NUN IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE
I decided to begin a blog-site out of my interest in dialoging with others in the public square about important experiences and issues of the day. Internet technology empowers us as individuals to communicate nationally and internationally to explore experiences and issues for the purpose of gaining insight and vision in shaping our present and future, and perhaps to heal our past and present social sin. I believe this is the work of a proactive, discerning human community.
My journey to the here and now? My apostolic ‘nun-life’ began as an educator in Catholic schools and eventually led to the presidency of a Catholic college on the rural Northern Plains. The seeds for a life of religious consecration and church ministry, rather than marriage and kids, were sown by several strong, prairie women, Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who challenged us prairie kids to “go out and make the world a better place!” And, “Leave a footprint, one that will make a difference!” I took the plunge, and spent a generation teaching kids and parents!
With the redefined Church of Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, of Vatican II, we nuns handed our Catholic school ministry to the laity whom we had been preparing for two generations in our parochial schools and Catholic colleges and universities. Thus the Sisters responded to another form of “teaching and healing”. Leaving the secure structures of semi-enclosed convents and parish schools, and faithful to the daring of our founding mothers, we redirected our apostolic work… to hostels for the homeless in our streets, founding homes for victims of AIDs and other crushing issues, establishing numerous social agencies to address the needs of those ridden by poverty, those trafficking across our borders for jobs and as victims of the sex trade, and to the poor in the Third World.
We also discovered the power of corporate board rooms where policy is made and questioned, and we brought our voices to those tables. This includes the institutions of the church as well as the market place, “the public square”.
I spend most of my ‘second’ apostolic life in circles of leadership and governance. I believe there also the gospel needs to be sown, and ‘prophecy’ consists of standing the purposes and policies of an organization over against gospel values.
My journey to the here and now? My apostolic ‘nun-life’ began as an educator in Catholic schools and eventually led to the presidency of a Catholic college on the rural Northern Plains. The seeds for a life of religious consecration and church ministry, rather than marriage and kids, were sown by several strong, prairie women, Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who challenged us prairie kids to “go out and make the world a better place!” And, “Leave a footprint, one that will make a difference!” I took the plunge, and spent a generation teaching kids and parents!
With the redefined Church of Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, of Vatican II, we nuns handed our Catholic school ministry to the laity whom we had been preparing for two generations in our parochial schools and Catholic colleges and universities. Thus the Sisters responded to another form of “teaching and healing”. Leaving the secure structures of semi-enclosed convents and parish schools, and faithful to the daring of our founding mothers, we redirected our apostolic work… to hostels for the homeless in our streets, founding homes for victims of AIDs and other crushing issues, establishing numerous social agencies to address the needs of those ridden by poverty, those trafficking across our borders for jobs and as victims of the sex trade, and to the poor in the Third World.
We also discovered the power of corporate board rooms where policy is made and questioned, and we brought our voices to those tables. This includes the institutions of the church as well as the market place, “the public square”.
I spend most of my ‘second’ apostolic life in circles of leadership and governance. I believe there also the gospel needs to be sown, and ‘prophecy’ consists of standing the purposes and policies of an organization over against gospel values.
posted by Lynn Marie Welbig, PBVM at
4:53 PM
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