Denver Newsroom, Apr 30, 2020 / 03:01 am (CNA).- If everything were going according to plan, Jessica would be entering the convent on August 22.
But, thanks to coronavirus, everything is not going according to plan.
“I was accepted to pre-postulancy with an order, and as of right now everything is going according to their schedule still,” she said, as far as the entrance date.
“But because of COVID-19 I haven’t been able to work (I had two jobs on campus which closed) and I lost my summer job opportunities, so I might not be able to enter because of student loan debt,” Jessica told CNA.
Jessica asked that her identity and the order be somewhat concealed because she hasn’t told all of her family and friends of her plans to join the convent – especially now that she’s not sure if it will even happen in the expected timeframe.
“I haven’t told many people about my plans to enter because I’m worried I won’t be able to enter,” she told CNA.
Jessica is not alone. Postulants – new members of a religious community starting the first process of formation before taking vows – are among the myriad of people whose plans have been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
Many women discerning religious life with communities of religious sisters or nuns in the United States are having to settle for tentative plans as their summer or fall entrance dates to their communities are fast approaching. Many otherwise-standard pre-entrance visits or retreats have been canceled or moved online, while some entrance dates have been postponed, and others are – very tentatively – staying in place.
Natalie Ross has been discerning religious life for several years, and decided in October last year to begin the application process with the Daughters of Mary Immaculate, often called the Marianist Sisters.
Ross turned in her application in April and should know if she is officially accepted by late May. If she is accepted, she would theoretically enter shortly thereafter, and move from her home in Austin, Texas to the sisters’ house in Dayton, Ohio.
“Right now there are no concrete plans to delay entrance if I’m accepted, but I think that’s the way a lot of people and institutions have been handling all this,” Ross told CNA. “You just keep your plans the way they were before until it gets closer to the time for them to happen, and then re-evaluate if they will really be possible now.”
Ross said while she doesn’t “terribly mind” having plans up in the air, and while she knows other people are facing bigger problems related to the virus, it has left her with a lot of questions.
“Our lease is up around when I would theoretically be moving, and someone else has already leased our apartment – should I look to sign a new lease somewhere? How do you safely move during a pandemic? Should I move back in with my parents (several hours away)? If I leave, what should my roommate do? Also, will I be able to say goodbye to my friends and family?” she said.
Because the Marianist sisters are not cloistered, Ross said she knows she will get a chance to see family and friends again, even if she doesn’t say goodbye before she initially leaves. But she had specific ideas of a “cheerful but slightly teary-eyed goodbye party,” of revisiting some of her favorite parks and restaurants one more time, of heart-to-heart conversations she’d have with friends and siblings in the days before she left.
“And now, I’m sure I’m being melodramatic, but I’m picturing me packing my stuff into my car and abandoning my roommate and driving to Ohio by myself and bawling my eyes out. And that breaks my heart. The idea of this temporary separation from loved ones becoming more permanent is really sad!” Ross said.
“But this situation is a reminder that I have to sacrifice things I really want, even things that are genuinely good, to pursue God’s call,” she said.
That doesn’t mean that she isn’t grieving the things she will miss, she added, “but it does give meaning to it in a way that strengthens me. I was reminded of Jesus’ words, ‘Follow me, and let the dead bury their dead’…that passage in Matthew made sense to me in a personal way that it hadn’t before.”
Brianna Farens would have been entering the convent of the Poor Clares in Roswell, New Mexico, a cloistered community, on May 26.
Because cloistered communities have even fewer opportunities for members to see friends and family in person after entrance, Farens had planned out her time before entrance. She had planned to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with her parish in Denver, and then to spend some time with her parents and extended family and friends in Connecticut before her entrance into the cloister, since she had been living in Denver for the past five years.
It started with the Holy Land pilgrimage. What was supposed to be a 10-day trip in mid-March turned into a whirlwind of about three days in Israel and hurrying to get home as countries quickly shut their borders. When Farens got home, she had to self-quarantine at her house in Denver since she had been traveling internationally.
She also learned that both of her parents had contracted coronavirus.
“I found out the day they got the results back, the day I landed back in the U.S. That was horrifying,” Farens said.
While they were both very sick for two weeks, they both have recovered and are doing well, Farens said. But it meant she had to wait until Good Friday to go home, to make sure that they were recovered and that her risk of infection was low. At home in Connecticut, Farens kept in touch with the Mother Superior of her convent. Just recently, they decided to push her entrance date from May 26 to June 30.
“So in that way, it’s giving me some extra time with my family here,” Farens said. “We’re also hoping that things might be a little bit better, it might be a little bit safer to travel a month later. Also we’re just really wanting to make sure I’m not at risk of bringing the virus or anything else there to the monastery, because obviously the sisters being cloistered, they’re very safe, very well-quarantined.”
Even June 30, Farens said, is likely just a tentative plan.
“I think as it gets closer, we’re going to have to see how everything is and reevaluate. We might also figure out if I should get tested before going,” she added. Some sisters in the community are older and immunocompromised, and are therefore at greater risk.
One of the hardest parts of this time has been being unable to see the extended family and friends that she wanted to see before entering, Farens said.
“These were going to be some of the last times I get to hug my family and friends here and all my friends’ babies. This process of surrendering all of that, realizing that that actually might not be – at least in a way that I was wanting and hoping – it’s been really, really hard to let go of,” she said.
But despite the challenges, the changes to her plans haven’t deterred Farens in her conviction of being called to the Poor Clares. “Living in such chaotic times and realizing the brokenness of our world, and hearing the sufferings of so many people and people I know, and especially people dying alone…if anything, I feel even more steadfast and convicted that is my call, this vocation to give my life praying for this world that is suffering so much,” she said.
Sr. Emily Marsh is the national vocations director for the Daughters of St. Paul, an order of religious sisters with convents throughout the United States and Canada.
Typically, new postulants would enter the community in the order’s St. Louis convent in August or September, but there hasn’t been a final decision made yet as to whether the women will enter at the normal time, or at a slightly later time, she told CNA.
“We have not had any conversations with my superior or council for formation regarding that, we don’t have enough information regarding August or September,” she said.
The sisters’ infirmary is housed in a separate convent in Boston, Marsh added, but there is a 92 year-old sister living in the postulancy house who would particularly be at risk for coronavirus. Marsh said she has been keeping in touch with the women who are planning to enter this year, and she said that even if their entrance date were to get bumped back by a few months, it wouldn’t cause major logistical problems for most of the women.
However, “if things get pushed back more than six months we would have some concerns,” she said.
Other than the entrance for postulants being up in the air at the moment, the community has “basically been taking our vocation apostolate online,” Marsh said.
Many of the order’s convents have monthly in-person discernment gatherings, Marsh said, and those have all been moved online in the form of video chats, recorded talks, or live question-and-answer sessions with the sisters.
The sisters also usually host an in-person Holy Week retreat at their convent in Boston. This year, as the retreat approached, the sisters decided to move the event online, particularly out of concern for the sisters in the infirmary at the Boston convent.
Normally, Marsh said, there would be about 6-15 women on any given year at the Holy Week retreat.
This year, she said, “we had 7 or 8 confirmed, when we realized we couldn’t have people travel. We decided to at least do something online for those who had signed up, and we started planning an online alternative.”
Word spread, and soon there were five times as many young women registered for the retreat.
“I woke up to 40 emails inquiring about it,” Marsh said. In total, the retreat had 43 registered participants from the U.S. and Canada, as well as Trinidad and Tobago, and one from Australia who had to completely “flip her schedule” in order to participate in the real-time events.
There were also about 150 additional people viewing the discernment videos and downloads that the sisters posted online who were not registered participants, Marsh said.
“I don’t know why it took a pandemic for us to come up with a discernment retreat online,” Marsh said, adding that the sisters are looking into planning another one for this summer.
“I think just from what I’ve been seeing, it’s weird, but it’s been a very fruitful time,” as people have been forced to stay at home because of the virus, Marsh said. “People have a lot of time, and it’s just making people think about life. I think God is giving special graces for vocations and vocational discernment, and we’re basically trying to do what we can in providing women with resources.”
Marsh said while she doesn’t see virtual retreats ever replacing in-person discernment opportunities, she thinks the community will plan on offering a few online discernment events in the coming years, as they can provide a good first step for young women looking into the community who may not be able to afford an expensive plane ticket to a faraway convent.
“It will provide a nice first step, and then from that interaction we can make a mutual discernment of what’s a good next step,” she said.
Sr. Anne Catherine, OP, is a sister with the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, Tennessee. She told CNA that the order typically welcomes the new postulant class in August, and so far those plans have not changed.
“From indications we’re seeing at this time, we do think we can go forward with an August entrance date,” she said, and the current postulant class is still proceeding in their application process.
But if the public health situation regarding coronavirus were to change for the worse, the entrance date could be changed, she noted.
Already, some of the young women in this year’s entrance class have experienced other natural forces throwing off some of their plans, when a tornado blew through Nashville on March 2, just days before a discernment retreat at the convent, knocking out power for most of the weekend.
“It was all very funny, normally they eat in this one dining area, but it was so dark we couldn’t take them down there,” Sr. Anne Catherine said, “so we made a makeshift refectory with candles.” The rest of the weekend went well and the women had a good attitude about everything, even without power, she added.
The week of March 16 is when many non-essential businesses started to shut down and people started to shelter at home in the state of Tennessee due to coronavirus. Since then, Sr. Anne Catherine said, the sisters haven’t been able to have retreats or visitors.
Looking ahead to August, Sr. Anne Catherine said that because the sisters’ convent is so big, it is possible that they would have the young women entering do a kind of quarantine-retreat hybrid in their first two weeks, to ensure that they are not bringing the virus into the community as they’re entering. They would normally have the new members do a retreat upon their entrance anyway, but this one would be a little longer and in a separate part of the house.
“We’d want to protect the young women who are coming to us, to make sure that they feel safe and their families feel safe, and also protect our community,” Sr. Anne Catherine said.
“A vocation is an invitation to put out into the deep and trust the Lord,” Sr. Anne Catherine added. “In the pandemic, the emphasis on God’s plan and trusting his will…it’s even more palpable in this time.”
[…]
Why do Harris’ hollow eyes remind us of the blank-stare eyes in Rupnik’s so-called artwork?
You know, wow. That is really true. They do, don’t they?
Trump is NOT like Abe Lincoln with ending slavery. Trump would keep slavery in the States on the grounds that Trump wanted to be the one-time top Jacksonian. “And when I’m through getting done with it, slavery will never be a Federal issue again.”
Harris is NOT like Abe Lincoln. “When I’m through getting done with the States slavery will forever be a Federal issue. Without it no-one can identify or seal the Union. If it stayed in the States some would secede and I would be strung out by the rest.”
No way no how.
Well I hope and pray that Trump is not like Lincoln. It took way over 600k American lives before slavery ended.
Britain had accomplished the same thing decades earlier without shedding a single drop of blood.
I’m voting for Trump and ending feticide one state at a time. That’s how abolition originally worked too.
My state is completely free of legally enshrined feticide following Dobbs . That should be the goal for prolife people in every US state.
Don’t cheer too quickly. Before Roe fell, Michigan had some “reasonable” pro-life protections. I remember an article that once touted Michigan RTL as being very effective. And once Roe fell, we had a law that prevented abortion.
.
And then we quickly put abortion in the Constitution because abortion is super popular among the promiscuous. The real goal should be to get people to stop sleeping around and “getting pregnant accidentally.”
.
That is going to be pretty tough, especially since I don’t think the religious hierarchy (Catholic or Protestant) is up to the task.
I find this pro-life feature depressing/dispiriting.
Just sayin’.
Typical Dem move to codify/ignore a flawed law.
Big Gretch did that in MI with her Draconian lockdowns, once she was found to be violating the law – just handed the torch to the state health dept; follow the science which to date has never been documented or codified
“Harris has used this line repeatedly during her “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms Tour” in which she slammed states with pro-life laws as “immoral” and advocated for a national pro-abortion law.”
Right, because destroying a human life created in God’s image is somehow moral 🙄. Progressives are moral imbeciles.
“Right Here, Right Now”
My adaptation of the slavery question can’t be exact because abortion is more urgent -the oppression with slavery did mean that while it persisted you were at least alive and had means for remaining alive once you stayed inside the bounds.
There are further important details that need distinguishing.
Lincoln centered the abolition drive and focus. Today Trump and the Republican Party have thrown off the responsibility for doing this while proclaiming such with acceptance of types of abortion. Abortion has to be dealt with but doing abolition in parts ….. is abortion. The South was prepared to coexist with slavery alongside the North without slavery; and Lincoln made sure it would not stay so.
I feel sure Lincoln would recognize the “absolute” difference with abortion and give effect to it, that it is urgent and pressing unlike slavery because it is 1. killing outright the life in the womb and 2. positively adding to the mother’s problems. What the mother endures after abortion is the fault of the State as much as the abortionists; and is a fault at the level of criminal abetting.
Yes, Lincoln did get at slavery in stages, it was not all one-and-done. BUT, until the Civil War and the Proclamation of Emancipation, the slow, steady attrition against slavery was the opposite of 2, ACTUALLY. This attrition activity is what is attributed to Lincoln who coalesced it and made it the point of focus from before his inauguration. But you tell me, isn’t it the case today that the 13th Amendment is used precisely to fight “modern slaveries” like sex trafficking?
Consider again. The USA had to go into fratricidal war to achieve the 13th Amendment. But if it adopted an attitude “right here right now” to end abortion, it could avoid that route and all the abortion and harm that would be done by aiming to make it recede in steps. Lincoln already achieved that modality -of steps- in ending slavery. The USA has to improve on it and outmatch it.
From an argument standpoint the “right here right now” intervention argument uses notions that are designed to frustrate precisely the imperative from entering -that abortion must end. The notion that rebuts it is, there is nothing to prevent a leadership, right here, right now, from undertaking the task of criminalization of abortion and openly speaking about marking it out and that the guilty must lose.
Not to pass without being noticed: the Yankees brought the Emancipation Proclamation right in behind their opening onslaught, on the heels of raw force. The army were being truly heroic, right then, right there.
‘ July 1, 1854: Fragment on Slavery
Lincoln often encountered views supporting slavery. In this fragment, he countered the arguments that slavery was justified based on color and intellect.
If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B. — why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?–
You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own.
You do not mean color exactly?–You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own.
But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you. ‘
https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/slavery.htm