Growing up, Michele Harnett did not dream of leading a group of Catholic sisters in Southern California.
Actually, she didn’t dream of California or convents at all.
“I had no intention of becoming a sister,” she says.
She was still a teenager living in Ireland when a priest told her she had two choices: Get married or enter the convent.
“I wasn't very happy that there were only two options for women at the time, or at least, so I thought,” she says. “In the end, I did decide to enter the Sisters of St Louis. I was 17, going on 18 at the time. It was 1960.”
A few years later, Harnett received a letter that dozens of sisters got before her. It said she’d be moving from her home in Ireland to become a Catholic school teacher in Southern California.
“I arrived on September 4, Labor Day. I still remember it. And I was standing in a classroom with 56 third graders on September 6,” she says.
For decades, she devoted her life to educating. She bounced around, teaching in the fledgling Catholic schools built to accommodate the exploding Catholic student population in mid-20th century Southern California. She got a teaching credential, became a principal, got her master’s degree in counseling psychology, and spent her 70s helping female survivors of human trafficking.
Harnett did all those things because – here comes a quick vocab lesson – she is not a nun. She’s a sister. She hasn’t dedicated her life to cloistered prayer. As a sister, she’s dedicated her life to her order’s ministry, or vocation. In this case, education.
Now in her 80s, she’s well passed retirement age. But when she and the other Sisters of St. Louis stop working, there will be no younger sisters to take their places.
At its height, Harnett estimates she was one of more than 100 Sisters of St. Louis in Southern California. Now, she is one of 26. Most of them are older than 80.
The U.S. population of nuns and sisters peaked at nearly 200,000 in the mid-1960s. Now there are roughly 40,000.
It’s just not a job that most women want anymore.
Harnett does not think that should change.
“At this point, I would not really encourage anybody to enter, because of the fact of our age level. I mean, it wouldn’t be fair to a young woman to come in when you have that many people in their 70s, 80s and 90s. They’d have to be very brave,” she says.
At a recent mass, the Sisters of St. Louis, their associates, and supporters celebrated the 75th anniversary of the order’s first arrival in Southern California. Photo by Caleigh Wells.
That fact added a melancholy note to a recent Catholic mass celebrating the 75th anniversary of the sisters’ arrival in Southern California.
Nineteen gray-haired women process two-by-two. Some have walkers or canes. Others hold onto their procession partner for support.
As the Sisters of St. Louis consolidate and vacate local convents in Southern California, they’re sending their archives to Santa Clara University. Photo by Caleigh Wells.
The chapter of Southern California history that includes sisters is ending. With no young people to pick up the torch, orders of elderly women are grappling with how to make sure their legacy continues.
It’s a legacy that includes some progressive values.
Like other religious orders, the Sisters of St. Louis has a charism (a motto or mission statement), “which is ‘unity,’” explains Harnett. “That ‘they all may be one.’ It is to bring about ‘a world healed, unified and transformed.’” The charism includes standing in solidarity with the voiceless, embracing diversity, and transforming unjust structures.
Although no future sisters will carry the mission forward, today’s sisters are really pragmatic about it.
“We were created at a time of great need. Now it looks as if the need is different. It’s to have [lay]people out there doing the work,” says Sister Laura Gormley.
That’s why Gormley helped start an associates program for people who want to follow their mission but don’t want to become a sister.
“One of the recommendations we got from Vatican Council was not to just stay within our community, but to spread the charism beyond us to the laity. So that's when we started inviting people we'd worked with and knew well over the years to join us. And we have kept doing that,” Gormley explains.
Many of the associates are married. Some of them are male.
They’re also a shrinking group. One associate estimates it has declined from roughly 60 people at its peak to roughly 20 who still actively participate. Their membership is younger than the sisters, but not young.
Sister Donna Hansen, president of Louisville High School, an all-girls school the Sisters of St. Louis founded in Woodland Hills (and which I attended) is looking for other groups of religious women that could take over the school.
“Any advice I’ve been given says, don’t do that lightly,” Hansen says. “Date the group, go along and get to know them, and journey with them for a year or two to make sure that they’re being true to who we are.”
Hansen will likely be the last of her order to lead the school.
“We knew this was coming. We started to be matter-of-fact that we are going to die out in the Northern Hemisphere, and we are trying to be realistic about it,” she says. “But the truth is, it is hard.”