Dominican sisterhood evolves to serve
Saturday, August 11, 2007 By Charles Honey
Press Religion Editor, Grand Rapids Press, MI--
Back then, they all wore black and white habits and were not permitted to talk after 9 p.m. Almost all of them were teachers.
Life for Grand Rapids Dominican Sisters is much different today than when Sister Marilyn Holmes entered the order.
"If you told us in 1963 we would be living like this, I wouldn't have believed it," Holmes, 62, said recently at the sisters' Marywood motherhouse at 2025 E. Fulton St. "We aren't stagnant -- that's the beauty of it."
Indeed, although Holmes teaches third-graders at St. Andrew School, teachers are now a minority among the approximately 280 Grand Rapids Dominicans.
Others serve in a variety of ways: from a health clinic in Peru to a New Mexico Hispanic parish to a Colorado anti-nuclear protest that landed three of them in prison. And only a handful wear habits.
Most of the sisters gathered last week for Dominican Days, an annual get-together on Marywood's spacious grounds for reflection and policy-making. The assembly led up to the Aug. 8 feast day of St. Dominic de Guzman, who founded the Dominican order in 1206 in Prouille, France.
This year's gathering included a prayer service for peace featuring Sisters Jackie Hudson, Ardeth Platte and Carol Gilbert. The three were convicted in 2003 of vandalizing a Colorado missile silo.
One way to reach out while supporting their much-publicized efforts, fellow sisters say political activism is just one manifestation of their commitment to community, prayer, study and service.
"They're the prophetic voice out there on that particular issue, representing all of us who support them," said Sister Dolorita Martinez, 70, parish life coordinator of San Juan Diego Mission in New Mexico. "We have a strong commitment to address justice issues." "If you're going to be a witness for Jesus, you're going to have to be, in some sense, political," added Sister Dorothy Ederer, 63, a campus minister at St. Mary Student Parish in Ann Arbor. "Jesus was a radical in his day."
If the protesting sisters have conveyed a radical image, visitors see a gentler side of Dominican life at Marywood, home to classes on spirituality, healing and alternative therapies.
A 24-hour prayer line is another example of the order's contemplative nature, sisters say. Yet their contemplation compels them into lives of service befitting their call as the Order of Preachers.
"It's exciting to know all these women are touching people in very different aspects of life, everywhere," said Martinez, who last year celebrated 50 years as a sister. She is one of about 165 sisters who do not live at the Marywood motherhouse or the adjacent Marywood Health Center. Their ministries take them as far afield as Chimbote, Peru, where a Dominican health clinic last month delivered its 80,000th baby.
Serving wherever needed Sister Lillian Bockheim is nurse director of the Maternidad de Maria outpatient clinic, whose 96 employees include 14 doctors and 18 midwives. Bockheim treats everything from tuberculosis to asthma for residents of the poor fishing community. She grew up at St. Alphonsus parish and attended Marywood Academy and Aquinas College before going to Peru 40 years ago.
The annual gatherings at Marywood reconnect her to family and fellow Dominicans. "It's like close sisters getting together," said Bockheim, 69. "It's very important for supporting and encouraging each other." For her and other sisters, Dominican Days is a reunion that re-energizes them for their work in the world and bonds them to their sisters in Christ.
"It's a family, so it's like you're growing up together," said Holmes, the St. Andrew teacher. "It's just innately a part of you."
Send e-mail to the author: choney@grpress.com