." Time and again she attacks the accuracy of the account of the troubles set forth in Monsignor Francis Weber's biography of the cardinal, His Eminence of Los Angeles.
The picture Sister Mary attempts to paint of Cardinal McIntyre is one of a cruel and petty dictator who was, above all, an oppressor of women. Here, again, having known McIntyre very well, I must differ. Certainly he was a businessman, but he had a great zeal for souls, quite often going out in the middle of the night to bring the sacraments to the dying. (In those days, one could get him after hours by calling his residence out of the phonebook -- try doing that today!) McIntyre certainly believed that the salvation of the sisters' souls was bound up with their retaining the religious life -- especially the rule and habit; moreover, he believed that their abandoning these things could jeopardize the souls of their students.
Of course, with all their talk of being open to the Spirit and accepting the world, one can indeed imagine that the IHMs would inflame Cardinal McIntyre. He had an inherent horror of empty words, meaningless gestures, and grandstanding. For example, he forbade his priests to join civil rights marches. Instead, he kept open -- at archdiocesan expense -- inner city schools, so as to guarantee a quality education to minority children. So too, despite all the talk about his racial prejudice, in the aftermath of the Watts riots, he lent Catholic school buses to the work of transporting Watts housewives many miles to shop at supermarkets (the ones in their area having been burned). But the cardinal's social conscience emerged from his zeal for souls.
Despite her slant on the issue, Sister Mary Humiliata's book makes clear that Cardinal McIntyre knew exactly what was happening -- that the IHMs were embarked on a journey that would take them not only out of religious life, but out of Catholicism as it has always been defined. Witness to Integrity makes it abundantly clear just how disingenuous the sisters were.
In her book, Sister, for the most part, passes over in silence what the result of the senior IHMs' quest for a "new paradigm" for religious life would be, both for their students and the young nuns. Jeanne Cordova, a postulant from 1966 to 1967, gives a painful attestation in her essay, anthologized in Rosemary Curb and Nancy Manahan's 1985 collection, Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence. "They promised me monastic robes, glorious Latin liturgy, the protection of the three sacred vows, the peace of saints in a quiet cell, the sisterhood of a holy family," writes Cordova. "But I entered religious life the year John XXIII [sic] was taking it apart: 1966. The fathers of the Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church were sitting at the Vatican Council destroying in the name of CHANGE, my dreams. Delete Latin ritual. Dump the habit. Damn holy obedience. Send nuns and priests out into the REAL world. If I had wanted the real world, I'd have stayed in it.
"I fell out of love with Jesus and the IHMs, who betrayed and mocked my innocence. I was sinking in the quagmire of broken dreams.... All I have ever wanted to be was a nun. Now I was, and it was hell."
Cordova's experience was far from unique.
Sister Mary Humiliata and her allies, (save for a remnant of about 50) having at last been set free from the archdiocese, created their own religious group, the Immaculate Heart Community. Open to men and women, Catholics and non-Catholics, married and single, it is an amorphous body. Sister describes it triumphantly: "As a Christian ecumenical community, our rituals are open and not confined by male-privileged rules and prohibitions. We are free to serve in the public and private realms of life. As attorneys, educators, ministers, professors, nurses, mothers and fathers, social workers, foster-mothers, scholars, musicians, secretaries, retreat and shelter directors, we continue to expand our understanding of being a Christian in the world. We are free to love and form committed relationships that enhance our service to the world." Doubtless this is all very pleasant, but it underscores Cardinal McIntyre's fears such attitudes would end the IHMs' status as a religious order of teaching sisters -- fears that Sister violently discounts even while proving true.
The order was founded by a Spanish priest in 1848, to safeguard youth from the 19th century wreck of morals. One may contrast Sister Mary Humiliata's statement, above, with a current one from the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Wichita, a daughter foundation from those sisters who elected to remain religious: "The graver poverty of today's youth often stems from the dissolution of their cultural mores, from a lack of nurture in piety, of Christian self-discipline, of prayer and guidance. The Founder [of the Immaculate Heart Sisters] charged the Sisters to provide young people with a solid education as an apt means of reforming society, by helping them to know the truth, to recognize error, and to set their feet firmly on the paths of the Gospel. The Sisters strive to fulfill their mission through a deep prayer life, excellence of scholastic preparation, and sound pedagogical methods. From the heart of the Tabernacle and in the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary they take Christ's message to his people that peace and justice may be restored through the practice of charity."
Witness to Integrity does point up two important contributing factors to the ruin of the IHMs. One was the ever-increasing demands for teaching sisters, demands which often resulted in inexperienced, newly-professed sisters being sent out to teach. While Sister mourns their resulting inadequate university education, certainly their spiritual foundations were also lacking. A sister is not fully formed in the spiritual traditions of her order until she has been solemnly professed for some time. Thus, traditionally, only those in final vows were sent to the classroom under the assumption that only someone whose prayer life was mature could meet classroom pressures. But under the demands of the times, many institutes, including the IHMs, relaxed this rule.
The other problematic issue is that of the sisters' 1924 separation from the Spanish leadership. Sister describes the situation which led up to the break: "The IHM administration in Spain, which during this early period governed the California community, was unfamiliar with the challenges California posed to the sisters. Also, with the entrance of American women into the community, the attitudes of freedom of spirit, rugged individualism, and adaptation to life in California created a distance between the two groups. More grave was the imposition of Spanish authoritarianism over the sisters of the California province."
From the eventual outcome, it is hard not to suppose that the Spanish superiors knew what they were dealing with, as Cardinal McIntyre would four decades later.
Sister Mary Humiliata gloats over the fact that, in 2000, Cardinal Roger Mahony apologized to the Immaculate Heart Community. But an honest reading of this book leaves one with the conviction that any such apology should have been reserved for the memory of James Francis Cardinal McIntyre. By his thwarted attempt to prevent the loss of souls both in and out of the order, he showed himself to be the only real witness to integrity in the whole sorry mess.