The documentary ‘Rebel Hearts‘ (2021) tells the story of the nuns in Los Angeles who stood up for the people and faith they served and paid a high price for change.

Abolition of the habit and patriarchy
The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary had 540 members and began to implement the Vatican II ethos into the community. Everything was reexamined and revised – from the way they prayed and how often, to how they dressed and who they looked to for guidance. They distributed questionnaires, experimented and held regular meetings. More than 300 of the 400 sisters renounced their vows to form a new non-canonical community.

Cardinal James McIntyre, an old-fashioned authoritarian from New York, was sent to Los Angeles to oversee the church. He oversaw a Catholic building boom in Los Angeles of churches and parochial schools. Nuns were sent to the schools with no training, no resources and no pay. They had 80 children in a class.

At their 1967 general assembly, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart had their answers and began to implement the changes they wanted to see. They insisted that it would be inhumane – and unfair to both teachers and students – for a sister to teach more than 40 students at a time. They demanded that the sisters receive their own education and training before teaching. The sisters’ experiments had shown that they could dress modestly and modernly and be nuns without the traditional garb, so they gave it up. They declared that sisters did not need priests to tell them when and how to pray. Ultimately, after much deliberation and prayer, they concluded that they did not need permission to be involved in social and political affairs, to march, to organize, to follow their conscience.

The male power structure of the church felt threatened by these claims and tried to silence them, but the sisters knew their heart, their strength, and their worth. In one day, 200 nuns left their positions in Catholic schools. The church responded by closing the poorer schools and tried to blame the nuns.

Finally, a delegation from Rome was sent to tell the sisters that they had to follow the rules. But in the meeting, the priests claimed that if the rules are too many, the sisters should just comply and pretend to do as they are told.

The sisters rejected silence, accommodation and secrecy. They rejected the male hierarchy. The lie, the silence: It infects the entire church – from the silence and compliance with sexual abuse and rape to the silence and compliance with militarism.

Sister Corita Kent asked, “What would Jesus say?” The sisters respond by starting anew with enthusiasm, rejoining themselves as a “community of hope in an endless search for personhood.” And to do that, they had to leave formal religious life. More than 300 of the 400 sisters renounced their vows to form a new non-canonical community.

Today’s community now welcomes men, laity, and families and provides a strong foundation for women priests, for church renewal, for radical action, for community. They continue, in a different form than they expected, but they continue.

Ultimately, it seems that the institutional church has suffered more than the sisters, as it continues to decline in relevance, even as the charisma of vital, fervent love and creativity embodied by the sisters flourishes.

Adapted from this article.