I've been informed that my great-aunt, Sister Mary Denis Schwartz RSM, died the other day. She was my late grandmother's elder sister, and the last of their generation to go, at 93. (Gram, who died in 2015, would have been 91 this year.)

When I was little, I always thought it was kind of odd that my grandmother's sister was a nun, because Gram and Gramp didn't seem to be religious at all. It was only fairly recently that I pieced together what had happened, back in the '40s...

... which was that my grandmother, who was from a big French Catholic* family, and my grandfather, the son of a hellfire-and-brimstone Baptist lay preacher who used to close his business in the summer to go a-revival-ing, both left their respective churches to be together. This was a Big Deal in northern Maine in 1950. By the time I was old enough to know, 25-30 years later, their parents were all gone, and nobody talked about it.

The reason I bring this up in a post about my grandmother's sister the nun is because you might assume, being pretty visibly the most religious member of the family, she would have had the biggest problem with Gram's big decision.

And make no mistake, Sister Denis was the real thing. When I was a kid she was Mother Denis, the superior of her convent; she only retired from that post and went back to being one of the sisters after a major health scare in her fifties. She had an audience with the Pope once, and was one of the main figures in pretty much everything the Sisters of Mercy did in Maine, and, a bit oddly, the Bahamas, from the '60s through the '90s. Point is, she was very, VERY Catholic.

And yet, she was the member of the family who maintained the closest ties with my grandmother, which is why I ever knew her, however slightly (we only met in person a handful of times that I can remember). She visited my grandparents often and kept in touch with all of us--even me, the eldest grandson of her apostate sister, and who was raised in no faith whatsoever, not even the wrong one. She was at my high school graduation. At 89, she attended my grandmother's very non-Catholic funeral, too.

She wasn't keeping contact as some kind of Faith Exercise, either, as far as I could tell. I don't remember her ever mentioning anything religion-related. She wasn't trying to convince her sister to come back to the Church, or "salvage" any of us in later generations, or like that; it just seemed that, to her, family was more important even than the religious life--and the religious life was very, VERY important to her.

I'm very cynical about people who have Position in religious hierarchies. I think for most of them it's a pose, the noises they have to make in order to rise within the organization, just like you have to make in any big business. My great-aunt the nun, though? Nah. She was for real. She was not unworldly--she was the treasurer of her order for years and played poker for keeps**--but for 73 years, she walked the Church's talk in a way that its most prominent figures often fail to do.

So here's to Sister Denis, whose commitment to Christian ideals (as opposed to Christian formalities) was so strong it moves this godless materialist. I fear we won't see her like again.

--G.
* I know, "Schwartz" is a German name, but they came from Alsace, you see.
** both figuratively, in managing the convent's business, and literally, at one family reunion my parents will never forget.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Real Nuns (tm) are a Thing, and they are Awesome. Religious personages who walk the talk are a boon to us all.

ETA: It's always spelling with me.

And I am exactly the same. With anybody of any real level of authority, in fact. Far too often, in my opinion, they're there not because they're competent, but because they can "play the game". Which disgusts me. So, the fact that Sister Denis walked the talk, and I'll be stealing that one, impresses my immensely.

Sorry for your loss and my condolences, but at the same time, knowing and being related to someone that did have, and lived, convictions is a blessing and I am jealous.

...!
Stoke Mandeville, Esq & The Victorian Ballsmiths
"Nobody Want Verdigris-Covered Balls!"