Blogging, tweeting, doing battle in court – just a few of the things that mainstream media have been reporting about women religious this week.
Philly.com profiled Becca Gutherman, a 22-year-old senior at Immaculata University in Pennsylvania who is planning to become a sister.
Gutherman is writing a blog called “Road Less Traveled” – a tip of the hat to Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” – where she is chronicling her preparation.
She’s been in discernment for the last five years. At the end, she plans to join the Immaculate Heart of Mary order or the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth.
Young women like Gutherman going through the discernment process, the story notes, are making good use of technology, watching theological discussions on YouTube, researching convents and meeting other women in discernment online.
“The blog gives a face to religious life,” said Gutherman, who is majoring in English and secondary education, with a minor in theology.
The story described Gutherman as “smart, spirited, savvy, and predictably, steadfast to Catholic doctrines.”
The day she was interviewed she was dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt, and in spite of wind chills in the 20s she wore flip-flop sandals.
She had given up proper shoes for Lent after meeting a homeless man with a frostbitten foot.
"I can't speak for all millennials," she said. “But the young women I've been meeting who are becoming nuns are bringing a depth and excitement with them.”
What not to wear
A sister’s habit is out-of-order garb? Apparently so, in an Indian courtroom.
When a sister identified only as Sr. Jasmine, a lawyer, appeared last week in a Delhi court for a domestic violence case, other lawyers objected to what she was wearing, according to The Indian Express.
“I was wearing a black coat and a white band over my habit but they objected, saying I had violated the dress code,” she told the newspaper.
Jasmine, who has been practicing in Delhi since 2000 and works with the Human Rights Law Network, doesn’t understand the controversy.
“If wearing a habit is in violation of the court’s dress code, how did they let me wear it for my identity card picture? You allow Sikhs to come to court wearing turbans. So, how is my habit a problem?” she said.
The chairman of India’s bar council, Manan Kumar Mishra, told the newspaper that there is a “prescribed dress code for courts. No deviation can be allowed regarding that… The turban is not a problem. It can be allowed but not a habit.”
She plans to file an official complaint with the council.
Meet ‘the media nun’
Just in case you’re not already one of her 15,000 Twitter followers, let us introduce you to Sr. Helena Burns of Chicago, recently profiled by The Atlantic in an article titled “The Nun Who Got Addicted to Twitter.”
Sr. Burns is one of a growing number of young nuns using social media to spread the good word. She’s on Facebook, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter, where her handle is @SrHelenaBurns.
Her Twitter profile reads: “Media nun tweets God, Theology of Body, Media Literacy, Philosophy. Proof God exists: hummingbirds, hockey, coffee.”
Burns, who is finishing a master’s degree in media literacy education, tweets on everything from current affairs and religion to her travels. She once posted a selfie she took with Pope Francis and wrote: “Pope Francis will not be your monkey & say what u want him to say when u want him to say it. Mt. 11:17.”
But her bigger goal? To evangelize.
“I want to use the latest, most modern, most efficacious media and media technology to reach the greatest number of people with the holy spirit,” she told The Atlantic.
No doubt?
This headline on a Variety story this week stopped us in our tracks: “Meryl Streep Gets Serenaded and Called a Nun at the O’Neill Theater Center Gala.”
So this is what happened.
Playwright John Patrick Shanley was heaping praise on Streep at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Waterford, Conn., theater.
He directed Streep in the screen version of his play, “Doubt,” in which she played a sister.
“It’s extremely appropriate for Meryl to play a nun because, and no offense to her husband, she kind of is a nun,” Shanley said. “She lives a life of service. It’s just nice to see somebody behaving so well for so long.”
Just a click away
A new website called Imagine a Sister’s Life also went live over the last few days.
Created by the Sisters of Bon Secours based in Marriottsville, Md., the website has a lot of interactive tools to let women learn about religious life.
Several sisters are featured in videos, Sr. Fran Gorsuch writes a blog about her own experiences and a chat room is set up to let sisters and inquiring women talk to each other in real time.
Sr. Pat Dowling, vocation director for Bon Secours, said in a press release: “Our site invites women from all walks of life, who are passionate about their faith, and who wish to use their unique gifts in helping others to explore, ask questions, imagine, and listen to the voice of God in their own hearts."
Must-see TV
Irish TV cameras went behind-the-scenes of St. Mary’s Abbey in Glencairn, County Waterford, this week.
The workings of the country’s only women’s monastery have stayed largely hidden until now, reports Ireland’s The Irish Independent.
The sisters make 3 million communion hosts every year that are used in Ireland and abroad. They are rarely in the public eye, but their living quarters need renovating and the sisters need donations for the work before the next winter sets in.
So, they allowed cameras in.
Mother Marie, abbess of the Cistercian monastery, explained that the nuns were in an unusual situation because they needed to “make ourselves visible in the hope of getting financial support….”
[Lisa Gutierrez is a reporter in Kansas City, Mo., who scans the non-NCR news every week for interesting pieces about sisters. She can be reached at lisa11gutierrez@gmail.com.]