Part of the publishing adventure this time around has been encountering a world of magazines, podcasts, and other publications that connect to religion, one way (The God Show) or another (Freethought Radio).
This week, I’ve included a few excerpts from a review in Commonweal. In its own words, the magazine is “a bridge between the intellectual and active lives of lay Catholics who seek meaning and justice, inspiring people in their hopes for a more inclusive future for our church, politics, and culture.”
Commonweal ranges widely in its cultural reviews and political and religious analyses. Here’s a deeply engaged and thoughtful review of Cormac McCarthy’s work, posted for a second time to mark his recent passing.
Journalist Helene Stapinski wrote the Ghosts of the Orphanage review. It was moving to read about why she was drawn to reviewing the book.
No one likes to hear, or write, about the real thing. I know because I tried. I stumbled across the real thing in Northwest Alaska at St. Mary’s Mission back in the 1990s and considered writing a book about it. But I didn’t have the stomach for the gory details.
I feel for Stapinski. The trauma is tough. The thing about hanging in there with the orphanage story is that by the end there is an enormous amount of detail about bravery and strength, too.
Stapinski also said:
For anyone who attended Catholic school in the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s, or even ’70s, some of what the nuns at St. Joseph’s did will sound familiar. I found myself flashing back to nuns slapping children across the face, hitting us with big wooden paddles, and making us kneel as a group for extended periods when a suspected perpetrator refused to come forward. For years I have written about, and laughed about, what the nuns did at my school, Our Lady of Czestochowa, in Jersey City, New Jersey. But the St. Joseph’s stories go beyond the typical—and no longer acceptable—corporal punishment some of us endured. They are no laughing matter, and reading this book made me realize my own nun stories weren’t funny either.
I appreciate her frankness. I’ve heard this many times from former pupils of the catholic school system. They weren’t exposed to orphanages, but they were exposed to a culture that meant they didn’t just understand, they recognized the behavior of individual nuns described in Ghosts of the Orphanage.
For such a widely shared experience, the enraged cruelty of many women in orders is oddly unacknowledged in histories of culture. Much will be lost if the last generations of children schooled by these women don’t write or talk more about it. It may be hard to convey, but if it isn’t recorded, I fear it will be too hard to believe for generations who never had the experience.
What of the good nuns? It’s all the more interesting to think about these individuals in the larger context of a longstanding toxic culture. My good nun was called Sister Eileen. She taught literature, and while she was extremely strict, she wasn’t mean. She cared deeply about stories and poetry, and she fostered that flame within me. Sister Eileen died a long time ago, and I’m not sure how she’d feel about the way I have put to use the skills that she taught me. But if she meant what she said in class, I think she believed in truth. I hope she would be proud.
The Commonweal review can be read here.