A Step Back

I learned a new word or concept this weekend: tertianship.

Tertianship is essentially a year of probation, when a Jesuit examines his vocation before taking final vows. (https://jesuitportal.bc.edu/research/documents/1966_decree10gc31/)

It is a time to go deeper, a time to step back and assess.

I discovered this word in regards to my reading on Sister Corita Kent and her “artwords.”

Almost every Sunday I’ve been hopping on my bike and riding to a labyrinth located off Ridge Blvd. at a Benedictine Sisters convent. The sisters used to run St. Scholastica a school for girls that awarded an International Baccalaureate Diploma, It must have been a tremendous blow to the nuns who had dedicated their lives to teaching when the school shut down almost 10 years ago. I discovered the labyrinth during Open House Chicago.

I walk the maze, trying to work out the tangle inside my head. Right now the Church and politics are so entwined as to almost be indiscernible. The current administration has managed to mesh and, in my opinion, mess up so many things that even on their own are complicated, and debase them further. Such as God and country. What we have is a corrupt administration co-opting faith, what it means to be a person of faith, and turned it into an us-or-them, a way to advance policies that harm the “least of these.” Thus, the church is as equally divided as are our country’s politics.

This was even more on display after the first presidential debate—a cacophony of noise.

So I walk the labyrinth burdened by my doubts. It helps to stay within the narrow track and let my thoughts go. I can’t say I’m in a state of contemplation or prayer, more like a white-knuckled going forward into the unknown. I am always amazed when I reach the center of the maze, before beginning to wind my way back out.

Vatican II in the early 1960s focused on reforms to hopefully bring the Roman Catholic Church into the 20^th century, to make the Church relevant to a “modern” society. Yet the hierarchy would remain. The order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary which Sister Corita belonged to welcomed these changes; they were ready to update the pageantry surrounding their Mary Day on campus and bring in color and a feeling of freedom. Some of this cultural acceptance struck the Archbishop of Los Angeles as sacrilegious. In particular—Sister Corita was in the scope of his target. He singled her out for admonishment for her liberal thinking aka inviting various speakers of all faiths and platforms to address her senior students in class. She appreciate the work of composer/musician John Cage, the mind of Buckminster Fuller. She invited Buddhists, atheists and reprobates such as Anaïs Nin. Cardinal James Francis Aloysius McIntyre put the kibosh on the sisters.

For some it was a time to re-think what they had dedicated their lives to, to take a step away.

My series on Corita inspired by:

CORITA KENT. ART AND SOUL. THE BIOGRAPHY.

By April Dammann

Published by Angel City Press, 160 pages, $40

To read the entire series, Search Corita Kent or click on tags.