A Look At Two Communities, One With A Habit, One Without

[DameAgnes]

[url="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/08/24/old-fashioned-sisters-newfangled-nuns-numbers-and-habits/"]http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2012/08/24/old-fashioned-sisters-newfangled-nuns-numbers-and-habits/[/url]

[PhuturePriest]

Well, we can pick any two Communities and make the result praise either side. I know some Communities that are very traditional and wear habits that are dying out, just as I know there are at least a few Communities in the world without these things that are doing well. On average habited Communities fair better, but let us not forget sometimes the habit gets in the way of the aposotlate, so some Communities, though they may want to, cannot wear it. I think these Communities should do as the Knights of the Holy Eucharist do and simply take it off when work does not permit them to wear it and then put it back on after, but this is simply my opinion. Personally I love the habit and would not look into a Community that did not wear it because it is very important.

Edited August 25, 2012 by FuturePriest387

[emmaberry]

Edit: cue the 273562365th response to the 'habit dialogue'.

Nobody [i]cannot[/i] wear the habit. As the article said, it is a matter of each community looking at the Foundress' intention and the modern day needs of the Sisters. Personally, I would never consider a non-habited community.. It is just not my call, but I realize that my call is just that, mine, and that I don't really know the call of others.

While I would love to see religious back in the habit, it also doesn't really matter what I want or prefer. I trust that some communities that don't wear the habit do it out of sincere concern for the apostolate and what the Foundress would have wanted.

I do know Sisters who said they would never wear the habit because they are not 'subject to Rome.' That mindset is wrong concerning what Rome wants and is just not right in general, but I don't think that is the mindset of most of these communities.

Edited August 25, 2012 by emmaberry

[Antigonos]

Speaking as one who wore a "habit" -- albeit it was called by another name, "uniform", of some sort when at work for about 45 years, it has occurred to me that wearing a constant and distinctive garb does remove certain distractions. If you wear street clothes, you've got to shop for them, wash and iron them, choose what you will wear each day, allow [probably] a bit more time to one's personal grooming, need at least some accessories, and so on. It would seem to me that, for someone in religious life, this would create an obstacle to concentration on religious matters, but maybe I'm wrong. I've never actually discussed this with a sister who didn't wear a habit, so I am only speculating.

I know that a great many nurses who abandoned uniform regretted the decision, for various reasons. Originally psychiatric nurses were the first to wear street clothes to work, on the assumption that it would be easier for patients to relate to them. In fact, for those struggling with perceptions of reality, it was really more confusing. They knew what nurses should look like; when they were out of uniform, well, they just weren't nurses somehow. The nurses themselves reported that it cost them a lot more to provide themselves with a large enough wardrobe for work.

In my last job we wore white jackets over street clothes. A downside of this "distinctive garb" was that when I took my 18 month old granddaughter for a visit to show her off to my former co-workers, she thought she was being taken to the doctor, and screamed her head off!!

Ya win a few, ya lose a few, and a few get rained out...

[AnneLine]

Antigonos, that is a GREAT story and a great insight.

I do wish we could PM you!!!

I agree with what the others have been saying.... it really is about what will enable us to serve God and God's people better.... and it does help to not get distracted. I suspect many communities wish they hadn't made changes as.... abruptly as they were made. They did what they were told.... and it's awful hard to undo it. Very good insight, Antigonos



Wonderful story about your granddaughter. I've just been spending a LOT of time with in the hospital because of my MIL's illness, and it is VERY hard to tell who is a doctor, a nurse, an aide, a social worker.... or a visitor.

Sometimes there really IS a value to a 'habit' or a 'uniform' - beyond the spiritual part of it.

I'm just praying for all the sisters and all the discerners... I get so tired of the sniping at and between both groups sometimes.....

Edited August 25, 2012 by AnneLine

[Strictlyinkblot]

Here's another blog article which is interesting.

[url="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thecrescat/2012/08/does-the-habit-make-the-nun.html"]http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thecrescat/2012/08/does-the-habit-make-the-nun.html[/url]

[Antigonos]

[quote name='AnneLine' timestamp='1345871693' post='2473999']
Antigonos, that is a GREAT story and a great insight.

I do wish we could PM you!!!

it is VERY hard to tell who is a doctor, a nurse, an aide, a social worker.... or a visitor.

Sometimes there really IS a value to a 'habit' or a 'uniform' - beyond the spiritual part of it.

[/quote]

Back in 1980, when nurses were just beginning to wear different colored tops and/or pantaloons at work, my mother was hospitalized with what was terminal cancer. When she wanted a nurse, she'd press her call light, and when someone responded, she'd say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call the dietary staff" [I think she knew full well that it was either a nurse or a nurses' aide, but it was really hard to tell at times]

When I was a student nurse, our instructors inspected our uniforms every morning -- "A professional appearance assists professional functioning" -- and that included clean shoelaces along with no jewelry, makeup, and hair off the collar. I don't know if that really was true, since some of my classmates were really scatterbrained, but it certainly didn't hurt.

I know that in some habited orders, getting dressed is turned into a religious ceremony, with certain prayers said as certain items are donned. Do the non-habited orders have anything similar, or has this been dispensed with and getting dressed is just "getting dressed"?

BTW, I don't know why I can't PM, or you PM me. Nor can I give props

[AnneLine]

Antigonos, you can send me an email at this email address (it's one I use for junk mail mostly.... then at least we can connect....) fly2tree AT yahoo DOT com

[AnneLine]

[quote name='Antigonos' timestamp='1345891022' post='2474033']
Back in 1980, when nurses were just beginning to wear different colored tops and/or pantaloons at work, my mother was hospitalized with what was terminal cancer. When she wanted a nurse, she'd press her call light, and when someone responded, she'd say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to call the dietary staff" [I think she knew full well that it was either a nurse or a nurses' aide, but it was really hard to tell at times]

When I was a student nurse, our instructors inspected our uniforms every morning -- "A professional appearance assists professional functioning" -- and that included clean shoelaces along with no jewelry, makeup, and hair off the collar. I don't know if that really was true, since some of my classmates were really scatterbrained, but it certainly didn't hurt.

I know that in some habited orders, getting dressed is turned into a religious ceremony, with certain prayers said as certain items are donned. Do the non-habited orders have anything similar, or has this been dispensed with and getting dressed is just "getting dressed"?

BTW, I don't know why I can't PM, or you PM me. Nor can I give props
[/quote]

That's a good comment, Antigonos. I would suspect that things like dressing prayers and many other little 'pious practices' as the term used to be used (in other words, little things to draw ones' mind back to God) aren't used as much in some of the unhabited communities. There used to be many formal prayers that were said, and the whole Divine Office (or the Little Office) was much more elaborate and often prayed in Latin as well.

I'm not sure (you can correct me here....) but my guess is that much of the continuum in religious life and how it is lived out is parallelled in the Jewish Community, with observances ranging from very traditional, Hassidic communities and other Orthodox communities through Conservative Judaism through Reform Judaism.... and then extending to those who really simply consider themselves ethnically Jewish in extraction.

When I was in religious life, I chose one of the very traditional communities that wears a full habit and keeps an almost monastic tradition while still doing active works. When I came out, I realized that that structure was too much for me -- I found it almost distracting and couldn't pray and couldn't relax. Both my superiors and I realized that this was God's way of letting me know the structure was wrong for ME (but it worked well for some of my sisters... but not all of them.....).

When I came out, I spent many months re-thinking what had made me go in, and what had led me to come out. I was overwealmed by a lot of the conflict between very traditional and not-so-traditional and over-the-top-everything changed communities.... and found it hard to discern what I would need to be able to serve God best.

This is waht helped me: I talked to others who had come out. We shared stories, and I realized I wasn't alone. PhatMass does a great thing in allowing this, by the way....

But in terms of prayer and research.... I talked to God a lot about why I had come in and why I had come out. I was VERY much at peace in my choice.

In terms of reading, In addition to the Perfect Joy of St. Francis (which I found in the Convent and was the FIRST book I wanted to buy when I came out -- wow, it was helpful to see HOW Francis did his discerning..., and to not give myself a hard time becuase I didn't fit in Community #1)...... the next books I found the MOST helpful were two from the Jewish tradition, Chaim Potok's [u]The Chosen [/u]and [u]The Promise[/u]. They deal with the growing up of two boys who BOTH love their Jewish faith and the practices of their religion, but have two very different ways of living it out. If there is interest, I think reading these and discussing these in a different thread might be VERY helpful for some of the discerners, by the way....

I also found it really helpful to explore other non-Catholic communities that were struggling with how to live a religious life and how much of the modern world to incorporate into their lives.... studied a lot about the Amish, the Shakers, the Quakers (I wanted them, by the way, because both our Protestant and Jewish brethren had more to say about living as a LAY person and having a religious practice.... now there is more on this for Catholics, but not much in the 1980's).

.. and only after that -- after I realized that one really could incorporate what worked from the tradition and still live in the modern world. And got very comfortable in that mode. Re-activated myself into my Secular Order community (had left even before I had entered religious life).... and when I still felt drawn to religious life, I looked at other communities, and seriously discerned with one that would be considered a fairly middle-of-the-road liberalish-community. I learned so much from them, and while I didn't enter, I ended up VERY respectful of them and the choices they make. The still wear habits, still keep the traditions of their Order (they belonged to a different Mendicant order)..... and I realized that I just didn't fit there. I was happiest and most at peace and best able to serve God as a lay woman.... and incorporate what I had learned from both of those groups and from our Jewish and Protestant brethren.

And in my mind (and I could be totally wrong, guys, I'm frighteningly human.....) that is what real ecumenism looks like.... helping each other to serve God better....

Edited August 25, 2012 by AnneLine

[OnlySunshine]

[quote name='Strictlyinkblot' timestamp='1345882072' post='2474020']
Here's another blog article which is interesting.

[url="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/thecrescat/2012/08/does-the-habit-make-the-nun.html"]http://www.patheos.c...ke-the-nun.html[/url]
[/quote]

I really like that blog post and I agree with almost everything (if not everything) she says. That is why I think the habit is so important. It's not that it makes a nun less of a nun if she doesn't wear one -- it's that it helps you remember your identity as a "bride of Christ." I totally agree with the statement that school uniforms help children with discipline. If that's so for children, why not religious? I want that outward sign -- not for recognition -- but for my own benefit. And who wouldn't want to wear their wedding dress every day?

[emmaberry]

[quote name='MaterMisericordiae' timestamp='1345927007' post='2474179']
I really like that blog post and I agree with almost everything (if not everything) she says. That is why I think the habit is so important. It's not that it makes a nun less of a nun if she doesn't wear one -- it's that it helps you remember your identity as a "bride of Christ." I totally agree with the statement that school uniforms help children with discipline. If that's so for children, why not religious? I want that outward sign -- not for recognition -- but for my own benefit. And who wouldn't want to wear their wedding dress every day?
[/quote]

I agree. Mother Mary Francis held the view that the problem with women religious today is not that they are bad, or anything of that sort, but that they have lost their identity of brides of Christ. As Mother Teresa said, "We are not social workers. We are sisters."

[Antigonos]

A purely personal observation, but to me, most of the modified habits look so frowsy, seem to make the wearers look even more dumpy and repressive than they are, while the full habit [always assuming the veil and headgear isn't too impractical] has a lovely grace to it and certainly hides some of the "faults" of its older wearers, who are no longer quite as svelte as they were when they entered.

However, looking at old photos of some nursing sisters, I must admit that they had to be walking transmitters of infection, with so many folds and pleats in their habits, and how they could use a stethoscope with some of the headgear is beyond me. Recent studies have shown that even plain doctors' coats have very high bacteria counts!

[OnlySunshine]

[quote name='Antigonos' timestamp='1345957438' post='2474374']
A purely personal observation, but to me, most of the modified habits look so frowsy, seem to make the wearers look even more dumpy and repressive than they are, while the full habit [always assuming the veil and headgear isn't too impractical] has a lovely grace to it and certainly hides some of the "faults" of its older wearers, who are no longer quite as svelte as they were when they entered.

However, looking at old photos of some nursing sisters, I must admit that they had to be walking transmitters of infection, with so many folds and pleats in their habits, and how they could use a stethoscope with some of the headgear is beyond me. Recent studies have shown that even plain doctors' coats have very high bacteria counts!
[/quote]

When I was a CNA, I always had to come home and wash the scrubs (and myself) because of the high bacteria count. I didn't want to wind up infecting myself or someone else. Thankfully, my order, which is a nursing order for the most part, assigns nursing habits to their Sisters that are white so I'm assuming they wash them after every shift.

[mantellata]

[quote name='Antigonos' timestamp='1345957438' post='2474374']
A purely personal observation, but to me, most of the modified habits look so frowsy, seem to make the wearers look even more dumpy and repressive than they are, while the full habit [always assuming the veil and headgear isn't too impractical] has a lovely grace to it and certainly hides some of the "faults" of its older wearers, who are no longer quite as svelte as they were when they entered.

[/quote]

I want to prop this ^^^

A few pleats (not a ton like in the pre VII days) fits every body-type and is actually a [u]ton[/u] easier to sew then something more fitted!

[Lisa]

[quote name='Antigonos' timestamp='1345957438' post='2474374']
A purely personal observation, but to me, most of the modified habits look so frowsy, seem to make the wearers look even more dumpy and repressive than they are, while the full habit [always assuming the veil and headgear isn't too impractical] has a lovely grace to it and certainly hides some of the "faults" of its older wearers, who are no longer quite as svelte as they were when they entered.

[/quote]

Adding absolutely nothing of value to the conversation, but... the word "svelte" is amesome.