a more intellectually sophisticated version of them. I did wonder about the Church’s warnings about the dangers of venturing outside its limits, asking why I should believe in the religion into which I happened to have been born, when others were equally convinced that the religions into which they had been born were true. Was I brainwashed? I latched on to apologetics textbooks to answer my questions and address my doubts. I pored over the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas. I enthused over Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man, not only because they expressed the ontological position I was seeking to justify, but also because I took to G. K. Chesterton’s clever and paradoxical style.
I savored novels with political or religious themes, such as The Last Hurrah and The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, Advise and Consent by Alan Drury. I took to Frank O’Connor’s stories and nearly split my sides laughing at “First Confession.” I sought sociological analysis in The Lonely Crowd by David Riesman and The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard. I took early morning walks in dark streets pondering words I memorized from my reading, such as lines from We Hold These Truths by John Courtney Murray: “The barbarian need not appear in bearskins with a club in hand. He may wear a Brooks Brothers suit and carry a ball-point pen…. The real enemy within the gates of the city is not the communist but the idiot.” One day in downtown Philadelphia, I bought a Communist newspaper. It would be hard for anyone who didn’t grow up as I did to realize how daring this felt. However, lightning did not strike me dead, and I felt improved by exposing myself to the other side. I didn’t find its contents so implausible either. At times, I seethed with contempt for the conformism and mediocrity of the older generation in general, and of my own parents in particular. What enraged me was that they held up this complacency, which they called normality, as the peak of wisdom, the goal to which I should aspire.
After I graduated from high school, I got a job in a detective agency in Philadelphia. I was only a clerk, but I thrived on the office banter with the investigators and on reading reports before filing them. They were mostly cases of suspected adultery or insurance fraud—no murders—but I found it a quirkily enlightening experience. I also liked the independence and the salary. My parents had laid down the law that at eighteen we were on our own financially. If we wanted to continue to live at home, we had to pay our own board. My earnings allowed me to explore further the joys of Philadelphia’s city center, to meet friends in restaurants, movies, and concerts. As I worked full-time and stayed out most evenings and weekends, my mother needed more helping hands at home. Rather than make the demands on my brothers that she had made on me, she hired a “cleaning lady.” It was Ken’s mother. My mother couldn’t understand why I thought this inappropriate, as she needed the help, and Mrs. James needed the money. I saw Ken often at the time, and we both found this embarrassing.
I was also still involved in politics. Dick Doran, with whom I worked during the Kennedy campaign, contacted me and said it wasn’t enough to get our man elected, that we had to go out and garner support for the whole “New Frontier” program. I did so enthusiastically. I was back in City Hall again, too, chatting with politicians, judges, assistant district attorneys, and public defenders.
I felt a burning desire to touch life at all possible points, to live as fully as a person could live. I wanted to push my knowledge and passion to their limits. I was fluttering my wings and wanted to fly free. Nevertheless, I did the opposite.
2
Faith of Our Fathers
Why would I renounce all my aspirations and ambitions to explore the wider world in order to enter a cloister? To understand it, it is necessary to grasp the grip that Catholicism had in those days, not only in its institutional hegemony, but in its psychological power. More than anything else, the all-encompassing presence of the Roman Catholic Church had dominated my life. My family was Catholic. My friends were Catholic. My schools were Catholic. My books were Catholic. Most of my mentors were Catholic. Imprimatur and nihil obstat were as natural and essential as title and author in the opening pages of books, at least those dealing with higher matters. Above all else, it was the rituals of the Church that gave rhythm and order to the days and months and years of the first two decades of my life. Its rites of passage marked most decisively the stages through which I moved through my life world. Each year revolved in the grooves of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, May procession, Pentecost. Its theology provided answers to every philosophical question. Philosophy, I was told, existed to take human reason as far as it could go, but could only be completed by divine revelation. Theology stood at the summit of the hierarchy of knowledge.
In time, I discerned different streams within this overall flow. It was this gradual realization that brought me into the realms of philosophy and theology. Despite being female, I developed an aversion to the trappings of female spirituality: rosaries, scapulars, apparitions, sugary sentimental prayers. I had little respect for women, including nuns. All my role models were men, and I gravitated toward traditions of male spirituality, Jesuit ones in particular, which I found stronger, more rational, more active. I believed in the harmony of faith and reason, with the emphasis on reason. When we graduated from eighth grade, we were presented with a book called The Question Box, which gave answers to every anticipated question and objection to Catholic doctrine. I read it avidly and felt even more confident of the Church’s omniscience.
I wanted to give myself without reserve, even though it meant enclosing myself in a world of women, leaving behind my notions of a career in academe or politics, sublimating my sexuality, sacrificing my freedom. I prayed in the spirit of Ignatius of Loyola: “Teach me to be generous, to give without counting the cost, to fight without heeding the wounds.” It was inevitable that I enter the convent, because I yearned to have a comprehensive worldview and to live in harmony with it. I thought that the people around me were so busy going somewhere that they forgot to find out where they were going. This became axiomatic for me. What I saw most people doing was what I was most resolved not to do. Catholicism addressed the big picture and demanded that its chosen commit totally to contemplating and communicating it.
I felt called. I believed that this thrust toward totality, which I felt so strongly and which kept me so preoccupied with questions of origin and destiny, was God’s way of pulling me toward the religious life. The Church’s constant emphasis on “vocation” had conditioned me to believe that this restless searching was a sign of having been chosen to play a special role in understanding and teaching. When I decided to enter the convent, I believed I had resolved my struggles, although that was far further from being the case than I could possibly have imagined. I had my worldview worked out, so I thought, and I had only to advance in higher knowledge of it and give myself in total commitment to it.
I applied and was accepted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Chestnut Hill. We had to supply academic transcripts, SAT scores, baptismal and confirmation certificates, and letters of reference from our teachers and pastors. We underwent psychological and physical examinations—the latter testing for virginity. Not everyone who applied was accepted, although I don’t think that those who were rejected necessarily failed the virginity test. The fact that the Sisters of Saint Joseph had a Jesuit founder—Jean-Pierre Medaille, who established the congregation in Le Puy, France, in 1650—was significant for me. In fact, I would have preferred to join the Jesuits, but this seemed the next best thing. I wanted to be a teacher, and this was a teaching order. I also had two cousins, both on the Sheehan side, who were SSJs.
The day I entered the convent in September 1962 was one of the most drastic rituals of closing one chapter of a life and beginning another that I have ever known. I shut my huge trunk, full of the required number of undershirts, slips, stockings, nightdresses, slippers, pencils, bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo, and placed on the top an envelope with the “dowry” I had worked all summer to earn. It was not only that we had to bring exactly what was on the list, but we were also strictly prohibited from bringing anything not on the list. I had to let go of my most treasured possessions: books, letters, photos.
