Let's talk about nuns

Nuns are a topic that I am keen to consider. 

Oddly, the issue of nuns is not straightforward these days.  Strict divisions have arisen.  First of all, there is a need to tread carefully between who is termed a nun (based upon a cloistered community or solemn vows) and who is termed a sister (living in the world or simple vows), but both are able to be addressed as ‘sister’ and can be called a ‘nun’ in common parlance.

Then there is the issue of the habit – should a nun wear a habit? For a look at great images of various orders’ habits, visit http://www.nunsandsisters.com/Home_Page.html  Conversely, if you want to see an argument against the habit, either look at the photos of the Josephites at St Mary MacKillop’s canonisation (they are the ones in the blue flight-attendant scarves) or, to see the argument in written form: http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=22477. (For the record, I side with the habit.)  

Next, there is the schizophrenic media approach to nuns. On the one hand, there is the eternal Sound-of-Music image of the kindly, habited nun wishing good upon all, and on the other hand there is the sort-of-kind-of-feminist, un-habited, permed-haired, social-justice-addicted sister perpetually under attack from the ‘hierarchy. For a fun representation of this latter view, see Tobias Wolff’s short story ‘The Missing Person’  in the collection ‘Back In the World’, which is a good story to boot.

Of course, the schizophrenic nature of media coverage arises due to the reader having the image of the habited nun as a readily avaliable stereotype, but where the religious sisters the subject of the story are not from the habited-end of the nun spectrum.  In other words, the media free rides on this image as a means to creating a certain sympathy in the story: poor nuns being cracked down upon by a hierarchy of old men etc.  

The most recent story (circulating today) involves an American’s nun’s book on sex education not conforming to Church teaching (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-06-05/vatican-denounces-nun-over-sex-book/4053384). The nun involved is not of the traditional type (obviously), but the story trades upon the notion of attacking a nun.

Another local example, a few years old now, concerns a nun was robbed and attacked in the street (and, as an example to us all, who unconditionally forgave the attacker).  The crime gained a special local media heinousness on the basis that it portrayed an attack on a defenceless nun.  It conjured the image of the habited sister being mercilessly set upon. The fact that she was not habited, so assumedly the robber’s offence was not aggravated by attacking a nun (in addition to the aggrivation of a defenceless elderly lady), did not feature.

Anyhow, just some things to ponder.