Dropping the Habit

Royalty, military families, artists, performers .... There are many people who have been laid by a pre-destiny to them by their families born and raised to imagine as "atonement" for your parents. As these people are usually Marion Dante was happy with the selection.

"Tell them, Marion, what you get when you grow up."

"A nun," I said, waiting for all follow a rule.

But what can the complexity of a long traditionreligious system of a small child called? She had enough of him to suggest that if the gold cross that hung around the neck is lost, it could prematurely retaliation for their money spent on sweets learned. But when her mother told her of Jesus entering their hearts for first communion, went to the opportunity to be the cause of a suit jacket and exciting, thinking done for them. But, as he thought he was happy that the future was definedthem. It would be a nun, and "everyone would know, I was a good girl."

The operation of the monasteries have always been, by their very nature, invisible to most. As a child I had sisters everywhere, and when I was an adult, would be a rare spectacle. What I was recovering from the revolution that went under cover below them in the sixties and seventies. I do not remember any news about the nuns, though in the Western world, the enormous growthfiltered information flow and a change of course we all lived through this army of female monastic. I knew he must have changed their lives a bit 'like the few I had never seen, to dress in street clothes. As in the eighties and nineties, the allegations of sexual abuse and corruption rocked the church, I heard nothing of what their women were contending with, a few jokes about priests antics' with the sisters and the boys choir.

Once I startedReading "Dropping the Habit", I realized I should have asked years ago. Your sister tends to be a stereotypical Irish woman. This story is a great idea why this should be the case. The London of the fifties and sixties had a lot of families of Irish immigrants. He had read the signs on display houses, "no blacks, no dogs, no" Irish. For someone who was at the age of fourteen years of examination, provides no incentive to go out into the world alone, becauseare doubts about the vocation and vows.

I could always come back, he thought, but I was led into a room with my brothers and it was our house and we were always to be calm. Why did we ever leave the beautiful home dad had built in Ireland?

At the age of fourteen, as Elvis was discovered, and make the art of threading a strip of cloth in the skirt, lift, Marion has been withdrawn from the world. From the age of fourteen years, Marion had not seenNewspapers and letters - incoming and outgoing light - would be, and most fun to watch TV very rare was the sight of anxious glances to the nuns who was under the shawl, and make sure there is nothing " inappropriate "on the screen can see the girls.

So, finally, he realized he had cheated and left - you would think that would be a very short history, is not it? Think about it. Think of a lifetime of brainwashing, the opinionway to alcoholics and drug addicts after making the decision to change his life. "Dropping the Habit" is a terrible, long-term task, which easily fills a book.

"I hope you realize that even if you live in a poor area, you will never feel insecure about how we feel."
"Why?"

"You know you live can live poor but you will never be on the road, as some people are brought here. The rent will be paid and if something happened to one of you,They have a large order of priests and nuns behind you. "

The fact that this mission the sisters, undermine the search for a hug and a bathroom with a friend (individual friendships, the community), chat and priests would tell anyone to use 'if you undermine not only maintain begin to fight, weaken the power. It 'used by people who will keep the ways of counseling and psychological help secretly executed because many of the nuns, who can then use these servicesOrder.

There were also strong practical obstacles. A nun who has his vote for life has to earn every penny that can never be signed and the petition to the Pope to be freed from this contract. It also depends on the monastery for a home, and no board of her care in their old age.

Think of all support services are there for people who are victims of cults and abusive, closed communities of different species. Did it ever dawn on anyone that the ex-nuns andEx-priest could do something similar?

I taught a lot of people who were themselves brought by or sisters met. Some of them remember with love, some with terror. Anyway, I hope you will find in this book and discover that these women and the long struggle that many of them have a new way of life as the 20th Century has fallen and the world have done what had fallen on their heads.

"Dropping the Habit"
Marion Dante
Poolbeg Press 2007
ISBN978 184223 297 2
Article originally written for Booksy - a revision of indie Circaidy Gregory and small press books.