The Russian & Aunt Sophia

by Rita Moreau

  “Already tried, not home, got their voice mail. You want me to try the public access TV studio?”

  “No,” I said as I resigned myself to the inevitable and headed back to my client, who was already chatting on her cell.

  I knew something was coming, like a storm you could see off in the horizon. I had dreamt about it last night as I walked in Dreamland, a place a gypsy once told me was located between the visible and invisible world. It was only a matter of time.

  2

  I found myself seated at my desk in my office surrounded by a flock of nuns. I had first met these nuns a few months back when they showed up with my Aunt Sophia. Their arrival came with a direct order to find a long-lost jewel, which possessed a special power. I found it, but the road to discovery hadn’t been easy. It did, however, force me to accept my psychic power—finally.

  Their ringleader was Sister Hildegard. Her formal title is Mother Superior. She sat directly across from me instead of sitting in my seat, which is where I found her the first day I met her. Next to her was her right-hand gal and sidekick, Sister Matilda. Their eyes (and the ones in the back of their heads) were laser focused on me. They made sure that Velma joined us, and sat her down between the two of them.

  Being a large, black woman, sitting between two nuns dressed in their full habits was causing Velma great discomfort, which was highly unusual for her. The other three nuns who rounded out the entourage were seated to my left and were busy being quiet.

  Wanting to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible, I asked, “Sister Hildegard, as glad as I am to see you, what brings, ahem, all of you to my little office on such a beautiful day?”

  “We are being audited,” Sister Hildegard said. Like my mother, she didn’t believe in small talk.

  I shook my head, “Audited? By the IRS?”

  “No, worse, by the Vatican,” Sister Hildegard said. “And Bishop Michael is behind it.”

  “Bishop Michael?”

  “Is the Pope Catholic? Yes, Bishop Michael,” Sister Hildegard said, and then catching herself she added, “Rumor is he is getting close to that promotion to cardinal. So, we have started to call him ‘Red Hat.’”

  “Red Hat?”

  “Cardinals are the princes of the church, appointed by the Pope,” Sister Hildegard said with a touch of sarcasm.

  Sister Matilda added, “Cardinals wear a red hat that looks like a beanie. Red is supposed to symbolize their readiness to spill their blood for the church. Like that would ever happen.”

  Velma and I had met Bishop Michael when I helped them find the long-lost jewel. He was rigidly conservative, a lawyer before he became a priest, and he was fond of debating theological and legalistic arguments. To his way of thinking, strict adherence to doctrine won out over mercy every time.

  “I don’t understand. I’ve never heard of an audit of nuns. What in the world for?” I said looking at Velma who just shook her head, rolled her eyes, pulled a small fan out of her bosom, and started fanning herself.

  “Hot flashes, dear,” Sister Matilda said, and before she could go any further on the topic of hot flashes and menopause, Sister Hildegard’s voice commanded our undivided attention.

  “Sister Matilda, please explain how an audit of nuns by the Vatican works, and be quick about it.” Sister Matilda looked at her and nodded her obedience.

  “Yes, Mother Superior.”

  Sister Hildegard was, without a doubt, the tallest nun I had ever met. She easily could have played on a professional basketball team. Velma and I had both attended and survived parochial schools. Velma’s mother had sent her to Mary Help Us, the all-girls Catholic high school in Fish Camp. The same high school I had attended about ten years earlier. Her mother thought that if she could isolate Velma from the opposite sex, she would stay on track to make it to the Olympics.

  “It was a good plan that didn’t work out,” Bessie would say to her group of church ladies. “Praise the Lord.” They would shake their heads in unison and respond, “Amen, sister, amen.”

  Sister Matilda was the opposite of Sister Hildegard, short and petite, but she carried herself with the same erect stature as Sister Hildegard. Sister Matilda was a history buff. Actually, she was a walking Wikipedia on almost any subject. The nuns at their convent did their best to avoid conversations with Sister Matilda that might lead to what they had dubbed history time.

  “God forbid you ask her a question by accident,” they would say to each other and make the sign of the cross.

  I looked over at the three nuns sitting to my left, and I could see in their faces they knew what was coming. They settled into their chairs, and two of them made the sign of the cross and closed their eyes. Sister Matilda got up and glided to the middle of my office, center stage. We adjusted our seats and necks to give Sister Matilda our undivided attention. Velma’s fan was fluttering at warp speed.

  “The Vatican has appointed a group of American bishops to rein in the nuns of the United States. A cardinal high up in the Vatican has convinced the Pope that American nuns have gone astray and fallen into serious doctrinal error. They want this addressed. We understand that the Cardinal tapped Bishop Michael for the job. The bishop has decided to start the audits close to home with our order, the Sisters of Saint Anthony.”

  “Holy Smoke,” Velma said. “This is serious. I’ve heard that Bishop Michael has plans to make it all the way to Popedom.”

  “If he does well with these audits, he will be a shoo-in for promotion to cardinal and therefore, a contender when the time comes to choose the next pope,” Sister Matilda said and walked over to give Velma a high five. She stopped cold when Sister Hildegard stood and clapped her hands.

  “Sister Matilda,” she said and paused while we all held our breath. “Do remember that there is a penalty for excessive celebration in the end zone. Please continue.”

  “Yes, Mother Superior,” she said as she walked back to her invisible podium, and we all resumed normal breathing.

  Sister Matilda along with her love of history had an equal love of sports. She had a great passion for football, college or NFL; it didn’t matter. She could give you play by play along with the best sportscaster. That was the reason the nuns at the convent avoided her on Monday mornings during football season, especially if her teams played poorly.

  Sister Matilda resumed her spot center stage, but then walked around the room, which required Velma and me to turn our necks to follow her movement. Sister Hildegard had gotten up and walked over to the back window of my office, overlooking the canal. She stood with her arms together and all ten toes tapping. She was calling on her patience. She knew whenever she gave Sister Matilda the floor, she would inevitably have to rein her in.

  I closed my eyes and silently said a prayer to Saint Anthony; after all, these were his nuns. “Saint Anthony, Saint Anthony, please come down. Something is lost and needs to be found.” That would be my sanity.

  Saint Anthony is the saint you pray to when you’ve lost something. He doesn’t care if you’re Catholic or not. I knew him well; he was my mother’s favorite saint. My mother had filled me in early in life about how to ask Saint Anthony for help.

  Only she called it Bribing Saint Anthony. I once asked her where she came up with Bribing Saint Anthony. She turned to me and said, “Your husband, Theo.” I didn’t dare ask her anything further since that would have opened the door to a discussion about my ex-husband, Theo, who she absolutely adored.

  I could hear her voice now as I sat looking at Sister Matilda.

  “If you have a special request in your heart, then you pray to Saint Anthony. It’s got to be something big, you don’t want to waste his time. Say, for instance, maybe your only daughter getting married to a good man.” Later, after Theo and I divorced she changed it to “Say, for instance, your only daughter staying married to a good man.”

  “MC, are you listening?” Sister Matilda said. She had been my third-grade teacher, so she knew exactly when to ask me that qu
estion.

  I just nodded my head yes, up and down, and she continued.

  “We received a letter from Red Hat’s office telling us that the audits are necessary because the Vatican is concerned that some nuns are leaning toward what they call “radical feminist themes, incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

  “Really, like what?” Velma asked.

  Sister Matilda looked over at Sister Hildegard still standing by the window in the back corner of my office.

  “Well, let’s see. They are a little ticked off, for one, that we may be challenging the all- male priesthood by pointing out the secondary role that nuns and, for that matter, all women play in the church,” Sister Hildegard said and nodded to Sister Matilda to continue.

  “We are being referred to as those feisty nuns,” Sister Matilda said as she continued. Velma and I looked at each other, and by the look on our faces, we certainly agreed that the term was appropriate.

  “By way of background, the mission of the Sisters of Saint Anthony is to follow the path of our patron, Saint Anthony. He is more than the saint in charge of the lost and found. Sometimes in life, you might take a wrong turn and find yourself lost, and he is there to help you find your way home. The mission of the Sisters of Saint Anthony is to help those who have lost their way make it safely home,” Sister Hildegard said with authority.

  “Back to this audit,” I said. “Does either Red Hat or the Vatican have the authority to tell the Sisters of Saint Anthony what to do like the IRS does in a tax audit?”

  Sister Matilda went silent and then looked over to Sister Hildegard.

  “Generally, religious orders are separate and independent of the local bishop and diocese. But, Bishop Michael seems to have forgotten that and to keep the peace we have tried not to remind him. However, now that he is under the wing of this powerful cardinal, it’s not as clear. It could be argued that this gives him authority over our order of nuns since he is working for a cardinal who works for the pope,” Sister Hildegard said.

  “So, do the Sisters of Saint Anthony have to take orders from the Pope?” Velma asked.

  Sister Matilda, still silent, continued to look to Sister Hildegard to answer these questions.

  “We take our orders from God,” Sister Hildegard said looking out the window at the water in the canal.

  “We like to think of the Pope like one would think of the President. He is the commander in chief of the Catholic Church, but we may not always belong to his political party,” Sister Hildegard said with a smile and then clapped her hands and gave Sister Matilda the cue to keep going.

  “As both of you might recall, nuns played a vital role in the Catholic Church during the 1950s and 1960s. We ran schools, operated hospitals, and parishes were expanding. Today the number of nuns is dwindling, less than 50,000. Down from around 200,000 back in the glory days.”

  “Many American nuns no longer wear religious habits and have left convents to live independently. They have branched out into new lines of work. We are a small order of nuns, and we are not in a hurry to change our ways. We decided to keep our habits and the convent life.”

  “Why is that?” Velma asked.

  Sister Matilda again looked to Sister Hildegard to answer that question.

  “We chose to continue to wear our habits because we felt the habit was a strong symbol and part of our identity. Most of the nuns in the U.S. have chosen otherwise. Whether they or we made the right decision or not is still being debated,” Sister Hildegard said.

  “Aren’t there nuns who are vocal and advocate for the poor and for social justice issues? Don’t they call them ‘Nuns on the Camper’ or something like that?” Velma asked.

  “There is a group of nuns that have been labeled by the media as the ‘Nuns on the Camper’ since they frequently drive an older Bluebird motorhome across the country and hold rallies. These sisters see advocating for social justice as acceptable. As a group, they are not shy and have even appeared before Congress. The leaders of the church, however, do not see it that way,” Sister Matilda said.

  “What do these audits have to do with that group?” I asked.

  “We are not sure, but it’s safe to say that the current leadership in the church is very conservative, so they would be happier if nuns were less vocal and disappeared back into the shadows where they used to be,” Sister Hildegard said.

  “So, the Nuns on the Camper are like Baptists preachers who go town to town and hold big tent revivals,” Velma said.

  “Why yes, that’s one way to put it, Velma,” Sister Matilda said with a smile.

  I heard a noise coming from Sister Hildegard’s direction. She was still standing by the window, and as I watched, I could see her habit rippling along the wooden floor. She was tap dancing in her black pumps.

  “The Vatican thinks nuns in the U.S. are spending too much time on issues of poverty and social justice and not speaking out enough against abortion and same-sex marriage.” Sister Matilda was now on a roll and about to continue merrily down that road when the tap dancing stopped. A loud clap came from Sister Hildegard.

  “Get to the point, Sister Matilda. You’re getting off track,” Sister Hildegard said as she now began to pace from the window to my desk, then stopped right behind my chair and then paced back to the window. When she stopped behind me I could hear her whispering, “Mother of God, help me.”

  “Yes, Mother Superior,” Sister Matilda said as she rolled her eyes upward and made the sign of the cross.

  “It is not a secret amongst Catholic nuns that the male conservatives and traditionalist leaders of the Catholic Church would prefer to see nuns embracing a more conservative message.”

  “Like what?” Velma asked.

  “Oh, like telling young women it’s wrong for them to use contraceptives. Even if they are married,” Sister Matilda added with an animated what’s up with that look on her face.

  “This is what is coming from the all-male leadership of the church, men who have never married and are allegedly celibate. We are losing our young women and men,” Sister Hildegard interjected.

  “They are so out of touch,” Sister Matilda added.

  “Sister Matilda, we have a bus to catch to get back to the convent,” Sister Hildegard said giving her the signal to wrap it up and added a couple more claps in double time. Sister Matilda nodded okay, and then went right back to history time.

  “The all-male leadership explains their stance by saying God revealed sacred truths to the pope and eventually it trickles down to the bishops, priests, and to the people. It’s not for nuns, who are on the bottom rung, to question the all-male leadership on church doctrine. Those things are the way they are because God said so,” Sister Matilda said pointing her pointer finger toward the heavens.

  “I get it,” Velma said. “It’s pretty clear to me. The male dominated church would like you nuns to go back to being their workers. There was a time when they called that slavery.”

  Both Sister Hildegard and Sister Matilda looked at Velma, taken aback by her remark. But then they looked at each other, made the sign of the cross, and nodded their heads like sister bobblehead dolls.

  “I know the bishop has not been a friend of your order because of his conservative leanings, but until now and for the most part he has left your order alone. I’m wondering why he chose your order for his first audit,” I said.

  “It’s like he plans to make a statement,” Velma added.

  Sister Hildegard looked at Sister Matilda and then said, “For years now I have guided our order of nuns along a path that attempts to keep us under the radar. Something has changed with the bishop. He has become bolder since he succeeded in aligning himself with this powerful cardinal and others who are close to the Pope. With their backing, he could make it very uncomfortable. He might even try to close us down.”

  “Close down the convent? I said. “Why? Can he do that?”

  “Well, he can certainly try,” Sister Hildegard said.

  “Th
e cardinal has the authority to remove our status as members of an officially approved religious community. Basically, he could kick our order out of the Catholic Church. The cardinal could make it very uncomfortable for us, especially since we are not as financially sound as we were in those glory days Sister Matilda spoke of.”

  “So, he would try to cut off your funding?” I asked.

  “There is no funding,” Sister Hildegard replied.

  “No funding?” I asked.

  “Wait a minute. Are you saying the Catholic Church does not support their nuns?” Velma said.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Most Catholics have no idea that nuns fend for themselves financially. Many orders of nuns are disappearing. You might say the church is putting us out to pasture,” Sister Hildegard said.

  “Wow,” Velma and I said in unison.

  Sister Hildegard now walked over to Sister Matilda and gently guided her back to her seat. She took the stage,

  “Thank you, Sister Matilda. MC, you are aware that some of the nuns within our order possess psychic abilities. It is a secret society within the order.”

  “Yes, I am very aware of that, Mother Superior,” I said, again thinking back to the first time these Sisters of Saint Anthony paid me a visit.

  “Of course, you are, dear. At times, we find our abilities are useful in furthering our mission as the Sisters of Saint Anthony. These abilities allow us to take our mission a step further.”

  “A step further,” I said.

  “Yes, as the Sisters of Saint Anthony we help those who are lost in the world, and sometimes we have to call on our psychic abilities. Let’s just say it speeds up the process of assisting those lost souls who come to us for help. While we wait for our prayers to be answered, we look to our psychic abilities as a gift from God.”

  “It works much like a GPS,” Sister Matilda piped in to offer a quick analogy. Sister Hildegard gave her an approving nod, which left Sister Matilda with a beaming smile on her face.