Passing On Mercy

Other convents heard about what was going on and started to get interested. People in Rome started asking about it, and the president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious mentioned Nuns and Nones in a recent address.

“They want to know how we found them and if there are more like them,” Sister Harney said.

Many of the Sisters of Mercy had joined the order en masse with friends after Catholic high school. As teenagers, they saw how much fun their teachers seemed to be having. The church seemed like a more adventurous and idealistic life than traditional marriage.

“I saw the sisters as women who were living their lives for the more,” Sister Carle said.

Through the church, these women could take enormously powerful roles heading hospitals, housing projects and schools.

“We’ve had opportunities and pathways for leadership that other Catholic women didn’t have — that other women didn’t have,” Sister Carle said.

For decades now though, the story of sisters has been one of diminishment.

As they have been passing their leadership roles at those hospitals and housing projects on to lay people, they have found that often men replace them. And what worries them most is who will inherit their charism — the great spiritual gift their order brings. For the Sisters of Mercy, that gift is, naturally, mercy.