View from the Pew Mary Adamski

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‘Sister-Moms’

Two Oahu nuns who took their vows after raising families reflect on why they chose to leave secular life behind

Sister Pat Schofield and Sister Judy Resta share jobs as hospital chaplains and commitment to vows as Catholic nuns.

They also share stories about their children and grandchildren.

They are among a rare few "Sister-Moms" in the country, women who felt called to a religious vocation in midlife after losing their husbands and raising their children.

Schofield was 59 and had worked for 30 years as a public school teacher when she took her vows with the Sisters of St. Francis in Syracuse, N.Y., in May 2004. She moved to Hawaii earlier this year and is adapting to the stress of time zones, keeping in touch with six children and 13 grandchildren scattered in New York, Texas, North Carolina and Nevada.

Resta was 48 when she entered the Sisters for Christian Community in Florida in 1993. Her four children were there when she took her final vows of poverty, chastity and obedience in January 1997. She moved to Honolulu less than a year later, with doctor's orders to seek a warm climate and the incentive that her two sons live here.

His mother's choice "seemed like a natural fit," said son Nick Resta, who works as a surfboard finisher on Oahu. "To me it was like she met another husband. I was 25 when she committed. In a lot of ways, I was relieved. She was in a group that was committed back to her.

"In the beginning it was a novelty. My Mom's a nun -- it's fun to explain," he said. The announcement invariably brings a barrage of questions about how that is possible. He and his brother, Bill, their wives and Bill's son are her family in Hawaii. Two daughters and her other five grandchildren are in California and Florida.

Sister-Mom is not a new concept. Elizabeth Ann Seton, the first American-born saint, was a mother with grown children when she founded the Sisters of Charity in the early 1800s.

For both women the choice to join a religious order came after years of being active in Catholic parishes. Both were encouraged to explore the path by priests and nuns they knew. The vows that might seem a burden to some are just about walking with God, said Resta.

"Poverty is seen as being open to serve in all places," she said. "Chastity is loving all people at all times. Obedience is listening to the call of the Holy Spirit in our lives, how God is leading me to serve."

Schofield said her choice was "the calling to be closer to God, to live the Gospel." Her sisters in the order "are a beautiful support group."

She said, "My youngest son gave me a hard time. He said, 'You worked so hard for your pension, why give it up?' Yet he's the one who sticks by me now."

"My dad was happy," said Schofield -- and two months later he saw his younger daughter ordained a Methodist minister.

The two nuns paused from their duties as patient advocates and chaplains at St. Francis Medical Center West last week to compare thick snapshot albums that are so typical of mothers and grandmothers.

"Two sons were candle bearers, my daughter and stepdaughter were greeters," said Schofield, showing photos of the celebration when she took her vows. That was the formal entry, but her commitment to the Franciscans dates back to 1990, when she joined up as a secular Franciscan. One daughter and her mother-in-law also became lay members of the order, committing to live "the rule of St. Francis ... trying to live the Gospel life." In 1998 she entered the convent, going through the years of formation that are required of candidates.

"I had four children and brought up four others," said Schofield, who is from Utica, N.Y. She was first married at 22, divorced and then married a man with four children. The second marriage also ended in divorce. One stepchild has died, and the other is out of touch, she said.

The vow of poverty was not a lifestyle change for Resta, who tells anecdotes of the struggle to support four children after her husband left. "If I could pull it together with kids 8, 9, 10, 11 and teaching in Catholic school, I could do anything," she recalls. She is also divorced and was, as are all Sister-Moms, required to get the marriage annulled in order to become a nun.

She said her early start as a multitasking mother paid off last summer when she organized the international assembly of the Sisters for Christian Community, which brought 125 sisters to Hawaii.

Resta's religious order is a "different profile" from the one founded by St. Francis in the Middle Ages, based in a monastic rule of communal life. There are no convents; she lives on her own in a Palolo apartment and is required to be self-supporting. She is active in her Kaimuki parish, playing guitar with the choir at St. Patrick Church.

Schofield lives in a Liliha convent, bringing her paycheck back to the religious order, which has more than 50 members in Hawaii.

With previous experience as a chaplain and patient advocate in Syracuse, Schofield is comfortable sharing her dual careers with patients and their families who might assume that a nun has been sheltered from domestic situations that trouble them.

"As they talk about themselves and what's going on, I'm able to say I've gone through that with my children," Schofield said. "I've gone through some of the pains they've gone through. They begin to say more about themselves and what's going on with them. Sometimes it is things happening in the home that give more grief than their illness."

Resta said she does not introduce her status into conversations, particularly with other nuns. She attends social and professional events with nuns from other orders, but there is only one other member of the Sisters for Christian Community living in Hawaii.

"When you talk about your children, and they didn't have the opportunity to have children ... some resent it," she said. "I try to let them bring it up first."

But there is a network of support out there. Sister-Moms were organized by Sister Bea Keller of Louisville, Ky. There are about 100 of them who are as close as an e-mail message, said Resta.

"Whatever's happening in your family, there's someone who's had the same experience." The group holds annual conventions. Its newsletter WOW stands for Women of Wisdom. And there's no surprise about what WOW spells if you look at it upside down.