The Cloister Walk - Kathleen Norris [106]
As more and more sisters work as pastoral assistants and hospital chaplains, I sense a tension between the ignorance that once insulated them from the world and the demands of these new ministries. A prostitute beaten half to death by a customer should not have to explain to a hospital chaplain what a “blow job” is; it’s something the chaplain should know. (Even if the chaplain’s job is mainly to listen, it helps to understand the language being spoken.) When a sister working in Minneapolis, long a center of child pornography and prostitution in America, sees a copy of Playboy for the first time and says in shock, “Why—those are real women posing in those photographs!” she reveals a naivete that borders on the criminal. I wonder if “criminal naivete” might not be a good term to add to the lexicon of moral theology, to apply to false innocence, the ignorance of people who should know better.
I am not one of those people who think that monastics are a bunch of escapists who should all become activists in the world. I believe that a contemplative who is being with God, praying with and for the world, is doing something that is invaluable in part because it transcends utility. And my experience of praying the psalms with the Benedictines has taught me that a contemplative who knows the psalms by heart is keeping up-to-date on the evils in this world—the record of human evil and violence in the psalms will make sure of that. But when monastic people are engaged in active ministries, as some have been throughout monastic history, they can’t afford a drastic ignorance of the people they teach and serve.
Benedictine women know that such ignorance can cause considerable strain for them and their own communities. “We women have not been able to avoid the hard sexual issues,” a former prioress told me. She related a story about a young sister whom she described as “terribly naive,” who was befriended by an older woman who invited her on pilgrimages to several Marian shrines. “She had no idea that anything sexual could happen,” the sister said, “and she was torn apart when it did.” The prioress added, “For us, the question is the same whether sisters are having affairs with men, or with other women. Pairing off does violence to the group. It’s a little like a marriage; a good community, like a good marriage, can survive an affair, one big shock to the system. But we can’t survive a lifestyle of infidelity. We have to ask sisters to discern their choices and decide: Do they want that person, or the community?”
She asked the young woman to see a counselor to help her make a decision. “But,” she told me, “the counselors saw their purpose as helping people to grow emotionally, so they promoted the relationship. They seemed to feel that it was better for her to grow through a sexual relationship than to remain a childish nun.” This raised a dilemma for the prioress. While she herself recognized the need for the woman to grow up—like many Benedictines I’ve talked to, men and women, she felt that monasteries have all too often provided a refuge for immature people—she was disturbed that the counselors seemed to be implying that one can’t grow emotionally in the monastery, in celibate relationships. The prioress knew from experience that this was not true, but she felt at a loss when dealing with the counselors. I suspect she’d run up against a classic conflict between a psychology that emphasizes individual development, and the Benedictine charism of