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PDF versionA life of change and renewal
Sr. Margaret Brennan's memoir resonates as the story of a religious everywoman
Feb. 19, 2010
From left, Brennan with Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry and Dominican Sr. Donna Markham in Toronto in 1993
Years from now, when historians look back to better understand the mindsets of U.S. women religious who lived through the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, they would be well advised to read What Was There for Me Once, a memoir by Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Margaret Brennan.
With a vantage of 65 years as a woman religious, she looks back and in an unassuming manner tells the story of her love affair with religious life during a period of monumental change. Brennan embraced this change, at times being called upon to manage and direct it, causing her bursts of excitement and reexamination, along with disappointment and a tinge of sadness, perhaps for dreams that never quite came to be.
Immaculage Heart of Mary Sr. Margaret BrennanIntroducing her work by evoking the imagery of playwright Lillian Hellman, Brennan depicts her life as a layered landscape, a portrait yet to be completed. “Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: A tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter ‘repented,’ changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by the later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.”
The layers, presented as chapter headings, take the reader on a journey with the author through the second half of the 20th century as her outlook on life evolves, catalyzed by feminist spirituality and theology, and a growing Christian desire, rooted in fresh Gospel understandings, to get involved in building a more just and peaceful world. While in so many ways, Brennan’s experiences were unique, she was also a religious everywoman and for this reason her clean and simple writing will resonate widely.
The first part of Brennan’s memoir deals with her early childhood, growing up in a loving Irish-American family “in which the traditional faith was vibrant and strong” and her parents encouraging. That upbringing led Brennan to decide to enter religious life as it had been lived “largely unaltered for centuries before.”
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This preconciliar church experience was fulfilling and made sense to her -- and she embraced it. Of religious life as it approached Vatican II, she writes: “While I was entirely happy in the traditional model of religious life as it had been lived for hundreds of years, I was open to the coming changes.”
 WHAT WAS THERE FOR ME ONCE: A MEMOIRBy Margaret R. Brennan, IHM Published by Novalis, $19.95 |
The Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary were among those religious who were quick to internalize the Vatican documents and the new theologians appearing on the scene. “To use the framework of [Jesuit theologian] Bernard Lonergan, I would say that for me the change from the traditional model of religious life to the Vatican II model was a process of conversion. In involved a real change in worldview, in horizon.”
In a Vatican II insight that was to have ramifications for Brennan and countless other women religious to this very day, Brennan writes: “Our sense of how the Holy Spirit moved in our communities was reversed. The charism of a religious congregation was given to the founder for the church, not from the church to the founder [emphasis hers]. ... We began to see ourselves as ourselves -- women in the church empowered by our own Spirit-given charisms and called by God to minister with our brother priests as collaborators in the great work of evangelization.”
It was during this period of change that Brennan was elected general superior of the Monroe, Mich., Immaculate Heart of Mary congregation. According to the order’s constitutions at the time, each woman was expected to approach Brennan, kneel before her, and kiss her hand as a mark of respect and obedience. “I knew instantly and instinctively that this was not what I needed from these women who had entrusted me with leadership. And so I made my first change as general superior and asked them to give me what I most longed for and needed -- a kiss of peace.”
Brennan was fortunate that her community rested within the archdiocese of Cardinal John Dearden of Detroit, who had been a member of the commission that drafted Vatican II’s “Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.” Dearden was a strong advocate of renewal in the years that followed the council.
When I spoke to Brennan recently, she recalled a piece of advice Dearden offered her: “He said, ‘I ask you one thing. Do not ask me any questions.’ ” Those words allowed and encouraged Brennan to lead her community as the Spirit inspired her -- and she said she remains grateful to the late cardinal to this day.
Brennan’s own spiritual renewal was founded upon three pillars: the house of prayer movement, Ignatian thought, and the entrance of sisters into deeper theological education. During those years the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, under Brennan’s leadership, personally encountered the likes of Br. David Steindl-Rast and Thomas Merton. Spiritual thought seemed volcanic at the time. Brennan describes it as seeing -- and seeing again.
“A dream began to take shape in my mind. What if we had one theologian for every hundred sisters in the congregation? Perhaps then, I thought, we would be able to discuss matters as equals.” So she decided to send 10 sisters to pursue studies in various fields of theology.
She describes the decade of the 1970s as one of “global outreach” for the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters, who were setting up new missions in Asia, Africa and Latin America. With those fresh contacts with the poor and marginalized came an inevitable social and political radicalization. The missions of women religious never seemed to be more grounded.
It was also a time when religious congregations began to feel church disapproval over how they were implementing council recommendations. Some congregations lost their status as canonical institutions. Tensions between the institutional church, fastened to the status quo, and religious, advocates of the marginalized, were beginning to become pronounced. These tensions, of course, would ebb and flow for decades.
Brennan with Dom Helder Camara of Recife, Brazil, in 1972In that atmosphere, Dom Helder Camara, the dynamic Brazilian bishop, spoke in 1973 at the annual gathering of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, with Brennan at the group’s helm. The “red bishop” called upon the women to become “Abrahamic minorities” -- persons “determined to fight in a peace-filled, yet valid way for the formation of a more just and human world.”
Those were “messy” and difficult years, Brennan writes. She watched many women leave her religious community and this caused her to rethink her ideas about religious vocations. Once she thought a vocation was irrevocable; it was a lifelong matter. Now she was thinking vocations had several dimensions. “Whether they were younger or older, many of these women who were leaving religious life had realized that they were called not to consecrated life as a religious, but to work as laypersons in the church. Exactly what is the call of religious today is something that needs a great deal of our prayer and reflection.”
The next phase of Brennan’s life involved time in Toronto, teaching for 25 years at the Jesuit-run Regis College there. These were more private years. They continued to nourish spiritual growth, and she encountered more feminist thought. She writes that she didn’t seek out a female deity to replace a male deity, but rather feminist thinking allowed her to “recover, reclaim and rename the God who is not any one person or any one thing, but is the source and the reality of all persons and all things.”
Creation spirituality, including the works of Passionist Fr. Thomas Berry, also molded her thinking. And in a yearlong sabbatical in Boston in 1984, she encountered Jungian thought and continued to let go of old notions of God, “images that were anchored in my mind but that no longer spoke to my heart. É Letting go is something that happens organically as old images are healed and transformed, and fresh ones slowly take shape out of new awareness, perception and experience.”
Sensing “it was time,” in 2001, Brennan left Toronto at age 77 to return to Michigan. Ending her teaching career was another time of “letting go.”
The idea of letting go, of emptying, was by then more than an old habit; it was another way of seeking God, seed for another insight to the divine. “To be able to let go of how and what and where the church, my religious congregation and I should be is an almost daily preoccupation that I can easily mistake for zeal,” she writes.
Brennan’s words reflect a tranquility that seems to emerge from a recognition she is not in control, that she has shed what she needed to shed, and faith moves her forward. As for religious life, Brennan likes to cite the thinking of two women religious she holds in her heart with special admiration: Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sandra Schneiders. Each of these women holds that religious life is primarily a call to reclaim a way of life organized to pursue the human quest for God. “To keep the question of God -- and God’s questions -- high on the horizon of the world is worth the gifts of our lives,” Brennan says. And, without a doubt, her memoir attests to this purpose.
[Thomas C. Fox is NCR editor. His e-mail address is tfox@ncronline.org.]
TELL IT TO MILLEA!: "We began
TELL IT TO MILLEA!:
"We began to see ourselves as ourselves -- women in the church empowered by our own Spirit-given charisms and called by God to minister with our brother priests as collaborators in the great work of evangelization.”
Tell it to Rode.
What a contrast between this
What a contrast between this story and the previous one on the Visitation of our American religious!
"As for religious life,
"As for religious life, Brennan likes to cite the thinking of two women religious she holds in her heart with special admiration: Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sandra Schneiders."
Heart to heart . . .
What an inspiring story and a great book, available now at
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/2896461272/ref=cm_rdp_product
thanks
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat. I
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat. I too was blest to be in Detroit during Cardinal Dearden's days. God give him eternal rest.
How about giving a copy of
How about giving a copy of Margaret Brennan IHM's book to Mother Mary Catherine Millea and asking her to put it into her report? In fact we might add another copy and ask her to try to induce Cardinal Rode to read it. He could learn a lot about our US religious sisters - it might even become the occasion of his conversion.
Sr. Margaret Brennan, IHM, was President of LCWR when Sr.Mary Daniel Turner, SNDdN, who just went to her reward, was Executive Director. What great women we had, what great leaders our sisters had, in those early days of renewal. What great leaders we have still with women like Sr. Donna Markham, O.P., pictured in this article with Sr. Margaret and Passionist Tom Berry, C.P. Thank God for Margaret Brennan, IHM, and her story. Thank God for the present officers of the LCWR and the present leaders of our women's congregations. They have always led the men - the religious men's congregations, both clerical and lay; the diocesan clergy; and the hierarchy - and they are still leading them. The men recognize this; indeed even some bishops have been humble and astute enough both to recognize it and to publicly acknowledge it. Thank God, thank God!
...and thank-God thank-God
...and thank-God thank-God for men like you Bernard Sweeny!
This sounds like a truly
This sounds like a truly exciting and joyful journey. I can't wait to get my copy from my local book store. This is where it all began for me. This to me, marks the beginning of the second Catholic Reformation and Renewal that is still very much a work in progress. The Holy Spirit at work and the best is yet to be.
Excellent article on a gifted
Excellent article on a gifted Religious woman. She has inspired me for many
years.
Thank you for writing it.
Brigid Wade IHM
We have been blessed here in
We have been blessed here in Michigan by the ministry and vision of Margaret Brennan!
Now this is why the Vatican
Now this is why the Vatican is investigating the American sisters. They have moved beyond Jesus and the Church.
Good job Tom. Everytime you write about these American sisters you reaffirm in my mind that their thinking is outside of the boundaries of what we call Catholicism or in Sister Laurie Brink's words "communities that have moved beyond Jesus and the Church."
Mara - what specifically in
Mara -
what specifically in this piece indicates that Sister Brennan has "moved beyond and the Church"?
i have read it a couple times and can't pinpoint, in the piece itself, what may have given rise to your concern.
peace,
jean brookbank
May Our Lord richly bless Sr
May Our Lord richly bless Sr Margaret & her vocation ! I can't wait to read both her book, as well as
Anita Caspary's (the former Mother Mary Humiliata, IHM) entitled: "Witness to Integrity".
What a difference a Cardinal makes ! Whereas Sr Margaret's community had the support of Cardinal
Dearden in Detroit, Cardinal McIntyre of Los Angeles did everything in his power to destroy the spirit
of Caspary's community. Now, sadly history repeats itself in the person of Cardinal Rode &
his very ill-conceived "Apostolic Visitation" of Women Religious in the US.
In would love to attend Mass
In would love to attend Mass once again -- with Sisters Brennan, Chittister and Schneiders officiating --- it's time to move ahead!
what is the isbn number of
what is the isbn number of this book? I want to purchase it.
Carren the numbers are
Carren the numbers are ISBN-13: 9782896461271 ISBN: 2896461272
Amen, Amen, Amen!! Sr.
Amen, Amen, Amen!! Sr. Margaret's story could be written thousands of times over by women religious all over this country. Dedicated and God-filled women all and what a gift to the Church. The People of God, as Church, recognize this; unfortunately, it seems that some in the hierarchy, especially in Rome, do not.
I am one of those women who
I am one of those women who was an IHM and left in the 70s with support from the community and have worked as a lay person in the church. I discovered, after a 3-year "messy" process that simply, I no longer belonged within that lifestyle.
The IHMs speak of being in "right relationship" with all of creation and even though my leaving predates that insight, I did have a sense of being in right relationship with the Community as I was leaving. The 12 year experience there gave me an adult grounding in Gospel values and post-Vatican II theology, scripture study, a college education, and relationships with other women seaching for who they are and how they are called to love.
I was there going into my second year of novitiate when Margart Brennen moved into the position of General Superior. We in the first few years of religious life had no real understanding of all that she was wrestling with
(other than we novices who irritated the older sisters in the infirmary by
trying to at least get our faces tanned by sunbathing with our bonnets back and tinfoil in hand to concentrate the rays; or who failed to respond to her encouragement to be generous with our responses to everyday needs.) Meanwhile, the sea-change was going on inside and far beyond the community.
Those years are well behind me now and I did go on to "work as a layperson in the church" as Tom Fox quotes. It is where I found my place, my husband and work. Now, as a widow and freer to do my own letting go, I have moved from my many-year career in clinical social work in to hospice chaplaincy.
Gratefully, I have found I wasn't so wrong in believing I belonged in religious life. This love we hear call to us, the sacrifices necessary takes
different shapes and texture, and yet there is deep familiarity to me in the flow of Margaret's life from one stage to another (and on a much smaller scale than the theater on which her life has played).
I am grateful to the IHMs that they have continued to allow the spirit of the Gospel to deepen their relationships with themselves, those of us who are now extended family members in the form of associates, former members, students, the marginalized and the earth itself. That witness continues to give me courage.
In these days of dwindling numbers in the form of excelerating numbers of sisters dying, in my visit to Monroe last year I had the sense of seasoned life in the people living there, not the decay that brings death to one's spirit.
In these days of the "visitation" and the hardening of lines between groups within the church, I see this community carrying on and working to be faithful to their charisms as those charisms, deeply embedded in their history, also continue to take them into new territory.
I look forward to reading Margaret's memoir, and I enjoyed this little trip down my own memory lane.
Rosemary
It is great to read that
It is great to read that Margaret Brennan has done this memoir.
I am one of the people who left the IHMs in the '70s after a three-year search with support from the Community. It came down to a recognition that I didn't belong there and, ironically, in leaving found how deeply the community had influenced me and is alive in me.
Margaret was in charge of the Novices when she was elected to head the Community and I was in the Novitiate at that time. We had little awareness of how much she was wrestling with at the time execept trying to deal with us, inspire us, urge us to greater giving. Sometimes we got it, sometimes we didn't.
I did become one of those who worked as a married and now widowed layperson
in the church. I also identify as one who has worked hard and had to let go in significant ways to be free enough to move to the next call and place. My stage has been much smaller, and yet maybe I and many others are examples and witnesses to generativity created when women's religious communities let by women like Margaret Brennan.
In a moment of frustration Margaret is to have said in relation to the limits on women's roles in the church, who thinks they can define who the Spirit calls? Who indeed. I am grateful to have been influenced by her and look forward to reading her memoir.
Reason #843,913 for the
Reason #843,913 for the Apostolic Visitation.
An inspiring piece to read
An inspiring piece to read and to re-read throughout Lent. Thank you, Sister.
I feel truly blessed to have
I feel truly blessed to have been exposed to Sr. Margaret in her courses at Regis College in Toronto. Her insights are powerful and life-giving to the 99.9% of the people of God, a.k.a. the non-ordained or the laity... Thanks Margaret!!!
"According to the order’s
"According to the order’s constitutions at the time, each woman was expected to approach Brennan, kneel before her, and kiss her hand as a mark of respect and obedience."
This is exactly the kind of tradition that Vatican II urged to be re examined and discarded if necessarry.
Vatican II never said that all traditional practices should be discarded, that change be undertaken for the sake of change, that vague manifestos replace constitutions or that Catholics should move beyond Christianity.
Sadly, these things are exactly what happened many LCWR congregations. One commentator said it best.... "The revolutionary 1960s and 1970s were simply not the best time to start a reform movement".
A beautiful and enjoyable
A beautiful and enjoyable read, Margaret Brennan's wonderful memoir. I can't put it down and the only part I will regret is when I read the last sentence. This remarkable woman represents the true hope for the future of Catholic spirituality and with more women like this, and I am certain there are, the Future Church will truly reflect Jesus in word and deed. Oh how I wish a woman such as Margaret would/could be The Bishop of Rome. I know the day will come when a woman leads the Catholic Church and my prayer is that it will be sooner than later. For now, I thank God for people such as Margaret Brennan who write such beautiful memoirs that reflect such a beautiful spiritual journey. I hope thousands of others will be able to read this insightful story of a woman and her fellow IHM Sisters who became engaged with the world as a result of the tremendous impact of the Second Vatican Council. Also, I would like to thank the NCR Staff for bringing this valuable book to our attention.
"vague manifestos replace
"vague manifestos replace constitutions"
Got any examples to support that silly claim?
sounds like a beautiful book.
sounds like a beautiful book. thank you, Tom Fox, for writing about it here. i have just ordered it and looking forward to it. that pill Lillian Hellman was a terrific story-teller and writer, and i love Sr Margaret's borrowing of "pentimento".
i am fascinated by this passage from Sr Margaret:
"The idea of letting go, of emptying, was by then more than an old habit; it was another way of seeking God, seed for another insight to the divine. “To be able to let go of how and what and where the church, my religious congregation and I should be is an almost daily preoccupation that I can easily mistake for zeal,” she writes.
[and Fox's comments that follow]
"Brennan’s words reflect a tranquility that seems to emerge from a recognition she is not in control, that she has shed what she needed to shed, and faith moves her forward".
I think I hear the same emptying, the same seeking, the same seed for insight, the same preoccupation, the same tranquility, and the same faith in Mother Millea's words in her interview with John Allen about her experience with the Visitation. i am thrilled by the relational energy each communicates.
****
I will also be interested to read, in context, more about Cardinal John Dearden's request that she not ask him any questions. What an amazing time to have been in leadership!
****
Memoirs of people who came of age in the 60s and 70s are endlessly fascinating to me. One of my favorities is called, "Texas Radicals in the Sixties" with this wonderful quote from one of those interviewed: "i started developing a mentality of resistance: if it didn't make sense to me, then maybe it just didn't make sense".
i love so much about that statement.
i love the respect for and the "owning" of the power of one's own sense-making capacity AND i love the implicit acknowledgement (in the form that "maybe") that one own's capacity for sense-making is necessarily limited.
i love what i hear as a deep understanding of radical "resistance": i can engage with everything; i can engage the certainties of others AND i can engage my own certainties; i can explore where the ground seems soft AND where the ground seems solid. their ground AND my ground. i can remain in relationship, always. and i can do so without making an "Other" of myself or anyone - anyone - else.
***
thanks, Tom, for the great review and thanks in advance to Sr Margaret for what seems a very generous telling of your story.
Jean Brookbank
This Sisters commentary
This Sisters commentary really say it all.Is it any wonder the Vatican is investigating American nuns?If the result of this investigation is that the Pope mandates reforms in religious life and many of these radical over 65 nuns pack up and leave......what could be better for the Church!They can found their own communities,institute their protestant agenda and see if any young people come along for the ride.Religious life is a bush that needs pruning badly.Go Pope Benedict go!
"vague manifestos replace
"vague manifestos replace constitutions"
Got any examples to support that silly claim?"
Manifestos have "f facto" rpelaced constitutions in the following examples:
The stretched definitions of "ministry". Constitutions often required ether specific ministries or a particular charism. Post Vatican II, "ministry" was stretched to include whatever an individual was interested in.
For example, one LCWR congregation includes a sister whose ministry is teaching art. I like to draw, but I dont confuse it for ministry. Organic gardening? I have one of those, but mine is not a "ministry".
Stretched post Vatican II definitions of "obediance" include the abotion nuns. Their congregations have know about their "ministries" for years but took action only when the "ministries" were publicized.
Thank you Sr. Margaret.
Thank you Sr. Margaret. Thank you for helping to shape religious life as it's meant to be lived --- fully and engaged in a dialogue with our Church --- living through the Gospel. As a religious who has never experienced the changes but the silencing of theological discourse in the 1980's during my college years, I'm just so grateful to you and so many others who stayed engaged in the dialogue in the sprit of respect and compassion for the Church. Religious life no matter what form or chosen way of expressing it is easy --- but the core of which is about how best to live out what Jesus has taught us and the Church tries to guide us to live. For those who are disappointed in where religious life is today, I pray for your compassion in understanding that the world has changed for better or worse but it has changed as the Church has changed. It takes all kinds of religious to enrich this changing world. I am proud to walk with my Sisters who wear habits and want the structure and discipline of the life in the spirit of their founders. I need their prayers and example in the world. As an apostolic religious, I am happy to walk with my Sisters who are labeled "radical" and work to advocate for peace and justice as they teach me to take risks on behalf of our Catholic Social Teachings. For years, Sisters from contemplative and apostolic traditions have been able to be in support of each other respecting the many traditions and forms of religious life. Religious life is not easy, no matter how you live it. There is no one better way to live it than another. The only way to live it is to just do it and try your best to live closely out of the Gospel message through prayer and ministry. For some it will be the discipline of daily and hourly prayer and for others it will be the discipline of apostolic ministry day in and day out. Both are so needed today.
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