An early proponent of education for girls & women
I know that I can't be the only non-Catholic woman to harbor a nun fetish. I think that there are many closeted nuns but, we are afraid to come out and do anything about it because it means not only converting to Catholicism, but, also renouncing all the fun, earthy pleasures*we still very much enjoy. (*My list: Sex, travel, good wine, artisan goat cheese, cake, & Viggo Mortensen. Apparently, it's not that I don't love God enough, it just that I can't taste him or, watch him fight bad guys naked on film.)
"Angela's methods were far removed from the modern idea of a convent school; she preferred to send her associates to teach girls in their own families, and one of her favorite sayings was, 'Disorder in society is the result of disorder in the family'. It was by educating children in the milieu in which they lived that she strove to effect an improvement in social conditions."- http://www.cin.org/saints/merici.html
But, I have recently discovered that there is someone who has already done it all for me: Saint Angela. I wasn't named for her but, it would have been fine with me if I had for, she dedicated herself to helping educate girls, specifically those who did not or would not marry. Back in her day, an unmarried woman was basically relegated to a life of servitude. Which wasn't all that different from being a married woman, only, it came without any of the protections such as a husband might occasionally offer.
Angela Merici was born in Desenzano del Garda (about halfway between Milan and Venice) sometime around 1474. She is most noted for founding the order of the Ursulines, a group of nuns named for Saint Ursula, patron saint of students. The Ursulines believed in working out in the world, uncloistered which was very unusual at the time. (Though I have read that St Charles Borremeo eventually saw to it that the Ursulines were cloistered like all other nuns at the time: "In reality she was in advance of her own times. Her plan of religious women without distinctive habit, without solemn vows and enclosure, was directly contrary to prevailing notions at her period, and under the influence of St. Charles Borromeo at Milan and subsequent papal legislation (under St Pius V) the Ursulines were obliged to adopt the canonical safeguards then required of all nuns." - http://www.cin.org/saints/merici.html)
Orphaned as a young girl along with her sister, Merici went to live with her uncle in Salo, a town not very away. After her sister suddenly died as well, Merici became a member of the Third Order of Franciscans and when her uncle died, she returned to Desenzano at age twenty and devoted herself to educating the mostly ignorant and ignored girls of her home town. Of course, like any good saint, she is said to have had visions of angels on more than one occasion, and received heavenly messages through her dreams. (In contrast, my extraordinary dreams usually involve me running the marathon, not promoting healing or education to the needy masses. So, that's how I know I'm not destined for beatification.) She also is said to have gone blind at one point and then had her sight miraculously restored.
Posts
