Chipping away at plaster saints

Resisting Orders: Catholic Sisters Contest Their Church
by Christine Gervais, Amanda Watson, and Shanisse Kleuskens

Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025
$39.95  /  9780228023708

Reviewed by Linda Rogers

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This book is a record of many witnesses, so many of them anonymous that we are left to wonder about “profiles in courage” a phrase initiated by a Catholic president of a now openly fascist country leaning into dictatorship. It begs for witness, those willing to stand and shout for the human rights implicit in the holy beatitudes. As such, it is a valuable document of failure and good works, none of which justify the state of the world and a church with a new leader, who may or may not have the courage necessary to lead the world to decency.

There is a derisive phrase that passes among jurors in literary competitions: “written by committee.” This means “cautious,” “indecisive,” and “lacking voice.” It is a death proclamation in literary writing, or what we might have expected from the confident and outspoken child who begins this record of rebellion from within the Catholic Church, which has traditionally depended upon the words “service” and “obedience.”

The little girl who walked out of church after listening to a homily steeped in patriarchal un-wisdom, just as my boy sopranos decamped from the choir mid-sermon, a racist condemnation of “Japs” who had built the church they were leaving, is the light that flickers but does not dim in this carefully constructed analysis of feminine resistance, in which identities are hidden and cases are made cautiously, without the thrilling rhetoric of passion, the underlying mystery of a church made by and for patriarchal power.

So, we wait for the bonfire of vanities. Will the spark of resistance start the conflagration that will cleanse us of sin, the greed and avarice that are the hallmarks of neocapitalism? There is a word in the Hul’q’umi’num language, Xwixelanexw, which describes the descent of leaves, each one a story. How many will it take to burn down the painted sepulchres?

The sisters, oppressed by the patriarchy, whatever their orders and callings, have been the Stepford wives of Jesus, and the authors of Resisting Orders wonder if whispered dissent will succeed in protecting idealistic notions of equality and social justice through the possible dismantling of paternalistic authoritarianism during the decline of neo-capitalism.

For one thing, recruitment for holy orders has been more complicated post-feminism. Where the church was historically a safer place for gay men and women and freed up women who chose careers over marriage, emancipation has changed those incentives. Who needs to be a nun when men are driving the bus?

In the days when women were discouraged from professional careers and freedom from traditional roles like mothering and serving husbands was an economic impossibility, the church offered acceptable alternatives. Teaching, for example, was an opportunity to engage with children in a career outside of motherhood. Scholarship was another attractive possibility within the confines of holy vows. Those options are now open to women in the wider society.

But there were constraints on the free minds of inquisitive girls. A Catholic sister of the little Jewish girl in red in Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, the church escapee, later returnee, is the flame we watch as brides of Jesus whimper and protect the status quo: you pay I obey, except when I complain.

Resisting Orders is a conscientious study, valuable in its resources and restrained in passionate storytelling, the agenda being changed from within with moderate damnation, chipping away at the clay feet of plaster saints, as opposed to Jesus the revolutionary.

“The sisters presented herein also include expressions of ambivalence and ambiguity in the face of systemic oppression stories.” They speak of “ambivalent sexism,” where women are revered and reviled, in other words a bad marriage. That ambivalence is nowhere near as dramatic as Jesus overturning the moneychangers’ tables and we are left to wonder if that loud opposition, aka the clerical uprising against ICE in Minnesota, is necessary for change.

Along with a Cowichan elder, I once established cultural programs and language study within the construct of the Catholic school system. As a non-Catholic, my observations coincided with the authors of this study. Quiet resistance often equals distress, as sisters struggle to amend. There is no half in, or the battle is lost.

They report that nuns are not a homogeneous entity. They are various hearts and minds dedicated to the principle that oppress them, one God Almighty, with the common understanding that “for the sake of what may emerge in generations to come, for the sake of women everywhere, for human wholeness and the survival of our world, we must end patriarchy now.”

One nun I worked with, a kindergarten teacher who believed in the sacred status of children, became an alcoholic after experiencing the blow back from child destruction in residential schools. Her order, Sisters of the Child Jesus, was connected with the missionary work of the Oblate Fathers, particularly among Indigenous children. The Oblates, mentioned in the chapter on clerical abuse, have a lot to answer for, but, in spite of a general consensus on the necessity for accountability, the nuns interviewed, and those I observed, did little to protect children from clerical abuse, although they were committed to comforting them after the fact.

I ran into a former head teacher at a local parochial school on the ferry to Kuper Island (now Penelakut), location of one of the most notorious residential schools in the country, and we began a conversation about the students in her care. “Are you a good person?” I asked, after we talked about children we knew in common, children she had tried to help short of outing the Oblates. “Did you do enough?”

She wept and the short answer is no, and that is the level of terror most of the sisters interviewed for this book experienced. None of them did enough, plain and simple. They maintained the status quo. Obedience. Silence.

All initiates intend to do good and taking holy orders should be a direct route to action, but the research shows it is complicated by the patriarchal structure of their church, so that means a double adversary, church and state.

Stories that carry the weight and restraint of oppressed people can be buried in academic language. This is a valuable text and reference tool, but, as in the teaching of Indigenous knowledge keepers, first-hand storytelling is essential to the recruiting of souls. There are no layers of transparency between speaker and listeners at the recurring Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes most sisters called to service wear on their tear-stained sleeves.

A companion volume or appendix of compelling first-person narratives would add soul to this conscientious text, especially to the personal experiences of gender and sexuality, which take up two chapters in the book. Some sisters discovered their sexuality after ordination, either in same sex relationships or with priests. It is highly ironic that a church that has provided refuge over time should judge common practice at every level. In the Closet at the Vatican by Frederic Martel (not mentioned) provides shocking insight into the hypocrisy of this patriarchal behaviour.

In their chapter on foreign missions, the authors report the frustration of nuns inspired by the Vatican Council. “The gradual acceptance of liberation theology among some church leaders along with the foundation laid by Vatican II catalyzed the shift in women religious’ meaning of mission into one of solidarity with and for disenfranchised people, rather than one focused solely on evangelizing and charitable assistance.”

Liberation Theology caught fire in ministries where the oppression of women impacted the physical and spiritual lives of many communities, and the sisters actively supported health and literacy, issues important to women and the family, but, sadly, oppression from the patriarchies within and without the church made their work frustrating and often impossible.

Even in a liberal democracy like Canada, even when the state is semi-compliant, church is still the adversary of justice in the activism of many nuns. Many of them, “green sisters” advocating for peace and environmental responsibility, encounter opposition to “radical witnessing,” which serves to remind many girls of early conditioning. “If you want to be loved, be quiet.”

It remains to be seen if Resisting Orders is a battle cry or just a dusty reference to the repressed energy of slaves. There is great value in the committed energy of believers, whatever their ilk. We are seeing that in resistance to the fascist American government. The sisters of Jesus have done valuable work in the world, but the question remains, will they change it?

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Linda Rogers, a past Poet Laureate and Canadian People’s Poet has written several books Say My Name, Queens of the Next Hot Star, and Finding Balance on the effect of the Catholic Church on the Indigenous population. She is a witness, not an expert. [Editor’s note: Linda has reviewed books by Donna Seto, Dacia Maraini, translated by Genni Gunn, Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa, Edward H. K. Ho, Evelyn Thompson-George & Art Thompson, and Bruce McIvor for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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