This diary is a bit of a history lesson about some sisters – the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, to be precise. Now before you skim over and say, “Oh, it’s a Catholic thing” and click away, let me add a comment – I’m thinking about the Sisters because of the Muslims. Because I love and have learned from the former, I’m compelled – indeed, bound by faith to love the daylights out of and support the latter. Because of the nuns, I’m an advocate for the mosques – mosques in Murfreesboro, TN, Temecula, CA, and even the the Islamic Center in Manhattan.
Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
My nuns weren’t the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (hereafter the “SNJMs”, which is how you’ll know them when you see their names on various social justice lists or parochial school teacher rosters), but the Sisters of Mercy. The Sisters of Mercy - RSMs - formed me, taught me about civil disobedience as well as how to diagram sentences, and made me generally predisposed to respect nuns, and to listen to what they said. The ordained clergy may have the power, but ask Catholic schoolkids from generations back who held the moral authority, and chances are good that you'll hear about the women religious - by name - who shaped our lives and consciences, taught us to love mercy, to walk humbly, to serve, to love justice.
I first encountered the SNJMs at the school Kid Pax attended in Oregon, where they taught music, served in the administration, and were a steady presence at early morning daily Mass. Nice women, wearing regular clothes and exuding just a shred of that “do NOT mess with me” attitude that women religious across spiritual traditions, from Mother Teresa to Pema Chodron carry in their being - the stuff that comes from authority, not mere power. The kid learned piano and cello from SNJM women religious, in a school that the Sisters had opened nearly 100 years earlier. At the time that Kid Pax began first grade at the school, all I knew about the SNJMs was that they loved the kids and loved music, which was good enough for me. I later learned that the SNJMs had taken on a bit more than fidgety music students in the 1920s. The Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary went head to head with the Ku Klux Klan in the United States Supreme Court - AND WON. “Do NOT mess with me” indeed.
Once upon a time in the United States, in the state of Oregon as one example, there were people who were worried about the growing influence of immigrants in American culture, and who feared that the national identity (whatever that was) was at great risk due to people who came from other lands. These people sometimes spoke different languages or looked different, and their manner of worshipping God* was different too. So the people who were already in Oregon grew concerned. They did not like these new people, and didn’t trust their motives, their language, or how they prayed.
( I know - hard to imagine, right? But just pretend, maybe, that this really could have happened once upon a time in America.)
These immigrants were – well - different. Not only did they bring their language, their food, their form of worship, but they brought their madrasas as well. Yes, they arrived, they built churches, and they built schools. Parochial schools. Their children went to these parochial schools, and for many folks, that was just the last straw. How would these immigrants assimilate, how would they become real Americans, if they sent their children to parochial schools? Such was the plaintive cry of the white settlers whose grandparents had arrived in the wake of Lewis & Clark’s “discovery” of the Oregon Territory. Perhaps if these schools, part of the underpinning of their culture, were removed, the immigrants would either assimilate and become just like everyone else, or even better - they’d simply leave.
Such was the thinking of many of the Protestant settlers who built cities in the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s, and they found strong and receptive allies in the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan, as we all know, already had quite the reputation for violence against people of African descent, but they didn’t like Catholics any better. White, brown, or anywhere in between, Catholics, with their strange praying language and visible representations of the body of the crucified Christ and their Pope and their separate schools that taught their children these strange ways were evil and wrong. They needed to be stopped, or at least controlled. In 1922, voters in the state of Oregon passed a Klan-backed ballot initiative, the Oregon Compulsory School Law, that required that children between the ages of eight and sixteen attend school – but only public school. All other private schools were to be closed. As it turns out, the Catholics weren’t the only ones who had private schools in Oregon, but the others were essentially no more than collateral damage. The Klan didn't care about them, but they wanted the Catholics out.
In 1923, an injunction against the new law was filed on behalf of the Sisters of the Holy Names. Although the expected argument might have been based on First Amendment grounds offreedom of association and freedom of religion, the attorneys for the Archdiocese and for the SNJMs argued a Fourteenth Amendment case instead, claiming that the law passed by initiative deprived the Sisters of the Holy Names of their property – their schools – without due process. The injunction was granted in 1924, appealed by the State of Oregon (defending the law, even though the Klan and not the state had been the force behind the law), and ultimately ended up in the United States Supreme Court. Pierce vs. the Society of Sisters (286 U.S. 510) was heard in March, 1925, and the Sisters prevailed in a decision issued in June, 1925.
I’m sure there will be those who say the parallel’s not there, that the people opposing the construction of mosques aren’t the Klan, after all. I agree – they’re not. If anything, who they are is even more pernicious. The Klan is a group of white folk who march around in sheets at night, generally existing on the fringes of society, and communicating via their own private channels. The voices of those who are vehemently opposing the construction of the Islamic Center in Manhattan and the mosques in Tennessee, California, and in Gainesville, Florida, the pastor who is planning a Qur’an burning on September 11 and the news media who are aiding and abetting this religious violence – this is coming from places much closer to the mainstream of American society. This is coming from Fox News, the parent company of which just gave $1 million to the Republican Party. These people are acting from positions of relative power in United States society.
But really, this isn’t about Fox, Beck, Palin, or that guy in Gainesville. This is about the Sisters of the Holy Names, who, at the time they took on the Klan, had nearly absolute authority - over lots of classrooms of children and teenagers. Beyond that, they had little social capital, little political power. They didn't choose to take on the burden of defending religious freedom across the United States. The Sisters certainly didn't seek battles with the Klan.
The Sisters a group of women who have joined a community because they believe that in community they can have a more significant effect than they can individually, and they share a common belief in something that is greater than any one of them is herself. Women religious are not ordained, and even then (as now, from some parts of the Church hierarchy), they were often encouraged to stay “in their place”, which was believed to be in the classrooms, teaching children. They did just that, even when to simply teach and practice their faith went against prevailing opinion, against the will of the electorate in Oregon, even against the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan. Standing firm and toiling for what you believe in, even when those in power seek to shut you down - that's countercultural at the very least, and can even be a revolutionary act.
As I hear about increasing anti-Islam sentiment in the United States, threats of violence against Muslims, and just this weekend, arson at the construction site of the mosque in Murfreesboro, I can't help but think of what happened in Oregon in the 1920s. During the years of their court battles, they had few allies. Catholic immigrants were treated with derision, much as Muslims find themselves treated today. The difference, though, is that 85 years post-Pierce, it is clear that the electorate or government can't deprive religious organizations of the right to assemble peaceably, to own property, to teach their children. Instead, we have angry reactionary mobs trying to do the same. This may not be a battle we'd choose to fight, but it's up to us to stand up to the anti-Muslim activists and speak for religious freedom. Especially for those of us who call ourselves "Christian", the same label used by those who seek to do violence to Muslims and to silence Islam today - this is our problem, our situation to fix.
For the little handful of us here at DailyKos who identify as Catholic - well, I sorta think we have no choice here but to step up and get involved. This is a rerun of our history, after all. Maybe it's through donations (see the "Offertory" below), through letters to the editor of newspapers in communities where the mosques are under attack, and maybe even through letters to the Catholic Churches in those communities, asking them to support their Muslim Brothers and Sisters - we need to step up. The Sisters of the Holy Names did it for us, and it's time to pay it forward now.
So - who's in? And what else is going on in the lives of all of y'all beloved ones in our community tonight? Pull up a chair, get your beverage of choice, and hang out for awhile, ok?