The religious life

In searching for organisations run by women for a long time, of which as I have found there are not many, I decided to approach women’s religious orders. I visited two different Catholic orders, one in London and one in York and indeed stayed at the York convent.
I was particularly interested to consider women’s organisations operating under what I, as a non-Catholic, see as a highly patriarchal umbrella.
I didn’t find quite what I expected but both visits moved my thinking on in new directions.
There was absolutely no criticism or even interest in what I regarded as patriarchal structures. There were odd throw-away comments about women’s orders being less hierarchical and male orders having more of a career structure with roles meaning a lot more to men, but these were presented as insignificant matters.
From the little I learnt, the organisational structures of both orders were very clearly defined and, to me, hierarchical but nevertheless, the feel was that decisions were reached through consensus and all nuns had a part to play in choices about leaders and direction. This was seen as important. It was stressed that women were running the orders in every aspect – except for the religious duties of the (male) Chaplain, only men of course being priests. Women had control of often large finances and estates and had had historically.
In one sense, my questions about leadership were gently shown to be off target for the nuns. The vow of obedience taken by nuns is seen to legitimise authority and make any questioning of the fundamental principle of hierarchy, irrelevant. The reverence for authority was such that the Provincial Superior ‘holds the place of Christ for us’.
On the other hand, I found unexpected interest in the foundation of the two orders. Both were started by two quite exceptional women of whom I had never heard – reminding me yet again of how women are ‘hidden from history’ – Cordelia Connelly (1809-1879) and Mary Ward (1585-1645).
Cordelia Connelly’s history was personally and spiritually fascinating in that she married an Episcopalian minister in Philadelphia, who after fathering five children decided he was called to become a monk. This necessitated Cordelia taking a vow of chastity and joining a convent. She had already a very powerful spiritual life and despite the odds, went on to found a strong and successful new order that started its life in Derby.
Mary Ward came from a Yorkshire Catholic family suffering under the horrific religious persecution of the time. She felt called to become a nun which was not at the time from her sort of family, particularly remarkable but what was extraordinary was that she believed that through a series of visions God was calling her to establish a female order along the lines of the Jesuits. This meant a female order that was unenclosed and reached out to meet human need where ever it was. This totally radical concept for women was pursued by Mary and her followers through endless trials and tributations. The many European houses she had established were supressed by the Catholic Church and she herself was imprisoned by the Inquisition. It is a long and harrowing story of a woman’s fight to fulfil her God given mission in the face of a lot of male opposition, to which she herself gave legitimate authority.
Mary’s life is now far more widely known about and I strongly recommend anyone interested in the role of women in religious life to look her up.
So where has this all taken me? Certain concepts about strenghts and concerns of women do run through so many organisations however different they seem from each other on the outside (‘being data-driven is so very male,’ said one nun, ‘women are people driven not paper driven’.) Individual wowen have had huge social significance historically but they are not as widely acknowledged as men, justifying in my mind the idea of women’s history. Oh and vows of obedience seem a pretty terrific tool in the leader’s tool box!!