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Faith of Our Fathers

Why would I renounce all my aspirations and ambitions to explore the wider world in order to enter a cloister? To understand it, it is necessary to grasp the grip that Catholicism had in those days, not only in its institutional hegemony, but in its psychological power. More than anything else, the all-encompassing presence of the Roman Catholic Church had dominated my life. My family was Catholic. My friends were Catholic. My schools were Catholic. My books were Catholic. Most of my mentors were Catholic. Imprimatur and nihil obstat were as natural and essential as title and author in the opening pages of books, at least those dealing with higher matters. Above all else, it was the rituals of the Church that gave rhythm and order to the days and months and years of the first two decades of my life. Its rites of passage marked most decisively the stages through which I moved through my life world. Each year revolved in the grooves of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, May procession, Pentecost. Its theology provided answers to every philosophical question. Philosophy, I was told, existed to take human reason as far as it could go, but could only be completed by divine revelation. Theology stood at the summit of the hierarchy of knowledge.

In time, I discerned different streams within this overall flow. It was this gradual realization that brought me into the realms of philosophy and theology. Despite being female, I developed an aversion to the trappings of female spirituality: rosaries, scapulars, apparitions, sugary sentimental prayers. I had little respect for women, including nuns. All my role models were men, and I gravitated toward traditions of male spirituality, Jesuit ones in particular, which I found stronger, more rational, more active. I believed in the harmony of faith and reason, with the emphasis on reason. When we graduated from eighth grade, we were presented with a book called The Question Box, which gave answers to every anticipated question and objection to Catholic doctrine. I read it avidly and felt even more confident of the Church’s omniscience.

I wanted to give myself without reserve, even though it meant enclosing myself in a world of women, leaving behind my notions of a career in academe or politics, sublimating my sexuality, sacrificing my freedom. I prayed in the spirit of Ignatius of Loyola: “Teach me to be generous, to give without counting the cost, to fight without heeding the wounds.” It was inevitable that I enter the convent, because I yearned to have a comprehensive worldview and to live in harmony with it. I thought that the people around me were so busy going somewhere that they forgot to find out where they were going. This became axiomatic for me. What I saw most people doing was what I was most resolved not to do. Catholicism addressed the big picture and demanded that its chosen commit totally to contemplating and communicating it.

I felt called. I believed that this thrust toward totality, which I felt so strongly and which kept me so preoccupied with questions of origin and destiny, was God’s way of pulling me toward the religious life. The Church’s constant emphasis on “vocation” had conditioned me to believe that this restless searching was a sign of having been chosen to play a special role in understanding and teaching. When I decided to enter the convent, I believed I had resolved my struggles, although that was far further from being the case than I could possibly have imagined. I had my worldview worked out, so I thought, and I had only to advance in higher knowledge of it and give myself in total commitment to it.

I applied and was accepted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Chestnut Hill. We had to supply academic transcripts, SAT scores, baptismal and confirmation certificates, and letters of reference from our teachers and pastors. We underwent psychological and physical examinations—the latter testing for virginity. Not everyone who applied was accepted, although I don’t think that those who were rejected necessarily failed the virginity test. The fact that the Sisters of Saint Joseph had a Jesuit founder—Jean-Pierre Medaille, who established the congregation in Le Puy, France, in 1650—was significant for me. In fact, I would have preferred to join the Jesuits, but this seemed the next best thing. I wanted to be a teacher, and this was a teaching order. I also had two cousins, both on the Sheehan side, who were SSJs.

The day I entered the convent in September 1962 was one of the most drastic rituals of closing one chapter of a life and beginning another that I have ever known. I shut my huge trunk, full of the required number of undershirts, slips, stockings, nightdresses, slippers, pencils, bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo, and placed on the top an envelope with the “dowry” I had worked all summer to earn. It was not only that we had to bring exactly what was on the list, but we were also strictly prohibited from bringing anything not on the list. I had to let go of my most treasured possessions: books, letters, photos. I donned the black serge dress and cape of a postulant. I said goodbye to friends and neighbors and siblings, looked around the house for what I believed to be the last time and got in the car. My parents and my cousin-sponsor chattered away about what a beautiful autumn day it was, how it was better to be early than late, how long it would take to get to Chestnut Hill, how I would never again worry about having a roof over my head. I let it all pass over me, impressing on myself the enormity of what I was doing and anticipating the contemplative silence that lay ahead. When we arrived at the postulate, a new building about a mile away from the mother house and college, I was taken away, given my number in the order, shown to my cell in the dormitory, and brought to a hall to say my goodbyes. When the bell rang, we formed ranks in the order of our numbers and processed into chapel. One by one, we approached the altar and received the postulant’s veil. There were ninety of us who entered that day.

From that day on, we followed the strictest regime: mass, meditation, meals, manual labor, spiritual reading. We were given precise instructions down to the smallest detail: how to walk (noiselessly, eyes down, hands inside cape, close to the wall, measured steps), how often to wash our hair (once a week), how often to change our underwear (every three days), how to undress without looking at our bodies (slip the nightdress over the head before taking underwear off), how to make our beds (square corners), how to eat a banana (with a fork) and an orange (with a spoon). Between night prayers and morning mass, we were to observe a grand silence, which could only be broken by a major emergency, and an ordinary silence at all other times, punctuated only by speech necessary to the execution of tasks. When the bell rang, it was the voice of God, and we were to stop sewing in mid-stitch, stop conversation in mid-word, stop anything we were doing that very second. We were assigned fixed places in refectory, chapel, and recreation. Recreation was the one hour a day when we were allowed to speak. There were rigid guidelines about topics that could and could not be discussed. We were not to speak of our past lives or to speak critically of our present ones. We were not to criticize our superiors or even comment on the food. We were forbidden to use the adjective “my.” It was our book, our veil, our slip, and so on. If told to put my name in something, I was to write “For the use of Sister Helena Sheehan.”

Communication with the outside world was severely limited and subjected to tight surveillance. There were no letters, except to and from our parents (but not during Lent or retreat), and even these were censored. Any letters we wrote that were judged insufficiently edifying or marred by sub-par grammar or handwriting were handed back to be rewritten. Some sisters smuggled letters out on visiting day. I didn’t, although I wanted to do so. I composed letters in my head to Ken and Greg, but I didn’t want to violate either the letter or spirit of the rules by writing or sending them. Many sisters were homesick, but I wasn’t. I didn’t miss my home, but I did miss the wider world. Postulants were breathless with excitement when visiting day came and they could sit in a circle in an auditorium and talk—of elevated subjects, of course—with their families. I was glad for the break in routine and interested to see how my brothers and sisters were growing up, but the people I most wanted to see were not allowed to visit me.

There were no newspapers. There was no reading of anything not assigned. There was no radio or television. Sometimes we laid newspapers (which could be read by superiors) over newly scrubbed floors, and it was hard not to peek at the articles. When parents came to visit, it was difficult not to ask about current events. Occasionally we were told about news. The inauguration of Vatican II was announced, although the spirit of renewal surrounding the council made little impact on our congregation during my time there. I was attuned to such trends before I entered, and it was deeply disillusioning that this new thinking had almost no discernable effect on our religious “formation.” The winds of change did not blow through our postulate or novitiate. It seemed so solid, even though it was about to be blown to bits. Just as Vatican II began in October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis rocked the world, even our cloister. The mistress of postulants announced it in a most apocalyptic way. We fell to our knees with a strong sense that the end of the world might be near. I trembled with world-historical fear. The Cold War was threatening to become a hot one, the ultimate one, and peaceful coexistence seemed in shreds. Then, after some days, she announced that it was all over. Naturally I wanted to know far more—how? why?—but that was forbidden.

Our mistress of postulants terrified us at times. We met with her regularly, primarily as a group, but also one-on-one. She told us God would decide who would stay and who would go. Not everyone who was a postulant would become a novice. All the doors opened out, she reminded us. Observing some behavior not to her satisfaction, she solemnly pronounced, “God will not be mocked.” As the months went on, postulants disappeared one by one. They were not allowed to tell anyone they were leaving or even to say goodbye, and their departure was never announced. There was only the empty space in chapel and at the breakfast table. Later that day, numbers would be reassigned. We were never to mention them again, but we could not help wondering who went willingly and who was asked to leave. For a time, things regularly went missing, and we gossiped about “the klepto.” When one postulant disappeared and the thefts stopped, we assumed that she was the one, though we would never have suspected her.

During these months, we received instruction in the Holy Rule and in the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The chapter of the Holy Rule on chastity was remarkable in that it dealt with virtually everything except sex. It began: “The sisters shall live in the congregation as the angels live in heaven, that is, their life is to be altogether interior and spiritual and detached from everything sensual.” We were never to look anyone in the eyes. We were never to touch another person. We were never to converse with one person alone, instead always gathering in groups of three or more. We were to have no “particular friendships.” We were to have no unnecessary conversations with men “whether lay or ecclesiastical.” For conversations necessary to our daily tasks, another sister was to be present and report to the superior. All the while, something in me rebelled against this monastic ethos, against the whole negative vocabulary of death and renunciation. We were to be “dead to the self,” “dead to the flesh,” “dead to the world.” The habit we were sewing and would soon be wearing for the rest of our lives was to be our shroud. Yet wasn’t it God, I wondered, who had created the world, the flesh, ourselves, our feelings for others? But according to Thomas à Kempis, “I go into the world of men and I return less a man.”

I couldn’t accept it. The attitude of blind, unquestioning obedience was alien to me. I often thought of a line from the film The Nun’s Story, spoken to the protagonist, Gabrielle, by her father on the day of her entrance into the convent: “I can see you poor, I can see you chaste, but obedient—never.” I believed in discipline. I wanted to purge myself of all indulgence and give myself to something greater, but I could not renounce my standards of intellectual and emotional integrity, which, however immature, were nevertheless very strong. But this, of course, was intellectual pride. I was constantly reprimanded for this particular sin, even when I said nothing. They knew the signs. They could read it on my face, which had not yet gone blank the way it was supposed to do. We were to do our best in the tasks we were given, yet when we did them well, we were accused of pride. When others came to me for help with their studies or sewing, at which I excelled, I was caught in a contradiction: I felt confident in my abilities and wished to be gracious and generous toward others who were not so confident or able, but feared that to help them was to be proud and arrogant.

For feast days, we had celebrations with songs and pageants performed by the postulants. My role was writing and delivering a script about the meaning of the feast. My work was very well received, as I found fresh language to articulate what they believed, delivered in a way that moved them. This too was treacherous territory, as any resulting self-affirmation and acclaim posed a danger to my soul. To keep me in check, I was never assigned to read in the refectory. Every time our weekly assignments were read out, I hoped for it, whereas most dreaded it. I was told I had to conquer my pride, and though I tried to be humble, no sooner did I make some progress than I took pride in my humility. Such a spirituality built around constant self-scrutiny and striving for perfection was torment to me, taking my already extreme self-scrutinizing and perfectionist tendencies and turning them from constructive into destructive forces. The problem was less the self-monitoring and drive for perfection in themselves, as much as their basis in a dualism of body and spirit, of reason and faith, which undercut my quest for wholeness. The anti-physicalism, and even more the anti-intellectualism, felt like a constant assault on my character. Yet others seemed simply to accept these impossible contradictions without torturing themselves the way I did.

We were divided into two groups. It was never said, but clearly understood, that one was considered to be of a higher academic standard than the other. Except for one sister who had graduated from college before entering, we all took courses at Chestnut Hill College that would count toward our degrees. There was no consultation or differentiation in what we would study. We would all pursue a B.S. in education, to prepare us to teach primary school. After several years, some might be selected for higher studies and teaching at high school or college level. I hoped I would be chosen. Our college classes were a series of introductory courses in literature, art, and music, as well as religion. Unlike some orders, we did not take classes with ordinary college students. Our nun instructors came to the postulate and gave special classes for us alone. I also suspected that marks were not given strictly on academic merit. If it was thought that a sister needed to be humbled or boosted, her marks might be adjusted accordingly. The ban on “particular friendships” was a constant source of tension. We were not to be more friendly with one person than any other, but it was of course impossible to like everyone equally, and we naturally preferred the company of some sisters to others. Lesbian tendencies were evident, though in a deeply sublimated mode. Some sisters had a crush on a high school teacher-nun, who had inspired them to join the convent, and soon developed new crushes in the postulate and novitiate as well. Even those who would not have been so inclined in the outside world developed infatuations toward other women that in another environment would have been channeled toward men.

Meanwhile, my family’s status in their local parish was enormously enhanced by my entrance into the convent. They had always been regarded as a good Catholic family, and my mother was admired as a daily communicant, even with her squirming toddlers in tow. But they never put themselves forward to be leaders of the Catholic organizations to which they belonged: Sodality, Holy Name Society, or Knights of Columbus. They had not been among those on the most favored terms with the priests and nuns. All this changed suddenly. My brothers reported being singled out to take messages from one classroom to another. My father was given the privilege of driving nuns attending Saturday classes to and from Chestnut Hill. Yet there was no question of his seeing me while he was there waiting for them. Week after week, they made the most minimal small talk, and otherwise recited the rosary all the way to school and back. After a while, my father had enough. He found the sisters’ behavior inconsiderate and rude. He was a working man with a house full of young children and lots to do on a Saturday.

As the months went by, we were gradually introduced to a series of secret practices: things never to be discussed outside the order, or even inside it, except to our superiors: Examen, penances, acts of humility, chapter of faults, and what was called “the discipline.” We knew nothing of the discipline until Holy Week. We had moved from the postulate up to the mother house to begin our novitiate. We were in deep retreat, preparing for the ceremony on Easter Monday when we would be formally received into the order. We had been immersed in the Good Friday liturgy, full of the vivid imagery of scourging at the pillar, bleeding from the wounds, carrying the cross, crucifixion, death for our sins. We then met with the mistress of novices; she produced an instrument, a chain that branched out into a number of sub-chains, each with a hook at the end, and instructed us in precise techniques of self-flagellation. Every Saturday night from then on, the bell would ring, the lights would go out, and the shades would be drawn. We would pull our veils over our faces, our sleeves over our hands, our skirts up over our backs, and expose our bare flesh. We would then use our instrument to inflict as much pain as possible without drawing blood, while reciting prayers in unison. We were shocked, but we had come this far, and had accepted so many things leading up to this, that we accepted it and moved on to the excitement of Easter and Easter Monday, which, in total contrast, brought the most absurd fussing over our physical appearance, as we set our hair in rollers, practiced walking in high heels, and broke the solemnity and self-abnegation of the novitiate with girlish giggles and the silliest ceremonial preparations. Of the original ninety, seventy-nine of us were left, all to be dressed as brides the next day. I was uncomfortable with the bridal imagery, but others gushed with sublimated eroticism and embraced it.

On Easter Monday, clad in long white dresses and wedding veils and new hairdos, we solemnly filed into the chapel of the mother house to the strains of the novitiate choir singing “Veni Sponsa Christi”: “Come, bride of Christ, receive the crown that has been prepared for you.” At the appointed time, we prostrated ourselves in the aisles and gave the prescribed answers to the prescribed questions asked by the bishop: “What do you ask, my children?” “I ask for the grace of God and to be admitted into this congregation.” It went on in this vein. We promised to live by the rules of the congregation. We declared ourselves dead to the world, dead to the flesh, dead to our old selves. Then, one by one, we approached the bishop, who placed in our hands the habit of the order. Out we processed in white, carrying the black habits reverently. Outside, in a designated room, we were undressed down to our slips by our sponsors. Then much of our hair was chopped off (the next day our heads were shaved). We were then clothed in the habit: the long black serge dress, the cincture around the waist with a heavy rosary attached, the stiff white guimpe covering the chest, the white linen cornet framing the face, the band across the skull, and then, crowning it all, the flowing black veil. We processed back into the chapel, where the bishop then read out our names: “Helena Sheehan will be known as Sister Helen Eugenie.” These, we were told, were the names by which we would be known in heaven. We had been asked to submit three names in order of preference, but the name given might not be any of these. In my case, it was not. Many sisters wanted to take the names of their parents. I did not, but my superiors decided otherwise. After the ceremony, we were allowed in the grounds to visit with our invited guests. My relations fussed over me. What meant the most to me was that Ken was there. He was a Dominican seminarian now and I was so happy to see him. It was also a measure of the disparity in freedom between male and female religious orders, as I would never have been allowed to attend a comparable ceremony for him. It was the only time I saw him during my convent years. I was deeply disappointed that Greg could not come. He had been transferred to Weston, Massachusetts, and I missed him terribly.

Our mistress of novices seemed ancient. She had been in the position for decades, presiding over the formation of several generations of nuns. She saw no reason to do anything differently from the way it had always been done. She was the type of old nun who had lived in that world for so long that she had no idea what went on outside it, no idea even of what certain words meant in the wider world. She warned us to avoid unnecessary “intercourse” with seculars and to encourage those in our care to “ejaculate” often. In her world, short prayers were called ejaculations. Life in the novitiate, especially during what was called the canonical year, was even stricter than life in the postulate. We went into deeper cloister. We had even less contact with the outside world, and no more university studies other than theology. We endured more meditation, more penance, more severe scrutiny, more merciless admonition. The occasional letters we were forced to write home were bland beyond belief. Any mention of what went on behind our cloistered walls was out, as was any reference to our personal feelings. Most letters were lyrical descriptions of nature and the change of seasons, with dutiful and clichéd praise of the glory of God. Even in such passages, any real literary flair would result in the letter being handed back for rewriting, with a strong rebuke for vanity and another exhortation to empty the self.

Meals were full of tension. Except on Sundays and first-class feasts, they were taken in silence, while a sister read aloud the assigned book of spiritual reading. Several factors contributed to stress in the refectory: the difficulty of keeping custody of the eyes when a senile older sister started acting up, the challenge of not laughing when something struck us as funny. Every morning the lives of the saints on their feast days were read at breakfast. One day it was the story of a saint who was so chaste even from infancy that he refused even his mother’s breast. It set off a giddiness in me that I could not repress, no matter how hard I tried. In fact, amid such solemnity and tension, the harder one tries not to laugh, the harder it becomes to stop. Needless to say, I was made to do penance. Even for lesser offenses, such as dropping a knife at dinner, it was necessary to get up from the table, pull down our sleeves and veil, walk to the top table, kneel before the superior, kiss the floor, and ask for a penance for making an unnecessary noise. We would then kiss the floor again, rise, go to our place, kneel down, kiss the floor, say the prayers, kiss the floor once more, rise, pin up our sleeves and veil, sit down, and try to finish eating at the same time as everyone else. Trying to do all this promptly and correctly often caused such nervousness as to make it almost impossible not to then drop a fork or make some other “unnecessary noise,” and be forced start the whole cycle over again.

Another regular ritual was chapter of faults. Every Friday night after recreation, lights would go out, shades would be drawn, veils pulled over faces and sleeves over hands, and one by one, we would approach the superior, kiss the floor, prostrate ourselves, and confess our infractions of the holy rule. If any sister knew of an infraction another had committed but not declared, she was obliged, in charity, to accuse her. The superior would then admonish her and give her a penance to perform. It was often a farce, because sisters consistently confessed routine infractions, such as breaking ordinary silence or failing to keep custody of the eyes, while concealing those that would bring down serious opprobrium, such as smuggling out mail or pursuing particular friendships.

We rarely ventured outside the novitiate grounds. We were not to speak to college girls if we encountered them on the campus that the mother house shared with the college. Medical appointments were a way to go out and one day I was taken to a dentist. For many reasons, it was the most memorable trip to a dentist in my life. The dentist drilled my teeth without anesthetic, using an old-fashioned, heavy drill. While he was drilling inside my mouth, workmen were drilling the pavement just outside the window. I had to take the pain without complaining or even remarking upon it. We were returning to the novitiate on a public bus when a black woman got on and, in tears, announced to everyone on board that the president had been shot. Everyone started talking and expressing their shock and sorrow. People spoke to us too, although we were not supposed to engage in any unnecessary conversation in such situations. I think that I spoke when spoken to, but I was so stunned that it is hard to remember what I did. I know I cried, which was definitely considered out of order in public. When we got back to the novitiate, the president had been pronounced dead. We prayed through our shock and tears. The Kennedy funeral was the only time we were allowed to watch television during the novitiate, and I cried all the way through. As he was not only president, but the first Catholic president, most sisters were sad and prayed for the repose of his soul, whatever they thought of his politics. In fact, most had few thoughts of politics. For me it was different, given my history campaigning for his election and for the New Frontier program. I was not to speak or think of such things during my novitiate, but I couldn’t help it. I cherished the moment when I met him. They could not take it away from me. John XXIII also died that year and we mourned him, too, even as the congregation evaded the call for renewal that he issued. Together these two Johns had presided over the transformations of Church and state that inspired us so strongly in these years of transition.

While it was possible to leave the novitiate for brief medical appointments, we could not go into the hospital or stay anywhere overnight. For a time, I woke up each morning in excruciating abdominal pain. The superiors decided I needed exploratory surgery, but to avoid breaking my canonical year, I was operated on in the mother house infirmary. They opened my abdomen, but never told me what they found or did. We were forbidden to demand to know anything other than what we were told. Ever since, whenever asked about my medical history, I have had to say I had a mysterious abdominal operation when I was nineteen. I healed from the surgery, but the pains continued. To this day I don’t know what was wrong, but the stress of my situation must have been at least a major contributory cause.

I persevered through the novitiate, although it was a severe struggle. I was totally alone in my battle with its contradictions and with my own irrepressible urge to rebel. I couldn’t control my rebellion, either of my mind or my body. The questions wouldn’t go away, nor the floods of tears at night, nor the crippling pains in the morning. I could not reconcile myself to the constant negation of what I felt so deeply should be affirmed. I could not bow to the persistent pressure to separate my soul from my mind or body. Nevertheless, there were moments of exhilaration. I remember singing the Requiem Mass in the novitiate choir after a nun in the order had died. It seemed as if the world came together and everything was in its place. There were many simple pleasures, too. My companions in the postulate and novitiate, even if they often irked me, were decent, earnest young women, who could even occasionally be fun. Despite all the privations of convent life, the food was better and more varied than what I had grown up eating.

At the end of the canonical year, we were sent down to Cape May to clean the retreat house for the sisters who would be staying in the summer. It was invigorating to leave the mother house and meditate with a view of the ocean. Nature was rarely so inspiring. We then moved back to the postulate for education studies and preparation for our first mission. During this time, Greg came to visit me. I hadn’t seen him for four years. He had recently been ordained, although there was no question of my being allowed to attend his ordination or first mass. However, to receive a visit and the blessing of a newly ordained priest was considered to be a special and sacred thing. I was overjoyed to see him. I spoke to him more honestly and intimately than I had ever spoken to anyone. He listened. He prayed with me in a fresh and relevant way. He looked into my eyes. He touched my face and held my hands. He told me what was going on in the Church and in other religious orders that were not resisting change and renewal. He conveyed the searching, the liberation, the joy of it. He summarized the latest books and debates. He told me of new experiments among other orders: consultation about what studies and work to pursue, freedom to form relationships of all sorts, even intimacies between priests and nuns. My mind was soaring. My heart was thumping. It went on for hours. After he left, I was chastised by my superior for spending so much time with him, even if he was a priest. She threatened me with dismissal, saying I was critical and disobedient, that I had no idea what religious life meant. The rebuke stung, but I was not sorry. If she had known what actually transpired, she would have hit the roof. I told no one, not all of it, anyway. I did discuss some of the ideas and debates with other sisters; some were sympathetic and excited, while others were shocked and afraid.

Most religious orders were then caught between an old guard clinging to traditions and a new, questioning breed seeking change and renewal. Most priests and nuns could be placed along a spectrum between these two extremes. In my circle, I was at the one extreme, while the order as a whole was dominated by those closer to the other side. The new thought emerging in the Church affirmed my loneliest thoughts, which fed my growing confidence that I was not wrong—and that I was not alone. It was a healthier, more positive attitude, not as preoccupied with crippling negation. It supported the questioning mind and responsible commitment over unquestioning faith and blind obedience. That kept me going.

After two years, the time had come for us to leave Chestnut Hill and embark on our first missions. The mistress of novices read out our assignments. Except for the college graduate Joanne, who was assigned to high school, we would all be sent to teach grades one through five. I was hoping for fifth grade in an inner-city school. Finally, I heard: “Sister Helen Eugenie, Corpus Christi, 5G.” I got fifth grade in an inner-city school, but it was a disappointment in that it was one of the few schools that divided classes into boys and girls, and I had the girls.

I arrived at Corpus Christi with two other sisters. The convent at 27th and Allegheny in North Philadelphia consisted of three ordinary row houses merged into one. Most sisters had rooms of their own, except for the youngest four of us, who shared one room. Much about a mission, especially the atmosphere in the convent, was determined by the superior. I hoped for someone open to renewal, not resisting it. My superior was neither. She was of the old guard, though she was not resisting renewal, because she had no clue about it. I turned this into an advantage. The first thing I did was acquire the book I most wanted to read: The Nun in the World by Cardinal Suenens. I had to ask my superior’s permission to accept and to read any book. Suenens’s text was hugely controversial and causing a major stir in religious orders, but she had no idea. It was by a cardinal, so why should she object? I went on in this way and received and read books by Hans Kung, Andrew Greeley, Karl Rahner, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. My superior’s laxity allowed me to send uncensored letters to Greg and others, where I spoke of my feelings and problems with a directness I could never express in letters submitted to a superior-censor.

I threw myself into my teaching. I made tasteful and progressive decorations for my classroom. I prepared my lessons with great care. I liked being out of the cloister and mixing with people in the wider world again: the pupils, their parents, the parishioners. I volunteered for a job supervising the putting out and putting away of folding chairs for weekend functions with the eighth-grade boys. I liked the banter with the boys. During the week, I stayed after class, so the girls could come talk to me if they wanted. Soon the eighth-grade boys started coming, too, along with stray kids from other classes. This brought resentment from other sisters, particularly the one who taught the eighth-grade boys. A few accused me of courting popularity and trying to show up other teachers. The superior admonished me to stop singling myself out and doing whatever stirred up such resentment. I remembered the instruction given to Sister Luke in The Nun’s Story to fail her examinations because another nun felt humiliated by her academic achievement. My situation wasn’t as drastic, but it came from a similar place.

Further problems arose from the racial tension then wracking the parish. Riots had broken out in North Philadelphia in August 1964. It was difficult to deal with the racism of the white working-class parishioners, who feared that their livelihoods and modest properties were threatened by the arrival of black families in the area. It was even more painful to discover the racism of the pastor and principal, who wanted to impose a “legitimacy rule” to keep black kids out of the school. More than a righteous support for civil rights, it was a strong attachment to the school’s black students that fired me. Sometimes they would come crying to my classroom and everything in me wanted to pull their faces toward me and caress them reassuringly. The pastor was as backward as the superior. He conducted the liturgy tediously, and saw no reason to change anything from the way it had always been done. Vatican II might as well have happened on another planet. I felt that I had to do everything in my power to bring renewal to the parish, starting with my own classroom. I was critical of the syllabus. I followed the basic structure, but tried to infuse it with vitality and meaning, moving away from rote learning and toward active engagement.

By then the election of 1964 was underway, and I was passionately for Johnson and against Goldwater. (Nuns were discouraged from politics, but allowed to vote. I could not vote, as I was only twenty, whereas most others in the convent could vote, but showed little interest in doing so, not least because both candidates were Protestant.) The civil rights movement was on the move, too. Watching news broadcasts on the march from Selma to Montgomery in spring 1965, I saw nuns walking with all the rest. Why couldn’t I be doing that, I thought. I went around singing “We Shall Overcome” in my head and taught it to the kids in my class.

Nuns were treated like goddesses, not only in the parish, but on the streets. I found it especially awkward when old women would get up to give me, a healthy twenty-year-old, their seats on buses. I was happy to volunteer for any errand that would take me on public transport and into the streets—always, of course, in the company of another sister. One day I went into City Hall and looked up some of my old mentors. I had a particularly fine visit with Judge Alexander. My companion was quite charmed by him too, astonished by an encounter with such an elegant and educated black man. It was a bit beyond the bounds, especially as he was not a Catholic. From then on he regularly sent me books and letters and called when I was at Corpus Christi. One day, walking around the parish, I spotted a girl, the older sister of one of my pupils, playing guitar and singing in an alley. As I listened to the lyrics, I was mesmerized. It was as if the world was speaking to me with utmost urgency. Every word was weighty and expressed exactly what needed to be said about the world as I saw it. It was “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” I stopped and asked her about the song and told her how moved I was. This, of course, was yet another instance of “unnecessary intercourse with seculars,” which I had been doing a lot lately.

Eventually I reached the conclusion that virtually everything in me that was natural and human and healthy violated some convent rule, and my relation to the whole monastic ethos came to a point of crisis. The times they were a-changing, and I wanted to change, too. Around this time, Greg came to see me at Corpus Christi. He celebrated mass for the sisters in the convent chapel. It was the first time I had seen him say mass, and he did it in a manner that was more expressive, more meaningful, than any mass I had ever attended. He said my name and looked me in the eyes when he gave me communion. He came to my class and taught the kids to sing “Kumbaya.” Then we talked for hours and I let loose all my stress, my questioning, my frustrations, my crushed aspirations. He listened. He sympathized. He affirmed me in my refusal to repress my thoughts or my passions. He held me. After he left, I stayed up all night crying, praying, pushing myself to the point of decision. By dawn, I had achieved some sort of clarity, and I decided to leave. The next day was one of the most difficult days of my life. I had a day’s work to do as a teacher, but everything was different. I was still wearing a nun’s habit and being addressed as Sister Helen Eugenie, only I didn’t feel it was me anymore. I still had to arrange my departure and finish the school year, but I no longer abided so strictly by the rules. I made phone calls and mailed letters without permission. I couldn’t live this way for long. I couldn’t bear the feeling of not being at one with myself.

My superior was bewildered by the reasons I gave for leaving. She told me not to mention it to any of the other sisters or parishioners and sent me up to the mother house to explain myself. She was only one of many who were oblivious of the change about to sweep through the Church like a tidal wave. There were not many leaving then, but just a few years later nuns and priests would be leaving in droves. It was arranged for me to leave on the last day of the school year. I would not come to class that day, which was hard, as I couldn’t say goodbye to my pupils. The other sisters were to leave for school as usual without noticing my absence, When my mother arrived with clothes, the superior brought them to me and sent me into the nearest lavatory. To be asked to remove this habit, which had been given to me in such splendor, in such a desultory fashion, infuriated me. I took it off, remembering what each part of it symbolized and how carefully I had always handled it, and left it in a heap on the lavatory floor.

I believed I was leaving for all the same reasons that I entered. I still felt called. I even considered joining another order more in tune with the whole spirit of aggiornamento. I did not anticipate that the questioning that had brought me this far would ultimately lead me not only away from the convent, but out of the Church altogether. People later told me that I had been “ahead of my time,” that I had come too soon, that if I had waited, the institutions around me would have changed, and everything would have been all right. But by then, I too had moved on. I may have been moved by history, but I was tossed and torn at the crest of each wave and not dragged onward at the tail end of each unavoidable advance. For the time being, I still burned with the faith of our fathers (and mothers). When I sang “We shall be true to thee to death”, I meant it. I felt that I would stand up for it “in spite of dungeon, fire and sword.” However, not all promises, no matter how sincerely made, can be kept.

P.S. ON SSJS: ALTHOUGH I PARTED WAYS with the Sisters of Saint Joseph, whose way of life has dominated this chapter and I had little to do with them after 1965, these years decisively marked my life. Various episodes throughout subsequent years brought these years and those who shared them with me back to my attention. I saw the film The Nun’s Story many times and I could never see it without tears. No other film has ever captured an aspect of my life experience so accurately. The convent eventually become more like what I had wanted it to be back when I was in it. Nuns could read newspapers and watch television. They could receive and read books without permission, write and receive uncensored letters, articulate their own preferences regarding their studies and their mission. They began to aim for self-actualization rather than self-abnegation. They could form healthy relationships without secrecy or suspicion. They modified the habit several times and then abandoned it, although sisters could choose to keep it. They could go back to their original names, although they were free to retain their religious names. Gone were chapter of faults and acts of humility. Summer schools became dating and mating fairs for priests and nuns. In my post-exit encounters, they told me that I was ahead of my time, that I should have stayed and all would have gone my way. However, I had moved on and it wasn’t my way anymore. One of my group became mistress of novices and then left. In the 1990s, my text Portrait of a Marxist as a Young Nun, which had been published in various versions in a journal and an anthology, became available on the World Wide Web, generating a steady stream of email about convent life in the past, even from some SSJs. One forwarded me a list of the thirty-three of the ninety who entered with me who remained. In 1999, I visited Chestnut Hill and met sisters I knew from the past. Some were wearing shorts and sneakers. The congregational photo directory of 1998 showed page after page of pleasant-looking older women with short gray hair, glasses, and normal clothes. Among them were my former teachers, my contemporaries, and our mistress of postulants. A sprinkling of them were wearing short veils, some of them in a later modified habit. Numbers had declined drastically, as in most other orders. In 1998, they had no novices. According to their projections forward to 2007, they expected to have no sisters under forty and more than half of their membership over seventy. The days of the congregation are numbered.

This chapter bears witness to that lost world.