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- [woman] When do we want it? - [crowd] Now.
- [woman] What do we want? - [crowd] Justice.
- When do we want it? - Now.
- What do we want? - Justice.
- When do we want it? - Now
- What do we want? - Justice.
- When do we want it? - Now.
- What do we want? - Justice.
- When do we want it? - Now.
- What do we want? - Justice.
- When do we want it? - Now.
- What do we want? - Justice.
- When do we want it? - Now.
Can you smell the pot?
- Can you smell the pot? - Yes, I can.
A Jewish Filipino family. Whoo!
A Jewish Filipino. I'm Filipino.
- [man] Are you? - He's a Jew-lipino.
[laughter]
We belong to Immaculate Heart community.
So we're still active, working for justice.
[woman speaking]
- Right. - We do. We do. We were nuns.
- [man] Really? - I joined to be a nun.
Wow.
And we were sisters of the Immaculate Heart.
And then we got into trouble with the bishop.
[man] Hollywood, California.
Home of a religious order which keeps making headlines.
[Anita] The sisters of the Immaculate Heart are a group of people
who want very much to serve people today
and who want to make themselves relevant.
The settlement of the dispute probably points
to the direction in which the church
will go towards modernization of its religion.
[Helen] I chose this life a long time ago.
I thought it was a good life, but times have moved on,
which I see very clearly.
[man] There are those who are afraid the nuns' rebellion is
going to spread and seriously undermine
the authority of the Catholic Church.
There's a sense in which we have always been in trouble.
[laughs]
[Corita] People are often frightened that one little change
is going to lead to many others.
And that they are certainly right.
But changing is what keeps one growing.
[woman] They do take vows.
Poverty, chastity, and obedience,
and they are destroying all three of those vows.
The cardinal feels that they are moving
out of safe Christianity.
[man] If the Immaculate Heart sisters get their way
it would just open Pandora's box.
[woman] We did what we thought was right.
We did it because we thought it was just.
[church bells ring]
[man] For a century, the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary
taught the young in Los Angeles.
Their convent was a spiritual oasis
in the religious desert of Hollywood.
[all singing hymns]
But today this cloistered order is
the subject of a fierce debate that reaches from California,
across America, to the inner sanctums of the Vatican.
Probably many of you are wondering just what are those
Immaculate Heart sisters up to.
[man] Sister Anita Caspary, Mother General of the convent,
who openly defied His Eminence the Archbishop of Los Angeles.
He just couldn't see what we were doing
or why we were doing it.
It seemed wrong to him.
[man] The big gun is James Francis, Cardinal McIntyre,
Archbishop of Los Angeles.
The sisters of the Immaculate Heart
are a threat to the church as he has helped to build it.
[Clement] Cardinal McIntyre was shaped, formed,
and anointed into a church that was authoritarian.
He felt that if you opposed him
you were opposing the church and you were doing something
that would hurt the church or that was ungodly.
[man speaking]
Well, I would hope that I'm gentle, too,
and unfit for violence. Um...
[Sheila] When I met Anita, I was struck by two things.
Anita always managed to stay calm
and she was always able to say something wise.
Conflict was not something that she would have ever
initiated out of anger.
But a part of wisdom is to know
when to stand your ground.
["Sure of Love" playing]
♪ Sure, so sure ♪
♪ So sure ♪
♪ Of love ♪
[Sheila] One of the things to say about that
period from early in the 20th century, up to the '60s,
for women, it was a very, very patriarchal time.
Your coffee, sir.
- Thanks, beautiful. - You're welcome.
[Sheila] So if marriage really wasn't your thing,
staying home and looking after the kids really wasn't something that
you were looking forward to,
in that environment, many young
independently-minded women joined women's religious orders
'cause this was a way out.
One, it was a way of getting an education.
The proposal of marriage and so forth did not appeal to me
that much.
My dad, with his family of girls,
he really thought of women as being in careers
and being able to make their own way.
So I went to Immaculate Heart College.
I immediately felt that's where I really belong,
where I would feel at home.
[Pat] The college faculty were so human.
They would accept a Coke or a little bag of potato chips
when you'd offer it to them.
So they struck me as more modern.
They were contemporary, and that attracted me.
[Anita] It was there that I think I really felt strongly my own
calling to become a nun.
I really wanted to become something like these women.
They were so different.
Full of life, energy, vitality.
But I didn't think about the practical part of what did
one do to become a nun.
[man] Fresh, eager young faces.
Who among this group will be God's career women?
[church bell rings]
[Anita] First, we were postulates,
studying to enter religious life.
It was kind of strange to me.
Our lives were so surrounded and so small.
I had hoped that we might go more deeply into some of
the great spiritual writers, but we were not allowed that.
We had to memorize what was called
the Catechism of the Vows.
And that was very dull and very hard going.
[Helene] After six months in preparation, there was a mass,
and so we all dressed up like brides.
Wearing the bridal gown is a way of symbolizing that
you are going to be quote, "married to Christ."
The priest blessed the habits...
and then we dressed in the habit and came back in.
And that's also when, if we were changing names,
they gave us, you will be known in religion
as sister so-and-so.
[Anita] My name which was given to me by my mentor
was Sister Humiliata.
Sister Mary Humiliata,
I insisted on, to give it some humanity.
But she decided that was a good way to personify for me
the virtue of humility, which I guess she thought I needed. [laughs]
[Ruth] We realized pretty soon that there were
elements in religious life that really were, you know,
not too rational.
- [church bell rings] - The bell rang
and we all went to mass at the same time.
We were not supposed to speak in the convent
unless it was a matter of charity.
It was what we called the day silence.
[Pat] Many of us read a book called Asylums
about mental institutions. And when we read it,
we began to realize that the same kinds of restrictions
that were put on people in mental institutions were also
the kinds of rules that controlled our lives.
I'd spent long hours on my knees, long hours learning
how to keep dust off the library books
and learning how to care for elegant, old hardwood floors.
I perceived myself to be really advancing in holiness.
[Pat] My superior insisted that the youngest person
at the dining table eat whatever
was left on the platters.
So if somebody didn't eat their poached egg
then I had to eat two.
I gained 15 pounds.
The minor rules and the infinitesimal
attention to detail in every part of our lives was meant,
I think, to make us simply obey.
[Clement] It was a patriarchal church,
and salvation came through a rigid obedience,
and it was promoted through an oppressive guilt.
That's how the American church was built.
[man] The great Basilica of Saint Peter's,
home of world Catholicism, towers majestically
over the papal guards in full dress uniform.
The ceremony of elevation proceeds in all its solemnity,
and Cardinal McIntyre advances to the throne to receive
the highest honor a grateful church can bestow.
He is now officially Francis Cardinal McIntyre.
The priests in New York were said to have been very happy
when McIntyre came to Los Angeles because they thought
they were gonna have it easy when he left.
Because he was, he was tough.
I mean, he wanted something done, he'd ask you to do it,
he wanted it done yesterday.
[Clement] He was rigid about everything.
I mean, he wore a hat.
I was his secretary, I had to wear a hat.
I hated wearing a hat.
[man] His brilliant financial mind and experience,
gained before he entered the priesthood,
has been brought to bear in the parishes
and dioceses in which he has served.
He now leaves to Los Angeles.
[Francis] Cardinal McIntyre was very powerful in those days.
All the big shots in the city and the politicians
would court him.
♪ The best things in life are free ♪
Not into theology much, now. He's a businessman.
♪ I need money ♪
He was a runner on Wall Street before he was a priest
and he knew Wall Street inside and out.
[Anita] Financially, he was certainly a big help
to the church in Los Angeles.
As a builder.
♪ But your love don't pay my bills ♪
♪ I need money ♪
- ♪ That's what I want ♪ - ♪ That's what I want ♪
[Clement] He came here in 1948,
when southern California was exploding after the war.
[Francis] So, naturally, the Catholic people here
wanted more schools.
We have in our pool, few schools today in this country.
Six million children.
And that's why I am standing up for true religion in our schools.
[applause]
[Pat] He was called the Educational Cardinal
and built, I don't know how many schools.
[Ruth] It felt like a new school was opening
in Los Angeles every week.
Who was going to teach in those schools?
We sisters.
[Francis] The McIntyre sisters were the largest community
staffing our schools.
[Anita] In a church school, the Cardinal had authority over that school.
It wasn't our school just because we taught there.
Those were his schools.
And so, the pressure was put on communities to staff
the schools beyond what was right, educationally.
I think Cardinal McIntyre viewed women, at least nuns in this
diocese, as coolie labor for his schools.
♪ Hey, sister Hey, sister ♪
♪ Could you come a little closer? ♪
[Francis] McIntyre was a genius, financial genius,
because he realized that the greatest cost in almost
everything is your salaries.
You must remember that in those days nuns,
they didn't get much of a salary.
[woman] We've taught for free.
No Social Security, no pension, no salary.
We used to say the nuns took the vow of poverty and we kept it.
[Pat] So, the first day of school arrived
and I brought my class up to the classroom and I thought,
"Oh, my God, what do I do with all these kids?"
Eighty three sixth and seventh graders.
My first class was 80 kids. [laughs]
I don't know to this day how many students I had.
Maybe 70, maybe 80.
The door would open and the priest would shove a couple more kids in.
And I didn't have the skills that would have helped to do
the kind of job that should have been done.
I mean, I didn't have a college degree at that point,
let alone a teaching credential.
[Ruth] The idea was you put on a habit,
you are teaching the kids. Your habit teaches them.
For the majority of us, we were teaching
and then gradually got our college education,
going to classes on Saturday for a very long time.
On the other hand, you don't need a vast degree
sometimes to teach third grade.
You need a bunch of common sense.
There were legions of young nuns in classrooms where
all they felt was defeat.
I mean, all the stories about bad nuns
I think come out of that period.
[child howls]
[indistinct chatter]
[Anita] Cardinal McIntyre wanted everything
under his authority, directly under his authority,
but Immaculate Heart College was our school, we owned it.
So we had much more freedom there.
[woman] Immaculate Heart College,
a college which promises its students you will become
part of the tidal wave of exploration
and never be the same.
[Pat] I was very happy when I got an assignment to teach
at the college.
It's obvious, I think, that anyone who teaches
or works in a college has much more freedom,
you know, in many ways than one who teaches
in the other part of the structure.
[Lenore] Unlike the sisters who taught in the elementary
and high schools,
those of us who taught in the college went on to get our PhDs.
So, the college was an exciting place to be,
which made teaching really fun. Really fun.
We were able to be part of the world
and in tune with the issues of the day.
[Dorothy] The college was so centrally located, it was on the same
grounds as the Motherhouse, which was the main convent.
So, the things the college put on in the way of artistic
productions, plays, lectures, art exhibits.
People from the whole order could, if they wanted to, come to these.
Free is a singing word, shouting word,
and it grows in sound as you say it.
Kind of spreads around when you live it.
[Mary] The college always provided an alternative education.
But it was the years '63 to '70
where everything was popping.
[cheering]
["Daydream" playing]
♪ Daydream ♪
♪ I fell asleep amid the flowers ♪
♪ For a couple of hours ♪
♪ On a beautiful day ♪
The Immaculate Heart College was alive with highly-trained,
very bright, professionally-ambitious women.
We would like to be able to say
that a women's college is freer.
[woman] This was a time when very few women
received a college degree.
The nuns who were college faculty had more degrees among them
than all the priests in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
[woman] A political science class discusses disarmament.
Nothing could not be discussed.
We were encouraged to be experimental.
Very famous people came to campus
because they had heard about us.
Like Buckminster Fuller, Charles and Ray Eames,
Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.
Each department seemed to be really flourishing.
The music department with the trio was traveling
all over the United States and giving concerts.
There was a telegram, would we consider recording
the Schubert Trio in B flat for Capitol Records?
The English department was publishing its own books.
The science people were getting
government grants to do research.
The drama department was bringing in directors
from England and Ireland to do plays with our students.
Of course, by that time the biggest excitement
and publicity was centered around the art department,
where Corita was doing her serigraphs.
[Mickey] I think that what drove Corita to become an artist was
the circumstance that she found herself in.
She was part of a community, and she needed to make
a contribution to that community.
And this is what came naturally to her.
In the early days, especially, I was trying to make quote,
"religious art" that would be not quite as repulsive as what was around. [laughs]
The work that Corita did was dealing with religious subjects
in a very unusual way.
So, this piece is representative of Corita's earlier work.
It's called At Cana of Galilee.
Corita's early work is very biblical,
very much the product of someone who is exploring spirituality.
The usual classical pictures of Mary and the saints
and Jesus were totally different in her eyes.
The negative reaction from the archdioceses happened right away.
[Marian] The cardinal couldn't stand Corita's art.
His idea of a Christmas card was
the child Jesus in the manger with the shepherds,
and Corita's idea of a Christmas card was a splash
of red, black, blue, green, or gold, and calligraphy.
They were very, very nice cards, we thought.
Well, the cardinal didn't,
but then he had no idea what was good art.
There are letters from the Archdiocese asking Corita
not to depict the holy family because it was disturbing to parishioners.
So, she is kind of forced to move into the direction
that she moved into with her work, where she was using a lot more text
and she was using figures because she was forbidden
from depicting the holy family, specifically.
The '60s were a time when people were saying,
"Open up your minds to what's going on."
And the college was very much part of that world.
But this was a very conservative Catholic community
in southern California,
to the degree that good Catholics
were not sending their daughters to Immaculate Heart College
because they felt it was a little dangerous.
So, at a certain point, the cardinal started censoring the faculty.
[Francis] The problem with Immaculate Heart College was that it was
very difficult for many Catholics to endure
because the one thing people hate is change.
It's very ordinary for churches and schools
who are Catholic to celebrate a day in May in honor of Mary.
[Marian] Mary's Day had been a very formal occasion.
The students all wore cap and gown
and carried white lilies. It was quite dreadful.
I guess it was the first year that
I was president of the college.
Corita herself came along and said...
And she said, "Isn't Mary's Day kind of trite
and traditional, and not utilizing all of our talents?"
And I said, "Well, yeah, probably that's so.
Are you willing to plan something better?"
Well, this Mary's Day, I guess you could say that about all
Mary's Day, that we begin by,
we tried to in the art department to make things
which will give the campus a different look.
We would try to have a theme each year,
and in those years especially, I think there was
so much happening that it was usually a social justice theme
underlying it.
Mary's Day was lots of fun.
I loved, you know, getting those flowers around my habit
and doing the dance on the lawn and...
I thought it was the kind of celebration that churches
ought to have regularly.
We did all these things to visually represent how Mary
was seen by the people at the college,
which was as an inspiration to all things good and holy.
It was picked up very quickly by the newspapers and magazines.
That, of course, drew much criticism
from the cardinal's office.
[gasps] They thought it was blasphemous.
[foreboding music playing]
The cardinal talked about Mary's Day being a scandalous thing.
Offensive to the faithful,
It wasn't his cup of tea, shall we say. [laughs]
And he kept saying that our alumni
were complaining to him.
And that's quite possible.
There were some very conservative alumni.
But he had something in for Corita, so the fact that
she was involved in the planning of it didn't help.
Clouds were gathering over that congregation.
I mean, that cardinal was not gonna put up with those uppity women.
The Immaculate Heart sisters, and all of these new ideas,
all became irritants to his perception of what should be
and what ought to be.
[woman] And then the following summer,
Corita developed these series of her prints.
That series was received publicly like wildfire.
[man] The one that drove him berserk was that one of Mary.
"She scrawled across it, " Mary,
the juiciest tomato of them all." [laughing]
Well, at that point, he had had enough.
The most dramatic moment of Cardinal McIntyre's
disapproval was he had announced that he was coming to visit us.
The general counsel was having its meeting and the cardinal
came in upon it and told us that we were becoming
much too modern, that we would have to follow what he said.
He scared me most when he said,
"If this goes on, I shall have to close the college."
At the end of the conversation he said,
"You will suffer for this."
[church bell rings]
[Clement] He was afraid.
He was afraid for the church.
Because the whole issue was caught in the middle
of a much, much larger contest.
I think that we have to trace our entire movement
back to our precedent breaking event, Vatican II.
There came about a period of profound discovery in our church.
First of all, I think it was a discovery of the modern world.
[man] The Vatican Ecumenical Council.
This is only the second in 400 years.
The council's immediate aim is to make church laws more compatible with modern times.
[man 2] The council produced 16 documents designed
to modernize the role of the church in world affairs.
All the decrees of Vatican II brought enormous change
to the culture of the church.
For instance, the mass changed to be set in the local language
instead of in Latin.
And in the pre-Vatican II days there was this whole thing
about women's blood being polluting.
And so, women were not allowed into the sanctuary.
But, you suddenly had women serving in the area around the altar.
That sent shockwaves.
- Depends on what the question is. - [all laughing]
[Pat] Cardinal McIntyre had been at the Second Vatican Council.
We think he voted against every single document that was passed.
There would only be about 11 votes against these beautiful
documents and we was sure his was one of them. [laughs]
That was a hard transition.
And I don't think that Cardinal McIntyre,
people of his generation, were reasonably prepared
for the radical nature of the change.
[Clement] People were polarized.
The church was polarized.
I'm really not happy with the change.
It's very distracting, these new modern methods they have for mass.
I think the church has a right to change.
There can be no change in the divine institution
and constitution of the church.
[Helen] In the face of all that was going on in the world,
we were in danger of becoming somewhat irrelevant
and of taking the easy way.
Do what you're told. Don't rock the boat.
And, uh, clearly we were in a boat that
needed desperately to be rocked.
At the Immaculate Heart community
we were hanging on every word that came out of Vatican II.
For us, it was a very big deal, because it
gave an official framework now with which to do the kinds
of things that we were already doing at the college.
One of the first Second Vatican Council documents
that we read was the decree of appropriate renewal of religious life.
[laughter]
Vatican II encouraged us to experiment with new ways of living.
Almost immediately we began to issue questionnaires
to our 540 members and to form commissions to talk about
the chief issues in religious life.
Testing, one, two... [speaking]
[Frances] The changes that we were discussing
were very encouraging because I found that the old convent structure
so oppressive that I didn't want to continue.
Adult women ought to be able to decide
what time they go to bed,
when they pray, and how many times, and no hierarchy
should be involved in making those decisions for us.
[all laughing]
[Marian] There were just, what I suppose many people would
think trivial things, that we no longer had to observe.
And it gave you a sense of freedom.
[Pat] One of my favorite second Vatican Council documents
is on the church in the modern world.
It just starts off by saying we should make the joys
and the anxieties and sufferings of all people our own.
[woman speaking]
Are we religious in the Roman Catholic Church comfortably
isolated from all of the petty burdens placed upon mankind?
With urban renewal and protests,
with the war in Vietnam and the cause of peace.
Can we make a contribution?
[Patrice] I like this title.
"Love trumps hate."
There I am in the corner.
Yeah.
That's right during the march.
Taking a rest. Taking a break.
I get teary-eyed just thinking about all the different things
you know, that terrible kind of hatred that built up in people.
Yelling and screaming with their little kids next to 'em calling me things.
I've never been called a whore. [chuckles]
You know, I heard that name I don't know how many times.
It was the first time I was afraid of white people.
I was scared to death of the police
and I was scared to death of every white man
that was driving a car behind us.
But that's when I realized this is how the people
had to live day after day.
The cause of justice is more important
and that always stuck in my mind.
No matter what may have to happen, you have to let go. Yeah.
It was hard.
It was also a real spiritual awakening to what
it means to really say you care for your neighbor.
♪ We shall overcome ♪
♪ Someday ♪
When Cardinal McIntyre saw my name in the Los Angeles Times,
he called Sister Anita and wanted to know who gave her permission
to go to Selma, Alabama.
[laughs]
♪ And now we've got a revolution ♪
[Sheila] One of the things you have to remember is
the Immaculate Heart sisters
were part of this youth rebellion.
The leaders might have been in their 40s and 50s,
but their enthusiastic followers
were these young nuns.
[Dorothy] The '60s were a time of civil rights
and incipient women's movement and rock 'n' roll and so on.
So all these things were
in the culture that we were breathing.
I offered the college as a site for a number of programs
critical of the Vietnam War.
[woman] There was a big peace march here in Los Angeles
and I remember the nuns in the school were marching with us
down Wilshire Boulevard.
These ladies were kick-ass and kind of subversive.
I used to demonstrate for the farmworkers.
[chanting indistinctly]
The farmworkers had called for a great boycott
because of the terrible conditions.
♪ If I have to swim the ocean ♪
Yes. [laughs]
A lot of times.
♪ It's not as simple as talking jive ♪
If you really believe something is wrong, then
it's important to put your body on the line.
So, as we started to talk about how should
we be in the modern world, our own labor issues came up.
We said that should not be the way
people are introduced to being a nun.
I mean, that has nothing to do with God or religion
or the church.
That has to do with bad management.
[man] When did you first begin to have reservations
and doubts about the kind of
formal ritual of life in this convent?
So, when I began to get the long line of sisters
coming in for personal advice,
and to understand how the institutionalization
of the whole system had been a dehumanizing one.
When I began to see people trying to be free of all these things,
then I kind of got
a burning desire to free everyone.
["Along Comes Mary" playing]
[woman] We realized that our labor problem
was at the root of everything else.
Well, after Vatican II, the order had
an official approach to deal with these issues.
♪ Every time I think that I'm the only one who's lonely ♪
♪ Someone calls on me ♪
We had these meetings,
and people complained about the conditions of their jobs,
overcrowded classrooms, sleep deprived,
and the worst of all was they weren't trained.
[speaking]
♪ And then along comes Mary ♪
♪ And does she want to set them free, and let them see reality ♪
♪ from where she got her name ♪
Then we began saying, all right, we have to stand up
and say this is what we will do,
and this is what we won't do.
Classroom size.
Sure, public schools say twenty-something.
Well, we can go up to maybe, you know, 40.
But 72?
And we had to be allowed to go to college first,
at least two years.
[speaking]
[laughter]
I have this at home. I love that.
"Passion is the very fact of God and man."
Hello, Ray.
Hello. How are you?
- I'm good. - Good to see you.
What are you doing?
I am sorting some prints.
[Lenore] Is there anything we could just use to march with?
[Ray] Yeah.
This is really pertinent.
"The rights of all men are diminished
- "when the rights of one man are threatened." - Uh-huh.
You know, I think Corita really wanted,
especially during the mid-'60s wanted to bring as much
positivity as she could to things.
And really talked about how she wanted things to be
beautiful and joyful and I don't think the anger
came in until a little bit later for her.
It seemed like more late-'60s that there was a little bit
more of an edge to her messages.
But by that time she'd been through everything
with the cardinal, and so, to me, that makes sense.
What's an example of the anger or the edge?
Um, like, the ones that are the heroes and she-roes.
It's all representative of her style of work,
but you have a piece like The American Sampler,
where she's making this intense criticism of Vietnam.
Or the putting together the Vietcong and the slave ship.
The messages that she is delivering in these pieces
are America is doing something morally wrong,
so the difference between that and God is Bread,
and Love Your Brother, seems like she's kind of like,
she flipped a switch at some point.
♪ People try to put her down ♪
[Anita] Cardinal McIntyre,
he wanted everything that Corita did,
that she created, to be supervised
by a group of parish priests,
which would have been impossible for Corita
and would have caused a good deal of laughter, really.
The way she took things like that was always as a joke.
It didn't mean anything to her.
You know, she would just not do it.
[no audio]
The negative attention that she was getting
from the Archdiocese just fueled the fire and just really kept
the snowball of her fame and her recognition going.
Corita's work was being sold.
It was on the covers of magazines.
She was having exhibits all over the world.
She was on the Christmas issue of Newsweek magazine,
as the literal cover girl for the modern nun.
[man] As she was becoming more and more famed,
she was also becoming braver.
I suppose that if you're devious enough,
I think you can work it to your own end.
To your own end.
Yes, I think sister Corita has given us
the sense that nothing need be taboo.
[woman] Corita was fortunate to be one of a dynamic group of women.
They were highly educated women who were tasting freedom
and liking the taste.
Is it thought to be a characteristic
of nuns that they should have pride?
[gasps] Oh, no. Not at all.
Humility is considered really the basic virtue
of the so-called religious virtues or virtues of the religious life.
- But, see-- - [man] You don't agree with that, do you?
Well, I do, if you define humility
rather carefully as truth.
And in that comes a very simple acknowledgment
of what you are and what you are supposed to do.
But if you think of humility as a kind of cloak,
of kind of subservience, conformity, that looks good,
but it's very easy to look humble and not be at all.
How does one judge humility, you know?
I mean, how do you measure it?
Um, which people really are humble?
It's hard to say.
[man] In keeping with the modernization of Catholic liturgy
and ecumenical thought, the tradition-bound
dress of nuns is being altered radically.
The official document that came out of Vatican II said,
"experiment in stages."
And then after a few years, good scientific method,
you re-examine them again.
So, as all the little changes and experiments continued,
we began to see more
and more discussion on the issue of the habit.
Why dressing as a medieval woman dresses
would make one more Christian, more holy?
It's hard now to figure out.
We have to drive cars, we have to board planes.
We have to do all kinds of things
that make this out of place.
[Pat speaking]
[man] Until recently, the nuns had no personal possessions
and no money.
Now they are given $20 a month to dress as modern women.
Did you look at the 14s down here or did you just look at the 12s?
I think we only looked at 12s.
Let's go down this way, then.
[woman] It wasn't universal at first.
Certain groups would try this and try that.
And then it was to be voted on.
[Anita] Somehow now with the changing into contemporary clothing,
the habit has become a symbol of a whole system
of uniformity and conformity
in which we no longer believe as we did before.
I personally would find it very difficult to return.
[man] How long is it since you've worn the habit?
Since last October, which I guess is about six months, isn't it?
[man] And now that you've got your habit on again,
do you really feel exactly the same dressed like that
as you do in your ordinary clothes?
No.
I never realized that till just now, I don't think,
but no, I don't.
That experience with him, just in a few minutes...
was a lesson for me because I had actually argued against changing
the habit in the beginning of the whole thing.
I thought it was a kind of silly issue.
[man] Does anybody here feel that it's a pity that they've removed the habit?
Well, I know that having a woman in some
kind of dress from completely another period automatically
does put up a barrier.
In this way, you know that they are people.
They are now people.
[man] I find you completely different.
I find my response to you totally different now.
And I've seen you and talked to you
in your civilian clothes.
I would want to ask you what you mean by totally different?
I feel a certain kind of...
uh, an awareness of the fact that you won't ever be able
to agree with any point of view
that I may hold on any serious subject
that will always be modified by the odor of sanctity.
And secondly, that I have got to censor my speech,
my activities, and the way I express things
so as not to put you in an awkward position.
- Abstinence. - [all laughing]
[Lenore] On the one hand, it was an exciting time,
but there were also some sisters who did not approve of the changes.
It was pretty scary, because we knew that among us
there was the sabotage of our plans.
[Pat] Gatherings of a small group were being held in our own premises.
The two people who led that group, Sister Joanne,
and Sister Eileen, were hypocrites.
Excuse me, but they were hypocrites.
[Marian] They said what they wanted was to restore the original
religious spirit in the community, which struck me
as being rather strange, because they didn't always turn up
for prayers when the rest of us did.
[Rita] Sister Eileen kept Cardinal McIntyre
totally in touch with what was happening.
I know she did.
Because she would tell us the different things that she was telling him.
They were like little spies inside the community that
reported all the little changes
and experiments to the cardinal.
She had him around her little finger
and he called her his little angel.
And I mean, it's just "blech."
It's like having an enemy within your camp.
They just decided, I guess, that there would be a conflict,
which there was.
[man clears throat]
[man] Do you know why your community is being investigated?
The cardinal decided on a new method of bringing,
um, correction into the community.
And that was by sending a group of priests
to interrogate every sister about
what she thought of the way the community was going.
[man] Don't you think it will take
too much time to fix your hair if you were to change your habit?
[man 2] Is the rule of silence being kept?
[man 3] Where will all of this experimentation
lead your community?
Each of us were interviewed several times by different representatives.
I prefer not to go into the details
because they are really rather embarrassing.
[man] Do you think the sisters' sex life
is affected by reading novels?
[man 2] Do you know how pornographic Ulysses is?
[man 3] Do you want to look like a floozy on Hollywood Boulevard?
[Anita] And then they relayed the message back to the cardinal
that our community was moving too fast
and that we were very much determined on our progression.
By the time we came to 1967,
we had an assembly for the community
as a whole to vote for all the changes
that we had been introducing.
[speaking]
Everybody had been studying the issues and we were quite
well-prepared for this assembly.
I had trepidation only, you know,
for politically what might happen to us.
We knew Cardinal McIntyre had told us very early that
unless we stopped our course of making changes
that we would pay dearly.
[Anita] Yeah.
[Lenore] My feeling was that those in authority in the Archdiocese
were intrusive and unjust.
And that as women religious,
we could determine our own destiny.
[woman] It was time to just take the bull by the horns
and vote for all the changes.
- [gavel banging] - [woman speaking]
[women speaking]
[gavel banging]
♪ You told me once I have a rebel heart ♪
- [woman] All in favor? - [women] Aye.
♪ I don't know if that's true ♪
♪ But I believe you saw something in me ♪
♪ That lives inside ♪
[woman] Proposal 27.
I remember making the motion on the floor that we make
the wearing of the habit voluntary.
And it passed.
♪ I don't know what it is ♪
♪ That makes me run ♪
♪ That makes me want to shout at everything ♪
♪ That I have done ♪
So out of that year's assembly came what are essentially
our decrees on the spirit in which we govern ourselves.
I was aware that something great was happening.
The ground was beginning to break underneath.
If you look back on it now, I feel it's really a marvelous,
incredible statement of women.
♪ Because of my rebel heart ♪
♪ Is it all because ♪
♪ Of my rebel heart? ♪
[woman] It must have been a terrible shock for the cardinal.
Because he'd never come up against anything like this before.
[man speaking]
[man] It would appear the action of the chapter
presents to the Archdiocese of Los Angeles an ultimatum.
Our policy as stated is that we wish sisters
teaching in our parochial schools to wear a uniform habit
that is immediately recognizable as the garb of a woman
dedicated to the service of God in religion.
They were expected to wear a habit in teaching
because they'd always worn a habit.
[man] It is evident therefore that the decision
rests with your community.
[Anita] Changing clothes should not make one fit or not fit
to teach at a school.
So why is that so important to him?
It was important to him
because the habit signified that we belonged to the church
and therefore we belonged under his authority also.
We just knew that nothing we would do or explain would ever
make sense to him.
[woman] Your eminence, we did not close our ears
to your request for reconsideration.
We struggled, however, to find some way in which
your authority and our autonomy might be reconciled.
At this time we conclude reluctantly
that we are indeed at an impasse.
Sincerely in Christ, the IHM sisters.
[man] My dear Mother Humiliata,
in the presence of your seeming attitude to ignore this feature,
we shall proceed to arrange for the withdrawal
of your community from our schools.
This was like a bombshell.
[Marian] I couldn't believe it.
And some people took it, I think, very hard.
He fired us from the schools, and that's a whole
lot of schools and a whole lot of people.
Two hundred some people.
For him, our leaving the schools was not good,
because he had to fill all the positions
in the schools that we left.
[Rosa] That was my class.
From six years of age on,
I wanted to be with the Immaculate Heart sisters.
So, I went to Queen of Angels Elementary
and Queen of Angels High School.
During the time of the changes in their group.
There.
They helped me to expand what I knew about the world
and to think critically,
to question authority.
I think that that was a very important thing for...
for young women of color to be able to absorb.
[man] This Catholic high school
in downtown Los Angeles will be closed for lack of staff
when the sisters of the Immaculate Heart leave the classrooms.
The school specializes in giving chances to children from racial minorities.
[Rosa] It was easier, I guess, to close that school down,
than to close down another place where there were people
with more resources.
[man speaking]
- No. Not at all. - No. Not at all.
Yes, I know those girls.
Although it does hurt us, and it hurts us very deeply.
We welcome it in a way,
because we know that this change has been...
It's been a long time coming, and we need it.
When I was there, we had books that were falling apart in our hands,
and they were very outdated.
And the classes were crowded,
fifty kids plus to one teacher.
And many times that teacher was fresh out of high school herself.
We're still willing to do it because we know that
the sisters are a very small part of a large movement
that has to take place and is going to take place.
These girls were demonstrating in front of the Chancery Office
to ask the cardinal to leave our school open.
They said that he met with them
but he had nothing to say to them
except, "May God have mercy on your soul,"
and sent them on their way, and they came down in tears
because the school was gonna be closed no matter what.
I downright hated the cardinal for several years.
I would say that that whole incident taught me that
the church could manipulate words and human lives.
But I'm not the only one that got hurt by an institution.
After we were fired from the schools, I went to Rome,
to the Vatican, and presented our case against the cardinal.
[Mary] Other communities were very supportive.
They were right behind us.
You know, I was mobbed by various sisters of various communities.
"Tell us, what's the latest? What's happening?"
And then, in November of 1967, we were sent notice
from Rome that they were sending a priest to us.
This priest visited. His name was Father Gallagher.
And when he came,
we were immediately struck by his lack of friendliness
and we knew that he was going to be very critical of us.
After some months, he sent what became a rather historical document,
the famous Four Points.
This document was shaking, because it became widely publicized.
It was not just a letter destined solely for us
as Immaculate Heart sisters,
it was a letter to the whole United States,
every sister in the United States.
By order of Rome, these were the points to be followed.
[woman speaking]
[Anita] It said we had to follow the same prayer schedule
for everybody at the same time.
In other words, every sister was to be a teacher.
We were to follow the regulations of the cardinal.
He was the boss.
Wear a uniform habit.
The sisters were shaken that an outside force could tell us
what to do.
When the Immaculate Heart situation occurred,
it was necessary then to set out guidelines which would influence
the other religious communities of women.
The Immaculate Heart sisters really set the tone for a lot
of other nuns, and that was really the big problem.
Um, because the, um...
You know...
They drifted away from authority
and then you're really in trouble.
[church bell rings]
[woman] After that, the cardinal requested from Rome
a team of bishops who were going to come and see
whether they could convince us to do what we were told to do.
We were all invited down to the old convent parlor.
We were all sitting around the parlor.
There were questions and answers back and forth.
So, what these bishops told us to do
was to just really pretend.
To say that we had a habit, but don't wear it.
Just leave it in the closet.
Say that we had a uniform schedule of prayers,
but don't follow it.
I mean, why should we lie?
Why should we pretend something that wasn't true?
To suggest those ways of going about it was just...
It was just too much.
[Anita] We said we did not feel that this
was in line with the present way we were thinking,
so the bishop said that if we were going to rebel against
the Four Points or not follow them
that we could not be accounted real sisters.
That meant that we were faced with the possibility of
giving up the vows which we had pronounced years before.
[Mary] At that point, Corita raised her hand and she said,
"I have one question.
What would Jesus say?"
One of them went... [mouths]
With his mouth and he was quite taken aback by that.
They told us, well, we should make up our minds
and announce our decision to Rome.
[Ann] It was hard.
They didn't want us to change.
They couldn't figure out why we are making such a fuss about,
well, just hang the habit in the closet.
But it wasn't just the habit.
It was a lot of things.
If you can imagine going into the classroom and trying
to teach fifth grade science when you have no idea
what the fifth-grade science, except what the book tells you.
- [all chuckling] - And we just felt that we were doing something
that we believed in for the good of our community
and for the good of the church.
We relished the whole idea of, if we are going to move ahead,
we are moving ahead.
We are not gonna be old-fashioned nuns anymore.
And once you start changing...
you don't put the genie back in the bottle.
You can't go back.
- [woman 1] Yes. - [woman 2] Yes.
You know, we fought for three years, in the press,
in Rome, everywhere we could.
And then the decision came down, you either have to obey
the cardinal or you cannot be nuns.
We had a huge meeting.
TV cameras were outside and newspaper reporters.
One of the crucial disputes over modernization
of the Catholic Church has centered here
at the Immaculate Heart convent in Hollywood.
They nuns will now be polled to see how they will divide up.
Sister Eileen got up and cried.
She could cry very easily.
And she cried and said something like,
"There are many sisters who want to stay with me"
and want to have the kind of religious life
"they entered the community for."
And then, I remember Anita herself
at that meeting said...
"This decision has come to us as a community."
What that means in the plan of God, I do not know.
[woman] I have felt for some time that the IHMs
are being asked to read the signs of the times, to forge ahead,
to begin with enthusiasm to work at a community of hope.
It is possible that such a group
will have to ask for dispensation from public vows.
Our decrees pledge us to an unending search for personhood,
vigilant and constant concern with the destructive forces in our society,
a willingness to welcome diversity,
not merely to tolerate it, and a condemnation
with the clarity of Christ of the primary evil, hypocrisy,
especially religious hypocrisy.
With confidence and peace...
I will carry out what I think is my duty.
"It's up to you to make a conscientious personal decision."
They sent out a paper and you had,
I don't know, maybe two or three weeks to make up your mind
before you sent the paper back in.
It was not an easy decision.
It wasn't change I objected to, but,
I knew it was a choice between having vows and not having vows.
And I wanted to live
a vow of life, so I did not sign.
Some of them said they believed everything that we were doing,
but they couldn't bring themselves to sign the paper.
And...
That was really very moving.
This was a community that I'd given my life to,
it was the work I'd given my life to,
and I saw it breaking apart.
I had friends who simply left around that time.
I remember walking down the driveway
and we were all talking about what was going to happen
and Corita said to me that she was going on a sabbatical in Boston.
[man speaking]
- Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. - Okay, yeah.
- Um... - I was shocked when Corita didn't come back.
[man] She left not only the order, she left the church.
She was scandalized by what had gone on
and what was done to her and the others.
I think she really thought that the church did not deserve our devotion.
We did take vows, poverty, chastity, and obedience.
But there came a point where conscience said...
we will not be dictated to or shaped by a power that oppresses.
[woman] I heard someone comment about us earlier, and by us,
I mean the sisters, but it wasn't so important that we survived,
but that we should survive with style.
And that if you couldn't do it with style,
it would be better not to survive.
[Patrice] I remember sitting at the table
and, um, reading it over and over.
And I kept saying, "Hey, I've got to sign this.
[chuckles] This is it."
You know?
And yet, you know, how sad that this has to happen,
but I signed it.
Should I address you as Sister Kelley,
or President Kelley today?
Well, Sister Kelley is appropriate I think, still.
How do you think the Roman Catholic community
in Los Angeles will react to this?
Mixed.
I think, a number of lay Catholics would like it to stay the way it was.
Everything else is moving, why can't the sisters at least
stand still and give us some indication of stability?
Well, I do think that's the way to be stable anymore.
[Mary] We didn't know how many sisters would sign
the dispensations of vows.
But as it turned out, you know, hundreds did.
[group singing]
[man] 315 of the 400 sisters moved out
of the formal structure
of the Roman Catholic Church to establish a secular group.
Nearly the whole community dispensed from their vows
and they were going to still form a new community.
That was something totally novel.
♪ Turning down sorrow ♪
We decided that we would become a lay community,
devoted to the works of religion,
following all the changes that we had made in the '67 assembly.
You left the church.
No, it doesn't mean we left the church.
We are still Roman Catholics,
but we left the formal structure of religious life.
That means you are no longer, in effect then, nuns.
That's correct.
[Karol] They look pretty good, don't they?
Look at them, some of them have hairdos even.
- Mm-hmm. - Here's Mary Mark, the musician.
Yeah. Anita, right?
- Yeah. - [man] Now, were you in this picture?
No. I came the next year.
- Oh, okay. - Yeah.
[Karol] You can imagine how challenging
it might have been in the early '70s
as the community started tiptoeing into this world.
♪ You've come a long way, baby ♪
♪ To get where you've got to today ♪
[Sheila] By 1970, although women had gained certain basic freedoms,
they still had a much worse deal of it.
Susan, I just went over the bills.
[Sheila] You know, like, you can get credit.
If they went out to buy a washing machine,
the husband had to sign for it.
Boy, here's real emancipation from old-fashioned chores.
It was a huge step no longer to be nuns.
And we didn't fit into any category.
[Ruth] Anita was very smart.
She advised all our institutions,
like the high school and the college,
to incorporate separately,
so that the church couldn't acquire our property.
[Sheila] They were able to keep their property
like the Immaculate Heart College and High School,
Which I think perhaps surprised McIntyre [laughs] when he found out.
[Pat] I was teaching at the college,
so a lot of the things didn't really affect me too much.
But for all the sisters that were kicked out
of the parochial school convents,
and had to scramble to get a job, to find a place to live,
to get a car if they needed it for transportation,
I think they're the ones who experienced the most pain.
[Lucille] I was a teacher,
and we were put out of the school convents.
People were literally told to leave the convents.
They had nowhere to go.
I'm 48 years old, I didn't have one cent.
It was a very difficult time.
I mean, we had nothing, you know.
We were scrambling to make financial arrangements
and doing all the things that I would imagine a divorced person does.
I think the things that saved us was that
there were so many of us in it together.
[Karol] In a sense, the challenges that the community was facing
fed our change.
We were impelled to find our feet.
We were moving out into smaller clusters of houses
where three or four or five IHMs were living together.
Whoever had a TV with the biggest living room,
everybody gathered and watched TV.
[commentator] Passed the ball for UCLA.
And some of them were interested in football or basketball.
And it just struck me, of course, they're real women.
We were finding work appropriate to our training
and also to what we were moved to do.
[man] Sister Rita Rose Grillo runs the house
where four young girls on parole
can learn to live in a family setting.
[woman] For the first time, I was asked,
what would you like to do?
Do you feel in your heart you may have caused
damage to the image of the church?
No, I would think that really we have made
a contribution in opening up a new kind of community,
which, in effect, may revive religious life,
which is having a pretty hard struggle right now.
[church bells ring]
[choir singing]
[Sheila] After 1968, there was this period of reaction
to the reforms that came out of Vatican II.
The Vatican was very afraid of dissent
getting out of control.
♪ Open your heart to the Lord ♪
The nuns' rebellion may spread
to other religious communities.
I like the changes.
I feel happier.
I'm scared to death, but it's worth it.
Definitively, the period of renewal was over.
[chanting in Latin]
And since that time, the numbers of nuns have significantly declined.
There is this general sense that the church has
just stood still, but of course,
you can't really stand still,
you either change or you become part of the problem.
[Cardinal McIntyre] With a heart full of gratitude and affection,
I surrender my official position.
[Clement] Cardinal McIntyre retired in January 1970.
[man] Has the recent controversy
surrounding the Archdiocese
had anything to do with your retirement?
Absolutely none.
[Clement] I think his tragic contest with the Immaculate Hearts
was his greatest mistake.
He devastated an entire community of dedicated,
holy women, where it could have been negotiated.
It was a costly decision, I'm sure both for him and for us.
I wish I had the kind of confidence in what heaven
is going to be like that some of my friends have,
and to know that I will have a chance
to shake Cardinal McIntyre's hand without kissing his ring.
"And saying, " What really was going through your mind then?
"Do you think it all worked out?"
[Doris] There are about 20 of us who live here.
Everyone you see is somebody who stood their ground,
stood her ground.
All of us lived through this whole period of time.
-Uh, today is my anniversary, and so 60 years ago today -Oh, wow.
I entered the Immaculate Heart community.
- I lived with you in Santa Barbara. - Joann and I lived together.
For a lifetime I've met some wonderful people, not here, but...
[laughter]
I'm just kidding.
[gentle piano music playing]
When we formed the new community, many people said,
"We'll give it five years, you know,
and then it will fall apart."
[woman] Hopefully all kinds of people could be members of the community.
Why not have men members? Why not have married couples?
[man] Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Small have applied for membership
in the Immaculate Heart community.
We started welcoming Christians of other faiths besides Roman Catholic.
[woman] We want to leave ourselves as open as we can.
And if it can't work, I think it's just a sign that
it's bad times for the world.
[man] This is the day of the last graduation.
Immaculate Heart College is closing.
Women students were being siphoned off by co-educational institutions.
So economics killed us in the end.
[exclaims]
Even though the college closed,
the high school stayed open
and the community continued to grow.
Stop the death penalty.
Reform the prisons.
[all chanting] United, we'll never be defeated.
[crowd applauding]
[Rosa] I had wanted to join the sisters,
but it was at a time when the sisters pretty much disbanded
and became the community.
Quite frankly, I ended up just getting married and having children.
But I saw that these children are gonna go on their way
and I need my life.
And by that time, the community was more established
and I was able to get in.
[slow music playing]
[all clapping]
[indistinct chatter]
[Karol] About half of the community now are people who have been
with the community the whole time.
And the other half joined the community after 1970.
We work to be a reflection on Mary because how the church
sees Mary impacts how the world sees women.
[all] ♪ Salve Regina Mater... ♪
Women in the church are still struggling for equality,
so we are fortunate that we have ordained women priests
as part of our Immaculate Heart community.
[all] Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
The Immaculate Heart sisters taught me
you must follow your conscience.
Even if it goes against what the pope himself has to say.
If every woman who is theologically educated leaves
the Catholic Church, who will call it to change?
[all] All glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever. Amen.
The movement is a movement. By definition it keeps going.
- [indistinct chatter] - Hi, how are you?
[all applauding]
- [woman speaking] - Yes.
Yes.
- [woman] Absolutely. - [all clapping]
I was an intern for the Corita Art Center this summer.
- Yeah. - But I'm also an Immaculate Heart alum.
So, we're long-time fans.
[Corita] I think that's one of the best things
that's happening in the world
is the fact that we're realizing
more deeply that awful things are happening in the world.
Because we all know what happens to things
that are buried under the rug.
They don't just stay there, they get worse.
[Patrice] I get teary-eyed just thinking about recent
awful things that happened.
I remember I burst into tears when I was watching it on the TV.
And that just brought back a lot of memories.
And I kept saying, "God, it hasn't changed much."
But when you bring the horrible things up to view,
then you have people who say, "Let's do something about it."
And they start to do it."
[Pat] It's not just a gender issue for me,
because I see the interconnection between
sexism, racism, ageism,
homophobia, colonialism.
All of those forms of domination are interlinked.
If our survival is to be truly stylish,
the cautions are to be interjected.
It is a plea for protest not without anger,
but without hatred or contempt.
Protest exercised through ridicule,
no matter how effective, seems to me
to be sowing the seeds of backlash and new hatred.
Here, at least, today at least,
our protests ought to be celebrated in joy.
Such protest with joy has the power to transform all who are party to it.
It was the genesis of an egalitarian spirit that moved these women.
It's easier to see that now.
If you fit in, you are not a prophet.
They didn't fit in.
[Helen] The passion for justice still drives us.
May it even until the end of time.
["Secret Sister" by Rufus Wainwright playing]
♪ Another day begins ♪
♪ Another flower blooms How you doin'? ♪
♪ Secret sister ♪
♪ Another perfect sun ♪
♪ Another fallen star What you thinkin'? ♪
♪ Secret sister ♪
♪ The galaxy is wide ♪
♪ And I still cannot hide from the roses ♪
♪ My desire ♪
♪ We're stepping on the streets ♪
- ♪ And all the people's eyes ♪ - ♪ And all the people's eyes ♪
♪ All we can do is meet ♪
♪ I'll make... small ♪
♪ Secret sister ♪
♪ The grass is always green ♪
♪ Beneath your simple shoes take me with you ♪
♪ Secret sister ♪
♪ I used to think the world ♪
♪ A sweet and lovely place ♪
♪ When you couldn't ♪
♪ From the shadow ♪
♪ But now the waves have won ♪
♪ And the fires are come back to the valley ♪
♪ Oh, the Immaculate Conception ♪
♪ We're stepping on the streets ♪
- ♪ In all the people's eyes ♪ - ♪ In all the people's eyes ♪
♪ And all you can do is meet ♪
♪ And all we can do is meet ♪
♪ I'll make her in the suffering smile ♪
♪ Let's go down in the midst ♪
♪ You're covered in my hand ♪
♪ Where we shall go and meet ♪
♪ I'll meet her in this troubled land ♪
♪ Secret sister ♪
♪ Over troubled land ♪
♪ Secret sister ♪
♪ Over troubled land ♪