Sisters & Daughters

A warm, honest article by Robert Miola in First Things. Though a professor of Early Modern Catholicism at Loyola, he had some difficulties watching his daughters enter convents.

But then, in 2005, I find myself saying with dismay, “You can’t be serious.” Another daughter, Rachel this time, looks at me with deep blue eyes. Her lip quivers. Robert Kaske’s book of medieval sources, my gift to her before she heads to graduate school at Notre Dame, sits on the table, already a relic from another dispensation.

“You are wholly different from Chrissy and wholly unfit for that life,” I insist. “She loves rules and you can’t stand them. You were a feminist at the University of Chicago, and this is a life of submission and obedience.”

She struggles to remain calm. “It’s not a matter of rules or my sister. It’s not even a matter of who I am, and, I’m not sure you know me anymore anyway. Don’t you trust that I have thought about this at length?” Her temperature rises. “Do you really want to argue with joy now and the hope of eternal life later?” she says sharply.