Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Calgary: Convent

6 comments:

  1. Did you make sure that it was still a convent, John? It might be an condo for all we know.

    When I visited Quebec City in 1994, my first since 1971, I was heartbroken to find out that the Franciscan Monastery of Perpetual Adoration near the Plains of Abraham (Battle of Quebec, 1759) was no more. It had been converted into an apartment house. The outside still looked like a convent, but it was one any more.

    In Montreal, the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame (founded by St. Marguerite Bourgeoys) sold their Mother House to a secular college (Dawson). That was the site of a horrific mass shooting some years ago.

    And more recently, the Sisters of Charity, more familiarly known as 'The Grey Nuns' (founded by another early Montrealer, St. Marie-Marguerite d'Youville), vacated their city Mother House and turned it over to a secular college for use as their music department. The relics of St. Marguerite were sent out of Montreal to her birthplace of Varennes, some distance away. I think there are less than 200 Grey Nuns left-all old women, all wearing secular dress.

    It made me sad then, and still does now, when I see the decline of true Catholicism in Canada, particularly in Quebec. The Quebecois used to be so strong and so staunch in their Catholic Faith. The so-called 'Quiet Revolution' in the 1950s and 1960s was the beginning of the end for Catholicism in Quebec.

    St. Marguerite Bourgeoys, St. Marie-Marguerite d'Youville, and all holy Canadian Saints, Blesseds, Venerables and Servants of God, pray for your country!

    Barb in NY

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    1. The Calgary convent is still a convent. The nuns there wear the tradidional black and white habit. It is beautiful there. Right by the river.

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    2. Hi can you help I went to notre dame school lingfield uk I am trying to track down my teachers who were all nuns from the convent in Calgary do you have the contact details for the convent please so that I can get in touch (Sister Cecelia Sister Christa etc 1978-82)deborah dalton

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    3. I do not. Sorry. I would recommend simply to look online to locate their mother house and to begin by seeking info there via e-mail. Best wishes.

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  2. Yes,religious life of nuns is destroyed in Canada, just as in the USA, and most countries of Europe with the possible exception of Poland and other Eastern European countries as well as tiny pockets in Italy, Germany, Spain and France. But there are no hopeful spots in England, Ireland, Netherlands, Belgium etc. All like Canada.
    It is sad to see the vast Motherhouse of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (n France), truely like a small city which once housed over 1,000 nuns now practically empty and desolate. The sisteionalrs discarded their beautiful traditional habits in the very early 1970's, moderninzed, discarded the modified habit for layclothes in 1980 and have collapsed since. Before Vatican II, 12,000+ sisters--today, barely 3,500 aged women in street clothes.
    I can name at least 6 Canadian religious Orders of nuns which once, before Vatican II were so numerous and flourishing with many young vocations but today are all dying out with aged lay clothes women in their 70's and 80's. The most memorable Canadian Orders of sisters besides the Grey Nuns and the Sisters of Notre Dame might be:
    Antonian Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Clergy
    Sisters of Saint Joan of Arc
    Sisters of the Assumption of the BVM
    Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception
    Ursulines
    Sisters of the Most Holy Names of Jesus and Mary--- all dead and disappearing Orders of radical femminist nuns today.
    The fruit of Vatican II and it's "reforms", so tragically seen in Montreal and Quebec, and all across the world, are empty convents or convents sold for commercial use, empty and closed seminaries, closed monasteries, consolidated or closed parishes.
    The enormity of the losses staggers the imagination.
    How could the Pope have stood by and allowed it to happen...unless he was/is part of the problem.
    Tragic beyond words.

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  3. 'but was one any more'--should have been written, 'wasn't'.

    Yes, Anonymous@3:09, I grieve for the collapse of religious life in the West, and especially in Canada, since it's just 'over the border'.

    I saw the Mother House of the Sisters of Saint Joan of Arc when I was in Sillery (a suburb of Quebec City) in 1994 and 1998. It was a few houses down from the "College Jesus-Marie', the Convent of the Religious of Jesus and Mary. It also had a lot of late middle-aged / elderly religious. A member of that Congregation, Dina Belanger, was beatified in 1993, and is buried in their chapel. Unfortunately, the convent building she knew burned down (either by accident or by design [arson by a disgruntled student], whichever version you believe) in 1983. So a smaller building of modern design stands on the grounds. Who knows how long that will survive, if there are no more RMJs!

    I met Ursulines at their convent in Quebec City-all old and in secular dress. Same at another Ursuline convent in Three Rivers.

    Yes, it is tragic beyond words....

    Barb from NY

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