TOTALLY AND ABSOLUTELY UNFAIR!

If I hear one more Catholic crack a joke or utter a "put down" of our nuns in the past, they had better have some evidence of what they are saying or I am going to explode and give them a dressing-down they will never forget! To single out a few sad souls among the hundreds and hundreds of self-sacrificing religious women and then paint all of them with the broad brush of those few exceptions is totally and absolutely unfair!

For the last few years, I have been volunteering to celebrate the Eucharist and the Sacrament of Reconciliation for our local Little Sisters of the Poor who have been serving the elderly poor of our city for a total of 130 years. Even though there are 11 of them here in Louisville today, they don't retire. Some of them are carrying on their ministry from walkers and motorized carts. You had better not criticize any of them in front of me! You'll regret it! 

These Sisters do not even include the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, the Sisters of Mercy, the Ursuline Sisters of Louisville, the Ursuline Sisters of Mount St. Joseph, the Franciscan Sisters, the Sisters of Loretto, the Dominicans Sisters, the Carmelite Sisters and probably others that I am unable to recall. They have certainly served us long and well here in the Archdiocese of Louisville. 

Personally, I was taught throughout grade school by our very own Sisters of Charity of Nazareth. I never experienced any unfair treatment from any of them. Of course, a couple of them had a bad day and lost their patience every once in a while, but what human being hasn't? I, too, had a bad day once in a while back then, but they didn't quit teaching me because of it! They taught two grades at one time, in hot black-serge habits and starched-stiff white bonnets, with no air-conditioning either in their crowded convent or in our school. They came to serve us in 1870, but didn't have running water and had to use an out-house until 1950! They were expected to pray constantly and even teach musicians, altar servers and catechists after hours. I loved them all, especially the one or two who had a bad day every now and then! Even as a child, I could sympathize with those who found themselves stressed out once in a while! I have never held any of that against any of them! In fact, I am more than grateful for, and truly amazed at, the many heroic sacrifices they made for little country kids like me. I not only respected them, I loved them --- and, yes, I felt loved by them!  

I just finished two years of researching the history of my boyhood parish. I was amazed to find out that 96 Sisters of Charity of Nazareth served my home parish of St. Theresa of Avila in Meade County, Kentucky, over 138 years (1870-2008) for little or nothing as far as pay goes. In fact, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth had to rescue our school from closing a few times in our history by subsidizing it from their own community funds because the members of our small rural parish  could not always afford to keep it open. 

The Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, just like the many communities of religious women in the United States, opened schools, built hospitals, founded orphanages, nursed wounded soldiers, established food pantries, opened clinics, started ministries in several other countries and served in various parish ministries here at home. Only God knows how many other ministries they operated that no one even knows about or even remembers these days! They have served white, brown, black, yellow and red people (all races), Catholics and non-Catholics alike, here and abroad, long before that was widely accepted elsewhere.

Watching their first three SCN Sisters depart from the USA on a ship in 1947 to start a hospital in Makoma, India.

 

One of the SCNs nursing a leper in India. 

Three of them, in their veiled bonnets on the left, at Catholic Colored High School in Louisville, Ky @1930 where they served as teachers.

They opened a school in Klamath Falls, Oregon,  @1922 simply because they were asked.

(I worked one summer in Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and picked up tourists in Klamath Falls 

and took them to the Park Lodge. I had no idea the SCNs who taught me had been there too.) 

At Spalding College in Louisville, they helped Muhammed Ali (Casius Clay) get a good start in preparing for his world-famous boxing career. 

The first SCN Sisters to staff their new Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1952 where they faced much anti-Catholic prejudice at its beginning  

SCN Sisters on each end, posing with their students, at St. Monica School in Bardstown, KY @ 1880

EVEN TODAY MANY ARE STILL SERVING

Sister Rosemarie, Sister Brenda and Sister Sophie working at the local Sister Visitors' Emergency Food Pantry, just one of their 120 current ministries around the world.  

Sister Roselyn Karakattu SCN recently started a "remedial study center" in a poor remote village in Mucharim, India. Until now, the area had been devoid of a nearby schooling facility - so much so that the local children were simply unable to go to school. Here is a photo of some of her students. It is yet another one of the 120 ministries in which the SCN Sisters support, both here in the USA and abroad. 

 

OUR VERY OWN SISTERS OF CHARITY OF NAZARETH 

operate 120 ministries in 6 different countries

OUR VERY OWN LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR

operate homes for the elderly poor in 30 different countries

 

(1) DON'T DISHONOR THEM WITH CRUEL AND UNJUST "JUDGMENTS,"

 (2) HELP THEM IN THEIR PRESENT MINISTRIES WITH A GENEROUS CHECK,

(3) BUT MOST OF ALL, DEFEND THEM AND DON'T FORGET TO THANK THEM!

Sisters of Charity of Nazareth

P.O. Box 9

Nazareth, Kentucky 40048

Little Sisters of the Poor

15 Audubon Plaza Drive

Louisville, KY 40217-1318

502-636-2300

TO ME, OUR RELIGIOUS SISTERS WILL ALWAYS BE HEROES