By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
(Editor’s note: The Boy Monk dedicates its April 2021 blogspace to Utah’s Catholic sisters and nuns.)
Utah was blessed for a long time to host two outstanding and compassionate medical centers run by Catholic nuns. The Benedictine sisters from St. Joseph, Minnesota, built and operated St. Benedict’s Hospital in my hometown Ogden. Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City was a charitable mission of the Holy Cross sisters from Notre Dame, Indiana.
Holy Cross opened in 1875 to care for poor Utah miners and migrants and their families. St. Ben’s opened in 1946 to meet the health needs of the population further north. For a time in the 1980s, they merged and provided services as part of the same joint entity. A sign just outside St. Ben’s explained the mission of both hospitals: “above all things…care must be taken of the sick as if they were Christ in person.”
As a result of escalating health care costs and with fewer women joining religious orders, both hospitals were sold to corporate entities in the 1990s. The Benedictine sisters provided pastoral support at their old hospital for many years after the sale. A small group of Holy Cross sisters also stayed in Salt Lake City to serve other community needs.
Both institutions were near and dear to my heart. My mother often cooked dinner for the nuns and worked in the maternity ward at St. Ben’s. Some nieces and nephews were born there. All three of our children were born at Holy Cross, but two arrived post-sale and so it had a different name each time. The Holy Cross sisters also taught my siblings and me at St. Joseph’s High School in Ogden.
To Utah’s great loss, the Benedictines left the state in 2013, but they continue to distribute the hospital sale proceeds locally. Only a few Holy Cross sisters remain in Utah. The Catholic Church owes a debt of gratitude to the nuns in these and other religious orders—hardworking women who, for little or no pay, tirelessly did a large part of the labor of the church for many years, usually taking on jobs no one else would do.
One of the Benedictines I remember best is Sister Stephanie Mongeon. Sister Steps, as we called her, lived in Utah for almost a half century, working for many years as the St. Ben’s dietician, and then later in pastoral care. Brother Gregory from the Huntsville Trappist monastery introduced us.
She was a bubbly, joyful, and optimistic bundle of high energy and great integrity. She also was a regular road runner, a first for me when it came to nuns. When I was a young boy, it never occurred to me that a nun would need exercise like everyone else.
Much like she endured the challenge of running hoping to earn the benefits of exercise, when people came to Sister Stephanie with their troubles, which I suspect was often, she would try to help them find hope in the midst of their challenges. Inevitably, she would remind them—as she did me—of the payoff for suffering, saying, “There is no growth without pain!”
In so many ways, the Catholic Church is a patriarchal institution. The historical Jesus was male. We often speak of the “church fathers.” The pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests all are men.
Even Monastery Mornings, my new book about the Utah Trappist monks and the important role they played in my life, is largely a story about church men. Yet, women often are the heart, soul, and even the backbone of the Body of Christ, and frequently they are the font of some of its greatest wisdom.
For example, Sister Steps kept a stuffed animal—a monkey—on the shelf in her office. One day during a visit I asked her why. She told me it was a reminder to herself. She explained that people often told her their troubles. She tried to be sympathetic and helpful, but said the monkey was there to remind her that the problem (i.e. the monkey) was on the back of the people she was helping/consoling, and she could not and should not take it upon her own back.
It’s good advice, rather like the technique one must use to help someone drowning in a lake—get in, help them, but don’t let them pull you under the water too. During my many years as a lawyer, counselor, advisor, mediator, friend, and father, I have recalled and admired Sister Stephanie’s clever method for remembering such wisdom. We all should keep a stuffed monkey on our shelf.
*Mike O’Brien is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (found here), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, will be published by Paraclete Press (more information here) in August 2021.
