March 14, 2011 • 27 mins
There's no denying that nuns are iconic. Unfortunately, they're all stereotyped in modern culture. In this episode, Molly and Cristen cut past the stereotypes and examine the life, traditions and habits (get it?) of Catholic nuns.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump mom never told
you From house top works dot Com. Hello and well
to the podcast. This is Smelling and I'm Kristin Kristin.
Today's episode is a tip of the habit two Nuns.
(00:24):
We spent a lot of time thinking about that side.
Don't think up with lots of nun puns people. Um,
I wanted to ask you if, before we get started,
if we want to do a little number from the
Sound of Music? By we, do you mean me, Molly?
I thought i'd be lovely. Um No, can you do
a few bars or climb every mountain? I don't think
you want me to you hear my voice of how
(00:44):
little Cold? All week? I'm all scratchy. The nuns will
lift you up. We don't want to scratchy climb every mountain.
I don't want to do that. The service to the
Sound of Music. That was how I first came in
contact with the idea of nuns at a very young age.
Was watching the Sound of Music and I was like, man,
I understand why Maria didn't want to be a numb
But these laders are pretty awesome. They find Nazis, they sing,
(01:07):
they've got they live in a really nice place. Um,
you know, it seems better than taking care of the
seven kids, to be honest. So are you saying that
you thought about becoming a nun? Molly? Um? No, Because
as soon as I think you you see the sound
of music. You see for every sound of music there is,
there's like two movies where there's a really mean nun teacher.
So I feel like those are the two stereotypes that
(01:28):
people get. Is either singing nuns because we've got things
like sister act sound of music, and then we've got
like the mean nun category where if you want to
just stereotype a kind of educator right away, it's a
nun with a ruler. So this is going to get
beyond all those stereotypes to look at the history and
daily life of a nun. Yes, And before we get started,
(01:53):
maybe it's good to differentiate between nuns and sisters, right
because you know, the terms are used interchangeably a lot
in the Catholic community. And we should also say we're
gonna be talking about Catholic nuns because there are other
both Christian denominations and non Christian denominations like Buddhism that
have religious women that they call nuns um But in
(02:15):
the Catholic Church, there are two groups of religious women
who have taken these vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty.
And the ones who go who inter convent never to
leave again, are considered the real true nuns, and the
other ones working in schools and hospitals and other community organizations,
those are technically sisters. And the reason for that divide
(02:39):
is explained by their history, and it might also have
implications for their future. This very simple difference between nuns
and sisters. So we might use the terms a little
interchangeably during this podcast, but that's sort of the breakdown
between the two. And one last point to get really technical.
If we use the phrase contemplative nuns, we're talking about
(03:00):
out those nuns who are living in the convents outside
of mainstream society. So let's go back to the past,
the very earliest Christian communities where we get the explanation
for why nuns used to wear habits or the veils.
And these were women who dedicated their lives emulating Jesus Christ,
(03:22):
and they tended to be virgins or widows and called
themselves either spouses of Christ or brides of Christ. So
they started wearing veils to symbolize this spiritual marriage right
to be off limits to the rest of the society.
And I think what's kind of interesting is these women
kind of popped up on their own. It's not like
these early Christian communities said, hey, we need we need
(03:44):
like a girls club. You guys want to be like
the women of the church Jesus brads. It was more
of these women made their own decision to say, I'm
going to set myself apart by wearing the veil um
and I'm gonna live like Jesus did and service to
the poor, living a very strenuous life of prayer and devotion,
and I want to be as close to uh spiritual
(04:04):
perfection as I can. So it's not until the fourth century,
after monks begin living in community with each other that
the brides of Christ following suit, and so we start
having the structures more like the convents that we think
of today. And this is also when they begin taking
their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Right, they lived
(04:27):
that way before, but that's right in the fourth century've
got definitive communities popping up and those specific vows, and
often what they would do is the monks would have
like one building, and then nearby the nuns would have
another building, and they would together be a self sustaining community.
They would do their chores, they'd they'd live off the
work of those two groups together. And different women would
(04:50):
would flock to convents for different reasons, some by choice.
For instance, if they didn't want to get married, they
might go to a convent. It was a good option
for them at the time. It was also a convenient
escape for battered women and former prostitutes who would have
been shunned by society. It was kind of a protective
space that they could go to. But then a lot
(05:11):
of women were also sent there against their will by
their parents, for instance, women who might not have been marriageable.
There's some really interesting to statistics from the fourth century
on all the way up to you know, maybe the
eighteenth century where UH parents, you know, would look at
the amount of money they'd have to pay UH potential
husband in the form of a dowry versus the amount
(05:34):
of y they'd have to pay the convent UH to
take on their daughter. And it was way cheaper to
send your daughter to a convent than to to arrange
a nice marriage for it. And if you think about
how large from these old families were, they would, you know,
marry off the best looking daughters. And then the comment
would be sort of like the runner up for the
ones who maybe not didn't win the genetic lottery. Yeah,
(05:55):
we we think a lot about arranged marriages, but parents
would actually seat of arranged convent days. And uh, if
they promised a young daughter to a convent, she would
be known as an oblate or the nuns, and the
nuns would take up her education very early in and
then when she had the age necessary to take the vow,
she would have taken the vows. But listen to this
(06:16):
little fun fact too. For women who were there who
really desired marriage and um children, they might be given
dolls that looked like Jesus to take care of. I know,
our little Jesus dolls. That was the closest they got
to motherhood. According to one scholar, Well, they would take
care ashould clarify they would take care of them on
certain holy days. They wouldn't just carry around their little
(06:37):
Jesus doll baby in their in their habit. Maybe there's
really no way of knowing true. Records can be kind
of sketchy from those early centuries. But then something happened
in twelve, a big date for non history, and that
is when Pope Boniface the Eight issues a papal bull
decreeing that complete enclosure thin cloisters was a requirement for
(07:02):
all nuns. Now, up until twelve, these communities and monks
and nuns could kind of pop up do what they wanted,
and you know, the Vatican didn't really oversee them too much.
But in this era, the Church is sort of like, whoa,
we've got these women living together. We've got uh some
nuns getting pregnant from living so close to these monks
(07:23):
and priests. Uh. So they decided to say, you can
never leave the walls of your commit a gat and
there were these even rules to where the windows of
a convent could be. You know, that walls couldn't overlook
a road that the public might pass on, because they
didn't want both the public to see the nuns and
the nuns to see the public. And the language of
(07:44):
the of the papable was pretty condescending to women. It
was like, you know, you are just temptresses for these
priests and these monks, and we have got to put
you enclosures for your own good. And you know, if
that's the only we're all going to be saved, is
if you are separate from the rest. And time got
even worse for women living in these cloisters with the
(08:04):
Protestant Reformation, because they were visible symbols of the Catholic Church,
and then convents were denounced by Protestants as unclean and
unholy places, and then some umes were even beaten and
beheaded because of it. Right, it was it was a
tough time to be a nun because these communities that
had come up on their own, they may have had
(08:25):
the early element of opening a school that the nun staffed,
they may have opened a hospital very early on. And
these women who are working so hard in the community
suddenly are decreed not legitimate by the Vatican. And it
was a real trying time where some orders would say, okay,
we're not nuns. We're gonna say that we aren't nuns
so we can continue to do all our community service,
(08:46):
whereas some orders really fought tooth and nail with the
Vatican who say, hey, we may teach in schools, but
we're still we're still nuns. You know, we don't need
to be shut off from the world to really live
the best spiritual life we can. You know, we think
that we're called to be out in the community working
with them, and uh so it's a really trying time.
And you know, I think that researching it now in
(09:07):
our present day christ and you can find a lot
of sort of feminist scholars who kind of project onto
these nuns what they think their lives were like, especially
within the cloisters. They say, oh, yeah, these women couldn't leave,
but they were still the first feminist because they were
writing all these essays and writing these poems and they
were really you know, creative women who didn't let being
(09:29):
in close stifle their creativity. And then you've got other
scholars saying, oh, no, this was the worst thing ever
happened to women ever ever well, and it lasted for
a long time. It wasn't until nineteen a hundred that
Pope Leo the thirteenth acknowledged that the active sisters who
were living outside of convents would be recognized by the Vaticans.
(09:49):
So they're kind of reinstated at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and then with the Vatican too, which convened
in nineteen sixty two, we have a loosen up of
life and the convent. So along with that we have
the differentiation between the sisters and the nuns we talked
about in the beginning of the podcast. We have the
(10:11):
active sisters who are out working in the schools and
working in homeless shelters and places like that, and then
we have the contemplative nuns who are in the cloisters
with their life just dedicated to the convent into Christ.
So if you've ever seen a person you think is
a nun out in like a school or community, probably
a sister. Yeah, I will say once, um and maybe that.
(10:32):
I don't know if that reassures me. But once when
I was in Italy, Christen, I went to St. Peter's
to see the Pope, and you know, he was going
to make an appearance, and everyone was like, Oh, when's
it gonna comment come, And a sister kicked me hm.
So I just you just see look on Molly's face
right now, just saying that hard it did, and I
was stunned because I was like Why is this nun,
(10:54):
this holy woman? Why did she kick you? Was it
just crowded? It was crowded and everyone wanted to see
the pope. Well, you know, sometimes people get a little
but I did not think that just because she took
some vow she had the right to the better spot
than I did. And I wish I could have seen
you taken on a taken on a sister the Vatican Molly. Well, now,
I just you know, I'm not saying that there are
any less than another, but I just all these years
(11:16):
I've been telling the story of how a nun kicked me,
but it was really a sister. Now was the nun
wearing a robe and a habit un who kicked you?
She was? And I think that's pretty significant because this
was two thousand three, and by this time many nuns
had given up wearing habits. Uh and may sisters tega
out wearing habits because in the nineteen fifties questions started
(11:38):
to rise up about how clean these habits were, what
was going on underneath those flowing robes. Yeah, Pope Pies
the twelfth said basically to the women, you might want
to start thinking about, you know, if you're going to
be out in the world. Why don't you look a
little bit more like the communities that you serve, which
was offensive of some of the nuns, because you know,
there was meaning behind every single piece of clothing they
put on. It was something that had to do with
(11:59):
cry s life for Christ sacrifice, so that was kind
of offensive. But he was saying, you know, you're spending
so much time trying to keep these garments clean, that
might be time you could better use praying, working with
the community. But things really heat up and the changes
really start to happen in nineteen sixty two and the
Second Vatican Council is called So with the Vatican Too,
(12:21):
which was kind of an attempt to open up the
Catholic Church a little bit modernize it. Nuns did away
with their habits in one order, even consulted Christian Dior
about what they should wear next. Yeah, they wanted sort
of the modern habit, a designer modern habits. And along
with the Vatican Too going on, we also have the
(12:42):
rise of second wave feminism, and with that we see
um not only maybe more nuns getting out into the community,
but also a drop in women choosing to um go
to convents and become sisters and nuns. Right you talked
about Christ and how in those early communities, to some women,
(13:02):
a nune was a really good alternative getting married. If
you did not want to get married, they would say
a husband or a vail. And with that rise of
second way feminism and the idea that women didn't have
to get married, didn't have to stay home with kids,
could could sort of choose their own path, these women
started seeing convents as a less appealing choice. So we've
(13:23):
got that going on. We've got Catholic families getting a
little bit smaller, so that you know, whereas especially after
World War Two, a Catholic family would usually donate one
of their kids to be a priest or are none
they sort of marked that kid for a religious life,
there were fewer children to do that with, so you
wouldn't want to, you know, throw away your chance at
grandchildren with a with giving one away to the Catholic
(13:46):
church goodness. And as a result, in nine five, we
have approximately a hundred and eighty thousand sisters in the US.
By two thousand nine we got fewer than sixty thousand,
and a big surprise here, the median age for remaining
nuns is in the seventies. They are an aging population.
(14:06):
But one really interesting thing that that you found, Molly,
while you were researching this article for how stuff works
on how nuns work, is that the younger women who
are becoming nuns today are actually more traditional and more
fundamental than these older nuns. Yeah. The women who stayed
after Vatican too stayed because they had these true callings
(14:28):
to live this kind of life, and most of them
took on really interesting ministries. Um in the community. And
uh they sometimes have you know, nine to five careers
in addition to living and working at the convent. So um, yeah,
there's it's an aging population that's pretty liberal. That they
usually tend to have beliefs about whether women should be
(14:49):
ordained in the church, and they think that as nuns
they should have equal standing with priests. They're also highly
educated of nuns today have master's degrees, right, And so
it's very interesting to these women at the trend. Rather
than you know, attracting maybe more women who are in
their fifties, say, finishing up one career and getting right
to start another one, that actually what they're attracting these
(15:09):
days are twentysome things who want to wear a veil,
whereas most women haven't wren the veil since the sixties,
who want to live enclosed, uh for larger periods of
time than they do. So it's it's kind of interesting.
I think it'll be uh, pretty fascinating to see what
happens in the next ten years or so, whether the
liberalism that some of these nuns have adopted remains or
(15:31):
if these new traditional women will sort of take the
lead in the Catholic Church and the young women who
are receiving the call. Because the process of becoming a
nun starts with a call or a message from God
that that a woman would receive that she's meant to
lead this life. Um, it's interesting that they would do
(15:53):
this because it's not a light undertaking. It takes a
long time to become an actual nune with all of
the vowels or sister. I mean, it's not like the
process of becoming a nun or sister is any different. Yeah,
you don't just show up at a convent, knock on
the door and say, hey, I like these clothes, I
like the sound of music, I like to pray, I'd
(16:14):
like will be Goldberg. No, it takes almost ten years
to become a nun UH women who received that call,
and they start contacting different UH convents and communities and
orders about their place in that community. The process almost
reads like serrority rush Kristen, and sometimes they use the
same language of dating. They'll say, well, I'm dating five
convents right now, trying to find the one that's right
(16:35):
for me. UM. But yeah, they'll go around from order
to order and say sort of, you know, what do
you have to offer me? What kind of work do
you do? They'll talk to the sisters figure out if
that's where they belong, and then once they find the
place that they want to take their vows with UH,
they begin a process with the formation director, with the
disctermined director of getting ready to enter the community. And
(16:58):
once you start that pre candidate process, you are called
an aspirant. And while you're an aspirinate, you have to
be deemed fit in mind and body by psychologists and doctors.
You're not just a crazy person off the street. You
have to complete essays about their call and UM your
relationship with God. And then once you've gone through the
first phase, you become a postulant or an official candidate
(17:21):
and still you're not taking any vows, but you might
start living with other sisters and participating in activities. And
this last for a couple of years until the next stage,
which is the novitiate. And at this point you are
considered a novice member who will live as a sister
while studying different subjects outlined by canon law and by
(17:42):
the different orders. And at this point you're going to
give any salary that you might be earning to the
community and you kind of start choosing to live that
life of poverty and really becoming part of the non community.
And then finally you take your sets of vows. You
have a first set of vows you're renewed on a
year by your basis, and then the final vows, which
(18:04):
are considered binding forever. But you get ten years to
sort of go through this process before you take these
binding forever vows. And it makes sense because if you're
going to take a vowel for ever bound with God,
becoming a bride of Christ, I mean, you really want
to know that you're for real about it. Yeah, if
they give you plenty of time to learn about the church, uh,
(18:25):
drop out if you want to drop out and there
are I mean, there are certain things set out by
the Vatican that you must study and learn about. And
I think that I think it's really interesting knowing that
it takes ten years for a woman to pledge herself
as a nun to become the Brighter Christ, to get
the ring. At those final vows, they'll hand out the
woman to ring and say, here's your wedding ring with Christ.
Knowing that these women go through ten years of pursuing
(18:48):
this profession, I think it's even more interesting that right
now nuns are under investigation from the Vatican in this country,
the United States. They are under investigation. And it's not
the templative nuns we've talked about, the ones who are
of we think it is locked away in the convents,
although they're not locked away, but the active sisters who
are out in the community, who are doing things like
(19:12):
advocating for the healthcare reform bill. We had sixty thousand
sisters sign on to a letter of support um for
the healthcare bill, and uh, yeah, the Vatican is basically
investigating all of these different orders, and especially the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious who have really agitated for women's
(19:35):
ordination in the Church. Right, And you've got to remember,
obviously the Catholic Church is not having an easy time
of it right now. There's a sexual abuse crisis. People
are saying, do we still need a pope? And uh,
some people are saying, if we had more women in
leadership positions, maybe these crisis, these crises wouldn't get so bad.
And basically, nuns are allowed to do everything priests can
(19:56):
do except perform mass. But because some people are saying that,
that's why, uh, many scholars believe these u S nuns
are being investigated. There being investigated, some belief for being
just too liberal. And uh, one scholar compare the current
investigation to sending a science professor to every single college
(20:18):
in the country and asking him to write report on
every single colleges, you know, administration, academic life, student life.
They're saying, this is a task that's impossible for one
person to do because orders are so different from one another.
Every order might have a different service that they provide,
they might have a different you know. I mean, they
(20:38):
are kind of like sororities where they're all different from
each other. So the fact that the Vatican has said
that one sister will visit all of these convents and
write report on the state of the American nun is
kind of an outrage to uh, these current women who
service nuns, and they're saying that, uh, they very much
fear that something that like Pope Bonifit, the eights Papal
(20:59):
bull could result where the decisions made that all nuns
again need to be enclosed. They need to live, you know,
quiet lives without all this service element. So it's it's
kind of interesting to see. It's it's being interpreted as
this slap back from from modern life back into the
Middle Ages, whereas a Vatican is trying to frame it
(21:19):
as an examination into the quality of life of these
different orders. And they were referring to um the checkups
as apostolic visitations, and it's led they're led by Mother
Mary Claire Millennia, who was described in one article as
an apple cheeked American with a black habit and smiling eyes.
(21:39):
And her report is supposed to be completed by mid
two thousand eleven. So it will be an interesting thing
to watch. It'll be interesting. You know. Someone were saying, yes,
it's just a visitation. Obviously, you want someone to check
up on your quality of life. But this kind of
investigation is usually only ordered when something's gone horribly wrong,
like these are the kind of investigations that are going
on about the sex full abuse crisis. So the fact
(22:01):
that the nuns are getting one too is striking a
lot of people as pretty fishy because really, um, I
don't like the idea of nuns being prevented from doing
the good work in the communities that they are doing.
You know, a lot of times now, while we were
talking about the younger women who are flocking to convince today,
but since it is a ten year process, a lot
(22:23):
of times the women who um will choose to become
sisters are also older women who have kind of lead
their lives and really feel this call. They might be widowed,
they might be divorced, they might have gone through some
difficult circumstances and they say, hey, I really want to
do good with the rest of my life, and and
you can have kids, can become a nun as long
(22:43):
as your kids aren't dependent on you. Um, those women
can become ordained as nuns. So it's it's really affecting
a wide range of women. But you know, again, people
are wondering if because these women are so broad in
their interests, in their backgrounds, in their desires, and maybe
their lack desire for the priesthood that um, this investigation
has come come down on watch what happens? We see
(23:07):
what see what happens to these nuns. And within light
of the investigation, we thought it would be important to
tell the full story of nuns because I learned a
lot Molly with this research. I don't know about you.
Oh yeah, I love drying this article because a lot
of times nuns are, you know, kind of like the
librarians we talked about, incredibly stereotype and we think of
them as these, you know, women who are just off
(23:27):
and separate from the world, not really doing too much,
but but they are there is an active, active life,
sharp gals. Okay, so it's pretty cool. And do you
want to talk about one other thing, one really kind
of cool contribution that nuns are making to our society.
They might help us understand because of Alzheimer's That's true,
(23:47):
and that is um from something called the Nuns Study,
which has been happening at the University of Minnesota, and
it's been written up a few times. You may have
seen it in Time magazine or the New York Times.
But basically this uh, this order of nuns in minnesot
To was approached by a researcher who wanted to study
their brains and try and figure out, you know, what
what causes forms of dementia, what happens as the brain ages.
(24:10):
And these nuns make a really good study group because
they've all lived similar lives. They're eating this for the
same food. They don't smoke. Um, you know, they've they're
really good like sample size of uniformity and um. He
can tell based on writings that these women made when
they were going through their candidacy process what they were
like when they were young. So what's going to happen
(24:30):
is when the nuns die, they donate their brain to
this researcher and he can compare, you know, the spots
that might have appeared on the brain that indicate dementia
or Alzheimer's with their younger rings and try and make
connections about how we can prevent Alzheimer's and other forms
of aging. And they've already started making some connections such
(24:51):
as women who or of higher intelligence and had more
brain activity tended to have lower rates of Alzheimer's. Women
who exhibited more positive amo ocean in those essays, um
also tended to have lower rates of all summers. So again,
some interesting things to watch for in the future. That
nuns are contributing to our society. And it's pretty synohing
(25:12):
just because so few studies are done with women. So
the fact that he knew he could go this community
and get sort of the ideal sample size, I think
it's pretty pretty cool. So with that we tip off
habit to nuns. And you know, we've never heard from
a listener who's a nun. I don't believe um, but
you know, nuns were very hip to the social media
(25:34):
and the social networking. One of the one of the
references I'll just plug this that helps me and eyes
ran this article is a blog called a Nun's Life.
So um, if we've got any nun listeners out there,
we'd love to know. Yes, email us nuns moms stuff
at how stuff works dot com. Don't that we read
an email from another listener? All right? I have an
(25:56):
email here from Lisa and it's about the superhero pot cast.
She writes, I think that the way women are portraying
comics is giving off messages to girls read them that
they are victims and that they can't be as powerful
as men. After listening to your podcast on this, I
looked up the women in Refrigerator's list and was shocked
to see how many women were on it, even once
that I thought were strong and held their own against men.
My favorite female superhero has to be Sue Storm from
(26:19):
the Fantastic Four because even though she suffers miscarriages, I
still think she is one of the strongest members of
the team. She also has brains, and that is why
she is my favorite. Well, thank you for that email,
and thank you to everyone who has written us at
our email address, Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
You can also join us over at Twitter at Mom's
(26:40):
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(27:02):
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Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump mom never told
you From house top works dot Com. Hello and well
to the podcast. This is Smelling and I'm Kristin Kristin.
Today's episode is a tip of the habit two Nuns.
(00:24):
We spent a lot of time thinking about that side.
Don't think up with lots of nun puns people. Um,
I wanted to ask you if, before we get started,
if we want to do a little number from the
Sound of Music? By we, do you mean me, Molly?
I thought i'd be lovely. Um No, can you do
a few bars or climb every mountain? I don't think
you want me to you hear my voice of how
(00:44):
little Cold? All week? I'm all scratchy. The nuns will
lift you up. We don't want to scratchy climb every mountain.
I don't want to do that. The service to the
Sound of Music. That was how I first came in
contact with the idea of nuns at a very young age.
Was watching the Sound of Music and I was like, man,
I understand why Maria didn't want to be a numb
But these laders are pretty awesome. They find Nazis, they sing,
(01:07):
they've got they live in a really nice place. Um,
you know, it seems better than taking care of the
seven kids, to be honest. So are you saying that
you thought about becoming a nun? Molly? Um? No, Because
as soon as I think you you see the sound
of music. You see for every sound of music there is,
there's like two movies where there's a really mean nun teacher.
So I feel like those are the two stereotypes that
(01:28):
people get. Is either singing nuns because we've got things
like sister act sound of music, and then we've got
like the mean nun category where if you want to
just stereotype a kind of educator right away, it's a
nun with a ruler. So this is going to get
beyond all those stereotypes to look at the history and
daily life of a nun. Yes, And before we get started,
(01:53):
maybe it's good to differentiate between nuns and sisters, right
because you know, the terms are used interchangeably a lot
in the Catholic community. And we should also say we're
gonna be talking about Catholic nuns because there are other
both Christian denominations and non Christian denominations like Buddhism that
have religious women that they call nuns um But in
(02:15):
the Catholic Church, there are two groups of religious women
who have taken these vows of chastity, obedience, and poverty.
And the ones who go who inter convent never to
leave again, are considered the real true nuns, and the
other ones working in schools and hospitals and other community organizations,
those are technically sisters. And the reason for that divide
(02:39):
is explained by their history, and it might also have
implications for their future. This very simple difference between nuns
and sisters. So we might use the terms a little
interchangeably during this podcast, but that's sort of the breakdown
between the two. And one last point to get really technical.
If we use the phrase contemplative nuns, we're talking about
(03:00):
out those nuns who are living in the convents outside
of mainstream society. So let's go back to the past,
the very earliest Christian communities where we get the explanation
for why nuns used to wear habits or the veils.
And these were women who dedicated their lives emulating Jesus Christ,
(03:22):
and they tended to be virgins or widows and called
themselves either spouses of Christ or brides of Christ. So
they started wearing veils to symbolize this spiritual marriage right
to be off limits to the rest of the society.
And I think what's kind of interesting is these women
kind of popped up on their own. It's not like
these early Christian communities said, hey, we need we need
(03:44):
like a girls club. You guys want to be like
the women of the church Jesus brads. It was more
of these women made their own decision to say, I'm
going to set myself apart by wearing the veil um
and I'm gonna live like Jesus did and service to
the poor, living a very strenuous life of prayer and devotion,
and I want to be as close to uh spiritual
(04:04):
perfection as I can. So it's not until the fourth century,
after monks begin living in community with each other that
the brides of Christ following suit, and so we start
having the structures more like the convents that we think
of today. And this is also when they begin taking
their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Right, they lived
(04:27):
that way before, but that's right in the fourth century've
got definitive communities popping up and those specific vows, and
often what they would do is the monks would have
like one building, and then nearby the nuns would have
another building, and they would together be a self sustaining community.
They would do their chores, they'd they'd live off the
work of those two groups together. And different women would
(04:50):
would flock to convents for different reasons, some by choice.
For instance, if they didn't want to get married, they
might go to a convent. It was a good option
for them at the time. It was also a convenient
escape for battered women and former prostitutes who would have
been shunned by society. It was kind of a protective
space that they could go to. But then a lot
(05:11):
of women were also sent there against their will by
their parents, for instance, women who might not have been marriageable.
There's some really interesting to statistics from the fourth century
on all the way up to you know, maybe the
eighteenth century where UH parents, you know, would look at
the amount of money they'd have to pay UH potential
husband in the form of a dowry versus the amount
(05:34):
of y they'd have to pay the convent UH to
take on their daughter. And it was way cheaper to
send your daughter to a convent than to to arrange
a nice marriage for it. And if you think about
how large from these old families were, they would, you know,
marry off the best looking daughters. And then the comment
would be sort of like the runner up for the
ones who maybe not didn't win the genetic lottery. Yeah,
(05:55):
we we think a lot about arranged marriages, but parents
would actually seat of arranged convent days. And uh, if
they promised a young daughter to a convent, she would
be known as an oblate or the nuns, and the
nuns would take up her education very early in and
then when she had the age necessary to take the vow,
she would have taken the vows. But listen to this
(06:16):
little fun fact too. For women who were there who
really desired marriage and um children, they might be given
dolls that looked like Jesus to take care of. I know,
our little Jesus dolls. That was the closest they got
to motherhood. According to one scholar, Well, they would take
care ashould clarify they would take care of them on
certain holy days. They wouldn't just carry around their little
(06:37):
Jesus doll baby in their in their habit. Maybe there's
really no way of knowing true. Records can be kind
of sketchy from those early centuries. But then something happened
in twelve, a big date for non history, and that
is when Pope Boniface the Eight issues a papal bull
decreeing that complete enclosure thin cloisters was a requirement for
(07:02):
all nuns. Now, up until twelve, these communities and monks
and nuns could kind of pop up do what they wanted,
and you know, the Vatican didn't really oversee them too much.
But in this era, the Church is sort of like, whoa,
we've got these women living together. We've got uh some
nuns getting pregnant from living so close to these monks
(07:23):
and priests. Uh. So they decided to say, you can
never leave the walls of your commit a gat and
there were these even rules to where the windows of
a convent could be. You know, that walls couldn't overlook
a road that the public might pass on, because they
didn't want both the public to see the nuns and
the nuns to see the public. And the language of
(07:44):
the of the papable was pretty condescending to women. It
was like, you know, you are just temptresses for these
priests and these monks, and we have got to put
you enclosures for your own good. And you know, if
that's the only we're all going to be saved, is
if you are separate from the rest. And time got
even worse for women living in these cloisters with the
(08:04):
Protestant Reformation, because they were visible symbols of the Catholic Church,
and then convents were denounced by Protestants as unclean and
unholy places, and then some umes were even beaten and
beheaded because of it. Right, it was it was a
tough time to be a nun because these communities that
had come up on their own, they may have had
(08:25):
the early element of opening a school that the nun staffed,
they may have opened a hospital very early on. And
these women who are working so hard in the community
suddenly are decreed not legitimate by the Vatican. And it
was a real trying time where some orders would say, okay,
we're not nuns. We're gonna say that we aren't nuns
so we can continue to do all our community service,
(08:46):
whereas some orders really fought tooth and nail with the
Vatican who say, hey, we may teach in schools, but
we're still we're still nuns. You know, we don't need
to be shut off from the world to really live
the best spiritual life we can. You know, we think
that we're called to be out in the community working
with them, and uh so it's a really trying time.
And you know, I think that researching it now in
(09:07):
our present day christ and you can find a lot
of sort of feminist scholars who kind of project onto
these nuns what they think their lives were like, especially
within the cloisters. They say, oh, yeah, these women couldn't leave,
but they were still the first feminist because they were
writing all these essays and writing these poems and they
were really you know, creative women who didn't let being
(09:29):
in close stifle their creativity. And then you've got other
scholars saying, oh, no, this was the worst thing ever
happened to women ever ever well, and it lasted for
a long time. It wasn't until nineteen a hundred that
Pope Leo the thirteenth acknowledged that the active sisters who
were living outside of convents would be recognized by the Vaticans.
(09:49):
So they're kind of reinstated at the beginning of the
twentieth century, and then with the Vatican too, which convened
in nineteen sixty two, we have a loosen up of
life and the convent. So along with that we have
the differentiation between the sisters and the nuns we talked
about in the beginning of the podcast. We have the
(10:11):
active sisters who are out working in the schools and
working in homeless shelters and places like that, and then
we have the contemplative nuns who are in the cloisters
with their life just dedicated to the convent into Christ.
So if you've ever seen a person you think is
a nun out in like a school or community, probably
a sister. Yeah, I will say once, um and maybe that.
(10:32):
I don't know if that reassures me. But once when
I was in Italy, Christen, I went to St. Peter's
to see the Pope, and you know, he was going
to make an appearance, and everyone was like, Oh, when's
it gonna comment come, And a sister kicked me hm.
So I just you just see look on Molly's face
right now, just saying that hard it did, and I
was stunned because I was like Why is this nun,
(10:54):
this holy woman? Why did she kick you? Was it
just crowded? It was crowded and everyone wanted to see
the pope. Well, you know, sometimes people get a little
but I did not think that just because she took
some vow she had the right to the better spot
than I did. And I wish I could have seen
you taken on a taken on a sister the Vatican Molly. Well, now,
I just you know, I'm not saying that there are
any less than another, but I just all these years
(11:16):
I've been telling the story of how a nun kicked me,
but it was really a sister. Now was the nun
wearing a robe and a habit un who kicked you?
She was? And I think that's pretty significant because this
was two thousand three, and by this time many nuns
had given up wearing habits. Uh and may sisters tega
out wearing habits because in the nineteen fifties questions started
(11:38):
to rise up about how clean these habits were, what
was going on underneath those flowing robes. Yeah, Pope Pies
the twelfth said basically to the women, you might want
to start thinking about, you know, if you're going to
be out in the world. Why don't you look a
little bit more like the communities that you serve, which
was offensive of some of the nuns, because you know,
there was meaning behind every single piece of clothing they
put on. It was something that had to do with
(11:59):
cry s life for Christ sacrifice, so that was kind
of offensive. But he was saying, you know, you're spending
so much time trying to keep these garments clean, that
might be time you could better use praying, working with
the community. But things really heat up and the changes
really start to happen in nineteen sixty two and the
Second Vatican Council is called So with the Vatican Too,
(12:21):
which was kind of an attempt to open up the
Catholic Church a little bit modernize it. Nuns did away
with their habits in one order, even consulted Christian Dior
about what they should wear next. Yeah, they wanted sort
of the modern habit, a designer modern habits. And along
with the Vatican Too going on, we also have the
(12:42):
rise of second wave feminism, and with that we see
um not only maybe more nuns getting out into the community,
but also a drop in women choosing to um go
to convents and become sisters and nuns. Right you talked
about Christ and how in those early communities, to some women,
(13:02):
a nune was a really good alternative getting married. If
you did not want to get married, they would say
a husband or a vail. And with that rise of
second way feminism and the idea that women didn't have
to get married, didn't have to stay home with kids,
could could sort of choose their own path, these women
started seeing convents as a less appealing choice. So we've
(13:23):
got that going on. We've got Catholic families getting a
little bit smaller, so that you know, whereas especially after
World War Two, a Catholic family would usually donate one
of their kids to be a priest or are none
they sort of marked that kid for a religious life,
there were fewer children to do that with, so you
wouldn't want to, you know, throw away your chance at
grandchildren with a with giving one away to the Catholic
(13:46):
church goodness. And as a result, in nine five, we
have approximately a hundred and eighty thousand sisters in the US.
By two thousand nine we got fewer than sixty thousand,
and a big surprise here, the median age for remaining
nuns is in the seventies. They are an aging population.
(14:06):
But one really interesting thing that that you found, Molly,
while you were researching this article for how stuff works
on how nuns work, is that the younger women who
are becoming nuns today are actually more traditional and more
fundamental than these older nuns. Yeah. The women who stayed
after Vatican too stayed because they had these true callings
(14:28):
to live this kind of life, and most of them
took on really interesting ministries. Um in the community. And
uh they sometimes have you know, nine to five careers
in addition to living and working at the convent. So um, yeah,
there's it's an aging population that's pretty liberal. That they
usually tend to have beliefs about whether women should be
(14:49):
ordained in the church, and they think that as nuns
they should have equal standing with priests. They're also highly
educated of nuns today have master's degrees, right, And so
it's very interesting to these women at the trend. Rather
than you know, attracting maybe more women who are in
their fifties, say, finishing up one career and getting right
to start another one, that actually what they're attracting these
(15:09):
days are twentysome things who want to wear a veil,
whereas most women haven't wren the veil since the sixties,
who want to live enclosed, uh for larger periods of
time than they do. So it's it's kind of interesting.
I think it'll be uh, pretty fascinating to see what
happens in the next ten years or so, whether the
liberalism that some of these nuns have adopted remains or
(15:31):
if these new traditional women will sort of take the
lead in the Catholic Church and the young women who
are receiving the call. Because the process of becoming a
nun starts with a call or a message from God
that that a woman would receive that she's meant to
lead this life. Um, it's interesting that they would do
(15:53):
this because it's not a light undertaking. It takes a
long time to become an actual nune with all of
the vowels or sister. I mean, it's not like the
process of becoming a nun or sister is any different. Yeah,
you don't just show up at a convent, knock on
the door and say, hey, I like these clothes, I
like the sound of music, I like to pray, I'd
(16:14):
like will be Goldberg. No, it takes almost ten years
to become a nun UH women who received that call,
and they start contacting different UH convents and communities and
orders about their place in that community. The process almost
reads like serrority rush Kristen, and sometimes they use the
same language of dating. They'll say, well, I'm dating five
convents right now, trying to find the one that's right
(16:35):
for me. UM. But yeah, they'll go around from order
to order and say sort of, you know, what do
you have to offer me? What kind of work do
you do? They'll talk to the sisters figure out if
that's where they belong, and then once they find the
place that they want to take their vows with UH,
they begin a process with the formation director, with the
disctermined director of getting ready to enter the community. And
(16:58):
once you start that pre candidate process, you are called
an aspirant. And while you're an aspirinate, you have to
be deemed fit in mind and body by psychologists and doctors.
You're not just a crazy person off the street. You
have to complete essays about their call and UM your
relationship with God. And then once you've gone through the
first phase, you become a postulant or an official candidate
(17:21):
and still you're not taking any vows, but you might
start living with other sisters and participating in activities. And
this last for a couple of years until the next stage,
which is the novitiate. And at this point you are
considered a novice member who will live as a sister
while studying different subjects outlined by canon law and by
(17:42):
the different orders. And at this point you're going to
give any salary that you might be earning to the
community and you kind of start choosing to live that
life of poverty and really becoming part of the non community.
And then finally you take your sets of vows. You
have a first set of vows you're renewed on a
year by your basis, and then the final vows, which
(18:04):
are considered binding forever. But you get ten years to
sort of go through this process before you take these
binding forever vows. And it makes sense because if you're
going to take a vowel for ever bound with God,
becoming a bride of Christ, I mean, you really want
to know that you're for real about it. Yeah, if
they give you plenty of time to learn about the church, uh,
(18:25):
drop out if you want to drop out and there
are I mean, there are certain things set out by
the Vatican that you must study and learn about. And
I think that I think it's really interesting knowing that
it takes ten years for a woman to pledge herself
as a nun to become the Brighter Christ, to get
the ring. At those final vows, they'll hand out the
woman to ring and say, here's your wedding ring with Christ.
Knowing that these women go through ten years of pursuing
(18:48):
this profession, I think it's even more interesting that right
now nuns are under investigation from the Vatican in this country,
the United States. They are under investigation. And it's not
the templative nuns we've talked about, the ones who are
of we think it is locked away in the convents,
although they're not locked away, but the active sisters who
are out in the community, who are doing things like
(19:12):
advocating for the healthcare reform bill. We had sixty thousand
sisters sign on to a letter of support um for
the healthcare bill, and uh, yeah, the Vatican is basically
investigating all of these different orders, and especially the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious who have really agitated for women's
(19:35):
ordination in the Church. Right, And you've got to remember,
obviously the Catholic Church is not having an easy time
of it right now. There's a sexual abuse crisis. People
are saying, do we still need a pope? And uh,
some people are saying, if we had more women in
leadership positions, maybe these crisis, these crises wouldn't get so bad.
And basically, nuns are allowed to do everything priests can
(19:56):
do except perform mass. But because some people are saying that,
that's why, uh, many scholars believe these u S nuns
are being investigated. There being investigated, some belief for being
just too liberal. And uh, one scholar compare the current
investigation to sending a science professor to every single college
(20:18):
in the country and asking him to write report on
every single colleges, you know, administration, academic life, student life.
They're saying, this is a task that's impossible for one
person to do because orders are so different from one another.
Every order might have a different service that they provide,
they might have a different you know. I mean, they
(20:38):
are kind of like sororities where they're all different from
each other. So the fact that the Vatican has said
that one sister will visit all of these convents and
write report on the state of the American nun is
kind of an outrage to uh, these current women who
service nuns, and they're saying that, uh, they very much
fear that something that like Pope Bonifit, the eights Papal
(20:59):
bull could result where the decisions made that all nuns
again need to be enclosed. They need to live, you know,
quiet lives without all this service element. So it's it's
kind of interesting to see. It's it's being interpreted as
this slap back from from modern life back into the
Middle Ages, whereas a Vatican is trying to frame it
(21:19):
as an examination into the quality of life of these
different orders. And they were referring to um the checkups
as apostolic visitations, and it's led they're led by Mother
Mary Claire Millennia, who was described in one article as
an apple cheeked American with a black habit and smiling eyes.
(21:39):
And her report is supposed to be completed by mid
two thousand eleven. So it will be an interesting thing
to watch. It'll be interesting. You know. Someone were saying, yes,
it's just a visitation. Obviously, you want someone to check
up on your quality of life. But this kind of
investigation is usually only ordered when something's gone horribly wrong,
like these are the kind of investigations that are going
on about the sex full abuse crisis. So the fact
(22:01):
that the nuns are getting one too is striking a
lot of people as pretty fishy because really, um, I
don't like the idea of nuns being prevented from doing
the good work in the communities that they are doing.
You know, a lot of times now, while we were
talking about the younger women who are flocking to convince today,
but since it is a ten year process, a lot
(22:23):
of times the women who um will choose to become
sisters are also older women who have kind of lead
their lives and really feel this call. They might be widowed,
they might be divorced, they might have gone through some
difficult circumstances and they say, hey, I really want to
do good with the rest of my life, and and
you can have kids, can become a nun as long
(22:43):
as your kids aren't dependent on you. Um, those women
can become ordained as nuns. So it's it's really affecting
a wide range of women. But you know, again, people
are wondering if because these women are so broad in
their interests, in their backgrounds, in their desires, and maybe
their lack desire for the priesthood that um, this investigation
has come come down on watch what happens? We see
(23:07):
what see what happens to these nuns. And within light
of the investigation, we thought it would be important to
tell the full story of nuns because I learned a
lot Molly with this research. I don't know about you.
Oh yeah, I love drying this article because a lot
of times nuns are, you know, kind of like the
librarians we talked about, incredibly stereotype and we think of
them as these, you know, women who are just off
(23:27):
and separate from the world, not really doing too much,
but but they are there is an active, active life,
sharp gals. Okay, so it's pretty cool. And do you
want to talk about one other thing, one really kind
of cool contribution that nuns are making to our society.
They might help us understand because of Alzheimer's That's true,
(23:47):
and that is um from something called the Nuns Study,
which has been happening at the University of Minnesota, and
it's been written up a few times. You may have
seen it in Time magazine or the New York Times.
But basically this uh, this order of nuns in minnesot
To was approached by a researcher who wanted to study
their brains and try and figure out, you know, what
what causes forms of dementia, what happens as the brain ages.
(24:10):
And these nuns make a really good study group because
they've all lived similar lives. They're eating this for the
same food. They don't smoke. Um, you know, they've they're
really good like sample size of uniformity and um. He
can tell based on writings that these women made when
they were going through their candidacy process what they were
like when they were young. So what's going to happen
(24:30):
is when the nuns die, they donate their brain to
this researcher and he can compare, you know, the spots
that might have appeared on the brain that indicate dementia
or Alzheimer's with their younger rings and try and make
connections about how we can prevent Alzheimer's and other forms
of aging. And they've already started making some connections such
(24:51):
as women who or of higher intelligence and had more
brain activity tended to have lower rates of Alzheimer's. Women
who exhibited more positive amo ocean in those essays, um
also tended to have lower rates of all summers. So again,
some interesting things to watch for in the future. That
nuns are contributing to our society. And it's pretty synohing
(25:12):
just because so few studies are done with women. So
the fact that he knew he could go this community
and get sort of the ideal sample size, I think
it's pretty pretty cool. So with that we tip off
habit to nuns. And you know, we've never heard from
a listener who's a nun. I don't believe um, but
you know, nuns were very hip to the social media
(25:34):
and the social networking. One of the one of the
references I'll just plug this that helps me and eyes
ran this article is a blog called a Nun's Life.
So um, if we've got any nun listeners out there,
we'd love to know. Yes, email us nuns moms stuff
at how stuff works dot com. Don't that we read
an email from another listener? All right? I have an
(25:56):
email here from Lisa and it's about the superhero pot cast.
She writes, I think that the way women are portraying
comics is giving off messages to girls read them that
they are victims and that they can't be as powerful
as men. After listening to your podcast on this, I
looked up the women in Refrigerator's list and was shocked
to see how many women were on it, even once
that I thought were strong and held their own against men.
My favorite female superhero has to be Sue Storm from
(26:19):
the Fantastic Four because even though she suffers miscarriages, I
still think she is one of the strongest members of
the team. She also has brains, and that is why
she is my favorite. Well, thank you for that email,
and thank you to everyone who has written us at
our email address, Mom's Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
You can also join us over at Twitter at Mom's
(26:40):
Stuff Podcasts. You can head over to our Facebook and
leave a comments say hello. And finally, you can read
our blog It's stuff Mom Never Told You at how
stuff works dot com for moralness and thousands of other topics.
Is it how stuff works dot com. To learn more
about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the
(27:02):
upper right corner of our homepage. The Houstuff Works iPhone
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