An Irish Girl Squeezed into a French Mold
I vacillated but then an event helped me to make up my mind to go back to boarding school rather than stay at home.
Mrs. Lux from our parish decided she would send two of her oldest to boarding school. She told my mother that I was welcome to ride with them when they took their daughter, Almira and their son, Richard, to enroll at St. Benedict School. Almira was going to be a sophomore like I was and Richard was entering his junior year. They told mother that they would bring me home with them for every holiday. That was the deciding factor that helped me make up my mind to return to boarding school that fall.
The return to school was so much easier for me than my first year. I was a veteran boarder now. The year went along much like the first. I worked again for my board and room. There were a few new faces.
One day, Almira Lux told me that she was leaving to join the convent. She was going to be a nun like the ones who were teaching us. I was completely floored. I couldn’t picture her, just a plain, little old country girl, like myself, as a real nun. A thousand questions filled my mind but my mouth was still hanging open. No words could express my thoughts. Almira was a girl of few words also. She told me she was going and then she was gone.
I began to think, “If Almira can be a nun then I can too.” The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. Ever the impulsive one, I began to ask questions about the convent of my religion teacher, Sister Eugene.
It didn’t take her long to paint a glorious picture for me. She told me that if I became a nun, I would please God and I would increase in holiness every day. She was sure that was the Will of God for me. That is what He was writing on that blank paper I had so courageously signed in my freshman year. She really had been looking over His shoulder when He wrote out His plan for me on the tablet of my life. She easily convinced me. She said the more I achieved, the more God would love me. I was ready to go without much more thought at all. It was only much later that I learned that God does not look for achievers but only believers. We don’t have to do things to earn His love. He loved us first before we ever had a chance to “do” anything for Him.
Mother Marie was not quite so sold on my idea of becoming a nun-. She knew me quite well. She thought that I was too immature to make that decision. She arranged for me to go home to talk it over with my mother. She was sure that my mother would talk me out of this plan. Mom did try, but I was not about to listen. I entered the convent on Valentine’s Day, 1945. I was very determined to be a great nun.
My childhood ended when I entered the convent at the age of 15 on February 14, 1945. I spent a year at Valley City, ND, learning about the church and what it would mean to be a nun.
Almira Lux and Barbara Pfeifer had been admitted to the formation program several months before I came to St. Catherine’s Convent. We were called postulants, a term derived from a French word meaning a petitioner. We were persons admitted to a religious community as probationary candidates. The other two postulants were as clueless as I was concerning convent life. We were three very young girls who admired the nuns and who wished to serve God in what we had been told was the best way.
In general, I must say that, Mother Guirec, the nun in charge of our formation into this new way of life, was a very likable woman. Although she had lived here in the United States for many years, her background in spirituality, culture, and communication was definitely French and Old World. Her approach to life was very foreign to my limited knowledge of how people normally regard subordinates.
She looked upon me and the two other young ladies in formation, as very rough material that had been badly corrupted by worldly ways. It was now her task to pour us into a mold that would turn out perfect nuns, who would learn to follow every rule of the Order of Sisters of Mary of the Presentation, and be fully prepared to go out into the world to bring others closer to God. In and of itself, that was a great goal that I wanted to attain with my whole heart.
Hers was an enormous task. She told us that she had to remake us, to crush out the hold that the world had on us and to break us of our sinful ways. “Remake, crush, and break,” were harsh words that held much foreboding for me. I didn’t look upon myself as a hardened sinner. I saw myself as a child of God, who sometimes sinned. Sin was not my habitual style of life, as this nun seemed to believe. My first days in the convent were very puzzling and upsetting but I gradually learn to adjust and to keep my misgivings stuffed down tightly inside. This unhealthy repression soon manifested itself in frequent, almost daily, migraine headaches that added an extra burden to this very difficult style of life.
Mother Guirec warned us to be docile as the work of formation began. We were not to question her directions or the rules. She told us that we must leave behind everything, our friends, our family, and all the bad habits that we had acquired in the “world”. She would reluctantly tolerate an occasional visit or letter from the family but warned that letters would be censored before we read them or sent to them. Well, I was used to that last rule. My days at the boarding school had prepared me for this antiquated regulation. If it had been left up to her, I think that she would like to have isolated us entirely from our families. She thought they only served to disrupt the order and discipline of community life.
We were to see ourselves as part of a new family. We were reminded that we must look forward to strict discipline that would weed out our obstinacy and willfulness. We were always to do God’s will, and this would be whatever she told us to do. Old pleasures were to be forgotten. Our only pleasure was to follow the wishes of our superiors. The “Holy Rule,” her wishes, and the routine of community life were to replace our own wills. We were never to question, never to challenge, and never disobey, never to even hesitate to do what was asked of us.
To prove to myself the sincerity of my dedication, I took out the photo of Dick that I had hidden among the few things that I had brought with me. Mother Guirec had said that besides leaving behind our family, we must also forget the boys with whom “we had sinned”. I had skated, danced, biked, smooched, skirted the boarding-house rules a bit, in my juvenile relationships with Dick and Leroy, but none of those things were sins in my mind. Nevertheless, I was determined to become the perfect nun. Slowly, with great feelings of heroism, I torn Dick’s picture into tiny shreds and flushed them down the toilet. I was confident that I was progressing nicely on my way to sainthood!
Well, what did you expect? It was a normal reaction to ideas presented by someone, I had been told, took the place of God. I decided to be very submissive and obedient. I figured I could do it, no matter how hard it would get. It got more and more difficult as the years went on. Thus began my formation into a proper member of this community.
Looking back, I believe this community used some of the same methods that the military uses to indoctrinate and train its soldiers. I would continue to wonder about a lot of things especially about these brainwashing techniques, but for the most part, I did comply with all attempts to purify of my character.
Next: Continuing Education and More Squeezing into the French Mold of Religiosity