One could argue that this story begins not in 1984, when Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey joined 22 other nuns, four priests and some 60 of the laity in signing a New York Times advertisement explaining that there were many viewpoints within the Roman Catholic Church on the subject of abortion.
It might have started between 1962 and 1965 at the 2nd Vatican Council, when Pope John XXIII unleashed the movement for change that would sweep through American Catholicism.
Or it might have started at the turn of the century, when blossoming feminism began drawing American women into politics.
Or it might have started much earlier than that, when the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church was creating its own history, written by men in a church structure built on an elaborate rationale that viewed women as something less than fully developed (while men represented the true image of Jesus.)
No matter when it began, it carried Ferraro and Hussey through the turmoil of the 1960s and `70s to the very heart of the Catholic mission for social justice and into a difficult conflict with the Vatican over the issue of abortion.
The last unreformed signers of the New York Times ad (everyone else apparently managed accommodations that calmed the wrath of the Vatican), they were stamped by the media ”the Abortion Nuns.”
They resigned as Sisters of Notre Dame two years ago, although they continue to work at Covenant House in Charleston, W.Va., a shelter for the homeless.
With the help of author Jane O`Reilly, they have written a book, ”No Turning Back” (Poseidon Press, $19.95), on one level a story about nuns and abortion, and on another a chronicle of what has happened within the Catholic Church over the last three decades.
The book is thoughtful and engaging.
It argues that there are really two Catholic churches, one of the hierarchy and another of the ”people of God” who are engaged in an honest struggle to define and understand their own beliefs without returning to the blind obedience and unquestioning loyalty of pre-Vatican II Catholicism.
Undoubtedly, the book will affirm the position of pro-choice Catholics even as it angers the institutional church and the many opponents of abortion. Beyond abortion, the book also traces the quantum leap many nuns took between 1968 and 1980 as they became by far the best-educated element within the Catholic Church.
Many embraced a strong feminism that led them to question the church`s position on women and, by extension, its position on abortion, birth control and the ordination of women as priests.
This experience carried them from the insular world of the old convent, where silent nuns carried out the directives of their orders and kept a blessed distance from everyone, to the open world of the modern convent, where the emphasis is on mixing with the world and attacking its problems.
Ferraro and Hussey believed that their moral and social contract with the Sisters of Notre Dame obliged them to attack injustice.
Their troubles began when they decided to fight what they concluded was injustice within the church itself.
”I think the line in the book that is really telling is when (you) said that you had found that to live your commitment to God, you had to leave the community, had to stop being a nun,” said Ferraro, 46, referring to Hussey, 40.
”The very challenge, the very commitment we revered as Sisters of Notre Dame from our own constitution moved us to where we went.
”And it was very unfortunate we found that out because we took it seriously; we got punished.”
Their signatures on the New York Times ad served only as a focal point in this battle, with the church pressuring them to withdraw their names and recognize its position on abortion or face dismissal from their order.
Ferraro and Hussey used the opportunity to expand their research into abortion history and the role of women within the church.
”The bishops and the pope have called for equality in society and fair wages in society, but they don`t even call for that within the church itself,” said Ferraro, in Chicago with Hussey on a recent book tour.
”How can you advocate that in society and not within your own church structure?”
”I think what we saw was that it was OK to deal with repression in society,” Hussey said, ”it was OK to deal with the social issues of change, it was OK to deal with injustice in Latin America, it was all right to speak against the government of El Salvador. It was OK to do that as nuns.
”But when we began to get close to criticizing, to critiquing, to condemning what exists within the Catholic Church in terms of injustice, in terms of the abortion issue, in terms of divorce . . . all of a sudden, the barriers went up for nuns.”
The theme of ordination occupied a great deal of time for the post-Vatican II nuns, many of whom viewed ordination of women as the best solution to the priest shortage.
That would lead to frustration, too.
As nuns, Ferraro and Hussey found themselves in a social and religious limbo, not quite ordained clergy of the Catholic Church and not quite laity.
Nuns were leaving their orders in legions, and priests were walking away from their own ordination vows. But the hope that the church would change its position was futile.
Almost all of the elements that brought turmoil to the lives of these two former nuns were the products of modern times.
When they entered the convent no one had had to worry much about abortion, sexism and the role of women in the church.
Barbara Ferraro entered the Sisters of Notre Dame in 1962, when the Catholic Church was still a symbol of unchanging stability, preserved in clouds of incense and locked in large old churches, many run like duchies by parish pastors.
Nuns were certainly among the chosen in this vast empire, people who had heard God`s call to a ”vocation.”
They wore strange clothing that set them aside from the rest of society and lived in large convents, where they could pray and offer up sacrifices that took the form of vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
Most taught in Catholic elementary and high schools.
Nuns were a great economic bargain for this old-style church, well-educated women who worked for nothing more than a small stipend and a contribution to their orders to cover medical benefits.
Becoming a nun was not easy, not simply a matter of declaring one`s intentions and cutting one`s hair.
Ferraro, who comes across in the book as likable and constantly amazed by what the fates had delivered, describes early convent life in detail, down to kissing the floor to display humility and wearing a sharp, painful little chain called a celice around her arm to remind her of Christ`s suffering.
As a teenager she wanted to find a safe harbor in the convent for her own spiritual needs, an expectation that was shattered as she learned that even religious institutions are made up of people with all their flaws and prejudices intact.
It also was something of a shock to learn that nuns were expected to avoid the many commitments of true friendship.
Shifting from the warmth and support of a large family in Cambridge, Mass., to the enforced silence of the convent was a difficult transition for Ferraro, who entered the convent right out of high school.
”Mortification was the point,” Ferraro wrote.
”The admission of sinfulness was the beginning of the road to a higher spirituality.”
But Ferraro believed in her mission. In 1965 she took her vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
”I believed then, as I do now, that my vows were spoken to God and not to the institutional church,” she said.
”I did not make them to the pope. I was speaking to God and the people I would work with . . . .”
Two years after Ferraro made her vows, Patricia Ann Hussey, of Springfield, Mass., joined the Sisters of Notre Dame out of high school.
Already the convent was being transformed by what had happened at Vatican II.
She liked the order because it served all over the world, she had a vague interest in becoming a missionary and she loved some of the nuns who taught her in grade school.
”The days passed in a pleasant enough cycle of chores, prayers and lessons,” Hussey said.
”I was learning a part, the role of a nun, but it didn`t seem quite real. I was waiting for it to connect to my vision of myself, all in white, bringing grace to the lands of the equator, a kind of Lady Bountiful of the Beatitudes.”
By 1980 when Hussey was ready, nuns were writing their own final vows.
She specified in her invitations that because sexism was alive in church and women were discriminated against, there would be no mass.
”The Gospel inspires me, the call to create a world more justly loving challenges me and the spirit of our foundress . . . continues to call me to commit myself to the cause of the poor and powerless,” her vows said in part. ”A big part of our constitution over the last two decades was that we would fight oppression and injustice as it exists in the church and in society,” she said, ”and that is still very much a part of me. It`s something that I live by every day. It`s something that I hope I can continue to live by.”
Ferraro and Hussey followed separate courses in their early years as nuns, but those paths crossed in Chicago, where both pursued graduate degrees. Ferraro received her masters from Loyola and a Ph.D. from McCormick Theological Seminary.
Hussey got a masters from the Jesuit School of Theology, now a part of Loyola.
The convent was changing. Nuns were expected to pursue their own careers. This new career path carried Ferraro and Hussey to Covenant House in West Virginia.
Their positions on abortion, both said, stemmed from their experiences with incest victims and women who were confronted by unwanted pregnancies, along with their feminism and experiences with the church hierarchy.
Their battle with the Vatican played out over the years as the hierarchy moved with the speed of molasses to resolve its problem with the troublesome nuns and priests.
There were many letters up through the bureaucracy, lots of official rumbling from Rome, meetings and a final session with authorities who tried everything from reminders that their parents would be upset if they were booted out of the order to fatherly assurances that the church still loved them.
But it never came to dismissal. They left their order on their own because they no longer could be who they were and still be nuns.
Hussey and Ferraro are active in West Virginia Catholics for Choice, the local branch of the pro-choice group that backed them during their battle with Rome. They recently joined 36 other original signers of the New York Times ad in reaffirming their stand on abortion.
Have their lives changed much since they quit?
”You don`t have to be a nun to do good works,” Ferraro said.
”For us, you know, your values don`t change just because you have a different title.”
