The Little Sisters of the Poor are back in the news.
Yes, it’s true that, for the third time, the order’s legal team is back at the U.S. Supreme Court. This is, of course, a case linked to the Health and Human Services mandate requiring most religious institutions to offer employees — even students — health-insurance plans covering sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including "morning-after pills."
The issue, of course, is whether leaders of the Little Sisters of the Poor, and others, can be forced to cooperate with government programs that violate the doctrines that define their work.
This raises a question that few SCOTUS-beat reporters have answered. Who are the Little Sisters of the Poor and what do the members of this order do to help others?
That brings us to a must-read feature at The Atlantic (by religion-beat pro Emma Green) that ran with this dramatic double-decker headline:
Nuns vs. the Coronavirus
At a Catholic nursing home in Delaware, one-fifth of residents have died. The nuns who run the facility are grappling with their calling.
This story isn’t about politics and SCOTUS, although it might have helped to have included a sentence or two pointing to this order’s role in that First Amendment fight. This feature offers an inside look at the work that the Little Sisters of the Poor are doing during the coronavirus crisis.
As it turns out, they are doing what they have always been doing — but this work now requires them to risk their lives on a daily basis. Here is a crucial early summary:
In many ways, the Little Sisters were founded for a moment like this: The nuns take a special vow of hospitality, promising to accompany the elderly as they move toward death. But like other long-term-care facilities in the U.S., the Little Sisters home in Delaware was blindsided by this pandemic. Even those most at peace with death have been deeply shaken by COVID-19.
Sister Raymond Elizabeth Kortenhof describes herself as a “lifer” in the Little Sisters. She first volunteered with the order when she was 11, and soon found herself falling in love with God, who directed her to care for the elderly. “We’re in the antiques business,” she told me. “People like antiques. But they don’t necessarily like old people.”
In addition to America’s ongoing wars over religious liberty, there is another major story looming in the background throughout this heart-rending piece.
I am referring to the vocational crisis among Roman Catholics — which affects religious orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor just as much, or more, than it does the priesthood. As everyone knows, there aren’t enough young sisters and priests. This is a story that has received plenty of coverage for several decades now.
However, every now and then, another news story comes along that puts a spotlight on the human side of what is often treated as a mere statistical trend.
This is the thread that Green weaves into this story — over and over. Here is one remarkable passage that shows what that looks like (and feels like). Yes, the elderly residents of this nursing home are dying at a rapid rate. But what about the elderly sisters and priests who serve them? This is long, but essential:
The first death came on March 26, and more followed in quick succession. There was Father Hilary Rodgers, a 75-year-old retired priest who spent decades as a Franciscan friar. There was Lucille Williams, a mother of six who would have been 95 in May, and who had recently been crowned queen of the residence’s Mardi Gras celebration. Many of the deaths were unexpected. One nursing assistant told me that staff might check on a resident at 8 p.m. and deem her stable, only to find her dead when checking on her again at 8:30. For safety reasons, family members were not allowed into rooms to visit their sick loved ones, even as they approached death. Residents’ children and grandchildren took to standing outside the windows of the first-floor Holy Family unit, shouting conversations through the glass or holding up signs that residents could see from bed. Jack Williams, Lucille’s son, made one that said dad is waiting for you. He was too nervous about upsetting his sisters to use it.
Inside the home, the sisters and staff were in shock. Every time they tried to grieve the death of a resident, a new person would die. “It felt like we were robbed,” Kortenhof said. “We may have 13 deaths over a year. We had 13 deaths … over a period of three weeks,” including the 11 COVID-19–related cases and two of unrelated causes. Typically, deaths at the home are slow and gentle, with residents surrounded by family and the sisters sitting by their bedside, holding a prayer vigil in three-hour shifts. COVID-19 has taken away all the normal rituals that might happen close to the end of a resident’s life. Priests cannot visit to take confession or anoint the dying. Because COVID-19 is so contagious, the sisters have to don personal protective equipment over their habits and veils anytime they enter a sick resident’s room. “One man, I was praying with him awhile with full garb on: rubber gloves, goggles, masks, gowns,” Kortenhof said. “It’s just so unnatural for us.”
A few weeks into the outbreak, the nuns started getting sick.
At this point, the poignant details keep coming in waves.
There are fewer sisters to take care of the elderly sisters, as well as the residents whose needs are at the heart of their ministry. Over and over the Little Sisters who are still able to work head to the chapel for the prayers that keep them going — while having to observe social-distancing guidelines that prevent them from kneeling side by side. A video stream from the chapel allows the bedridden to prayer along.
Holy Week arrives and the deaths continue.
Everyone is exhausted. But there is work to do and vows to be kept. Here is the final word, care of two residents in the facility — Florence Facciolo and Karen Malzone:
Both Flo and Karen are lifelong Catholics, and they believe firmly in the promise of Christianity. “When you’re people of faith, heaven is not a scary place,” Karen said. “It’s a place you’re looking forward to, that you’ve been working for all your life.” The residents encourage one another. They’re ready to go home, she said. “Just maybe not today.”
Read it all. I’m not crying. You’re crying.