BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) – A Belgian nun’s acrobatic and indecorous dancing with a missionary during the Catholic World Youth Day in Germany over the weekend earned her a reprimand from her mother superior, a Belgian paper said on Tuesday.
Daily Het Laatste Nieuws showed pictures of a dancing Johanne Vertommen being held up in the air by the missionary, and then clinging to him with her legs wrapped around his body.
“I wouldn’t do this at home but at such occasions I get carried away by the enthusiasm of the group,” the 29-year-old told the paper later.
“My mother superior raised the issue today: she thinks I should watch out a bit and bear in mind that I represent our community,” Vertommen said.
Pope Benedict attended the celebration at the Marienfeld, outside Cologne, in the presence of some 700,000 people.
The only nuns I really knew were the ones I had for teachers over 40 years ago. Perhaps that’s why my mind has such a difficult time grappling with that image.
Now if that had only been His Holiness instead of some unknown missionary . . .
Will O’Ban
PS: The story said something about the good sister being 29 years old. That was always the odd thing in my day. You could never tell how old they might be. You think St’r is 90 years old when you’re in 4th grade, and you go back to the school for a reunion 40 years later and she’s still there.
PPS: And it’s not like she was “new” when I had her. She was also my brother’s 4th grade teacher, and he’s 10 years older than me. My brother says he knows she was there when he started 1st grade.
I just went to a function at the Catholic high school which my daughters all attended or do attend, and they recognized Sister Margaret Leo for … 55 years of service.
The high school I attended was right next door to the retirement home for the order. And across the street from the cemetary for the order.
You wanna talk about OLD nuns??? For some reason, the principal would assign these ancient nuns to teach religion. They couldn’t hear. They could barely walk. All they would talk about was their “vows of poverty” and the “horrors of sex”. They had no idea what grade to give anyone because they could never keep any student’s name straight.
On a merely tangentially related subject–Nuns, by virtue of their similar lifestyles and regular health care, have made excellent subjects for an ongoing study which has tracked who is most likely to suffer dementia in old age and why. Great book on it called Aging with Grace.
There is no mention in the book of lap or pole dancing, but I’d guess those activities might keep the brain young for some people.
My favorite neighbor is a lifelong, self-described “lace curtain Irish Catholic” who, against all expectations, decided to pursue a master’s in theology degree at the seminary down the road (Mount St. Mary’s, of venerable reputation). She earned her degree in spite of a lack of encouragement and some rudeness among both staff and her classmates. She just turned 80. We sometimes have tea parties and one of her favorite guests is Sister Bertha, who is about 98 and still has a job at the Villa, to which she has retired. She rides along with the “older” sisters to doctor’s appointments.
When Sr. Bertha was 90 she was invited to return to Peru to celebrate an anniversary of a school she was instrumental in developing. Of course she went, and had a grand time.
Since I was raised a Southern Baptist, I have limited experience with members of the religious orders. When my neighbor and I went to the funeral of Sister Eleanor’s mother, I had a chance to chat, at the reception afterward, with some of the other sisters attending. I came away with the conviction that if you turned the energy and determination of these women loose in the world, we might just be the better for it. I remember in particular one sister who said she learned Chinese passably well in five years, but it took another 10 or so to become really fluent.
Perhaps they are denied any real leadership in the church because the guys would be embarrassed to see how much better a job they would do. (Sr. Eleanor is an unabashed Democrat, by the way.)
M
edited to add: Oh yeah, the sister learning Chinese was a nurse-midwife.
I dunno. They seem to see “free time” as an opportunity to be constructively employed. That’s why an able and mentally agile 98-year-old still has a “job.”
Sister Eleanor has retired from teaching (history, I think) and is now a full-time archivist at the provincial house, hip-deep in historic papers and thriving on hunt and discovery of tidbits of information. She’s in Emmitsburg, Md., and the PH, as they call it, also houses the shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. The archives, naturally enough, have her papers and other related documents.
Anyway, I have the dickens of a time coordinating a visit with her–the last obstruction was a lengthy retreat she made in Princeton.
We became friends when I was with the newspaper and covering Emmitsburg government. She would attend the meetings with her latest knitting project, reminding me (as she was well aware) a little of Mme. Defarge.
Oh that poor thing. Perhaps wrapping her legs around the man’s body was a bit much, but still…
You know, this reminds me of another story, a story we all know and love. I’m surprised no one has mentioned it.
When Maria arrives back at the abbey, she apologizes profusely and confesses the obvious to the mother abbess – that she is having trouble conforming to the ways of the convent.
Troubled by the unexpected turn of events in her life and unsure of her future, Maria sings away her anxieties
"Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, and so on, are only the tools we use to build a song. Once you have these notes in your heads, you can sing a million different tunes by mixing them up, like this…
the captain steps in and dances with Maria until, lost in his eyes, she can’t remember anymore.
“Whistles are for dogs and cats and other animals, but not for children, and definitely not for me.” --Maria.
