Lesbian nuns: a gift for the catholic church

Reflections by sister Jeannine Gramick taken from Adista Documents n. 4, 4 February 2012, p.10-13

(...) The topics related to homosexuality have acquired great importance in the agenda of the Catholic Church in recent decades, at least since I undertaken my ministry.
But when you touch the homosexuality topic and ministry the conversation inevitably focuses on priests or gay friars. Very little attention is paid to the lesbian nuns that I believe represent the silent and invisible minority in the world of gays and Catholic lesbians. (...).

Reflecting on the historical path taken, I heard in my mind, in particular, three central observations, especially looking at the last 40 years. The fundamental question that emerged for the religious in the first 20 years, from my point of view, was that of sexual identity.
That is, the nuns who discovered that they were lesbians, who thought they were lesbians, spoke to each other and wondered each other: how do you know they were lesbian?

Why do you think you are? Over the following 20 years, the fundamental question seemed to be that of coming out. But what dominated the scene in both periods was the theme of celibacy. (...).
The Author Judith brown has narrated, in her Book (Immodest acts, ndt) the story Of Benedetta carlini, an seventeenth -century nun, because of her erotic relationship with a sisted. many Thought - And many still think so today - That it is sexual activity that defines a lesbian woman.

At the time of the first retreat for lesbian nuns in 1979, it was clear that the Vatican authorities were convinced of this, that is, that it was sexual activity that defined a lesbian woman. (...). In other words, being a lesbian meant being sexually active.
That is, you could not be lesbian and unmarried. Many people, including some nuns, had this incorrect idea about sexual activity.

I believe it is possible that many nuns did not call themselves lesbians for the fact that they did not practice sexual activity. Following what is heard and what confided, I believe that many priests and bishops are also gay, but that they do not recognize it because for them it would mean declaring that they are sexually active. If you are celibate or unmarried you are not gay or lesbian. (...).

The scientific community, as well as the same nuns, testify how grotesque this is, but there are still many people who relate the two things and believe, wrong, that, if you are a lesbian, you do not live and you cannot live as a unmarried.

I happen to feel similar considerations by some exponents of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, when they ask questions such as: "The homosexual orientation affects the ability to remain Celibate?". we never hear the question: "heterosexuality affects the ability to remain celibate?".
Or do we hear: "Is it more difficult for a lesbian nun than for a heterosexual living in a community of women?". I believe that the implication behind questions like this is the incorrect belief that a lesbian is attracted to any woman.

This "universal attraction" is not real for the lesbian nuns, as much as the concept that a heterosexual woman is attracted to every man is not true.
I believe that the relevant question is as follows: "How can lesbian nuns, as well as heterosexuals, live the bachelorette in a healthy way?". This is the crucial question and certainly not if it is more difficult for lesbian nuns than heterosexuals. "How to live celibacy/backed in a healthy way?"

I asked this precise question to a small group of lesbian nuns and the answers were rather in line with each other. They declared that the tools that help to conduct a healthy life as a unmarried are loyalty and constancy in prayer and the ability to tighten sincere and deep friendship relationships, together with others I will say later.
The essential key to carrying on a healthy scaling is a life of prayer, of closeness to God, and of quality relationships.
In answering the question, the nuns declared that they felt fortunate for having had the opportunity to tighten sincere friendships with which to share the problems related not only to the sexuality and the frustrations that derive from it, but to the ups and downs that distinguish the existence.

In addition, they said they had experienced communion with God and that they have been helped by the presence of spiritual directors capable of understanding their sexuality, their profound spirituality. here, These elements are the valid support for a healthy life in the celibacy/bachelorette.
Many have declared that living a healthy life as a unmarried essentially means leading a balanced life. And they said they feed their bachelorette with good readings, movies, exercise, fun, nature. (...).
The testimony of these lesbian sisters, therefore, shows how, to live celibacy/bachelorettempan, a balanced life is necessary, which can be cultivated through spiritual growth and relationships and friendships with other people.

Lesbian Identity

In the 1950s there was no talk of such a theme. But, starting from the 1960s, the sexual revolution and gay rights movements have certainly entered the religious congregations. (...).
The sisters (...) therefore began to question their lesbian being, on feeling satisfied with their life in a female, homo-social environment (...), betraying the idea that if they had not had an active sex life, they could not have known their true sexual identity ("How can I know if I am homosexual or heterosexual if I live as a nutile?").
Others wondered: "If I had sexual relationships with other women, would it mean that I am a lesbian?".
Are all the nuns lesbians because they live with other women? «My social and emotional needs are satisfied primarily - perhaps not exclusively - by women. So I'm a lesbian? ».

Who Is The Lesbian Nun?

In the 80s I spent a lot of time making individual counseling for the nuns who arose on the matter, and organizing workshops for female religious orders so that they can clarify this type of perplexity.
At the time I tried to explain what lesbism is not, while trying to explain what it is. There were data, at the time, which showed how a third of the lesbian women had been married and more than half of these had had biological children. So the fact of having had sex with men did not mean that they were heterosexual.
To date, very few lesbian women lend themselves to heterosexual weddings since stereotypes are less rigid and do not require similar constraints.
But I believe that the point is clear, namely that sexual behavior is not a sufficient indicator of sexual identity (...): in short, sexual activity does not determine sexual orientation.
Living or working in a homo-social environment does not necessarily mean, therefore, that a person is a lesbian Or gay. social relationships are only this: social relationships, not sexual Intercourse. if your human need to touch, tighten, kiss are satisfied by another woman, this does not necessarily indicate lesbism.

Expressing an affectivity means only human being. I believe that one of the dares of the celibate lifestyle is the fact that you risk losing that natural heat since you fear to touch the other.
I particularly want to emphasize this aspect because I see what was done to the priests in our Church. They are afraid not only to touch the children, but even to put the arm around someone's life. (...).
An affectionate friendship between two women is not necessarily a lesbian Relationship. friendships between people of the same sex have always existed, both in religious and outside life.
There is also the friendship between lesbians that remains simple friendship; There is friendship between a lesbian and a heterosexual woman, just as there is friendship between two heterosexual women.
Friendships push us to find out who we really are. Friendships push us to discover how much we are worth. They demonstrate our ability to take care of each other, to love the other.

So simply if a nun loves a woman or has a woman as the best friend or confidant does not automatically mean that it is a lesbian.
I believe that the substantial difference between a friendship and a lesbian relationship is eroticism. The friends between them have a very strong emotional bond but without romantic or erotic feelings as it happens in a lesbian relationship. (...).

In my experience, the most precious for women is the emotional dimension. They want to feel understood, they want to share situations and confidences in order to enjoy common values, to feel close to another person.
This predominance of emotion on eroticism can falsely bring a nun to consider itself lesbian when experiencing this type of emotional closeness, even in the absence of the erotic aspect (...).
The emotional component distinguishes a friendship; The erotic component distinguishes the lesbian relationship. The best path, for a nun or anyone else, to determine their sexual orientation is to answer this question: who did I fall in love with?

If, in the course of her life, a woman is in most cases in love with women, her primary sexual orientation is a lesbian.
The orientation is determined by the gender direction and by the strength of the feelings of love, erotic desires and sexual fantasies. What defines a lesbian woman, or a lesbian nun, is not external behavior, but the most intimate sexual desires. I believe that falling in love is the best description for this intimate feeling.

Coming Out

If the sexual identity was the fundamental question for the nuns in the 70s and 80s, the coming out is in the following twenty years. In 2008, Sister Janet Rozzano, of the Order of the Daughters of Mercy, often speaker in the New Ways Ministry conferences, reflected on her condition as a lesbian nun and wrote a book entitled Out of Silence God has Called Us ("God called us out of silence").
Leaving the silence and returning to speak was for her as a sacrament. It was a sort of manifestation of grace. (...).
In the annual conferences that I mentioned in my historical excursus, intended for the nuns, to the superiors of the congregations, to the trainers and to the pastoral and vocational workers, there has always been the testimony of two lesbian nuns, one of which he made his coming out while he was in the convent.

At his entrance, the nun had not even asked himself if he was heterosexual or lesbian, he had not even had sexual thoughts. He had realized that he was a lesbian only during his religious life. The other story is instead that of a nun who made what his identity was already before his entry into religious life.
In the conference last year, one of the managers of the vocational formation said: "One of the most touching experiences for me was when a small and shy brizzed hair nun, around 70 years old, got up and told us that we were the first to know that she had discovered that she was a lesbian. Yes, at 70 years old ». A touching and exciting experience.

Coming Out is the subject of many of the articles in the newsletter (aimed at lesbian nuns, but also to religious superiors and the trainers of the congregations, NDT) which has been distributed for over twenty years.
Some nuns who write on the newsletter use a nickname, others only the name, others instead sign out for extensive, with the name of the community and often with photography.
From the texts of the newsletter I take a very touching story by Sister Linda Taylor, the nun of S. Giuseppe, who wrote a very beautiful testimony on her coming out.
I quote from his writing: «I had lived as a lesbian in silence for 50 years. I was afraid that calling me lesbian would bring me out of my community and such a chance caused me unspeakable pain.
When I was younger, already knowing I was a lesbian, I brought the secret with me as if it were a coin in my pocket. I would have pulled it out at the right time. But in reality I was happy to have that coin in the pocket.

After many years, and in any case only after meeting some lesbian women who were happy and proud to be, my feelings began to change. My coin had become heavy as a container full of dollars.
And those dollars had begun to occupy every free corner of my thoughts. My thoughts were now full of pockets and dollars. so i Got to a turning point. one day, Sitting in my room, i thought i went to the closet to Pray. why not pray in that small space with the wooden doors, since it was there i lived?
Asking me how it would have been, I rubbed me in the annoyed space and closed the doors. I began to notice small beams of light that filtered through the cracks of the doors.
I looked at my room through the cracks and saw that it was full of light. And I thought: "Why am I here in the dark when I could be out of enjoying the light of the sun?".
I imagined one of the sisters of the community who asked me: "Linda, what are you doing in the closet? You go out!". I felt a profound sadness.
All my efforts to hide my identity as a lesbian had led me to ensure that they would know only half of me.
So I thought that all the lesbian or gay people I knew and that they were out were risking everything on their skin. I felt deep in wanting to be like them. I thought: "I don't want to die in the closet!".

Praying in the closet that day was the beginning of the awareness of gradually wanting to come out, finding a way to integrate my being a lesbian with my religious life.
In considering my religious life as it took place following the steps I embarked on to literally get out of my bedroom closet, I am experimenting with a joy and enthusiasm that I had never even imagined before ». (...).
We can ask ourselves: if all the lesbian nuns experience this sense of joy and enthusiasm for life, a sense of freedom and grace deriving from coming out, why not all of them do it? The answer has to deal with the risks related to coming out.
In most cases, the lesbian nuns hesitate to come out in the open because they fear they lose their ministry. And it is the ministry they are deeply linked to: helping people. They fear that they can be prevented.
In addition, some fear of mudding the reputation of the religious community of belonging and this is deeply frustrating. This fear betrays our heterosexual culture.
Being a lesbian is as well as being straight: why should the reputation of the religious community be Threatened? for the reputation it is indifferent that we are faced with a heterosexual system or the presence of lesbian nuns.

These three themes - celibacy, sexual identity and coming out - that have dominated our considerations on the lesbian nuns have been present for many decades.
But the question remains: what advantages does this discussion offer to the Church in general? Is it a matter that affects the faithful? Do lesbian nuns positively influence the life of the Church?
We state that the ecclesial community was undoubtedly enriched by the struggles that the lesbian nuns carried out. Their lives are like charisms available to the community, for all of us. (...)
The testimony of the lesbian nuns teaches us (...) that their natural sexual frustration, the one that each of us has experienced from time to time - even if I met people who told me that they have never tried sexual desires in life: it is possible, even if rare - improves in the presence of affectionate friendships.

It reminds us that the true meaning of creation, the story of Adam and Eva, concerns the union between two individuals. In the second chapter of Genesis God says: it is not good that the person - not man - is alone. People need company. We need friendship, of intimate friendship, to satisfy the human thirst for affection that we feel in the spirit.
The struggles of the lesbian nuns for understanding their sexual identity have made them capable of being a guide for others, other lesbians and gays that are learning to embrace their sexuality. (...).
When the lesbian nuns come out, they become reference models for other lesbian or gay people.

For example, some gays confided to Sister Jackie Griffith, a sister of S. Giuseppe who had made her coming out, of having found the courage to reveal herself because she had done it. So this nun served as a positive model for those who knew it.
Lesbian nuns can represent a model even for those who have difficulty relating to an institution that defines them as "intrinsically disordered". I asked the sisters: "How do you feel compared to the habit of the Church to label gays as intrinsically disordered people?".

They replied that they sometimes feel depressed, annoyed or even angry for this easy labeling towards homosexual people; Some said they have written very calm and respectful letters to bishops or other religious leaders about the use of this language.
One of the nuns said: "Well, now I understand how to consider those from whom the labels come!", Adding to try a sort of shame for belonging to these institutions. "But I am Jesus Christ and the Gospel who keep me linked to the Church, which is then the people of God".
In the large majority, the lesbian nuns oppose the labels of the hierarchy simply by ignoring them and working for the construction of an ecclesial environment that nourishes and welcomes. Most of these work in religious communities and believes it truly enriching. (...).

Others claim to enhance the sacraments and to appreciate the social doctrine of the Church starting from Vatican II and which is what gives them hope: the teachings of the Council. It is for this reason that they remain linked to the Church. I believe that lesbian nuns teach us loyalty, a loyalty in faith through great difficulties.

These are some of the reasons - and I know that there are many others - so I believe that our lesbian sisters represent a valid gift for our church. (...).