TRANSCRIPT (by The Colorado Catholic Herald staff)
Mother Dolores Hart, prioress of Regina Laudis Abbey
Catholic Media Conference lunch keynote
June 20, 2013
I am very honored to be here and to be speaking with you. And to say this is very unexpected is about 50 years’ worth of questions. For if it hadn’t been for Ignatius Press asking me to go out on this tour, I would still be back at the monastery, where I have been for 50 years.
My dear friend Richard DeNeut, about 10 years ago said to me, “We’ve known each other since you were in Hollywood, 1957, and we’ve been through a lot together. Don’t you think it’s time you wrote a memoir before you’re too old to remember anything?” He was right, because all of you know that time does take its toll. So I said, “Dick, if you will join me and help me to do this, I’ll be very happy.” Because Dick and I had written a book about our late friend Patricia Neal, when she used to come to our abbey after she was elegantly rousted from England. And Maria Cooper, her good friend and my friend, said, “Why don’t you go to a place in Connecticut and get some rest?”
Well, I have found that, in contemplative life, you don’t rest any more than all of you rest. Because in contemplative life, you meet friends, you meet people, you’re there to be a servant to those who are ill and to listen – that’s the key word. “osculte ut filie” – “listen my son with the ear of your heart to the voice of your master” – that’s the first words of the rule of St. Benedict. And I think that’s the key, which I feel I hear in this wonderful room today – that you are listeners. You are people who have to go into all the situations of the world, which we hear about. It’s like we hear about it in black and white, and you come out of the monastery and you see the movie in full color.But what I’ve realized in these last days was that the movie is not in full color in this world.
In fact, I would dare say that the church is facing a world that is going into a new dark age, and you are the persons who bring light. I know that because you are the people who tell those who are trying to hear the truth – you tell them what the faith is about. St. Francis De Sales would have called you a living fountain in which people could drink. But the fountain has to be so shrewd, so secretive and so careful, and sometimes you have to just go for broke and say, “I’m coming in and doing it and saying it.” But you alone – the Holy Spirit will guide you. The Holy Spirit will tell you exactly what is needed because, I don’t mean to offend the priesthood by making something too easy, but you are a priesthood, another form of the priesthood, I would dare say, in the 21st century. I know that the good fathers here, the ones who hold the dignified office at its highest level, would appreciate my saying that this is a call that we need in you too. Because the people are not just going to church to hear a homily. The people need to hear the word through the papers, the magazines, the events, the scenes, the places where they’ve read. And you are the ones who have to bring that word.
Now in the monastery, we have a new system which we call “monastic education.”And in monastic education, anybody that gets so tired of what’s going on, so angry, so upset, and in the old version, they’ve got something in their mouth (to say). It’s spelled “sh . . .” and you know what I’m going to say. Where do they do go? They don’t go to their formation mother, they can’t tell her what they feel about it. Many years ago, when I entered the monastery, my abbess was very kind to me because she knew I was an actress and she knew I had come from another society. She was patient with me, and after I was there for about five months… And let me tell you leaving Hollywood and going into the monastery, I cried myself to sleep every night for the first seven years. I said, “I can’t do it. What am I doing? I don’t understand it.”
And so I wrote this letter to the abbess and it was about 50 things that I thought should change. So she called me up to her office and I thought I was going to be shown the door, and she said, “Sister Dolores, I think you should learn a few rules first. Then we’ll talk about the other.” So I thought I had been very lucky. But about seven years later, when I finally took final vows, she called me back and said, “Remember that letter you wrote to me?”Now it’s coming. She said, “You know, I liked a lot of things in there and I want you to start changing the way we do a lot of things. The one thing I really like is this business about education, that there should be a place where the sisters can come and say what’s in their heart, to say how angry they are, to say how miserable they feel, to swear if they want to, to do what’s in their instinct… to reveal their instinct. I want you to start something called ‘monastic education,’ and want you to be the dean of it.”
I said, “Mother, I have no college degree. I left school to become an actress to kiss Elvis.” She said, “What better education could you have?” (laughter) So we started this education, and in it, the sisters of the province.... they turned to me, and you know what? They were the first bloggers. They wrote down whatever they thought, whatever the need was, whatever they thought their place should be. And they came to understand. And in a monastery, everyone has to have a very particular mission. Everyone has something that they are bringing to the monastery. They will help to change it, to bring it into something new.
And I realized in working with them something I’d always known. I was a convert to the church. When I was little, my grandmother sent me to Catholic school so I didn’t have to cross the railroad tracks. When I was there, you used to fast after midnight and have breakfast after Mass. All the children had sweet rolls and chocolate milk after Mass, and I had to eat at home with granny. One day, I said to one of the sisters, “I really would love to take the bread with the children.” I was talking about the chocolate milk. She went to the priest and said, “I think little Dolores wants to be part of our faith, father.” So he came to me and said, “I understand you want bread with the children.” And I said, “Yeah!” And he said, “What you’ve got to do is go to school here and learn a little bit about being Catholic.” And I said, “I’d like to do that – I’ve got Catholics in my family.” I had so many different faiths in my family. So I went home and said, “Granny, I can have chocolate milk and sweet rolls with the kids at school if I go to the religion classes.” She said, “I don’t care what you do!” She was a waitress. She said, “Get it wherever you can, kid!”
So, I think from a very early age, the mysteries of the church were new to me, and I learned to understand (that) there’s a constant listening to find out what is it we are called to do. Why does each single individual room have a particular gift, a purpose, a place?You’ve come here to be honored. Buttons – in our case you got them on your shirt when you did the right thing. But each one got a different button, because each one was unique
And that, my friends, I think is the mystery. My friends, I would ask you to listen to yourself, to know who you are in the church and to trust it, because the church needs you. I am not saying that because it’s a nice thing to say to you. It’s a hell of a thing to say to you. You’re going to have to go through a lot to do what you know in your heart must be done. And I want you to know, you have 38 of us contemplative nuns, and when I go home, I’m going to tell them, “We’re going to pray for these folks. They’re going to be our special concern.” (applause) Seven times a day and once in the middle of the night, we say the Divine Office. And that office is going to have your name on it.