Kentucky or India, gospel thrust marks SCN outreach - Sisters of Charity of Nazareth continue social work

National Catholic Reporter, March 5, 1999 by Arthur Jones

This particular evening, the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth June assembly had a task before it -- to elect the director of "The Archangel Choir."

The gatherees approached the vote as a political convention -- state delegations all lobbying for their candidate. Mississippi fielded a lone delegate, Maria Brocato, who attempted to command a following as antebellum-gowned "Miss Melanie Magnolia Moore," extolling the state's pecan trees, beautiful cotton and the most hospitable people you'll ever find in your life."

Unsuccessful at the "fun night" election, Brocato received a different distinction -- in September she started a five-year term as SCN president.

As such, said Brocato, back in her day clothes, she and her team of Srs. Shalini D'Souza and Mary Elizabeth Miller, have member-generated priorities -- to make the congregation's governing structure "more relational and simpler," to reflect the order's current numbers and international nature, and to "strengthen our international ties," which will include discernment regarding Africa.

There's a marked contrast between the aging of the congregation and the energy behind its activities. Take as one example the many-acred Nazareth motherhouse campus itself. It's practically a self-contained hamlet -- yet open to everyone.

There's a Montessori school for toddlers and two Nazareth Villages providing accommodation for more than 150 elderly and people with disabilities.

There's Heritage Hall Museum, plus a conference/ retreat center -- retreats that can (for a small fee) include massage and other holistic services.

The surrounding community uses the campus, its walks and its lake as its local park -- the order uses it as an environmental issues training ground -- plus the community participates in Nazareth Arts for Life programs that use the arts and performance for everything from recreation to therapy.

Like many alert, large congregations with declining numbers, the Sisters of Charity have been looking to the future, and to consolidation, for years. Early into Social Security, they have had leaders, who, said outgoing president, Sr. Elizabeth Wendeln, shepherded the order's income into investments and began monitoring, 25 years ago, the corporations in which they invested.

In the past, the community received assistance from the fund for aging religious, she said, "but not currently because we know other communities are worse off than us. The day may come again." Wendeln said that projections suggest the congregation, cautiously, can handle the next two decades financially.

In the United States the sisters' activities range from Covenant House work in Florida to social services in Brockton, Mass., and Maryland.

But continuing this core outreach work also requires a change in mindset. "We've been very hesitant in the past," Wendeln said, "to be the link between people who want their money to go to places of need" and those places. "Now we see we can be," she said.

"Vincent de Paul did that," she said. "He had the Ladies of Charity who couldn't be present to the poor but who could give and the Daughters of Charity who could be with the poor and did not have the money."

During Wendeln's term, as buildings continue to be converted to meet new requirements, the sisters have created a development unit to handle fundraising.

To date it's helping in Belize City, where the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth have worked since 1975. They've opened their first SCN Center -- to serve as a boarding house for women from outlying areas trying to get their high school and college degrees. Sisters will help tutor them. In Independence Village, Belize, two sisters tutor women villages pursuing high school diplomas through correspondence courses.

In the United States, earlier leaderships, she explained, consolidated the hospitals and clinics, and brought lay trusteeship to schools and colleges, closed institutions when necessary; current leaderships grapple with less tangible questions.

"We've now looking at greater depths inwardly," she said, "at transforming our own value system. The last assembly called it `transforming consciousness.' Those might just be words, but they are deep because they are a call for conversion.

"We've started some international teams in the congregation, and this," she said, "was not understood at the beginning: Why are we having sisters go to international meetings -- why are we paying for it when the money could serve the poor? Why is it the executive committee had a meeting in England -- yes, it's halfway between India and the U.S., but so what? Can't the U.S. meet here and give India a call?" These were the questions.

What's occurring, said Wendeln, is a switch on where the congregation spends some of its money, "and that touches a nerve in some people. But the deeper part of it is our ability to communicate with one another as sisters. We're an international order."

"When one comes from another country, another culture, what one says -- the words may be English words yet come from an experience that is totally different. It's the same with Belize with our African-American and Spanish-speaking sisters here," said Wendeln.