The Nun in Education
Johnson, George
June 30, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 203 THE NUN IN...
...not labor for less than no compensation is less than no what she teaches but what she is...
...The sombreness, tired out after a hard year...
...she becomes a nun...
...slowing up will not be suggested by the sisters...
...texts in history, in matheThe work must be done and done as perfectly as pos- matics, in science, in literature promise that the day sible, because nothing shoddy, nothing second-rate is is not far off when through the labors of the sisters worthy of the Master...
...They may be Best of all, they are entering the field of text-book teaching anything from primary number to advanced writing...
...She has a day's work to do and school of imitation, and His method is summed up in she does it...
...There is good American home, happy, vivacious, intelligent, scarcely a sister in active service who will not attend discovering that there are ambitions in her heart that a summer school of some sort...
...Theirs is a great courage that accepts Him who are close to the work realize the full truth of literally and gives up all worldly things in complete this observation...
...Sometimes it is claimed that we shall have that which we have needed so long nuns cannot be good teachers because they know so Catholic texts for Catholic schools...
...a stumbling-block and foolishness to those who are The philosophy of Catholic education is fundamen- strangers to the fundamentals of Catholicism...
...Great a homesickness for the things of God...
...country-cultured ladies braving the perils and One can be in the world though not of it...
...They come cipline of the novitiate...
...the Cross that all must follow who would come after One is tempted to use the adjective "regular" in its Him...
...But the a novitiate...
...Literary essays and the mission of Jesus Christ to the world...
...Great thoughts of the children a recollection of something fine, someare not inspired by night clubs, and true scholarship thing noble, a recollection that never ceases to awaken is not born in the midst of mundane noise...
...Pic- Summer vacation is at hand...
...She has a vocation...
...His virginity intions of higher learning throughout the country that spires their own...
...The school that Christ established was the in things spiritual...
...Not cheap labor but richness of life...
...Perhaps there is too wish to see human nature at its best and loveliest, visit much burning of the candle at both ends...
...If you should be restrained a bit...
...There is infinitely more implied than ligious life, they become mirrors of His perfection...
...What the Catholic schools derive happiness, her essential blitheness of spirit, her selffrom the sisters is their very spirit and life, their sacrificing service afford a constant and pragmatic atmosphere of essential potency...
...There When the days of religious preparation are over, is no stint or limit to the measure of their giving...
...By all the laws of nature they should be or as happy as a religious novitiate...
...The fact that the sisters education...
...He was poor-they vow are quite as applicable to the other Catholic institu- to give up all earthly possessions...
...lovely spirit of religion...
...little of the world...
...If they are they do not the sternness, the inhuman atmosphere that the igno- show it...
...A thoroughly Christian character is one that ordinary slang usage to characterize her...
...They are not content to follow Him afar apostleship of Catholic culture...
...Teaching with the nun is not a pro- increasing volume of their literary production...
...It might be possible proof that Christ alone is the Way, the Truth, and to conduct Catholic schools without the sisters, but the Life...
...Christian per- a quasi-sentimental light, as a strange, ethereal sort fection is characterized by a fine contempt for the of being, highly idealized and quite unreal...
...It is only natural that those outside the they would never be Catholic in quite the same way Church should have strange ideas of nuns...
...Such proximity fills them with we are always conscious of the full significance of His spirit and as they go forward through the rethis statement...
...They are poems show how lovely is the beauty in their souls...
...We often say that off, but they cut asunder every tie that binds them without the sisters the Catholic school system of the to earth that they may be privileged to walk in His United States could not be maintained...
...People who talk thus forget that Our Catholic sisterhoods represent the very flower the average nun is in her twenties before she enters of American womanhood...
...The only return they expect new books by sisters...
...The activity of the nothing worldly can satisfy...
...She wants to do great American nun in the way of advanced education is things, to make the highest possible use of her life phenomenal...
...humor, which is a mark of the children of God...
...And Christ alone...
...Others, things of this world, a realization of their secondary less inclined to see anything good in Catholic life, importance, and a striving after the goods that are despise her as a stupid victim of an exploiting system, imperishable...
...Of them how to live...
...An increasing number are college gradu- idealism and the real progress of the nation is inates...
...Christ saved the world through The nun as we know her is just a typical American the instrumentality of the Cross, and it is the way of woman, grown up out of typical American girlhood...
...She wants to live for Christ, and things that promise improvement in her work...
...and youth...
...ment exercises of the Catholic University of No class of people in all the world are living lives America, Archbishop Curley stated that the uni- more thoroughly Christian, more inspired by the spirit versity is making its most important contribution to of Christ, more like His in thought and action than Catholic education through the Sisters College...
...The wisdom that is necessary customed to grow lyric over the American girl-nothwould one be a safe guide to the young is not acquired ing short of the epic is good enough for her when by much running about and a jading of every appetite...
...I wonder if immediate presence...
...Nontally ascetic...
...This is so because the Catholic philos- Catholics who are mystically inclined often see her in ophy of life is fundamentally ascetic...
...There is no particular mystery about If it is to be learned at all, it must be learned by ex- her except the mystery that the worldling always finds ample...
...Each fession, it is her very life...
...It is achieved by discipline and denial as lacking in intelligence and vision, as a dehumanized of self, by the substitution of higher for lower yearn- zealot...
...Their contribution to the the convent...
...Perhaps they sweet gaiety, peace and enthusiastic industry...
...trammels of the flesh...
...She acts and thinks and speaks as any the words, "Follow Me...
...She is made over hungry for new ideas, their minds full of the needs from a child of the world into a child of God...
...versity classes must all bear witness to the eagerness There for a period of years she submits to the dis- and the intelligence of their attitude...
...No other they yield their will to that of their superior in group of students has the same potentiality for the His name...
...From the days when they came to this with the things of the world that are worth while...
...Worldly living is not good enough This manner of living is not to be learned from for her...
...Those the nuns...
...Any good teacher, no matter where he may They have prepared their pupils for life by showing be, is essentially an unworldly sort of a person...
...common sense...
...One come the days of professional preparation...
...Catholics know how laughably absurd is their ings, by the gradual freeing of the spirit from the judgment...
...They see their work in the light of complished research workers...
...She does not strike poses nor doing, doing as well as they could what they observed fall into ecstacies...
...Doctoral dissertations pubfrom their labors is the success thereof in the lives lished by the various universities reveal them as acof their pupils...
...building up the Kingdom of Heaven...
...They in turn exhorted their disciples to cism about her...
...She is insatiable when it comes to the and her talents...
...The only difference is that she imitation of Christ has been the aim of Christian con- does not take these faults for granted...
...What does it mean ture, then, a normal American girl, brought up in a to the nun today in the United States...
...A nun is as the sisters' schools are Catholic...
...They have left in the memories necessity he leads a cloistered life...
...the economics of the situation, the comparative neg- This is the real contribution of the nun to Catholic ligibility of teachers' salaries...
...And there hardships of the wilderness to lay the foundations of are certain types of worldly experience that unfit any- Catholic education-to the present moment when no one for the work of teaching, and ought by their very sacrifice is too great for the expansion and betterment nature to forbid a person associating with childhood of the Catholic school, they have never faltered...
...Her fundamental factor in the case...
...That is why the nuns make month brings announcements from the publishers of the best of teachers...
...He was obedient even unto death, have opened their doors to the sisters...
...ordinary ways...
...Moreover, the words of His Grace confidence in His promise...
...Really it of the finest fruits we are reaping at the present mois all wrong to use the term "professional" in refer- ment from the higher education of our nuns is the ence to the nuns...
...Moreover, the convent is not out of contact estimable...
...She feels it duct, and it has been accomplished by carefully observ- her business to eradicate them as much as is humanly 204 THE COMMONWEAL June 30, 1926 possible, for not just ordinary decency but Christian Quiet, solitude, opportunity to think and to meditate, perfection is the goal of her heart's desire: Under- prayer, self-discipline-what better preparation than neath it all she usually possesses a saving grace of this for the work of teaching...
...His first pupils learned by normal human being...
...I of the children back home for whom the best is none doubt that there is any spot beneath the sun as lovely too good...
...The only is rooted in the fundamental conviction that the pur- thing that distinguishes her from ordinary women is pose of our existence is above and beyond this life, her idealism, her unquenchable thirst for better things, that temporal existence is but a means to an end, and her inability to find the satisfaction of her desires in that final victory is not for such as mind earthly things...
...Readers for the little ones, breathing the biology, but the spirit back of it is always the same...
...But with it all, she is the essence of sane the mere hearing of homilies or the reading of books...
...We are acsouls always walk alone...
...She has her petty faults just like her imitate their example, and from that day to this the sisters in the world...
...June 30, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 203 THE NUN IN EDUCATION By GEORGE JOHNSON T HE other day in his address at the commence- ing and imitating those who are living Christlike lives...
...She enters a re- what a splendid student she makes l Those who have ligious community, dedicated to the mission of teach- been privileged to meet the sisters in college and uniing...
...There is nothing of exotic mystiHim doing...
...After the summer school, a refreshing of rant love to imagine is conspicuously absent ; rather the soul in the waters of a spiritual retreat-then there is joy, and light-hearted happiness, affection and September and the classroom once more...
...She acquires the spirit and looking for the best, expecting help and direction, the technique of the religious life...
Vol. 4 • June 1926 • No. 8
