Friday, April 26, 2013

Happy Birthday, Sister Laurencia!


On April 25 Sister Laurencia Listerman turned 100 years old. Sister Laurencia taught English at Scecina Memorial High School when I was a student there in the late 1950s. She also taught a journalism course and was moderator of the school paper The Crusader. I took her journalism class and became editor-in-chief of The Crusader my senior year. Sister Laurencia was one of my mentors the three years I spent at Scecina. She continues to be an inspiration.

My dad was a newspaperman and she met both my folks on parents’ night. My mother became “her angel” because she would occasionally ask my mom if “Mister Widner” could do a favor for her so that our journalism class might have some perks. She and my mother became good friends.

Now that she has been at the motherhouse of the Oldenburg Franciscan Sisters for some years, Sister Laurencia receives visitors as she wheels around on her golf cart she calls “my Cadillac.” Still very alert and still reading, Sister Laurencia has a very progressive mind. I would not recommend that any bishop or any pope engage with her as they might come away with their tails between their legs.

Sister Laurencia was a most practical woman. She once told us in class that “it isn’t always what you know, it’s who you know.” She not only gave advice, however. She listened. She could engage with students who kept her up to date on the latest fads, gossip, thinking, etc., with her mouth and eyes wide open in an incredulous stare. She learned a great deal from us and she was genuinely interested in what we had to say. Although her wisdom became part of us, she always gave us the signals that told us that she was learning from us as well. When making a point, her speech became very deliberative and precise.

In his homily on the Feast of St. Mark (April 25), Pope Francis told his listeners how important it is for all Christians to go out into the world and preach the Gospel. We do so, he said, by being witnesses to the person of Jesus Christ. Sister Laurencia is a terrific witness to the Gospel. She taught me and many others the value of being fully human. And that’s as close to Jesus Christ as anyone can get!

 

Monday, April 22, 2013

Cornelia Connelly


One of the more curious stories of virtue in Catholic life concerns Cornelia Connelly, the daughter of a wealthy family in Philadelphia. She was born in 1809 as Cornelia Peacock and in 1831 married an Episcopal priest named Pierce Connelly. Herself a member of the Episcopal Church, Cornelia and Pierce became Roman Catholics after he renounced his Anglican orders. In 1839 he decided to seek ordination as a Catholic priest. He went to Rome, received approval and eventually called his family to be with him. Cornelia was told she would have to enter a convent.

Only two of five children the Connellys had given birth ultimately survived. Cornelia obediently took a vow of chastity when her husband was ordained and she moved to England with her children to establish a religious congregation (known as the Society of the Holy Child Jesus) for the education of girls under the direction of a local bishop who eagerly sought her assistance. Her own children were placed in boarding schools.

Some details of Cornelia’s life growing up seem similar to that of Elizabeth Seton. She would have been about 12 years of age when Seton died. She began as a Protestant and found solace in Catholic Italy after her husband’s death. Cornelia accepted the requirement of chastity for herself after her husband became a Catholic priest.

Cornelia’s ministry acquired some eminence in the English Catholic Church and within a few years was flourishing. Plans were made to establish a foundation in America. Pierce, though, became disillusioned with the Roman Catholic priesthood, renounced it, and wanted his family to return to him. By that time, however, Cornelia was firmly committed to her adopted faith and to the work she was doing educating young girls. Pierce brought a lawsuit against her. Though she won the lawsuit, it came at a great cost. Much public opinion sided against her. Pierce removed the children from the boarding schools and took them to America.

Cornelia continued her work and died April 19, 1879. A biography composed by one of her sisters in 1922 indicated that her two remaining children did visit her as adults but that relations were never completely healed as the two sided with their father. The daughter Adeline though eventually returned to her Catholic faith.

One has to wonder about the feelings that roller coasted throughout Cornelia’s life – in herself, her husband, and two children who grew to adulthood. A rigid discipline dictated that Cornelia take up religious life as a nun, and it is her positive response that sets her apart as a courageous woman, much as Mary said “yes” to the angel who announced a life-changing event to her.

 

 

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Peter said "I 'phileo' you"

English is a most imprecise language. That becomes apparent in the Gospel of John when Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him. I don’t know how it works in French or German or Spanish or Italian or Swahili or Chinese or Tagalog or any other language. But English has only one word to express the two different kinds of love expressed in that Gospel of John.

Greek, the language in which the Gospel was composed, uses the word agape to express the question of Jesus – do you love me? Agape refers to a very self-sacrificing love, the kind of love in which one person would be willing to give their life for the other. But Peter responds to the question of Jesus with another verb – philo – which suggests a very deep friendship, but not a self-sacrificing love. The third time Jesus makes the request of Peter, Jesus uses the verb philo. He understands that Peter is not yet capable of responding with a self-sacrificing love. But he will in time.

Americans love everything and everyone. We love our wives and husbands, our children, and parents, and cousins and aunts and uncles. We also love our cars and our TVs, our IPods and IPads, our toys and gadgets, our clothes, our furniture, our vacations, our cleverness, our guns, our food, our gardens, our wars, our peace, and so on and so forth. We love it all.
 
Once upon a time it seemed as though we could distinguish the difference between all of these. But today we live in a culture of fairness and equality. So why shouldn’t we love our wives and husbands just as much and with the same kind of love as our IPods and IPads, etc.? Why shouldn’t we think of our wars and peace as equal as our children? Isn't it fair to pick a vacation over church going or praying? As long as I make a choice, my choice is what counts. That I make the choice. That I have a choice. Praying isn’t any more important than going to a bar.

That’s the American way of loving today. The language has gotten more imprecise as time has passed. And as long as everyone recognizes that it makes no difference, then I can recite along with the poet the following:

            “all ignorance toboggans into know
            and trudges up to ignorance again;
            but winter’s not forever, even snow
            melts; and if spring should spoil the game, what then?”