The Restive Nuns

In 1947, St. Louis-born Marilyn Morheuser entered the Roman Catholic Sisters of Loretto. After 16 years as a nun, she left the order to become a civil rights worker in Milwaukee. "I was happy," she recalls of her convent life. "But it was like being in a box with windows in it. You can see things happening outside. You want to help, but you can't, because you're inside the box."

Marilyn Morheuser is not the only American Catholic nun to decide that the only way to live her faith is to jump out of the box. In recent years, the church in the U.S. has suffered a small but steady loss among its 181,400 sisters. In the Archdiocese of New York, for example, 47 nuns left their convents last year, twice as many as in 1965. Some church officials estimate that resignations from the nation's sisterhoods have more than doubled in the past five years. What particularly worries them is that many of the ex-sisters are not novices disillusioned by the rigors of their training, but mature women who have spent ten and even 20 years in the convent.

Questions & Answers. A major source of restlessness in convents is the uncertainty and questioning inspired by the Second Vatican Council. Time was, says Mother Benedicta of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, when women fled from the world into convents "in order not to be corrupted by it." Far too many immature girls, adds Psychologist Marie Francis Kenoyer of the Sisters of Loretto, accepted "poverty to escape financial responsibility, obedience to escape decisionmaking, chastity to escape involvement and the demands of love." The Council caused many nuns to ask themselves for the first time whether they had genuine vocations. When the answer was no, they left.

Still other ex-sisters insist that they left precisely because their orders were not moving fast enough on the road to post-counciliar reform. "There seemed to be such great conservatism and such lack of promise from updating my community," says one former nun, "that I felt there was no point in waiting for the next 50 years." Many spiritual rebels who have left the convent did so in the conviction that they could serve Christ far more effectively in secular life. Unless the orders accelerate the pace of change, believes Sister Jean Reidy of the Sisters of Humility of Mary, the prospect is for even greater losses. "Women who want to live committed Christian lives and are in orders that won't change," she says, "will have to leave to be true to their ideal."

Willing Dispensation. Since priests are ordained for life, Rome is reluctant to let them resume the lay state--and unhappy male clerics have little choice but to abandon their vocations in open defiance of the rules. By contrast, the church willingly dispenses nuns from their vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and they can more easily leave the convent without leaving the church as well. Moreover, there has been a lessening of the family and social pressures that once tended to keep a girl in the nunnery, whether she was happy there or not.

As a result, many convent partings are amicable. Even former nuns who get married are welcomed back to visit their old convents, and some, in fact, regard themselves as dedicated alumnae of their orders. A case in point is Mary Louise Prendergast, who left the Sisters of Loretto last year after 20 years as a nun. Although an unmarried laywoman now, she remains chairman of the science department at the Loretto Sisters' Webster College.

Nothing but Gratitude. Many former nuns remain in the grip of the idealism that led them to the convent--and are seeking new ways to live out this ideal in secular life. One such experiment is the Community of Christian Service in Pueblo, Colo., founded last summer by 13 former Sisters of Notre Dame. The women took private vows of chastity and poverty, live and pray together in a house rented from the diocese. When not pursuing secular occupations--most of them are teachers--they do welfare work among the poor of Pueblo.

They have no regrets about leaving their convent, no resentment at the years they spent there. "We have nothing in our hearts except great gratitude for the spiritual and professional training we received," says Mary Moynihan, 33. "They gave us everything they had." At the same time, they believe that their approach to cooperative living may lead to still other experiments in lay spirituality that the church may some day accept and bless as valid alternatives to the cloister and the wall.

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