The Veil of Woundedness

Recently several religious sisters from my former community passed away. Despite the pain and incredible heartache that I still feel almost four years later after unjustly leaving the convent, I still feel a great sense of grief and sorrow when I learn of the death of any of the sisters.

Although I experienced daily mistreatment from my novice director, and the blind eye of the Mother Superior, I loved the religious life with my entire heart and soul, my whole being, and I loved those sisters as my family, even the sister who treated me so horribly. Religious life was the best and worst years of my life.

Despite the hurt of losing my vocation to the religious life because of my novice director’s intentional actions, which she admitted to me the day I left, I look back now and understand that she is an incredibly wounded woman who needs a tremendous amount of healing. I do hope that one day the community gets her the help that she needs to heal from the trauma of her past. We all have wounds, but that does not give us a pass to purposely wound others, and in the case of religious life, it does not give a formator the right to destroy a vocation. 

After speaking with a multitude of women who have been abused in various religious communities, time and time again the consensus is that wounded women wound other women when they do not receive help to heal, and sadly these wounded women are often in charge of formation and are the superiors of the communities.

Vocations are severely declining and the unspoken truth is that it is largely due to this serious problem in the religious life. Frequently, community leaders fail to provide the essential support that women grappling with their past emotional pain urgently require, be it through counseling or the consideration of medication. The unfortunate result is that they continue to be allowed to harm young women who enter religious life.

Some may wonder why those of us who leave may not turn to the diocese for help; number one to report abuse that takes place, and two to try to get the help necessary for the sisters who abused us. Many of us have tried, and have failed to be heard by the leaders of our Church. 

Abuse in the convent although slowly becoming unveiled more and more is still a taboo issue in the Church. Yet I am encouraged by the recent book by Don Dysmas de Lassus, “Abuses in the Religious Life and the Path to Healing,” which exposes many of the abuses that are taking place in religious communities by means of testimonies.

Perhaps it is because of the priest scandals that the Church simply cannot handle the truth that there is scandal in the religious life as well. But one day I truly believe that in God’s timing the truth will be ultimately revealed and there will be no more sweeping it under the rug.

The Church simply cannot afford to ignore this truth any longer. Abuse in the convent is real, and many women either leave by choice or by being asked to leave because of wounded formators and superiors who never received the help that they so desperately need from their own community.

My heart still breaks for my formation director who outright said “I am not mentally well. Please forgive me” right before I walked out of the convent forever. I do hope that one day she has the courage to ask for help, or that the community can see that she needs help.

My heart is still heavy knowing that the Mother Superior was aware of the abuse and did nothing. I made it known to one of the other formators who was on the council, and one of the others in formation at the time reported directly to the Mother Superior about the abuses she was enduring and observing before her eyes. No one was going to stop the emotional, spiritual, verbal, and psychological abuse that was a constant part of the religious life for us. 

We were constantly on the defense at all costs to protect ourselves from the abuse. And the end result was that we both had to leave instead of the community seeking help for the director.

These missionary-contemplative sisters in New York are sadly yet another community losing more sisters than are remaining in their convent. Currently, they appear to have no postulants or novices, and only four temporary professed sisters. It is unfortunate that the community has become a revolving door of vocations since they make many more women leave than they permit to stay there. 

Far too many communities are in denial that they need to take necessary steps to fix their formation program, which means in reality to stop having the wrong women be in charge of formation, women who need to heal first before they can be responsible for the vocation of another. Mentally unstable women should not be formators, and that’s the honest truth.

The community's charism is truly beautiful, and I cherished my vocation to be a Bride of Christ during the brief period I had the blessing to live it, despite the challenges of enduring abuse from my director. This community does include many remarkable sisters.

The older sisters were a beautiful and inspirational model of a religious sister, and I am forever grateful for having the opportunity to know them and I will always cherish our dinner conversations when we were permitted to sit with them, and the games we would play together on liturgical days of celebration, such as Christmas and Easter.  I learned so much from them, and how I can continue to live the charism of the community in the world.

The convent will always be in my heart and I will always love what the vocation to the religious life is supposed to be in this world, and not what it has become in far too many communities with wounded superiors and wounded formators who are paralyzing their own communities and suffering from a stillbirth with regards to vocations. 

During this Easter Season I ask you to please pray for religious sisters, especially those who have leadership roles, and are struggling with mental illness, that they one day be brave and seek the help that they need to heal in this life and authentically live out their vocations.