What is the point of nuns?

Free labor.

Free food.

Nuns invented some of the best desserts in the world in the past, including my personal favorite (Ovos Moles de Aveiro), so they have my full respect.

WHat the hell are those disgusting looking things @R3?

Is that an apricot wonton?

I want to know too. Is it a yolk dumpling?

Disgusting!

[quote]Ovos Moles de Aveiro ("soft eggs from Aveiro", literally) is a local delicacy from Aveiro District, Portugal, made of egg yolks and sugar. This mixture is often put inside of small rice paper casings in nautical shapes, such as shells, or into communion wafers.

I was right, but the sugar part sounds gross R7

If it was like custard, that would be one thing. This does not look like custard...which I am now craving

I know they look gross, but they taste simply divine. The reason 90% of Portuguese desserts are made out of yolk is because most of them were invented in the convents - the nuns and monks needed the egg whites to starch their clothes so they were left with this whole bunch of egg yolks. Since they didn't want to see them go to waste they started to come up with all these egg yolk-based recipes. The legendary Pastel de nata pastry was one of them as well.

All the recipe videos for this mysterious “treat” are in suspicious foreign languages! It’s as if they don’t want to really talk about what goes INTO them!

I wonder if they are only fed to non-Catholics, to give them salmonella poisoning???

They were the only ones who showed no qualms about caring for AIDS patients back when it was known as "Gay Cancer" so they have all my respect and gratitude.

My uncle's sister was a Catholic nun living in Japan. She was also a trained nurse. She worked in Japan, in the Japanese equivalent of a ghetto, providing free medical care to the residents. I always was impressed by that because there was no way any of these Japanese people were going to convert to Catholicism. To me, it seemed like a true act of charity.

In the early days, they were just a concubine...not so much nowadays.

I guess I am thinking more of the secluded nuns, who are just silent all the time and far away from society...

R12/R13 love your posts and agree, nuns rock.

Nuns serve through service, prayer and the relinquishment of carnality.

I'm of the firm belief that monastics and ascetics of all faiths, who are called to lead lives of humility, service and prayer basically form our world's spiritual immune system. Monks, priests, nuns, rabbis, etc. all combat spiritual free radicals.

Prayer is real and works and not just spiritually but scientifically speaking.

My friend's sister became a cloistered Carmelite nun. Apparently, it had always been her calling, so after high school, the family drove her to the abbey, hugged and kissed and cried and said their goodbyes, and that was the last time they ever saw her. It was basically losing a family member.

Cloisetered nuns take a vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience in the enclosure, and they pray all day for the world, for mankind, for our salvation. They give themselves completely to God as a sacrifice for mankind.

The Cloistered Nuns fascinate me, R17.

Theresa of Avila is a great nun to study. Her spiritual work/guidebook, The Interior Castle, is an eye-opening masterwork.

It transcends Catholicism and popular Christianity.

Well, OP, at least your misogyny has taken an original turn for DL. What's the point of monks? What's the point of priests? What's the point of ascetic philosophers? But, really, it's those nuns who help everyone and hurt no one whose existence you question.

Nunya, OP

[quote]R19 Well, OP, at least your misogyny has taken an original turn for DL. What's the point of monks? What's the point of priests? What's the point point of monks? What's the point of priests? What's the point of ascetic philosophers

The male members of the Church, like priests, seem to have more visible roles, whether in interacting with the public or rising up through the church hierarchy. Or, I associate monks with making things like Benedictine liqueur, that’s sold to profit the church.

The nuns seem more squirreled away and secretive, by and large...and I just wonder what they contribute.

The carmelites in the video seem kind of like a 24-hour prayer/bible study group.

R19 sounds like a misandrist CUNT.

I don’t know why this film isn’t better known...it’s kind of a satire on the Watergate scandal, with an AMAZING cast.

Based on a novel by Muriel Spark, who wrote THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE.

R21, the nuns are actually the most visible front lines of the various religions. There are more of them than there are priests. They do all the work all over the world. They are the ones who take care of the sick and the orphans and the ostracized. You know, they're the women. Same as it ever was.

Mmmmmm....interesting. Thanks.

R19, oh honey put a cork in it. Go gild your strap-on while sister Brenda and I devour another lost horny bastard.

I’m a recovering catholic, been an atheist since my teens. I have nuns in my immediate family. This article says it all about what’s great about nuns. I reread it often as it picks me right up every time.

Looking at the state of this world, their prayers are being ignored.

That's why we, nuns, need to pray more!

About 40 years ago Catholic school enrollments started going down and nuns who would teach were now shunted to jobs in the retail industry. Sister Agnes Vianney was my 7th grade teacher and my Mom and I ran into her doing gift wrapping at Macy's. She did not wear a habit but was still a nun. She explained her Order (Franciscans) needed the money. It was weird. She told me another nun I had was now a receptionist at a country club.

Nuns do the shit work and are subservient to men in the catholic church. Plenty of nuns have been responsible for child abuse, mild stuff in catholic schools where parents pay attention, worse stuff in orphanages and the Magdelene Laundries and so on.

Righteous rage!

R18 today is St. Theresa’s feast day!

I can imagine Trump posing OP's post to his cabinet one morning, and each of them straining to avoid one another's eyes, as their stomachs cramp with suppressed hysterical laughter.

R33 Wow. I had no idea. I just felt a little chill. She was/is definitely around in spirit.

Her teachings and insights transcend dogma and speak of a true path to spiritual wholeness.

In the past, nuns were teachers and nursed, primarily. They started tens of thousands of schools, and thousands of hospitals. If there is a hospital in your area that has a St. in its name, the odds are very good that it was started by a nun. However, there were situations in which certain orders of nuns were or became abusive, and that should never be forgotten either. Like most things that get institutionalized, there will be examples of wonderfulness, and examples of horror.

One of the most powerful operas ever was written by a gay French composer, Francis Poulenc. Dialogue of the Carmelites, based on a true story from French history. During the French Revolution, a group of nuns was ordered to renounce their faith or face the guillotine. They went to the guillotine one by one singing a song of praise. The people of France were so horrified by the sight of these innocent nuns having their heads chopped off literally in mid-song and the outcry was so intense that the VERY next day the Reign of Terror ended. That's SUPPOSED to be the point of nuns. But of course, there have been plenty of really cruel ones through history as well and the Magdalen Laundries are just one of a number of examples.

Nuns (from non-cloistered orders, obviously) still are school teachers, nurses and midwives in numerous 3rd world countries.

Many people taught by nuns back in the 60s and 70s will confirm that they could be as cruel as monks. My partner was brutally beaten repeatedly as a young child at a school run by nuns. They hit the boys with a heavy wooden ruler on the knuckles until they bled.

Just as with monks, any members of this odious institution who chose to ignore the horrific abuse that was hidden by the Church, are complicit. Any good they might have done doesn’t make up for the many lives ruined.

One does not balance out the other.

[quote]During the French Revolution, a group of nuns was ordered to renounce their faith or face the guillotine. They went to the guillotine one by one singing a song of praise. The people of France were so horrified by the sight of these innocent nuns having their heads chopped off literally in mid-song and the outcry was so intense that the VERY next day the Reign of Terror ended. That's SUPPOSED to be the point of nuns.

What a powerful story. So true, too, what you wrote, "That's SUPPOSED to be the point of nuns."

The tentacles of darkness are everywhere attempting to subvert light at every turn. It's in acts like the one you shared about above that I can realize the true meaning and power of faith, which in truth can at times situate your personal concerns as the least of the Divine's worries, i.e. I am not the center of my, the or any world period.

Anyway, thanks for sharing!

Someone called ?

I was in a catholic high school and the nuns there were okay I guess. A lot of preaching but nothing really bad.

I had my favorite nun, Sister Elen, the school supervisor, also responsible for writing the correspondence with the parents for such stuff as skipped classes and talking back to the nuns. You could hear the typewriter across the floor. It was tick... [3 seconds]... tick... [2 seconds]... tick... You knew she had just started a new letter to some parents and you also knew the letter wouldn't be ready before dawn. It was hilarious. Some times the typed letters would just disappear when she left her desk (tee hee!) just like they do off Trump's desk so to say.

You knew she wouldn't type them again because backlog...

To watch the doors to make sure no one goes in as the priests molest underage boys,

Amen, R12. I don't know if this is true, but St. Vincent's in the West Village demise began with the huge debt incurred when they were one of the few hospitals that would accept and actually treat AIDS patients. The original mission of the nuns who began the hospital was to provide health care to the poor (hopefully of all religions and races). Mother Theresa (I have issues with her) started an AIDS hospice off Christopher Street down the block from The Dugout when there was still a lot of fear and inhumane behavior. I once asked a fellow, older RN why AIDS patients were dying so quickly early in the crisis, she honestly said no one was' taking care of them....medication wasn't given, food was left outside, basic hygiene wasn't provided which caused more disease and infections, the patients were treated like pariahs so their mental health suffered. She was working at Kings County in Brooklyn at the time.

I went to a Catholic grammar school for eight years, except for one psycho nun who should not have been teaching, all the nuns were incredibly kind, dedicated and excellent educators. They encouraged excellence, basics, challenge, curiosity and questioning. Kudos to the priests, too, and the parents who dedicated so much of their time to create a very supportive and enriching environment.

Are there any transgender nuns ?

R43 Praise you for more enriching true life stories that afirm the plight of those who have faith in the supremacy of love.

Bless you!

R39, talking about the tentacles of darkness, there was a group of SS that would follow the German army to destroy churches and Christian iconography. One of them became a monk. During the islamic conquest in Spain and Italy, muslim fighters would rape nuns on altars. Over one thousand people were slaughtered in Hagia Sophia by muslim invaders. Just two years ago an old priest was beheaded on an altar in France. His last words, witnessed by a few nuns and parishioners, as the muslim slit his throat was a rebuke against satan.

I know a lot of sisters but very few nuns. The sisters I know are great. One builds schools in South Sudan. The schools train midwives. I also know that nuns on the bus group. They do everything they can to make sure that the idiots on Capitol Hill don't ignore the poor and the most vulnerable people in society.

O thought that's were lesbians went

What is the difference between sisters and nuns r47?

A friend of ours died at a hospice for the indigent run by nuns. The hospice had an immense feeling of love, quiet and peace throughout—an oasis in the city. He was very tenderly cared for.

Thank you for the guillotine story, R36. Amazing.

If I’m not mistaken, St. Teresa d’Avila, who is considered a “Doctor of the Church,” and a reknowned Catholic mystic, was from a Jewish family who converted to Catholicism only when threatened with death. (One of the most influential Catholics came from a Jewish family!) Of course, the Catholic hierarchy was threatening her, too, throughout her life.

I was an atheist who had a series of experiences that profoundly changed my life in July 1986. During that time, a Catholic nun (who I never met) called a friend to tell her she was instructed during morning prayer to put my name at the top of the list to see a Catholic priest after someone canceled attendance at his conference. I hated the Catholic Church but couldn’t refute the synchronicity so I went. The priest was exactly the person I needed to encounter. He knew he could get in trouble with the Catholic hierarchy but cheerfully pointed out that he would be in good company—that many saints in the church were initially rejected by the church hierarchy during their lifetimes only to be canonized much later by the people. And he was right. The Pope publicly rejected Anthony DeMello several years after his death.

Some of the greatest mystics in the Catholic Church were/are nuns. Some nuns have been powerful agents of social change, too. That’s not to say that there isn’t a shadow side to all of this. Any institution populated by the human beings is bound to have light and shadow. Human beings are messy.

There are various orders of nuns that do different things. There are cloistered nuns, just like there are groups of Priests that commit to similar lifestyles. Then there are the nurturing nuns, who teach, or serve as nurses, or hmm, there’s another common one I can’t think of at the moment. Some are engaged in advocacy efforts, like anti-nukes.

My cousin, Virginia Mary, became a nun, but left her order to marry a Priest. I think they met protesting nuclear weapons and they continued that after they married.

My eldest sibling went to Mount St. Charles Academy in RI. That was run by a group of French Friars.

[quote] Friars are different from monks in that they are called to live the evangelical counsels (vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience) in service to society, rather than through cloistered asceticism and devotion. Whereas monks live in a self-sufficient community, friars work among laypeople and are supported by donations or other charitable support.[2] A monk or nun makes their vows and commits to a particular community in a particular place. Friars commit to a community spread across a wider geographical area known as a province, and so they will typically move around, spending time in different houses of the community within their province.

R50 Bless you, child.

Did you know that there are “Brothers”, too? Groups of men who aren’t Priests, but commit to their own orders. My High School was run by a group of Brothers. They we mostly if not all Gay, too.

I still don’t quite understand why someone chooses that, rather than choose Priesthood.

[quote] A religious brother is a member of a Christian religious institute or religious order who commits himself to following Christ in consecrated life of the Church, usually by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He is a layman, in the sense of not being ordained as a deacon or priest, and usually lives in a religious community and works in a ministry appropriate to his capabilities. A brother might practice any secular occupation. The term "brother" is used as he is expected to be as a brother to others. Brothers are members of a variety of religious communities, which may be contemplative, monastic, or apostolic in character. Some religious institutes are composed only of brothers; others are so-called "mixed" communities that are made up of brothers and clerics (priests or ministers, and seminarians).

"...what function they're intended to serve."

Nun at all.

R39, that's probably the basis for the French opera "Dialogues of the Carmelites."

Marge Redmond is still alive.

93 years old.

I just thought I'd throw that in there.

Nuns as hospital workers

Still working with AIDS patients

Nuns reflect everything that the Trumpkins are not.

There are a number of stories I like about St. Teresa of Avila. One is that the Church didn’t know whether to excommunicate her or give her a new order to run. I think they eventually gave her 2 new orders.

She was bedridden for, IIRC, a few years. She teleported herself to mass and lived only on the Eucharist and water for a long period of time.

She wrote an autobiography and you are granted an indulgence for reading it, which is well deserved because, although it is short, it is a tough read.

She wrote that many people pray to St. Mary for intercession, but she usually prayed to St. Joseph, because he was less busy and “what nice Jewish boy could refuse a request from his father?”

She used St. Francis as a role model and had the stigma as he did. I used to think it was painless but it’s not, those wounds hurt. She had visions and was referred to the Inquisition.

To have priest babies, which they chucked down the toilet.

[quote]They were the only ones who showed no qualms about caring for AIDS patients back when it was known as "Gay Cancer" so they have all my respect and gratitude.

Yes, in my city it was a group of nuns that organized to care for AIDS patients in the early days ... bringing them meals and shepherding them to doctor's appointments, taking their pets for walks, tending to them in the hospital, you name it. They even pressured the local Catholic hospital into opening an HIV/AIDS clinic, long before the other two hospitals in town even mentioned the word.

Today, most every local charity focused on the disadvantage has a nun on the Board of Directors.

That said, the stories my mom tells about the nuns in her Catholic school growing up are pretty horrible.

OP, this is a thoughtful film about a working woman (Diana Rigg) who joins a Benedictine monastery. It might provide some fictionalized insight.

Here is the Ecstady of St. Teresa of Avila by Bernini. It’s one of my favorite sculptures.

The two central sculptural figures of the swooning nun and the angel with the spear derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila, a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun, in her autobiography, 'The Life of Teresa of Jesus' (1515–1582). Her experience of religious ecstasy in her encounter with the angel is described as follows:

[quote] I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.

R50 why was the priest exactly the person you needed to encounter? And why did this bring an end to your atheism?

I wish I could remember who stated this, but I once read of a Catholic man who was so angry at the Church, he made an appointment with a Priest to tell him off. They wound up meeting weekly for the rest of their lives to discuss spiritual matters.

All of you blessed beauties sharing these wonderful true tales of nuns have brightened my heart.

Please do continue. Teresa of Avila's attention shines on you today.

A paycheck.

Buddhism has nuns as well, OP.

To get kids for the priests to abuse

Are there Islamic and Jewish nuns?

The nuns at my Catholic school were cunts, brutal and sadistic cunts. To this day I still shudder whenever I see a ruler.

Maybe if all nuns were like Sister Luke...

I was educated in Catholic schools, mostly by nuns. We had two grades in each classroom - about 70-75 students in all. Even as a child I was amazed at their patience and ability to keep such a large group involved and controlled without any yardsticks or cruelty. They were Sisters of Mercy and although some joked and called them "Sisters without Mercy", there was only one instance in which they exacted a punishment. Someone mouthed off to Sister Mary John in third grade. She didn't say a word and left the room. Within minutes, Sister Mary Therese, the principal arrived. She took the offender by the ear out into the hallway where the hooks for our coats were in a line on the wall. She lifted the 3rd grader up and hung him by his belt on the hook. He flailed around for an hour before he was let down. When he went home and complained, his parents punished him again because "Sister wouldn't have done that without a reason....." He never mouthed off again and graduated from high school first in our class of 135. Our education was exceptional and the dedication of the Sisters, at least in our New England community, was inspiring.

They never had none, don’t want none and don’t want anyone else to have none.

I fortunately did not have corporal punishment in my Catholic schools, though Sister Susan and Brother Peter threatened. I think it was the only way they could keep some kids under control.

I had one public school teacher who did not have control of her classroom, and it was awful. We learned little, and made her cry. I hate thinking of that.

Women can't be priests. It's the only way for a religious life. Also lesbians and frigid ones, all who didn't want to marry. Why did the church allow it? Because they were Christian extremists serving their god.

They pray, they keep chickens, they make altar breads, marmalade, jams, grow fruit and vegetables, look after sick priests and elderly sisters, have pets, grow orchards, all sorts of things like that OP.

Like R75 I was taught by Sisters, the Sisters of Zion in this case. We had one little harridan girl in our class, scruffy and rude and disruptive, and one sister dragged her out of class one day kicking and screaming, but she deserved it.

Just like the priesthood, convents were a place where homosexuals could go and no one would ever ask them why they weren't interested in the opposite sex.

R10 s a good example of why the datalounge is still a wonderful place to visit. As is Xavier's post at R65.

[bold]02:50 mark[/bold]

“But ain’t it hypocriticalist that so many nuns also work part time as strippers?”

[quote]I guess I am thinking more of the secluded nuns, who are just silent all the time and far away from society...

That's a myth. My friend Sister Edith who is a cloistered Cistercian nun explained it to me. All the orders speak, but idle chatter is against the rules. So we Marys would not do well there. Even in the Benedictine Trappist orders, sign language is used to communicate, and they talk, but 'only when necessary', they do not take a 'vow of silence' as many suppose.

[quote]Cloisetered nuns take a vow of chastity, poverty, and obedience in the enclosure, and they pray all day for the world, for mankind, for our salvation.

Not quite true. They have a strict regime of prayer, but work hard in other activities and rest and so on too. The regime is:

Vigils

Lauds

Midday Prayers

Vespers

Compline

and Mass, at various times.

My friends the Cistercian nuns pray Vespers at 4 a.m., and I like to think of them if I have insomnia, in their chapel, singing and prayers for everyone.

What in God's name is a "Harridan girl"?

Even in my most cynical moments I believe that there is a group of righteous holding back the darkness of the human mind, through words, actions and prayer. The 20th century was dark and destructive beyond words and I fear the 21st will be bloody beyond our imaging. I was raised Catholic by parents who cared more about the virtue of a person then their other characteristics. It took me a long time to see what my parents' generation showed me.....simple acts of kindness matter more than we will ever know and often require the greatest bravery.

Back in the days before easily obtained condoms & the birth control pill, families were bigger. Each Irish Catholic family was to “give one to the church.” Everyone wanted a priest in the family, of course, because priests were important. They said mass, heard confessions, were given gifts by parishioners. If your family was really big, (and most Irish families were really big) you sent one of the girls to the convent. It was usually the daughter who was smarter than the others, the daughter who didn’t want to marry a farmer & have 13 kids, and/or the ugly daughter. A lot of these women didn’t really want to be nuns, but they had no choice. The family dropped them off at the convent and that was that. They were angry & hurt by their exile from the outside world and the ones who taught or oversaw young women took their anger out on kids/young women. Imagine being locked in a laundry you didn’t want to be in, never to have children and young women would come in pregnant. They could have waited until they got married, but no. They had sex outside of marriage and were being punished with a baby they had to give away. It was a pretty dark place for the nuns and for the young women.

When affordable birth control became available, the number of priests and nuns dropped precipitously. Families no longer had spare kids to give away to the church.

they have always been teachers, professors, nurses, missionaries. not many were monks - praying all day. church took them in because women who weren't married were basically homeless unless their family decided to support them. now that women can actually get jobs, almost none go into the convent.

R3, what are those, & what to they taste like?

The nuns in my catholic school used pointers, not rulers. The could whack you from two rows away with one of those black rubber tipped pointers.

Nuns are the slaves of the church. Men get all the power. Nun gets nothing.

Why are they called nuns?

Cuz they ain't gettin' none!

R1 got it right.

Nuns were basically slave labor, and since they never paid into social security, have no retirement income except for the scant support their order gives them. That's why most nuns work into their 80s or are disabled by illness.

My mom's side of the family was one of those big Irish clans, with my grandfather being the eldest of 11 kids. Decades after he died, my brother started looking into geneology and discovered that the two youngest sisters, who had both become nuns, were alive and living in poverty in their 90s. Their convent had closed and they survived on charity from a local church group.

Never mind, R3. I read the posts subsequent to your’s, & got the answer.

What an interesting dessert, no?

Anyhow, it’s been my limited experience that nuns are usually very well educated. Most of them seem like decent human beings.

To the commentator upthread, citing frigidity: is there such a thing? The term frigid seems to describe women who were either lesbians, women who were asexual, or women who decided they never wanted to bother with sex again, because they hadn’t had positive, sexual experiences.

Fascinating, R87.

We were educated from age 5 to 13 by Dominican nuns and from 13 to 17 by Dominican priests. We are very grateful for that because we received an excellent educatia.

R65 I saw that sculpture in Rome. It's inside a small church, no fanfare outside nor inside the church. My friend and I were the only ones in the church, IIRC. To have the sculpture lit up so you can see it better, you dropped money into a box right in front of the sculpture.

R87, very educational. I had no idea.

My father’s side of the family were mostly Catholic, though he, himself, was most probably a covert atheist. He never got into religion. My mother’s side had been Catholic, until they ended up proselytized by Pentecostals, who are wackier than Catholics.

I’ve watched several documentaries regarding laundries. Had no idea the nuns were forced into service, however.

Thank you for the background information.

R19, c’mon. Give OP a break. I’m a woman, & not offended by OP’s question.

It’s a Monday, and this is one of the best threads in this joint, at present. I’m glad OP asked this question. We’re ALL learning something new because of OP’s question.

Hildegard of Bingen was a nun who invented an alphabet of 23 letters , for use in her own language, Lingua Ignota - 'unknown language'. Some believe that Hildegard intended it to be an ideal, universal language. Others, that she invented it for mystical reasons, to speak to God. She was also a composer.

The point? There is nun.

When people die, you might see that they got perpetual prayers from some group. I don’t think they name most people individually. At my church, they ask for prayers for the big donor, then they name the recently deceased in the parish, then they say “and all the departed”, or something like that. Interesting, to me.

So, there is some order near me, I think in Rhode Island, where they spend the day praying for lots of the deceased. When my folks died, we got these cards with notice of perpetual prayers listed on it.

I have a crush on you, Xavier.

Joni Mitchell wrote a song called “Magdalena Laundries” about this practice...

I never understood nun dolls. What was the point? I mean....how much fun could they be to play with? Well, maybe this one....but really, wouldn't a Gidget doll have been oodles more fun?

Aww, Sister Prudence! I have a crush on you too!

St. Teresa of Avilia, as reported in the link in r61, was originally a bad girl, so her papa put her in a convent.

I think the purpose of nuns has changed a lot over the centuries. In the far past, widows would join convents as the only other option to make money was prostitution. Orphans or fatherless impoverished girls would be sent to convents for the same reason.

After Vatican II, and the acceptance of Lesbians in society, the number of nuns dropped a lot. I understand that the Church eventually realized that they went too far in incorporating nuns into their society, and eventually reenacted some of the nun rules that set them aside, like wearing habits,

It wasn't that far in the past that being a Catholic nun was the only way for a woman to get an education and have a career.

I'm 66, and my great aunt (my father's aunt) helped her sister raise her family. She eventually left to become a nun, and got a bachelors (BS in nursing), and masters degree and was a hospital administrator until she retired. Most women of her time could only dream of these things.

R107 You valiant angel!

I like the orders where they allow the sisters to wear make-up.

I like the ones in the Himalayas where they don't allow it

Ding....Dong.....Ding....Dong....

[quote]Hildegard of Bingen

I listen to her compositions to fall asleep.

Really, if you want to relax and go off to sleep, listen to a Gregorian chant. Youtube is full of them. I play one and am out in 10 minutes.

R66, I don’t want to derail OP’s thread so I’ll try to answer as succinctly as I can. It’s hard to put into words.

I was raised a nominal/cultural Catholic but came to believe God was like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or, as Marx said, the opiate of the masses. I then had several profound mystical experiences during July 1986 that completely shattered my former worldview and showed me that God/Love/All That Is was not only real but more Real than what I had perceived this “reality” to be. I was incredulous—did that mean all of mankind was deluded (for lack of a better word)? I pondered this, not realizing that I was essentially praying. Within days, the nun called my friend, saying the Holy Spirit instructed her to put my name in place of a DeMello cancellation. I had a lot of anger at the church but went. The first thing out of Anthony DeMello’s mouth was, “The world is insane. Once you recognize this, you are finally on the path toward Sanity.” The rest of the conference addressed other questions I had on how to integrate the experiences. (I never questioned the experiences, just had no clue how to proceed with this new understanding.)

Reality has a sense of efficient humor. I received assistance from a source I had previously regarded as an enemy of sorts! So my anger toward Catholicism was healed, too, that weekend.

I do not practice Catholicism but admire its mysticism just as I admire other world religions’ mystics. Mystics from all religions have more in common with each other than their religions do (including teleportation, etc.) They just use different symbols. As DeMello said, religions/religious texts/ritual are a finger pointing to the moon (God) — the problem is that we often end up sucking on the finger and miss the point. I think some nuns are living embodiments of never missing the point. They hold that space for the rest of us, just as Theresa D’Avila did.

We are profoundly loved. All of us.

They're......

Their main functions are singing and riding motor scooters.

Joni

We sing

....and dance!

I have a lesbian acquaintance from high school who became a buddest nun. She’s been to Nepal and stayed at one of those cloistered abbeys that are really arduous and dangerous to get to. She had to go specifically there to advance on her spiritual path. She shaved her head, too.

I have another male friend from college who became a buddest. He also lived in the Far East, wore the orange robe, the whole thing. He left, I don’t know the details, now has a son, and works in Seattle at a high tech firm.

[quote]I do not practice Catholicism but admire its mysticism just as I admire other world religions’ mystics. Mystics from all religions have more in common with each other than their religions do (including teleportation, etc.) They just use different symbols. As DeMello said, religions/religious texts/ritual are a finger pointing to the moon (God) — the problem is that we often end up sucking on the finger and miss the point. I think some nuns are living embodiments of never missing the point. They hold that space for the rest of us, just as Theresa D’Avila did.

Truth.

You certainly do R10 - without nuns, or one nun at least, Australians in the 1970s would have been deprived of this chart-topping hit. Her follow-up single, The Ten Commandments, met with less success.

I loved the movie “Agnes of God“. It’s about a novice nun who gets the stigmata. Jane Fonda and Anne Bancroft compete for chewing the scenery, but I always love the topic. The stigmata fascinates me.

I also loved the movie “Doubt”. That was the era and location, more or less, when I was in Catholic school, too. Meryl plays a tough ol’ broad. Like Bankroft, she was widowed before becoming a nun, but somehow is Mother Superior. She also takes care of a decrepit old nun in her convent, just like my parish nuns did.

Then there is “The Trouble With Angles”, a 1966 comedy film about the adventures of two girls, later best friends, in an all-girls Catholic school run by nuns. The film was directed by Ida Lupino and stars Hayley Mills (in her first post-Disney film role), Rosalind Russell and June Harding. Sister Prudence is the decrepit old nun that the other old nuns have to take care of, IIRC. It’s also a fun film.

In all three, the Mother Superiors seems really mean, but they have a loving side you see as the file plays out. It’s just that they had to be tough, maybe too tough, to deal with their life experiences. You see the humanity unveil in that dichotomy.

Nasty Habits.....

Nun. The word says it all.

To continue on with the Sister Janet Mead post, I just looked her up and found out that The Lord's Prayer was a hit in a number of other countries, including the US, and sold nearly 3 million copies worldwide. Also, and I quote, 'Mead was nominated for a Grammy for Best Inspirational Performance (although she lost to Elvis Presley's How Great Thou Art) and also became the first Australian artist to sell one million U.S. copies of a record produced in Australia'.

Quite an accomplishment for a singing schoolteacher nun.

R125 Xavier, once again you've sent my hear aflutter. Bless you, child!

Nun Porn

To say "cuntface"

[quote]a buddest nun.

Oh, DEAR!

[quote]“The Trouble With Angles”

Yeah--that movie was pretty (a)cute.

Stop being obtuse, r133.

^ LOL

Tom Hardy har har, boys.

Fought Nazis!

I got this copy hand signed by the author, who is an acquaintance

More lovely stories, please. And include all monastics/ascetics from different religions, too!

Sometimes you have to be a high riding bitch to survive, sometimes, being a bitch is all a woman has to hang on to.

If nuns were allowed to be ordained priests, the Catholic church would not have such a massive pedophilia scandal on its hands.

I recall during the last days of the Marcos regime in the Philippines, there was a group of nuns who kneeled down and prayed in front of a tank to stop it from driving on. The driver in that overwhelmingly Catholic country stopped. The military there, for the most part, didn’t want to kill innocent citizens, and that was the end of Marcos.

Do people know that under their habit, that nuns shaved their heads? Pre-Vatican II.

You try keeping your hair while wearing a wimple, a robe, a long slip, black stockings while being menopausal. Shaving their heads was probably the only humane thing about being a nun.

I wonder if the tradition started as a lice-control technique, hundreds of years ago?

In Russia, upper class men could send their wives away to a convent and remarry. A nun in 1600s Venice named Arcangela Tarabotti wrote “Convent Life as Inferno.” She and all the other nuns were forced into convent life by their families. She was sent to the convent because she had an inherited form of lameness, so her father (who had the same lameness and passed it onto her genetically) decided she could never marry & must be sent to the convent.

“In ‘Convent Life as Inferno,' she describes a very sad existence. The book is a sociological analysis of women living together unwillingly - of a prison life. Tarabotti felt buried, jailed. And she was not alone in this. Many women complained about being forced into convent life, but not all of them were able to give expression to their frustration.

“To persuade them to accept their fate, the girls were promised a paradisiacal life in the convents. In practice, the young nuns encountered a bleak future which was little more than an onerous life of incarceration. They were not permitted to leave the confines of the convent and endured a physically and psychologically demanding, Spartan life. Any consolation which might have been derived from their education was rendered moot, as nuns had access only to religious writings: Reading secular works or bringing them into the convent was strictly forbidden. Whereas the male population of Venice enjoyed a vast array of liberties unusual in Italy at that time - those same males deprived many of their daughters and sisters not only of the family fortune, the right to an education and the freedom to choose their own way of life, but also of their basic rights to sex, motherhood and family life.

Panizza: "We think of the family as a warm, protective framework, but these were malfunctioning families. Tarabotti reveals the cruelty of the family, the fact that the fathers want to be rid of their daughters so they will not have to spend money on their dowries. She also writes about the betrayal of the girls' brothers: They wanted their sisters to enter convents in order to reap a larger share of the family money and property."

R162 is fake news.

I do imagine that in the past, becoming s nun was a welcome refuge for lesbians, or molested women who were afraid of marriage.

I hope they found some peace in an all-female environment.

Several of my cousins became nuns. and I was educated by nuns (in grade school). I'm grateful for this thread not devolving into anti-Catholic hatred. I'm Catholic, and sometimes feel isolated, here on DL, for admitting such.

r146 can predict the future! Please tell us how the November election will turn out!

The tentacles of darkness are everywhere....

Xavier, your aide is requested.

I used to work for a Franciscan publishing company and though their product was lame, so many of the priests/brothers/nuns were totally gay supportive and especially supportive of married men being priests. Totally in violation of the Vatican.

Here is the difference between a nun and a sister.

When I was in the 8th grade, a former nun came to speak to our Religion class. We were allowed to ask any question. Some girl asked if she was getting married and the ex-nun said no, she had a roommate - another ex-nun. This was 1975 and it never dawned on me the two ex-nuns hooked up and became a 'couple'. They both continued to teach, but in public schools. The liberal religions teacher we had, had been a former priest and when the Archdiocese found out he had this woman speak to us they fired him.

Nuns of FUN!

Our favorite movie nuns...Meryl Streep would have to be on this list, wouldn’t she? 🙄🙄🙄

R150, when in high school, I had a lay teacher, made his money in beer distribution. He would occasionally put a dollar sign $ on the far upper left of the blackboard, then a cross on the far upper right. Then tell us to choose, like Sophie’s. Choice.

It made an impression on me.

YOU MUST CHOOSE!

Same teacher told the story of the multimillionaire who lost millions in the Great Depression. He was left with only 3 million, and killed himself. Can you imagine, he didn’t think he could live on three million!? He was trying to make the point that money was meaningless, if you love and are loved.

Funny story. This same guy was an English teacher. One day he was going on and on, that when asked who you are, you should say “It is I”, not “it is me”, which everybody says.

While rambling on, there was some commotion at the closed classroom door. He barked “who is it? WHO IS IT?” Some poor kid opened the door and said “It’s me”, and we all laughed. The teacher resumed his rambling, and there was another commotion at the door. He again demanded, “WHO IS IT?” Then the head of the English department, his boss, opened the door and sIaid, “Its me.”, and we all roared with laughter.

Have you chosen yet?

Xavier dear, as Bob Dylan once put it, 'You've got to serve somebody'. Same sentiment. Let us choose / serve wisely.

[quote]Xavier, your aide is requested.

What's his name? (Or did you perhaps mean "aid?")

somebodies got to hit kids with rulers and put the moves on good catholic bordering school girls

I love this last scene to the movie “Doubt”. SPOILER AHEAD!

The setup to the scene is that Sister Meryl got a well-liked Priest removed from the Parish because of her certainty that he was a pedifile, though she had no real evidence. He was actually promoted when the diocese removed him, though his reputation may have suffered.

My own middle school had a likewise tough ‘ol broad, Sister Susan, as Principle, that we were all terrified of. She kept a large paddle in her office, though she apparently never used it, haha.

Sister Aloysius’ (Meryl) back story is as a newlywed whose husband died at Anzio in WWII. She entered the convent afterward. No kids, I don’t think. I love this movie because I have always been impressed by people who have certainty where no certainty is really possible. Gnostics, with secret knowledge. When I got older, I realized that most of the time, it’s their confidence that is really so interesting.

The last scene expresses doubt regarding the charge of pedophile, but also to the religious calling that Sister Aloysius took up. All intelligent religious people doubt their faith from time to time. How hard that must be, to keep at it, during periods when one questions one’s vocation. And, I’m sure we all come to doubt the most consequential decisions we’ve made, whatever they may be, at least on occasion. Regret is also a topic that has fascinated me, too.

I have a friend who’s a Priest. He’s been busted by the Bishop for posting on gay online dating apps at least a couple times. He’s X Navy with washboard abs and a motorcycle and leather jacket. He’s just not well suited to the life, seems to me. But now he must be in his late 40s, with no retirement plan or wealth of his own. That must be hard. I don’t think the Church treats their oldest very well.

[quote] he was a pedifile,

Oh, dear

[quote] somebodies got to hit kids with rulers and put the moves on good catholic bordering school girls

Back to EG101 for you

Today I have no clue, but I suspect when it first started it was a place for the lesbians to go, instead of being burned at the stake.

OP illustrates one of the more disturbing trends today.

It's not that OP has any knowledge of the stated purpose or has posed any opposing point to that stated knowledge. Rather, he's merely whining about his lack of information as if there weren't an entire internet that has both that information and supporting or contracting discussions or opinions on the matter.

People like OP lack basic research and reasoning skills, the ability to digest and process information and opposing viewpoints, and want other people to spoon feed them what they ought to know.

It's this fundamental lack of ability to think for oneself that puts politicians like cheetollini, Ted Cruz, and little Marco Rubio into office, as well as fools like Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court.

Post your favorite habits. The Daughters of Charity had the best headgear.

[quote] I don’t think the Church treats their oldest very well.

They have a place to stay, food to eat and all the medical care they need, all paid for. Lots of older Americans would love to be treated that "harshly."

Where I live, millionaires used to bequeath property to orders of nuns and/or priests. The properties were sold for millions back in the 90s & early 00s, when the nuns and priests orders became too small to upkeep the properties.

There was one beautiful waterfront property owned by an order of nuns. The nuns tried to rent it out for weddings & galas, but the insurance to run the property for such a purpose was sky high. They could easily be sued if some drunk person broke their ankle or drowned. So they tried to rent it out as a conference center. The first group that rented it as a conference center was a music producer - Sony, I think. They produced rap music that called for killing cops and the nuns were forced to cancel the contract because there was such an uproar over it. They really didn’t want to sell, but eventually had to do it. Some corporation owns it now.

Yeah, r169, as long as they have kept working into their 80s, don't mind sitting alone in their room since they don't have money for anything else, and don't complain. What a great life!

[quote]don't mind sitting alone in their room since they don't have money for anything else

Please. Priests, including old and retired ones, can have as active a social life as they want -- they're celebs at Catholic nursing homes and parishioners are always inviting them for meals and social events. A friend of a friend of mine just went to a Fleetwood Mac concert with a 70-year-old priest who had been gifted a pair of $400 tickets.

[quote] R169: They have a place to stay, food to eat and all the medical care they need, all paid for. Lots of older Americans would love to be treated that "harshly."

Sure, though their security, FWIW, is bought with their liberty. If they decide to leave their religious order after years of service, they do so with no pension, and no social security.

And the housing and food they get in not the finest.

R168, that's good shit

[quote] R169: They have a place to stay, food to eat and all the medical care they need, all paid for. Lots of older Americans would love to be treated that "harshly."

Then they should all become nuns, R169. It’s win-win!

[quote] R167: ...It's not that OP has any knowledge of the stated purpose or has posed any opposing point to that stated knowledge. Rather, he's merely whining about his lack of information as if there weren't an entire internet that has both that information and supporting or contracting discussions or opinions on the matter...

I like to think in such posts, that the OP is just interested in starting a conversation on the topic, not interested in an argument. He might have done better if he used the DataLounge thread-starter kit. Too late now.

For related reasons, I think it’s okay to bump old threads, with a long gone OP, if the topic might be interesting to others later.

Man, you don’t have to have a point, to have a point.

[quote]R167 People like OP lack basic research and reasoning skills, the ability to digest and process information and opposing viewpoints, and want other people to spoon feed them what they ought to know.

Please don’t play governess...I wish [italic]I[/italic]could have gone to Radcliffe, too, but Father wouldn't hear of it. He needed help behind the notions counter.

Sister Mary Roslyn told us in 4th grade that a little boy who didn't believe 'The Host' was actually Jesus, body and soul, took Communion but didn't swallow the host. He took it home and pricked it with a pin and it bled profusely. She terrified us. She also told us that a little boy who drank from a stream swallowed a small snake and became possessed by the devil. We were 9 year olds who loved Dark Shadows and SHE was 100% more terrifying than any of their monsters.

Sisters of the Holy Cross AKA the "Sunflower Sisters"

Teachers and nurses...for Catholic endeavors.

Nuns provide order

[quote]They were the only ones who showed no qualms about caring for AIDS patients back when it was known as "Gay Cancer" so they have all my respect and gratitude.

The nuns at St. Vincent's in the West Village were Portuguese? TIL.

Mary!

What’s the point of praying to a make-believe entity and spending a lot of time trying to obey it’d make-believe rules of life?

See you’re asking much too granular a question OP. It’s like complaining about the wood varnish on the titanics deck chairs as it sinks below the waves.

Its...

R184, isn't that the film that begins with Mary doing a slow striptease out of her habit?

The Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit of Perpetual Adoration (the Pink Sisters)

[quote]R172 Priests, including old and retired ones, can have as active a social life as they want -- they're celebs at Catholic nursing homes and parishioners are always inviting them for meals and social events. A friend of a friend of mine just went to a Fleetwood Mac concert with a 70-year-old priest who had been gifted a pair of $400 tickets.

Are old nuns treaded the same way?

Thought not...

[quote]R175 [OP] might have done better if he used the DataLounge thread-starter kit. Too late now.

What is this? I did a DL search for “starter kit” and found nothing.

This poem was in my high school English book!

That poem is a portrait in sexual harassment.

R190, I was kidding about the thread starter kit, though it’s a good idea and probably a good topic for a thread of its own.

monk: voluntary

priest: this will fix our problem child

nun: men scare me!

i mean by becoming the priest not sending them to a priest

[quote]R93 I was kidding about the thread starter kit, though it’s a good idea and probably a good topic for a thread of its own.

Yes PLEASE! I do do a subject search before starting a thread...for this one, I didn’t see anything obvious explaining nuns’ purpose.

Though there is:

[quote]Marie Osmond: Christians Could Lose the Freedom to “Worship Our God Freely”

[quote]Deborah Kerr

[quote]Coronation Street on ITV Part Deux

[quote]I Don’t Understand What Anything Means

Meryl was good, r155, but Sister Cherry was good eight times a week!