Sister Nouveau Mary Rides Again!
(“But does she ride on an earth-friendly bicycle? an anything-but-U.S.-made compact car? or perhaps a broom?” ~Sandra Molnar, author)
SISTER NOUVEAU MARY LOOKS TO THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH
Why, it’s Sister Nouveau Mary, and she’s charging down the street,
Nose a-twitch at scents of heresy and rumors far from sweet
That her very own disciples (“Future Leaders of the Church”)
Are fomenting revolution and have left her in the lurch.
Now here it is First Saturday, and every girl in class
Has bugged out of enneagrams and gone to morning Mass.
It was Sister Athanasius (of all people!) with a grin
Who had told her of the dire straits her protegees were in.
For all the girls were making a novena! To Saint Ann!
“And we all know, Sister Mary, that’s the way to catch a man!”
To catch a WHAT? The little brats! And here she’d spent her life
In saving her young charges from becoming justawife!
Not stifled slaves to One of Them, tied down to babes and home,
But her elite, her avant garde, crack troops for the Sack of Rome!
Now she puffs and trots the faster, lest that saint unreconstructed
Should smile on those petitioners ere their prayers could be destructed.
And she contemplates with horror (lo, her knees have turned to water)
Just how badly that same saint had failed in raising her own daughter.
And she seeks in vain for comfort: “It could be worse, after all–
The whole bunch could have gone to join the Daughters of Saint Paul.”
Then her high heels click the faster, but no comfort can she find
For the worm of doubt is burrowing and whispering in her mind:
“Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, say, how does your garden grow?
With poppet pope-ettes, rootless plants not meant to bud or blow
And given not the Living Water and the Light they need,
But sterile potions you distill from silly books you read?
Or have they fled your circled chairs, your paper-bannered room,
Transplanting out in God’s green world, where they’ll be free to bloom?
And if you could form yourself anew, to which would you incline:
To be a dry stalk in the sand or a branch of the Living Vine?”