I belong to a distinctive group of women who were and are out of order. We were nuns who entered their communities in the 1950s and '60s and '70s and later left those communities. Like us, many women, perhaps all women, have felt at one time or another, that they were out of order, alienated, separated, different from their peers, even alone. Some ignore the feeling or grow out of it; others cannot do this. I and many thousands of nuns across the country could not stay in order; we left our religious communities and our lives as nuns in the middle of the twentieth century. More significantly, we chose out of order as our status quo and served as exemplars to our generation of women in what is called Second Wave Feminism. We provided a kind of generational map to our contemporaries as we were extreme in our turn from one way of life to another. We are Everywoman.
Our generation is also called The Silent Generation, referring to those born between 1925 and 1946, a generation of Depression era and World War II United States children who came of age roughly in the 50s in a relatively safe and secure culture. This generation was rather conformist, married early, had families, and lived the great American dream. Also within this generation were the beginnings of the '60s, the dawning awareness of injustice and inequality in American culture and the desire to fix the problems within that culture. This kind of shift is seen in boldface in the stories of the Silent Generation of nuns who chose to leave, and to be silent no longer.
Being Out of Order (Vandamere Press) is my story of a generation of women who entered religious life in the middle of the twentieth century, when Catholic convents were actually medieval institutions. Many of these same women left religious life somewhere in the 1970s and '80s when the wind started blowing and the Spirit was moving the church and the nuns into contemporary life. We were prophetic. I say we were prophetic in the true sense of the word; that is, we were witnessing the truth as it was in our day and in our situation. We told the truth about what was going on and we had a vision of what was coming. We were spokespersons for our generation of religious women who would help to change the nature of religious life and the church. Furthermore, we spoke to the larger issue of the role of women in the world.
When Betty Friedan took off her apron and wrote The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she was doing what we were doing. Her voice resonated with every woman who had secretly wondered why she was wearing her apron so much and when some out of order nuns started to take off their habits, other nuns began to ask questions also. From a Jewish housewife to a Catholic nun and everyone in between, the momentum was occurring.
What we said and what we are still saying is as true today as it was in the 1960s and 1970s. Only the incidentals differ. Women have claimed and are continuing to claim their place in all segments of society¸ bravely and proudly. I have been looking at what it means to be out of order, spiritually, emotionally, and culturally with a discrete group. It's the story of a revolution, with the nuns as prototype. Our generation of religious women was an exemplum of what was happening to women in all segments of society during those years. I have heard a million different stories over the years and I use some of them as I tell the story of a generation of gutsy women. I hope more stories from other women will be added as time goes on. We helped to define the issues and press them forward.
We Silent Generation women who became nuns were products of our inclinations and our culture. I don't know exactly why I decided to become a nun, but the intention was with me from early childhood. Even that was out of order in my world since everyone admired and respected the nuns and thought they were wonderful, but secretly thought a girl who actually wanted to be one was somewhat strange. My tendency to go toward the edge and the unusual led me to the convent, out of the convent, and into the myriad other experiences of my life. I have always questioned everything: God, society, church, good and evil, justice, rules, patriarchy, organizational structures, gender roles, all the isms, and practically anything anyone proclaims as absolute truth. It's fun and troublesome to me and to others to always be dis-orderly, but it is an interesting way of life. My generational colleagues say and behave likewise.
We said something important to our generation and to the ones following us and because we were and are such a easily identifiable segment, our story has importance and has served as a token of honesty and courage to our children and grandchildren.