Black sisters' leader knows how to reach out

National Catholic Reporter, July 3, 1998 by Arthur Jones

WASHINGTON -- Few people bow in reverence when they meet their mentors. Patty Chappell's mentors laugh when she does it, but she does it nonetheless. And Chappell's no softie. Decades back, had the Black Panthers been a religious order, she'd have been their mother superior.

The word mentor has a spiritual and intangible quality even in its origins, whether one dips into the Greek or French tales, whether Mentor is depicted as man or woman. In one account it's the goddess Athena, disguised as a nobleman, who takes the name Mentor in order to guide and counsel Telemachus.

When a mentor dies, the loss is significant -- in part because the relationship defies easy description. Mentor implies a particular kind of guidance and soul-sharing.

Switch now to New Year's Eve two years ago.

If there's anything going on at a Catholic parish on Dec. 31, it'll be a church hall dance. Baptists, by contrast, have Watch Night, and Chappell was feeling called to pray. The Notre Dame de Namur sister was at a low ebb. Her grandmother -- whom she regarded as a friend as well as one of her mentors -- had died.

When, during college, Chappell decided to become a nun, it was her rosary-saying grandmother -- not her mother or stepfather -- who was opposed.

"My mom was excited. My grandmother, the matriarch, the wisdom in the family, had serious problems with it," said Chappell, currently president of the National Black Sisters Conference in Washington. "One, I was the first in the family to have a college education. Two, children were highly valued" -- whereas religious life meant celibacy. "And, three, my grandmother had experienced much racism in her life. She did not want to see her grandchild go through that by entering a predominantly white religious congregation."

Chappell did enter and did experience racism. But just before final vows the grandmother saw that Chappell's vocation "was embedded in my heart and gave me her blessing," Chappell said.

That New Year's Eve two years ago, Chappell said, resuming her story, "I'd lost [my grandmother], my best friend, the person I went to when things were in upheaval in my own life."

We were seated at a wobbly conference table in one of those Washington places that constitute the church-on-the-Potomac: the basement of St. Paul's College, home to yeasty Catholic groups including the social justice arms of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace and the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.

"I couldn't see my way anywhere," Chappell continued. "It wasn't that life didn't mean anything, it was like mission, ministry -- none of that -- meant anything. I felt a need to be somewhere."

And somewhere turned out to be the Randall Memorial Baptist Church, which she was driving past that night. "I was so upset, so down. It was Watch Night -- I went in and went down on my knees."

There was much going on in Chappell's life. She works five days a week for the black sisters and four evenings as a social worker in tough North East Washington where nothing seems to get better, only worse. Maybe burnout, maybe doubt, maybe loss of direction added to the grief.

"Praying, crying," said Chappell, "I felt like there was a crucifixion going on within me personally: `What is it you're asking of me? What is it you want from me? I'm trying to do the best I can. But you need to make it clear to me, because I'm ready just to hang it up.'

"And through it there was this sense -- the choir was singing, I remember that -- this sense, almost this conversion experience. Jesus said to me, `It's going to be all right. I'm going to be with you and strengthen you. Let this burden go, this grieving. ... Let it go and be resurrected.' And I came up off my knees, praising and shouting God and came out realizing and knowing it was going to be all right."

Chappell is inclined, during any praying moment anywhere, to rise up and joyfully shout, "Amen!" or "Praise the Lord!"

"I pray passionately and compassionately," she said.

Born in New Haven, Conn., she was the oldest of seven in a family that has been Catholic for many generations.

When the adolescent Patty at 15 and 16 didn't want to be a part of "the racist Catholic church anymore, my family allowed me that flexibility. `OK, we raised you Catholic, you can make your own decisions about religion.' She tried the Baptists, the Black Muslims, "and I still had my grandmother praying the rosary for me."

But she also had the first in a line of sister-mentors: Sr. Dolores Harrell of the Connecticut Province of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. "She was my eighth-grade teacher at St. Martin de Porres, the first black nun I'd ever encountered. It was almost like a foreigner coming into this predominantly black elementary school.

"I was a good-kid, but an adolescent, too. I think she planted the seed. I'd thought about it, but I didn't think I could be a nun because I'd only seen white sisters and thought it was for white women," Chappell said.

In 1971, between high school and college, Harrell invited Chappell to a meeting of the National Black Sisters Conference.