Celibacy, Marriage, and Generativity

My clearest memory of wanting to be a nun is from when I was four years old. My five-year-older sister Mary and I were in our parents’ bedroom. On the right of mother’s vanity, wedged between mirror and frame, was a holy card of St. Therese Martin of Lisieux. Mary took the card down and began to teach me about this French Carmelite who at the age of 15 entered a cloistered convent and made her goal in life to pray for missionaries and priests. The saint would have liked to have been both priest and missionary but felt the contemplative life, a life devoted to prayer for the whole world, was the most inclusive path to love God and serve others. Thus, I learned the best way to be close to God was to be a nun. I believed there was no more compelling or radical path. Thus was the beginning of my idealized self.

My spiritual life was nurtured by immigrant parents in a noisy but loving Irish Catholic family where knowledge, truth, service, friendship, and laughter were valued. My five siblings and I went to Catholic schools and were taught to respect our elders but none of us were taught to blindly hand over our will to any authority figure, including priests and nuns. Our will was to be consistent with the will of God for us, as discerned in the events and challenges that life offered.

Soon after my 19th birthday in August 1966, I became a Missionary Sister of the Holy Rosary and remained with this community for nine years. Along with six other candidates, I had undergone a battery of psychological testing before acceptance into the community. Three years of formation or training included theological course work and the study of the spiritual life that borrowed much from psychology. Holiness was considered to be a balanced life that integrates thought, word, and actions. Nuns and priests who were psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, or counselors were available as consultants.

During my years as a vowed religious (nun), I developed my own definition of what it meant to become a woman: to be strong, independent, interdependent, smart, resourceful, and generous. Poverty led to a simpler life not only materially but also spiritually. Beauty was found in the creation that surrounded me: the polka-dotted ladybug, the masculine oak, and the fickle sky. Obedience was not simple submission but response-ability, which meant owning my actions and the consequences. An example of the difference is my choice of a major in college. My preference was English, the community’s was social work. There was a lengthy and respectful discussion between myself and the Mother General of the community about the need in the missions for social workers rather than English teachers. We agreed that my outgoing personality and practicality supported such a choice. My response-ability to study and do social work was consistent with my desire to do God’s will as discerned by the representative of the community and myself in concert with the needs of the missions. It was not mere submission; it was a well thought out, give-and-take, back-and-forth “Yes.”

Through vowed celibacy I came to understand that sexuality is more than who is lover and who is mother. I intended my sexuality to give birth to something greater than myself, to leave a legacy that was woven by Gospel values and the traditions of my community. Women who inspired

Page 112

 such surrounded me. My psychosocial development and worldview were enhanced by living in a community of women scholars, doctors, nurses, and educators of various ages, cultures, and experiences who had worked with the “poorest of the poor.” Conversation was lively, worldly in the sense that discussion often centered on political policies that might enhance or deprive the most marginalized in our world. It was the revolutionary 1960s. Changes in the Church brought about by Vatican II and changes in society inaugurated by the feminist movement permeated our convent walls and only strengthened my resolve to make a difference in the world.

I graduated from Temple University in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in social work. Once in my Marriage and the Family class, the professor had announced that if we were 19 and still a virgin, it was okay and we need not feel uncomfortable. I was amused because at age 23 I was planning to be a lifelong virgin. I saw my countercultural stance of vowed celibacy and countercultural dress of veil and habit as consistent with a feminism that espoused that a woman had many options by which to make her way in the world.

To be celibate was not to be barren. To be a nun was not to be above the fray but to dive right in and sort things out. My affective self was diffused in the world for the sake of the world and my time was God’s alone who returned it to me to give to others. Sexual expression was limited to a twinkle in the eye and warmth in manner and speech. Many times I was attracted to men and men were attracted to me. When the feelings were too strong, I remembered my priorities before nature took its course. I would avoid encounters with men who made my heart race and fortitude fizzle. Sexual energy was channeled toward the productive enterprises of church work. Prayer grounded my need for sexual intimacy and led to the development of an interior life that has served me well as a spouse, mother, grandmother, and campus minister. There came a knowing in prayer: God is deeply in love with me and will never abandon me.

The call to leave religious life was as compelling as was the call to enter. Perhaps the call was less “to leave” and more “not to stay.” The life that had provided solitude and spiritual sustenance as well as a support system and structure in my journey towards God, also demanded more independence and more ego strength than I could muster. This became obvious to me in my work in Zambia. All of what I had dreamt to do I did but found the dream itself disintegrating. My spirit drooped as I went from thatched hut to thatched hut facing hunger or death at the door, feeling powerless to teach others how to help themselves and at the same time being respectful of their culture and tradition. I found myself caught in the need to be empowered as I failed to empower others.

Leaving Zambia helped clarify my own identity. Before, I had thought that to be me, to be Kathy, was to be a nun. Slowly, through self-reflection and in conversation with trusted friends, I came to realize that to be me was to be a spiritual person, a good friend, a lover of God, and a woman of faith who found meaning in service. This was my essence. Being a nun was a map for such expression, a map that for me had reached a dead end. Others in my community could live creative and fruitful lives, I no longer could. I thought there must be another way to express my essence. I left my community on a crisp and clear sunny October day in 1975. A rainy foggy night might have suited me better since I felt sad, alone, and without direction—I loved those women.

Less than a year later I met Michael, my life partner. Fortunately, he had similar values and helped me dream a new dream. Consciously, I had not left the convent to get married. However, my marriage to Michael empowers me daily through word and touch, and I think that was what was missing for me as a nun. The person I am with helps clarify the person I wish to be. My ideal self is reflected back to me through Michael’s eyes.

I no longer have the benefits of vowed celibacy, the freedom to put my life at risk as I did when as a young nun who worked in gang conflict resolution in Philadelphia and preached in prisons in Zambia, nor am I free to serve as members of my former community now do in war torn countries in Africa. Michael knows too well the ramifications of such work and my four daughters would not “allow” such a challenge, and I do not wish to miss the excitement of watching my grandson grow up.

Vowed celibacy taught me to focus on the Other, to be generous, to empathize, and to provide emotional support. Celibacy in and of itself is not virtuous, but vowed celibacy lived in concert with others who share and shape a common vision provides the interior space to live out that vision. Celibacy kept that space silent for me and guarded against interruptions. That sacred space is now crowded by my family whose interruptions are

Page 113

signposts in my journey towards God.

Page 114