Sisters of the Humility of Mary, Motherhouse

 Villa Maria is in the sad borderlands just east of the Ohio state line.  The postindustrial city of Youngstown, Ohio, looms just a few miles to the west.  (Postindustrial?  Hell, more like post-apocalyptic.)  All around are the grayish Novemberlands of neglected farms and old industrial tracts.  The Mahoning and Shenango valleys are a spooky sort of place.  But Villa Maria is lovely.  

Notice the democratic psychology of the main chapel: altar and pulpit are on the same level as the people's chairs; seats are in a circle; there is no chancel, no choir, no rood screen.  The best thing about this chapel is the marble fountain of sweetly trickling holy water at the entrance.  It sounds like a meadow brook.  I didn't see a baptismal font in this place, but--immaculate conceptions excepted--why would they need one?

 The environs are gritty and haunted, but the little enclave of Villa Maria sits pretty and serene in the shadowy countryside.  Villa Maria is the Motherhouse of the Sisters of the Humility of Mary, a small order of nuns that is active mostly in a few American states and Haiti.

 These nuns have kept up pretty well with the times.  They closed the girls' school back in the late '80s and made it into a center for personal retreats, group retreats, and conferences.  They've got chapels, and shrines, and a meditational labyrinth.  There's also an indoor swimming pool, a library, and a pretty good cafeteria.  It's a peaceful place that still has the feel of a small private college: broad lawns, towering shade trees, a reflective pond.

 Somehow my liberal Protestant imagination still ascribes to Roman Catholicism a lofty sort of grandeur that, in all fairness, is more Anglican than Roman.  After all these years of living in Pittsburgh, a town bedecked in the cheap trinkets of Italian and Polish Catholicism, I somehow continue to be surprised by Catholic kitsch.  Poorly made statues, wilted flowers on dusty shrines, schmaltzy sweet prayers showcasing theological ideas so esoteric that they surely don't tug at the hearts of anyone except the person who wrote them.  

 The framed prayer next to the Mary statue (fourth photo) says, "Most holy Virgin, I believe and confess your holy and immaculate conception, pure and without stain.  Most pure Virgin, by your virginal purity, your glorious quality of Mother of God, obtain for me of your divine Son humility, charity, purity of heart, mind and body, the gift of prayer, a holy life, and a happy death.  Amen."  

I understand that it's a prayer for nuns, not for ordinary laypeople (if I could be called a layperson).  And I agree that humility, charity, and the gift of prayer are all truly beautiful things.  But I don't like the prayer's implications about sex and purity (much less about natural law).  It makes human procreation seem so dirty, like a "stain" on a person's soul.  It's outlandish enough to say that Jesus was born of a virgin; why does Mary have to be born of one, too?  Is it true that the Roman Church hates sexuality--which is surely one of Life's great joys and gifts?  Also, it sounds like the prayer was translated a little stiltedly from the Latin.  It reminds me of the uncomfortable English that a long-ago friend read on her own paperwork when she was kicked out of a nunnery: "Insufficient Docility."  

But this is a wonderful place.  The sisters are sweet and very welcoming.  They've opened their Motherhouse to me and the others at our retreat.  And these ladies are very definitely peace-and-justice allies in the culture wars against right wing wackjobs of our times.