The New Orleans Sisters of the Holy Family: African American Missionaries to the Garifuna of Belize

Chapter 5: Changes in the 1950s through the Early 1970s

65 C h a p t e r 5 Changes in the 1950s through the Early 1970s As with all Catholic orders and congregations, new problems would face the Holy Family Sisters in the post–Vatican II era. But before this issue is addressed, it is necessary to look at how the Second Vatican Council changed the lives of American nuns in general. Vatican II (1962–1965) profoundly affected all female religious congregations by challenging them to break from their traditional isolationist convent culture. Ever since the Middle Ages and especially since the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century, religious women were expected to live a contemplative, cloistered life.1 The Vatican did not officially recognize active female religious who did not conform to this role until 1900, when Leo XIII issued his papal bull, Conditae a Christo. But while this bull granted the same status to active and contemplative congregations, it also obligated all female religious to restrict themselves to at least a semi-cloistered way of living that severely constrained their contact with those beyond their convent walls.2 Transplanted congregations of European nuns and U.S. “home-grown” communities of sisters, especially those laboring on the frontier, were sometimes able to negotiate their way around cloister restrictions due to the special nature of their ministry. This exception ended, however, in 1918, due to the promulgation by Rome of a new Code of Canon Law that made enclosure restrictions the norm, thereby fostering a “cloister mentality” among active female religious communities. As historian Amy Koehlinger explains, 66  The Post–Vatican II Years Required to report their compliance with canon law to authorities in Rome every five years, many superiors of women’s congregations from the 1920s through the 1950s rigidly enforced restrictions on sisters’ physical movements, access to media and public meetings, and contact with family members, lay people, and even other religious. In a curious juxtaposition, during the first half of the twentieth century when papal encyclicals and American bishops were calling Catholics toward engagement with an ever-broader program of social action, sisters were­ increasingly required to limit the scope of their ministries to adhere to norms of enclosure.3 This “cloister mentality,” adds Koehlinger, especially burdened those female religious who worked with “non-Catholics and communities of color beyond Catholic enclaves,” forcing them to live “with constant tension between the unencumbered movement that such apostolates required and the concrete limitations that canon law placed on them.”4 Historian Patricia Byrne notes that even sisters who taught in parochial schools avoided as much as possible the social and ministerial aspects of parish life. They were in the parish, she aptly asserts, but not of it.5 Lora Ann Quiñonez and Mary Daniel Turner further emphasize Byrne’s contention by pointing out that before Vatican II, it “would have been unthinkable” for female religious to take part in any type of public discourse.6 The seeds of change that would later bear fruit were actually planted in the 1950s, when some church leaders concluded that the isolation of convent life had instilled a lack of sophistication in nuns that impeded their ability to play an effective role in the increasingly complex modern world. Based on this judgment, Pope Pius XII urged all female congregations to update their customs and ministries so as to take into account the charism of their founders along with the needs of contemporary times. He further proposed that they make­ arrangements to ensure that their members were as well educated as their secular counterparts and that they wear habits that were prac­ tical and therefore did not impede their ministry.7 To achieve these Changes in the 1950s through the Early 1970s   67­ reforms, Pius urged the various religious congregations to work together cooperatively; and, to best facilitate this approach, he summoned religious superiors to Rome for a series of international congresses on reform that were held between 1950 and 1952.8 As Koehlinger notes, these congresses introduced religious superiors to the collaborative process, thereby undermining the culture of isolation and competition between different congregations that had existed at least since 1918.9 Just prior to Vatican II, Archbishop Giovanni Montini of Milan took Pius XII’s request a step further, urging sisters to replace their cloistered way of life with one that was more active. Several years later, Montini would repeat this call during the Council, after...