There’s no quitting a mission from God

Brother Bill and I joked that we felt like Jake and Elwood seeking out Sister Mary Stigmata as we approached Mount Loretto, the Dubuque motherhouse of the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

We had been summoned by Sister Richelle Friedman to share supper and talk about Iowa issues. Even if you did time at Joliet you can’t say no to the nuns.

Here we are, in or approaching our seventh decade and we remain mere schoolboys trying to appreciate what hospitality actually means.

We were fortunate to visit at supper with Storm Lake natives Sister Elena Hoye and Sister Annette Kestel.

As Brother John recently noted, the Presentations taught us all at Storm Lake St. Mary’s. The convent was built for 16 sisters; now there are none in Storm Lake. Sister Donna Determan and Sister Josita Zieser were the last in the outpost. Our children were lucky to be taught by them.

The PBVMs were founded in Cork, Ireland, in 1775 by the venerated Nano Nagle and established a motherhouse in Dubuque 150 years ago. They were subversives — they figured out ways to get around British laws that kept the Irish from education. Then they were set upon the globe to do the same: subversives for freedom to know.

We benefited. They taught us how to write, and our mother reinforced it. The nuns were always right, mom said, so don’t stain her carpet crying about it. Pay attention! Straighten up and fly right!

They earned an express trip right past St. Peter for putting up with us in junior high. Sister Celine taught us in seventh grade by brooking no tomfoolery and forcing us to practice free throws for a week over lunch hour after a humiliating loss to arch-rival Fonda OLGC. She had received advance warning that bad hombres were coming up from sixth grade, and had slots reserved in after-school detention for three of us during the first weeks of class. After that, we stayed in detention voluntarily because Sister Celine was actually pretty cool.

The nuns who taught us are gone to their reward. We learned that the least shall be first, that if women ran the world it would be better, that labor leaders were heroes and not criminals, and that the New Deal was a good deal. JFK is immortal. That’s all there is to it. Do your homework. Comb your hair and look presentable, Mister. They did not care if you read Catcher in the Rye as long as you were reading. They existed to teach.

The ones who remain ask after our siblings, and of our wives and their siblings who matriculated in Algona or Mason City. They have moral GPS to keep tabs on you. They went to Clarke College in Dubuque, where Dolores studied, which was run by another order of sisters called the BVMs. Nobody can really tell them what to do because there are enough old widows out there to keep them going that the bishop is wise to offer a blessing.

Sister Richelle said the Presentations were proud of the Cullen boys. Holy Mary, that’s worth more psychically than any prize.

Sister Richelle did time in DC as a lobbyist for Network, the Catholic social justice advocacy movement launched by women. They remain concerned for you after you emerge from the womb. They persist for peace. They do not let go. They find you. You are on their mailing list. They remind you that justice is an eternal search in this world, and they try to help light the way. They are on a mission from God that never ends.

There are only 70 left with the Dubuque motherhouse. They truly are counter-cultural radicals. They are the ultimate conservatives in that they live frugally, communally and simply, and they are hopelessly woke in that they believe riffraff have a place at their table.

This is how we were taught. Don’t blame us. The nuns taught our parents, too. It all came back around as we reminisced. Sister Richelle urges us on. You can’t give up. They aren’t. Too much is at stake. They taught us that this is the land of the free, a place where only your imagination holds you back, and now we are shackling immigrants in concentration camps (that’s what the Sisters call them). They’re older than we are, still trying to help poor people in Mississippi when the government doesn’t.

People like to throw around the word blessed. We actually were blessed to be prodded by our conscience formed by the Presentation Sisters all through these years. Better heed their example if you know what’s good for you. That is what mom would say. And, young man, if you leave a participle dangling (whatever that is, look it up) you will be made into minced meat. Get cracking. Write on, Sister!