Navigating the Zeitgeist. Helena Sheehan

office banter with the investigators and on reading reports before filing them. They were mostly cases of suspected adultery or insurance fraud—no murders—but I found it a quirkily enlightening experience. I also liked the independence and the salary. My parents had laid down the law that at eighteen we were on our own financially. If we wanted to continue to live at home, we had to pay our own board. My earnings allowed me to explore further the joys of Philadelphia’s city center, to meet friends in restaurants, movies, and concerts. As I worked full-time and stayed out most evenings and weekends, my mother needed more helping hands at home. Rather than make the demands on my brothers that she had made on me, she hired a “cleaning lady.” It was Ken’s mother. My mother couldn’t understand why I thought this inappropriate, as she needed the help, and Mrs. James needed the money. I saw Ken often at the time, and we both found this embarrassing.

      I was also still involved in politics. Dick Doran, with whom I worked during the Kennedy campaign, contacted me and said it wasn’t enough to get our man elected, that we had to go out and garner support for the whole “New Frontier” program. I did so enthusiastically. I was back in City Hall again, too, chatting with politicians, judges, assistant district attorneys, and public defenders.

      I felt a burning desire to touch life at all possible points, to live as fully as a person could live. I wanted to push my knowledge and passion to their limits. I was fluttering my wings and wanted to fly free. Nevertheless, I did the opposite.

      2

      Faith of Our Fathers

      Why would I renounce all my aspirations and ambitions to explore the wider world in order to enter a cloister? To understand it, it is necessary to grasp the grip that Catholicism had in those days, not only in its institutional hegemony, but in its psychological power. More than anything else, the all-encompassing presence of the Roman Catholic Church had dominated my life. My family was Catholic. My friends were Catholic. My schools were Catholic. My books were Catholic. Most of my mentors were Catholic. Imprimatur and nihil obstat were as natural and essential as title and author in the opening pages of books, at least those dealing with higher matters. Above all else, it was the rituals of the Church that gave rhythm and order to the days and months and years of the first two decades of my life. Its rites of passage marked most decisively the stages through which I moved through my life world. Each year revolved in the grooves of Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, May procession, Pentecost. Its theology provided answers to every philosophical question. Philosophy, I was told, existed to take human reason as far as it could go, but could only be completed by divine revelation. Theology stood at the summit of the hierarchy of knowledge.

      In time, I discerned different streams within this overall flow. It was this gradual realization that brought me into the realms of philosophy and theology. Despite being female, I developed an aversion to the trappings of female spirituality: rosaries, scapulars, apparitions, sugary sentimental prayers. I had little respect for women, including nuns. All my role models were men, and I gravitated toward traditions of male spirituality, Jesuit ones in particular, which I found stronger, more rational, more active. I believed in the harmony of faith and reason, with the emphasis on reason. When we graduated from eighth grade, we were presented with a book called The Question Box, which gave answers to every anticipated question and objection to Catholic doctrine. I read it avidly and felt even more confident of the Church’s omniscience.

      I wanted to give myself without reserve, even though it meant enclosing myself in a world of women, leaving behind my notions of a career in academe or politics, sublimating my sexuality, sacrificing my freedom. I prayed in the spirit of Ignatius of Loyola: “Teach me to be generous, to give without counting the cost, to fight without heeding the wounds.” It was inevitable that I enter the convent, because I yearned to have a comprehensive worldview and to live in harmony with it. I thought that the people around me were so busy going somewhere that they forgot to find out where they were going. This became axiomatic for me. What I saw most people doing was what I was most resolved not to do. Catholicism addressed the big picture and demanded that its chosen commit totally to contemplating and communicating it.

      I felt called. I believed that this thrust toward totality, which I felt so strongly and which kept me so preoccupied with questions of origin and destiny, was God’s way of pulling me toward the religious life. The Church’s constant emphasis on “vocation” had conditioned me to believe that this restless searching was a sign of having been chosen to play a special role in understanding and teaching. When I decided to enter the convent, I believed I had resolved my struggles, although that was far further from being the case than I could possibly have imagined. I had my worldview worked out, so I thought, and I had only to advance in higher knowledge of it and give myself in total commitment to it.

      I applied and was accepted to the Sisters of Saint Joseph in Chestnut Hill. We had to supply academic transcripts, SAT scores, baptismal and confirmation certificates, and letters of reference from our teachers and pastors. We underwent psychological and physical examinations—the latter testing for virginity. Not everyone who applied was accepted, although I don’t think that those who were rejected necessarily failed the virginity test. The fact that the Sisters of Saint Joseph had a Jesuit founder—Jean-Pierre Medaille, who established the congregation in Le Puy, France, in 1650—was significant for me. In fact, I would have preferred to join the Jesuits, but this seemed the next best thing. I wanted to be a teacher, and this was a teaching order. I also had two cousins, both on the Sheehan side, who were SSJs.

      The day I entered the convent in September 1962 was one of the most drastic rituals of closing one chapter of a life and beginning another that I have ever known. I shut my huge trunk, full of the required number of undershirts, slips, stockings, nightdresses, slippers, pencils, bars of soap, and bottles of shampoo, and placed on the top an envelope with the “dowry” I had worked all summer to earn. It was not only that we had to bring exactly what was on the list, but we were also strictly prohibited from bringing anything not on the list. I had to let go of my most treasured possessions: books, letters, photos. I donned the black serge dress and cape of a postulant. I said goodbye to friends and neighbors and siblings, looked around the house for what I believed to be the last time and got in the car. My parents and my cousin-sponsor chattered away about what a beautiful autumn day it was, how it was better to be early than late, how long it would take to get to Chestnut Hill, how I would never again worry about having a roof over my head. I let it all pass over me, impressing on myself the enormity of what I was doing and anticipating the contemplative silence that lay ahead. When we arrived at the postulate, a new building about a mile away from the mother house and college, I was taken away, given my number in the order, shown to my cell in the dormitory, and brought to a hall to say my goodbyes. When the bell rang, we formed ranks in the order of our numbers and processed into chapel. One by one, we approached the altar and received the postulant’s veil. There were ninety of us who entered that day.

      From that day on, we followed the strictest regime: mass, meditation, meals, manual labor, spiritual reading. We were given precise instructions down to the smallest detail: how to walk (noiselessly, eyes down, hands inside cape, close to the wall, measured steps), how often to wash our hair (once a week), how often to change our underwear (every three days), how to undress without looking at our bodies (slip the nightdress over the head before taking underwear off), how to make our beds (square corners), how to eat a banana (with a fork) and an orange (with a spoon). Between night prayers and morning mass, we were to observe a grand silence, which could only be broken by a major emergency, and an ordinary silence at all other times, punctuated only by speech necessary to the execution of tasks. When the bell rang, it was the voice of God, and we were to stop sewing in mid-stitch, stop conversation in mid-word, stop anything we were doing that very second. We were assigned fixed places in refectory, chapel, and recreation. Recreation was the one hour a day when we were allowed to speak. There were rigid guidelines about topics that could and could not be discussed. We were not to speak of our past lives or to speak critically of our present ones. We were not to criticize our superiors or even comment on the food. We were forbidden to use the adjective “my.” It was our book, our veil, our slip, and so on. If told to put my name in something, I was to write “For the use of Sister Helena Sheehan.”

      Communication