Nuns in "Babylon" Hollywood

[batteddy]

Nuns shut-off from most news of the world for over 50 years still pray for the redemption of the scandal-ridden moral sewer that is the celebrity world...

Did anyone see this article from the New York Times today?

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?ref=us"]http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?ref=us[/url]

Edited August 29, 2006 by batteddy

[shortnun]

Would you mind copying and pasting the article (if it's not too long)? I know it's not the preferred way to post things, but I think you have to have a subscription to read the article.

Thanks!

[zunshynn]

It started off really well for the Times. I didn't like how it portrayed them as news-starved though. Few contemplative nuns I know are like that. They might not know names but they do know what's going on. (The Alex Presley thing was good though. :

And some of those statistics sound off. Only 5,000 cloistered contemplatives? Fewer than 6,000 under 50? Please. They're making that up.

[quote]Reasons for the collapse can be traced to the mid-1960’s: the flowering of the women’s movement, which broadened opportunities beyond secretary, housewife, nurse, teacher and nun. But the Roman Catholic Church unintentionally inflicted damage on itself when it ratified the Second Vatican Council.

“Basically it said that religious women were no more holy than lay women,” said Sister Patricia Wittberg, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. “It was devastating.”
[/quote]

and that's a bunch of phooey.

Interesting tid-bit: For most of my life my goal was to win a Pulitzer as a correspondent for the Associated Press by the time I was 30 and then become the editor-in-chief for the New York Times or the Washington Post.



[quote]For 56 Years, Battling Evils of Hollywood With Prayer
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By CHARLIE LeDUFF
Published: August 28, 2006
HOLLYWOOD — Sister Mary Pia, wearing a threadbare habit, spoke from behind the bars of her gated parlor about the boundless power of prayer.

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Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
Two Worlds, Two Windows A Hollywood wig shop, and Sisters Mary St. Pius and Mary Pia in a visitors room at the Monastery of the Angels. “Hollywood is the Babylon of the U.S.A.,” Sister Mary Pia says.

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Video: Nuns in Hollywood “Hollywood is the Babylon of the U.S.A.,” she said. “For people who need prayers, we have to be here.”

Just two long blocks from her monastery, you are in the thick of the electric lights of Hollywood Boulevard: among the dopers, the runaways, the surgically augmented, the homeless, the sex salesmen.

Sister Mary Pia, as pale and innocent as an uncooked loaf, prays for all of them, while knowing virtually nothing about them. There is nothing ironic about this, she believes: “One doesn’t need to be of it to know of it.”

Indeed, in her 56 years at the Monastery of the Angels, she has ventured out no more than a few dozen times to attend religious retreats or make preparations for dying loved ones. Rarely has she set a shoe onto the stained sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard.

Yet the signs of iniquity are everywhere. Police helicopters routinely hover over the cloister. There is the dull roar of the Hollywood Freeway. The head of the monastery’s statue of St. Martin de Porres has been stolen twice. Neighbors recently complained so loudly about the belfry’s morning chimes to prayer that the authorities forced the peals silent.

“I think we pricked their conscience,” she said of the neighbors. “Is 7 o’clock too early to get up?”

Sister Mary Pia is one of 21 Dominican nuns cloistered in this walled complex of stucco and steel. From a distance, the place looks more like a loading dock than a religious retreat.

They do no missionary work here, canvass no alleys, cook in no soup kitchen. Prayer is the occupation. Until recently there were 23 nuns, but Sister Mary the Pure Heart and Sister Mary Rose were sent to a convalescent home because there were not enough youthful and vigorous nuns to care for them.

The sisterhood is a dying way of life in America. Forty years ago, the United States had about 180,000 nuns. Today there are perhaps 70,000. Fewer than 6,000 are younger than 50. There are estimated to be about 5,000 cloistered, contemplative nuns, a piece of women’s history that may be on the way out.

Reasons for the collapse can be traced to the mid-1960’s: the flowering of the women’s movement, which broadened opportunities beyond secretary, housewife, nurse, teacher and nun. But the Roman Catholic Church unintentionally inflicted damage on itself when it ratified the Second Vatican Council.

“Basically it said that religious women were no more holy than lay women,” said Sister Patricia Wittberg, an associate professor of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis. “It was devastating.”

Still, the sisters of the Angels, frail and birdlike, go on with a vocation to which they sacrificed their youth: perhaps never to have known a man, never to have rowed the banks of the Seine, never to have taken a moonlight drive. High heels and self-adornment were given up after high school graduation.

As a young woman, Sister Mary Pia might have become an opera singer. Sister Mary St. Peter, 78, the daughter of a Protestant, thought of becoming a nurse. Sister Mary St. Pius was good at photography. They gave away these things, without regret, for something they say is incalculable.

The average age at the Monastery of the Angels is about 70. From this generation also came feminists like Betty Friedan and Bella Abzug. Hugh Hefner, too, is of their era, as was the centerfold pinup Bettie Page. This generation helped create the cultural chasm that divides America today.

“It’s a materialistic age,” said Sister Mary Pia, gray now, her eyes milky with years. “For young women, religion is far down on the list.”

Sister Mary Pia grew up in the Wilshire District of Los Angeles and joined the monastery at 17, despite the tears of her parents. Prayer, she said, had delivered her brother home from the South Pacific battlefields, and so, seeing the power in it, she dedicated her life to God. She became a novitiate in 1950, years before the birth of rock ’n’ roll.

“I’ve heard of Alex Presley,” she offered. “But I wouldn’t know his music.”

Sister Mary St. Peter gave over her life in 1947, six years before the founding of Playboy magazine. “I never heard of Hugh Hefner,” she said with a shrug in the cloister’s front garden.

Sister Mary St. Pius, who arrived in 1953 from a small town in the Mojave Desert, does not know the work of the political satirist Jon Stewart. But after a brief moment, she squealed: “Martha Stewart? Oh, yes!”

Asked about Father John Geoghan, the Boston priest and serial molester who was the catalyst of the sex scandal that rocked the Catholic Church, the sisters went blank-eyed.

When told about him, Sister Mary Pia’s eyes became flinty, flashing defiance. She said she believed that one of the last respectable prejudices in America was that against the Catholics, and that the news coverage of abusive priests had been excessive, almost joyful.

“You get a little tired of all the bad news,” she said. “The media,” she wrinkled her nose, as if catching a whiff of a bad onion. “They never write about the good things.”

The important thing, then, is that there are still old women in America with the charity to care about something more than themselves, about strangers, even if they do not know those strangers’ manias and motivations. But take a walk down the boulevard any evening, and one wonders whether their prayers are reaching the intended destination.

“That’s the meaning of faith,” Sister Mary Pia said.

[/quote]

[Sr Mary Catharine OP]

[quote name='batteddy' post='1052571' date='Aug 29 2006, 12:38 AM']
Nuns shut-off from most news of the world for over 50 years still pray for the redemption of the scandal-ridden moral sewer that is the celebrity world...

Did anyone see this article from the New York Times today?

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?ref=us"]http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?ref=us[/url]
[/quote]

Yes, someone gave us a copy of the NY Times. Ugh! What a way to describe someone: like an baked loaf of bread!
I know Sr. M. Pia well. The article was extremely slanted to put cloistered life in a negative light.
It also happens that the cloisters are experiencing growth, not decline!
I wish someone would write the Times and tell them that the article was half baked itself!

SEE ENTRY BELOW! PHATMASS IS NOT BEHAVING! :-(

Edited August 29, 2006 by Sr. Mary Catharine

[Sr Mary Catharine OP]

[quote name='batteddy' post='1052571' date='Aug 29 2006, 12:38 AM']
Nuns shut-off from most news of the world for over 50 years still pray for the redemption of the scandal-ridden moral sewer that is the celebrity world...

Did anyone see this article from the New York Times today?

[url="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?ref=us"]http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?ref=us[/url]
[/quote]

Yes, someone gave us a copy of the NY Times. Ugh! What a way to describe someone: like an baked loaf of bread!

I know Sr. M. Pia well. The article was extremely slanted to put cloistered life in a negative light. The Sisters there are intelligent and certainly not out of touch with the world! I suspect that the "Alex Presely" thing was a slip of the tongue! Also, they have been getting vocations regularly. They might have a lot of older sisters but they have younger ones, too. They make great pumpkin bread and hand crafted candy. They always bring both to meetings. It's yummy!

It also happens that the cloisters are experiencing growth, not decline!
I wish someone would write the Times and tell them that the article was half baked itself!

[OLAM Dad]

Who better to write and tell the NY Times that cloistered sisters are aware of what is going on in the world (after all you're responding to a newspaper story!) than you, a cloistered nun yourself!

Edited August 29, 2006 by OLAM Dad

[Lil Red]

[quote name='shortnun' post='1052573' date='Aug 28 2006, 11:40 PM'] but I think you have to have a subscription to read the article.[/quote]use [url="http://www.bugmenot.com/"]http://www.bugmenot.com/[/url] - it's wonderful! you just type in the web address and it will give you a user name & password to use to see the article :

[dee_lt4life]

this is post on my blog, am just adding it here b/c it goes along with this NY Times article

i subscribe to Youth Specialities email newsletter...and every week they have interesting articles...and also within this newsletter, they have a link to some Youth Worker's blog...this week, i was for the first time offended.

the blog is the [url="http://rookieyouthworker.blogspot.com/"]Rookie Youth Worker[/url]

here is the statement that offended me

[b]The New York Times [url="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/us/28album.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin"]carries this article[/url] today about a group of cloistered nuns who continually pray for Hollywood. The story has a few interesting statistics about the number of nuns that serve today in America, and talks to several of the sisters about their labor of prayer in what one of them calls "the Babylon of the USA."

This quote raised the only red flag for me:[i] "They do no missionary work here, canvass no alleys, cook in no soup kitchen. Prayer is the occupation."[/i]
[/b]

here is the link to the rest of his post entitled [url="http://rookieyouthworker.blogspot.com/2006/08/good-reads-today_28.html#links"]Good Reads Today[/url] ...

and here is my response that i posted to his post:

[b]why is "prayer is the only occupation" a red flag for you?

do you not think that being a "prayer warrior" is not enough? do you think that prayer is not needed in today's world..

I am a youth minister. I also want to become a "professional prayer warrior" - a Dominican Nun. I am losing my "life" so as to save it. Myself and 100's of other nuns are present-day examples of people living the Gospel message: And everyone who has given up houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands for the sake of my name will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life. ~ Matthew 19:29.

I should hope that there is another reason on why "prayer is their only occupation" raised a red flag for you.[/b]


usually, i bookmark the blog, but today i will not.

[she_who_is_not]

Frankly, I just expect more from the New York Times. I really wonder if the Times (and the rest of the secular media for that matter) is just not capable of handling a group of intelligent, committted women who are interested in more than being viewed or labeled as a sex object. Likewise, how often do you see political women belittled for appearance or portrayed disrespectfully according to their rank or level of achievement. I respect the BBC as a news agency because I have never heard them refer to the Secretary of State as Condi, always Sec. Rice or Dr. Rice.
Would a newspaper ever report on a male community in this manner? I've never read an article on contemplative monks portraying them as silly or stupid or out of touch. I mean, really, who cares if a cloistered nun knows about Jon Stewart or Hugh Hefner? Is this the most important thing the Times can think about in the world today? All this, and somehow, genocide is taking place with vry little coverage from the American media. I suppose they are just to busy making fun of anyone or anything who may be a threat, you know, women, Catholics, thought. I'm sorry for the rant. Howevr, I feel that writing like this in a well respected publication fuels the flames of the culture war. It makes me angry. Pray for the media. St. Francis de Sales, Pray for us!
Amanda

[msahara]

[quote name='she_who_is_not' post='1052966' date='Aug 29 2006, 04:31 PM']
Frankly, I just expect more from the New York Times. I really wonder if the Times (and the rest of the secular media for that matter) is just not capable of handling a group of intelligent, committted women who are interested in more than being viewed or labeled as a sex object. Likewise, how often do you see political women belittled for appearance or portrayed disrespectfully according to their rank or level of achievement. I respect the BBC as a news agency because I have never heard them refer to the Secretary of State as Condi, always Sec. Rice or Dr. Rice.
Would a newspaper ever report on a male community in this manner? I've never read an article on contemplative monks portraying them as silly or stupid or out of touch. I mean, really, who cares if a cloistered nun knows about Jon Stewart or Hugh Hefner? Is this the most important thing the Times can think about in the world today? All this, and somehow, genocide is taking place with vry little coverage from the American media. I suppose they are just to busy making fun of anyone or anything who may be a threat, you know, women, Catholics, thought. I'm sorry for the rant. Howevr, I feel that writing like this in a well respected publication fuels the flames of the culture war. It makes me angry. Pray for the media. St. Francis de Sales, Pray for us!
Amanda
[/quote]

I agree completely. I read the article on Monday. But I'm not surprised by the nyt's portrayal of the nuns. It was blantanly insulting them and their way of life. I wish the Times would give as much respect to Catholics as they do to Muslims and Jews.

[brandelynmarie]

Go get'em Sister Mary Catharine! I agree with OLAM dad...You should definitely write the editor! I was reading the article & I kept thinking..."Does Sister Mary Catharine know about this?" Well, I guess I sholdn't have worried! Unbelievable!