There’s a new reality TV show on the air. Yep. It’s about nuns.
And the first two episodes of the Lifetime series — The Sisterhood: Becoming Nuns — are set at the motherhouse of the religious order Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, which my sister Anne joined up with 45 years back.
The premise of the show is you take five nice young women, 20-25 years old, who seemingly have some level of interest in becoming nuns (or perhaps starring in a cable TV show) and then you send them off to three different convents over several months and see if you have captured any brides for Christ.
Yes, I was skeptical of this concept. I worried for the good women of Anne’s … make that Sr. Jeanne’s … order. Being a nun, especially a nun in an old-style habit, is both curious and counter-cultural these days. Knowing a good number of these sisters as my family does, I find them wonderful, inspiring, complex women who are doing work that would grind most of us to dust.
But how would they hold up with cameras following them, recording their every word, their casual interactions with each other and the young postulants. Well, Dan of little faith, they did great. The Carmelites are generous, welcoming huggers. The sisters displayed remarkable self-awareness of how others see them, correctly and with blinders both. And they showed a great, self-deprecating humor in understanding the many reactions the young women brought to the motherhouse — set on a lovely piece of land along the Hudson River in Germantown, New York.
The Haleys are watching this show with fresh eyes as late next month our own Sr. Jeanne will be heading to the motherhouse as a newly elected member of the order’s governing council. After nearly 20 years of having her right here in Naperville, running St. Patrick’s Residence, we spent a happy Thanksgiving with her on Humphrey Avenue but knowing that when January ends, she’ll be gone from us.
It is a great honor to be chosen, and a smart choice by the voting sisters, to send Anne to the motherhouse. But as a woman who has spent 50 years in the direct, intimate care of elders — Anne started volunteering every weekend at the order’s old Sacred Heart Manor on the West Side as a freshman at Trinity — leaving a nursing home for the governance of the order has proven both wrenching and, I think, gradually invigorating.
So this is the point where Anne gets humanized.
She did teach my brother John and I how to smoke. She did not teach us how to dispose of the butts. She rolled her skirt at Trinity. She can be a little bossy. And she can laugh until she wheezes and gets a lovely shade of red. She has a practical-eyed view of the Catholic Church, sees the warts and the wonders. White Sox fans might recognize her for her “Nuns Love the White Sox” sign she carries to the half-dozen games we make a year. She flinched when our mom told her she wanted to move to St. Pat’s, knowing it would be to die. And she was there with us as a sister when our mom did die after six happy months in Naperville.
Anne headed to Germantown, New York in 1969, right after she graduated from Trinity. We made the trip multiple times as she moved toward final profession of vows. And now we see that lovely spot on the cable TV show and it brings memories and it settles the reality that it will soon be Sr. Jeanne’s home again, at least for the next six years.