Author Topic: Real Women (Read 259 times)

poche · « **on:** March 24, 2020, 04:32:42 AM »

A few years ago, I set out to research my grandmother’s early childhood in Philadelphia, looking for clues about what the world was like in the first precarious years of her life. I knew that she was born in October 1917, that she had lived through the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 as a baby, but I was unprepared for the harrowing details I uncovered in my search.
Reading about the fall of 1918 left me grappling with a series of images of the outbreak as it was experienced locally: hushed streets, shut doors, bodies piled up in basements and on porches because the morgues had run out of coffins. Businesses and public spaces citywide were shuttered, including churches, schools and theaters. In a single day, on Oct. 16, more than 700 people in Philadelphia died from influenza.

But as I read the first alarming headlines about the coronavirus in January, what came to mind from my family research was one particular docuмent, an oral history published in 1919 by the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia to preserve living memories of the Spanish flu. “Facts unrecorded are quickly lost in the new interests of changing time,” its author began; here, he meant to “gather information for the future.” Within these unassuming pages, I found the story of an extraordinary act of generosity and compassion, carried out at the height of a pandemic. Titled “Work of the Sisters During the Epidemic of Influenza, October 1918,” within this docuмent was evidence of the enormous human capacity for personal sacrifice in the name of public good.
In early October, the Red Cross warned that Philadelphia did not have enough nurses to treat and minister to the sick, whose numbers were growing rapidly. “The nursing forces of the city have been depleted by the war. There was a serious shortage in many of the hospitals before the epidemic broke upon us,” an official cautioned. “Now it is a matter of life and death.” It was in this tense atmosphere that the archbishop of Philadelphia called on nuns in his diocese to leave their convents and take up posts caring for the sick and dying across the city.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-nuns.html

poche · « **Reply #1 on:** March 24, 2020, 04:33:55 AM »

Although most of the nuns had little experience of the outside world and no medical training, 2,000 sisters answered the archbishop’s call. They signed on for 12-hour shifts, navigating the unfamiliar streetcar system through a city made still with fear. Dressed in white gowns and gauze masks, the sisters treated patients who represented a cross section of Philadelphia: immigrants from Italy, Ukraine, Poland and China; black families, Jєωιѕн families, and the city’s poorest, its orphans, its homeless and destitute, all in need of care.

They tended to stricken men, crammed 30 to a ward, with the dirt from their factory jobs still smeared on their faces and hands. Hallucinating patients tried to climb out of windows, tore at the bedsheets, threw glass tumblers at their nurses and begged God for mercy. In private homes, the sisters found parents dead in their beds while their hungry children cried in the next room. “The windows were closed tightly, and we felt we could taste the fever,” one nun recalled later.
They washed linens, served hot soup and mixed medicine. They brought water, ice, blankets and comfort. “The call ‘Sister’ could be heard every minute during the night,” one remembered of her hectic shifts. Another spoke about her initial trepidation on her first day: “I was struck, at first, with a fearful dread, for I never came in close contact with death but once in my life. But realizing what must be done, I quickly put on my gown and mask, and being assigned to the women’s ward, I began my duties.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-nuns.html

poche · « **Reply #2 on:** March 24, 2020, 04:34:48 AM »

One hundred years on, the work of the sisters provides us a model to follow and aspire to in this uncommon time: one that presses us to look for ways to support our neighbors rather than shrinking from them, to acknowledge our fears but to find courage in the strength of our communities, and ultimately to put others before self.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/20/opinion/coronavirus-nuns.html

Ladislaus · « **Reply #3 on:** March 24, 2020, 06:59:31 AM »

Quote from: poche on March 24, 2020, 04:32:42 AM

It was in this tense atmosphere that the archbishop of Philadelphia called on nuns in his diocese to leave their convents and take up posts caring for the sick and dying across the city.

Alas, that was at a time where there was an abundance of religious vocations, and they had nuns to spare. Many hospitals (and schools) were staffed mostly by religious. Catholic school was practically free because you did not have to pay a cadre of lay people to run the schools. Today you're lucky to find a stray nun or brother or priest at a Catholic High School or grade school. Now the average Catholic elementary school around here charges $4,000 a year per student to attend. There's a High School near me that used to be run almost entirely by the Holy Cross brothers. Currently they have exactly TWO brothers floating around, both of them elderly and not capable of making great contributions to running the school. The rest is made up of lay people. So the tuition is $13,000 per year per student ... unaffordable for most, especially those who have large families by allowing God to determine the size of their family. Instead, most of the students there come from one- or two- child families who have deliberately restricted their family size so they could "live the life." They go on expensive vacations a couple times a year, and their 16-year-olds drive to school in luxury cars (Lexuses, etc.) ... but this has changed the culture of the school to one of selfishness and entitlement ... with a mentality completely alien to Catholic principles.

More cascading effects of the Vatican II disaster.

Author Topic: Real Women (Read 259 times)

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