Tea at Trianon: Helping Former Nuns Transition Back into the World

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, April 14, 2023

Helping Former Nuns Transition Back into the World

There is more being written about the difficulties of young Catholic women transitioning back into the world after a failed attempt at religious life. In the late 80's, I had flung myself with gusto into all the rigors of a monastic community, to be told in the end that I had no vocation to be a cloistered nun. Apparently I had “gifts” which were meant to be used in the world. ( I wrote more about that HERE.) St Teresa of Avila had said to her nuns, “You have come to Carmel to die for Christ.” I had willingly embraced the material austerities, but the “death” of having to give up my vocation seemed too much to bear. The disorientation of being suddenly catapulted from the silence of the cloister, where the sixteenth century constitutions of St Teresa of Avila were observed, into the noise, the fashions, the situations of the waning twentieth century, was almost paralyzing. Stumbling around in the home town where I had become a stranger, I often found myself saying to God, “Why?" I was ultimately helped by spending a summer in Lourdes, but not everyone can do that. It is most important not to become bitter. From Catholic Exchange:

I can personally attest to the loneliness and overwhelming grief that can follow leaving the convent. When I left for the second time several years ago, I felt lost and broken. The pain I experienced was all-consuming, and I feared I would never recover. It wasn’t until I connected with other women who had similar experiences through online support groups that I began to heal. O Mi Jesu is one such group, and it is a chapter of the Maria Goretti Network that provides peer support specifically for former religious sisters. (Read more.)